last, senator feinstein asked you a series of questions about the record number of nixed denials last year. that's when someone tries to buy a gun, gets run through the background system and is denied, usually because of a felon. i will be a colleague on this committee that would simply require when there is an attempt to buy who is denied, because someone is a person prohibited, that notification be given to state law enforcement. that is the law in some states, it's not the law in a majority of states. do you think that seems like something good in the toolkit that to let the fbi know that someone has tried to lie and procure a weapon? >> certainly i think the lied and tried information is often a valuable tool from an

invest invest investigative perspective in providing more conduct. we will certainly work with you on this on an operational perspective. i know the key consumer, as your question alludes, are state and local law enforcement, so i would work with them to see what they find more useful. certainly what i told senator feinstein, the volume of nixed checks overall and the volume of a subset of denials has exploded over the course of the last year, so i am mindful of the resource burden that it puts on everybody in the law enforcement system. but i would be happy to talk with you more about it. >> thanks. i look forward to working with you on that. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator sasse. >> thank you, chairman. thank you, director wray, for being here, and thank you for being available to us on this committee and the intel committee. we've also been grateful for

your work and availability. we've talked a good bit about the intelligence failures around january 6, but some of it is how did we sort signal from noise, and some of it is the handoff from other entities to the capitol police. as you do an interaction, how much is the problem of a challenge of navigating a social media world where any drunk guy in a bar has amplification that he can rant around the world, and he's just a drunk guy in a bar, and other people can mor ph w -- morph with other people? >> a lot has been made of this norfolk s.i.r. which i think i

talked about at some length where we talked about information to our partners three different ways. the information was raw and uncorroborated information at the time, certainly. i think the other part of your question, the filter, the social media piece of it, is a huge issue and is something that we and everybody in law enforcement struggle with right now. you know, you use the drunk guy example. i guess sometimes i refer to it -- it used to be that some angry, demented guy living in mom's basement -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- in one part of the country is able to communicate with the similarly aggravated guy in grandma's attic in another part of the country, and they get each other spun up now. how to separate who is being aspirational or who is being intentional, it won't shock you to learn, and hopefully not other members of the committee, that the amount of angry, hateful, unspeakable, combative,

violent, even, rhetoric on social media exceeds what anybody in their worst imagination is out there. so trying to figure out who is just saying, you know what we ought to do is x, or everybody ought to do x, versus the person who is doing that and actually getting traction and then getting followers, and of course, that's assuming they're not communicating through encrypted channels about all that stuff, is one of the hardest things there is to do in today's world with the nature of the violent extremism threat we face. social media companies play a huge role in helping us with that. what you often hear us say, if you see something, say something. to me the refinement here would be, if americans see something on social media that seems to have crossed that line, they need to say something. because that's going to be our best source of information to prevent this. >> i've heard from nebraska law enforcement before at one level they don't really know what to

do with, if you see something, say something, because it's not clear exactly where they hand that information. let's talk a little more about the handoff between state and local law enforcement, as senator coons was, and the bureau, but also between technological platform, content moderation and the bureau. but first just inside the bureau. give us comfort that we're getting a lot better at this, because i don't think we're giving you enough resources to get the right kind of new human capital you're going to need, but i would love to be wrong. so go from three years ago to a year ago, from a year ago to a day to a year from now. how are we getting better to filter noise and how can you tell us with confidence that we're getting better in a world of explosive rant? >> i think we are getting better, but as you referenced, all of it requires resources. there is a data analytics piece because the volume is so

significant that we need to get better being able to analyze the data that we have, to do it in a timely way, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that requires both tools, analytical tools. we've had requests for those in the budgets the last couple years. but also people, data analysts, who can devote their time to that, who have the experience. so that's part of it. i think a second part of it is, as i think i referenced in response to an earlier question, all these investigations that we do, all these arrests we make, are important not from just a disruption perspective but putting my intelligence hat on, they allow us to learn more about where people communicate, how they communicate, what the magic words are, all that kind of stuff so we get better and better at anticipating from that reason. but make no mistake, we got a long way to go. this is an incredibly hard problem. i know from communicating with my foreign counterparts,

