FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday appeared in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where he was questioned by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
One of the first questions the 2020 White House hopeful asked Wray was whether he knew if President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani “holds any security clearance of any kind.”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Wray replied.
{mosads}The Golden State Senator continued, asking Wray whether his “first oath” was to the Constitution or the president.
Wray replied, “My loyalty is the Constitution and to the people of this country.”
Harris then shifted her focus to her main question: Is it “ethically appropriate” for the FBI to “launch, limit or stop a criminal investigation at the request of the president or at the request of anyone at the White House”?
Although she repeatedly asked Wray the question, Wray deflected from fully answering each time.
“I’m not going to wade into specific people’s conversation … but what I will say is that the FBI’s obligation and my obligation and the obligation I expect of all 37,000 men and women of the FBI is that we’re going to conduct properly predicated investigations, continue properly predicated investigations and complete properly predicated investigations,” he said.
He added that FBI investigations should be supported only by facts and said he couldn’t recall a time when Trump or anyone else in the White House had asked him to launch, limit or stop a criminal investigation.
Giuliani finds himself at the center of the House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings, having been mentioned in Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During the phone call — which was the subject of a whistleblower report that acted as a catalyst for the ongoing impeachment inquiry — Trump appeared to instruct Zelensky to contact Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr for next steps regarding investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Additional testimony to House investigators has revealed Giuliani was insistent that the president relieve former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch of her duties before her scheduled three-year term was finished.
Testimony has also linked Giuliani to a kind of shadow diplomacy with Ukrainian officials, in which he attempted to coerce Zelensky into publicly announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden in exchange for nearly $400 million in congressionally approved aid to Ukraine that was being withheld.
Giuliani, however, isn’t an official employee of the federal government, which is why Harris and other congressional Democrats are interested in what level of security clearance Giuliani has or previously had.