Full Senate Judiciary Cmte. hearing video is Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: the January 6 Insurrection, Domestic Terrorism, and Other Threats with statements to download on official www.judiciary.senate.gov/…
Also on C-SPAN.org at www.c-span.org/…
World media outlets have covered & reported on this all day so far. Worthwhile watching & thinking about, it truly is.
“Well, senator, I think the intelligence or the information you’re asking about is the much discussed Norfolk SIR or situational information report,” Wray told Senate and the entire World today. “I didn’t see that report, which was unverified intelligence, until some number of days after the 6th.”
In light of Sen. Graham’s loaded questioning of Wray (about an hour into the hearing), it is imperative that we understand and accept the fact that ─► There is now a spate of state’s legislative actions making new, and reinforcing existing, "domestic terrorism" structures despite the fact that federal & state law enforcement structures already have powerful tools to investigate and prosecute acts of domestic terrorism without any new laws, and that importing the anti-terrorism framework risks creating broad and vague powers that could be used to go after activists or religious minorities. Graham and others all but begged Wray to fire up a burst of vigorous requests to Congress, especially to both Appropriations Cmte’s., for budgetary and programmatic escalations to get more so-called “tools” for FBI.
However, as was stated by President Obama in 2013-2014,
[P]romoting civil society that can surface issues and push leadership is not just in keeping with our values, it’s not charity. It’s in our national interests. Countries that respect human rights ─ including freedom of association ─ happen to be our closest partners. That is not an accident. Conversely, when these rights are suppressed, it fuels grievances and a sense of injustice that over time can fuel instability or extremism. So I believe America’s support for civil society is a matter of national security.
At that time, We were working in partnership with other governments, the philanthropic community, and multilateral initiatives, as a seemingly genuine “United” States to many persons, fostering supportive and permissive environments in support of a vibrant civil society and identifying innovative ways to inject technical, financial, and logistical support into our spaceship Earth. Let’s not further our status as “Untied” States as Sen’s. Graham, Cotton, Grassley and others seem to truly desire us to be, truth be known.