especially the five eyes, that they're struggling with it, too. as to your point about people knowing where to go, i will tell you our public access tipline, both the e-mail tips and the phone tips, have exploded in volume, and we're doing things to get that information out to state and local law enforcement much more quickly. and the social media companies, some of them have gotten better at providing us more realtime information when they see something, because they have a lot of resources to devote to this problem in terms of policing their own platform. is to the more we can incentivize them to do that, that's a big part of this, too. >> i'm a high schoolteacher or high school principal and some kid comes to me and says, hey, these kids have always seemed to be online bullies, but now it seems like the things they're saying sound more violent, what do you tell them to do? >> contact your local fbi field office. >> so it is fbi, it's not your local police department?

>> well, i think they could also contact local law enforcement. we all now work so closely together that i think we view a call to one as a call to us all. if we get the information, we're nine times out of ten going to be pushing it to state and local law enforcement as quickly as we can. we do a lot of outreach to the high schools like you're talking about. meeting with teachers, meeting with students, meeting with parents to try to get them to understand better for what to be on the lookout for what might be that indicator. one thing we know, whether it's any kind of domestic violent extremism we've talked about this morning, or frankly just the horrific active school shooter information, is when you look back on the path to the key moment, almost every single time there was a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a classmate, a coworker, something, somebody who knew the person well enough to know this is their baseline, they've now changed in a way that's scary to me, and no one

knows better than the person who knows them well, and that's the person we need to come forward. when they do it more and more, we're able to get in front of it. >> i'm basically out of time, but i'll flag one i want to continue talking to you about. i would love to hear your big national pitch for these data analysts, because we need more serving our country in this way, but i also want to be sure that the training for the data analysts know what they're looking to do. they're there looking for violence, not to be the national speech police. thanks for your work. >> thank you, senator sasse. senator blumenthal. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you, director wray, for being here today, and i want to join in expressing my condolences for the loss of those two agents, and my thanks to the thousands of agents who work

work day in and day out to make america safer. when you last appeared before this committee in july of 2019, i expressed my concern that donald trump's attacks against members of congress and his other rhetoric, quote, might ignite white supremacist and national organizations and encourage hate crimes, end quote. i asked you whether you were concerned about the increasing number of his attacks on public officials and what the fbi was doing both proactively and responsively about them, and you said, quote, i think we are very concerned about any threats of violence against any americans, but certainly that would prominently include our elected officials. we've seen increasing attacks by the president and others against public officials. when the rioters who came to the

capitol, stormed the citadel democracy on january 6th were inside, they boasted proudly and loudly that they were doing what donald trump wanted them to do. we have warned specifically about qanon in a letter dated december 8th, 2020. a number of us, of the senate, warned that qanon specifically was a threat. i would like to ask you whether the threat posed by qanon and, as you well know, adherence of qanon was here very strongly who stormed the capitol, whether the continued threat is worsened when prominent elected officials, including members of congress, endorse the qanon

theory. >> well, certainly we are concerned about the qanon phenomenon, which we view as a sort of loose sort of set of conspiracy theories, and we've certainly seen domestic violent extremists of the sort that you're describing who cite that as part of their motivation. that's something that we do -- >> i apologize for interrupting. as you know, my time is limited. when members of congress, as has happened, endorse the qanon theory, doesn't it worsen the threat of violence? >> well, again, our focus is on the violence. and on the plans to commit violence, on the threats to commit violence, it's less on the rhetoric and idealogy. obviously the folks who engage in this kind of violence draw

inspiration from a variety of sources and we're concerned about any source that stimulates or motivates violent extremism. >> well, i'll follow up in another setting, but i am, frankly, disappointed that you're not discouraging one of the sources of incitement, which is prominent public officials endorsing a theory that in turn resulted in storming the united states capitol. let me turn to hate crimes. hate crimes are underreported. we're seeing a rising trend of hate crimes, particularly directed against asian american pacific islanders. i have a bill called the no-hate act that would require more reporting, provide both incentives and requirements. wouldn't you think that kind of measure is a good idea?

