FBI Director Christopher Wray is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12, a spokesperson for the committee confirmed to The Hill.
The hearing, set for the week the House returns from July 4 recess, will put Wray face-to-face with some of his fiercest GOP critics on Capitol Hill, who have gone after the director in recent weeks and have requested information from him and his agency as part of their various investigations.
The Hill reached out to the FBI for comment.
Criticism of the Justice Department — especially the FBI — has been a theme of the House Republican majority. GOP lawmakers have argued that federal law enforcement agencies are politicized and biased against Republicans.
That criticism skyrocketed last month after Trump-era special counsel John Durham released a report on his roughly four-year investigation into the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, which looked into potential ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Durham concluded that authorities did not have sufficient evidence to open the case.
Durham testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a rare hearing earlier this month.
And last week, tensions between the Justice Department and House Republicans grew after news broke of a plea agreement between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors, which some GOP lawmakers characterized as a sweetheart deal.
The hearing could touch several topics, including the Durham Report, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, school boards, the Republican claims that federal law enforcement has been weaponized against Americans and a leaked FBI memo that the committee said suggests the agency may be targeting Catholics.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Judiciary panel, issued Wray a subpoena in April in connection to the FBI memo that discussed meeting with church leaders to review “the warning signs of radicalization and to enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”
In February, Jordan subpoenaed Wray as part of the panel’s probe into the targeting of parents at school board meetings. It centers on a memo Attorney General Merrick Garland signed last year that noted a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” during a broader discussion over COVID-19 policies and how matters like race and gender are addressed at schools.
Next month’s hearing also comes after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee threatened to hold Wray in contempt over his initial refusal to turn over a document detailing an unverified tip that GOP lawmakers claim shows then-Vice President Biden’s involvement in a bribery scheme.
The panel — led by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) — however, backed off the contempt threat after the FBI agreed to allow members of the committee access to the document.
