Transcript
Ted Cruz (0:00)
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. Senator. It was a lot of headlines that kind of came out of nowhere from the FBI Director, Ray, and he had a lot to say in the sit down interview with Brett Baer over at Fox News. And I want to get your reaction, first off, to the FBI director's inability to answer a very straightforward question about January 6th and possible FBI informants. Here is what he was asked and his lack of response.
Brett Baier (0:32)
Full confidence in that.
Ben Ferguson (0:33)
And the other Twitter question we get a lot is, did the FBI have undercover agents or paid informants or assets among the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th?
Brett Baier (0:43)
Well, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Brett, I can't really appropriately talk about when, where and how we use confidential informants.
Ben Ferguson (0:51)
Is it classified?
Brett Baier (0:52)
Well, we have information that is about any number of topics that is law enforcement sensitive. But you should not read into my inability to answer a question because of my obligations as that as a clue or a hint in any way about how accurate your reader's tweet is.
Ted Cruz (1:15)
I mean, Senator, that's not a very good answer for a lot of Americans that want answers. We are getting a lot of the footage that's going to come out of January 6th. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's talked about being transparent. He believes it was politicized January 6th. The January 6th committee was politicized. Are you satisfied with Director Wray's response?
Chris Wray (1:35)
Absolutely not. That was a ridiculous answer. And listen, there is a fundamental problem at the FBI and at the Department of Justice. It's something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, which is that DOJ and the FBI have been profoundly politicized. The last book I wrote, Justice Corrupted how the Left has Weaponized Legal System. And by the way, I would encourage folks go buy that book. I detail how first Barack Obama and now Joe Biden have turned DOJ and the FBI into partisan tools they use to attack their enemies on January 6. In particular, there are enormous questions about the responsibility, the culpability of the FBI and the doj. What did they know? What was their involvement? And listen, let me say something about Chris Wray. So I've known Chris Wray a long, long time. When I came out of law school, I graduated law School in 1995 and the first judge I clerked for was a judge named J. Michael Ludig. He was at the time the top conservative federal appellate judge of the country. Judge Ludig and I were very, very close. He was like a second father to Me, Judge Ludig was a very young judge. He was 41 years old. He had been on the Federal Court of Appeals for five years. He was appointed by George Herbert Walker bush at age 36. So he was the youngest federal appellate judge in the country. Judge Ludig had been Antonin Scalia's very first law clerk. The first year Antonin Scalia was on the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals. And so Judge Ludig was someone who was just. He was an incredible judge. He taught me. He was really the first person after law school to teach me how to be a lawyer. So I knew Chris Wray because Chris clerked for Judge Ludig. I think it was three years before I did. So I was the fifth year Judge Ludig was on the court. I believe Chris was the second year Judge Ludig was on the court. And I've known Chris a long time. Chris is a good guy. He's a very smart lawyer. He's a very decent man. He loves America. Chris is not a left wing activist. But I will tell you, I've been incredibly disappointed with the job Chris Wray has done as the head of the FBI. And the reason, and I've had this conversation with Chris directly more than once. The reason is Chris is fundamentally he's a company man. He's someone who believes his job is defend the FBI, that that his responsibility. He's someone who has been at DOJ a long, long time. He was the head of the criminal division under George Herbert Walker Bush. He was someone who was a prosecutor for a long time. And he believes his responsibility is whatever the career lawyers the FBI has done, he needs to circle the wagons and defend them. And I have had energetic and even screaming conversations with Chris where I've said, listen, you are not helping the FBI when you are defending Democrat partisans who have corrupted the FBI, who have turned it into a weapon to advance the political interests of partisan Democrats. It doesn't help the institutions, it weakens the institution. And on this question, listen, it is a matter of enormous public import to know whether the FBI had informants in the January 6 riots and what role they played. And as a matter of accountability, the public interest is massive. Now, Chris doesn't want to answer that. The FBI doesn't want to answer that because the obvious inference from their refusal to answer that is yes, they had FBI informants that participated in the riots. And the question that arises from that, and this is something I talk about at length in the book Justice Corrupted, is the extent to which FBI agents or FBI confidential informants incited the behavior. So one of the things I talk about in the book is the plot in Michigan to kidnap and murder the governor of Michigan, Democrat Gretchen Witwer. Now that broke shortly before the 2020 election. And it was the sort of story that was really fabulously beneficial for Democrats because Democrats message was those crazy right wing Republicans and especially those Trump Republicans are a bunch of violent insurrectionist terrorists. They're terrible and we need to stop them.
