Meadows: ‘There are different degrees of confidence’ in FBI director

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Sunday that “there are different degrees of confidence” in FBI Director Christopher Wray among Cabinet members after Wray testified before Congress that he has not seen evidence of widespread voter fraud in a major election. 

“As we look at this, we want to make sure he’s doing his job. There are different degrees of confidence in different Cabinet members,” Meadows said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“Certainly, he’s still there. The minute that the president loses confidence in any of his Cabinet members — they serve at his pleasure — he will certainly look at replacing them.”

“There are different degrees of confidence,” @MarkMeadows says when asked if he and @realDonaldTrump have confidence in @FBI Dir. Wray

Earlier this week, Meadows questioned Wray’s competence after he testified there was no evidence of voter fraud by mail or otherwise. pic.twitter.com/Rtfoswmk4g

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 27, 2020

Meadows criticized Wray on Friday after the FBI director testified before Congress that he had not seen evidence of widespread voter fraud in a major election, undercutting President Trump’s claims that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud. 

Meadows doubled down on his critique of Wray on Sunday. 

“My reference to that particular point, I said that he couldn’t find emails at the FBI, so to opine on whether we have wide-scale fraud or not, it’s not him with boots on the ground,” Meadows said. “You know and I know there’s an investigation the Department of Justice has initiated with some ballots being thrown in a wastepaper basket.”

The Department of Justice said Thursday that nine ballots were found discarded in Pennsylvania, including seven cast for Trump. 

“To suggest that there is a process that is full of integrity is trying to make a verdict before you’ve actually heard the case. That’s my problem with Director Wray. They need to investigate it and make sure that the voting populace, make sure their vote counts and no one else’s does,” Meadows said. 

During a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this week, Wray said, “We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”

Trump for months has criticized mail-in voting, asserting that an expansion of mail balloting during the election would invite widespread fraud. Experts have said there is not evidence of meaningful voter fraud in mail-in voting.