>> so certainly we share your goal of both deterring and reducing hate crime, but also particularly relevantly promoting better reporting, more complete reporting of hate crime. and we are specifically concerned about hate crimes against asian americans as well. i'm not directly familiar with the bill, but i think we share the goal of trying to figure out how to improve reporting. as you may know, we have nibers, which is a new system we're rolling out and we're trying to get to 100% on that, and we would be pleased to work with you on figuring out how this bill might help advance that goal. >> well, the no-hate act would, in fact, lead to better reporting if 87% of hate crimes are unreported now.

that is a searing indictment of the present system. we need to know more. and particularly about asian americans and island pacificers being victims of them. i know you don't want to be, as you said, armchair quarterback, but you're going to be armchair quarterbacked by the american people. and i think the american people listening to these past ten days of hearing and knowing how much information there was out there on social media in other forums about these thugs and rioters coming to washington, organized groups, 3% are proud boys and others, are wondering, why didn't the fbi sound the alarm? i know there was a communication through that threat assessment. i know you've talked about the

agencies that were hearing that assessment. but here we have the united states capitol where a key function of democracy enabling the peaceful transition of power was taking place and a threat of violence and even death to them. why didn't you go to the gang of 8? why didn't you sound the alarm in some more visible and ringing way? >> well, senator, i guess a couple things. one, over the course of 2020, we repeatedly, repeatedly put out intelligence products on this very issue. domestic violence extremism, domestic violence extremism specifically tied to the election, domestic violence extremism specifically tied to the election and going beyond the election up through the inauguration and specifically in december of 2020. in addition to that, in connection with the one piece of raw intelligence that's been discussed so much here today, we

did pass that on to the people in the best position to take action on the threat, not one, not two, but three different ways. now, more broadly in terms of what's out in social media, as a number of the questions here today have elicited, i think it highlights, and your question highlights one of the most challenging jobs for law enforcement in today's world with social media. there is so much chatter, often unattributed to someone in a neatly identifiable way, where people are saying unbelievably horrific, angry, combative things, using language about beheading and shooting and things like that, and separating out which ones are getting traction, which ones need attention as opposed to aspiration is something we spend an enormous amount of time to do. sometimes we don't have the luxury of time to be able to make those assessments.

i think senator klobuchar, my standard is we're trying to bat a thousand. any time an attack is not thwarted, my partners and i try to figure out how to get better at that. we're pleased the inauguration went smoothly, notwithstanding threats of chatter we were seeing not just here in the capitol region but state capitals across the country, and our focus was on engaging with all our partners, our state and local partners. i did a conference call with like a thousand plus police chiefs around the country about state capitals. that was the kind of thing we were doing to make sure we're doing the grind, the hard work, to get in front of the threat, and we're going to keep working at it every single day. >> i understand your response. what i don't understand is why this chatter, raw intelligence, didn't prompt a stronger

warning, an alarm going to the very top of the united states congress, because clearly the united states congress was under severe threat. >> thank you, senator. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator hawley? >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you, director wray, for being here. can i just go back to a series of questions senator ray asked you? he asked you about the january 6 riot. you said you weren't familiar with the specifics. can i clarify your responses to him? when you say you're not familiar, are you saying you don't know whether or not the bureau has scooped up geolocation data, mehta dametad cell phone towers? are you saying you don't know if they did that? tell me what you know about this.

>> when it comes to geolocation specifically, just the use of geolocation data, i would not be surprised to learn, but i do not know for a fact, that we were using geolocation data under any situation in connection with the insurrection of the 6th. because this is such a sprawling investigation, that would not surprise me. when it comes to metadata, which is a little different, i feel confident we are using various legal authorities to look at metadata under a variety of situations, but again, the specifics of when, under what circumstances, with whom, that kind of thing, i'm not in a position to testify about with the sprawl and size of the investigation and certainly not in a congressional hearing. >> what authorities do you have in mind? you said that you're using the relevant authorities. what authorities are they? >> well, we have various forms

of legal process we can serve on companies that will allow us to get access -- >> and that's been done? >> we're using a lot of legal process in connection with the investigation, so yes. >> but specifically serving process on companies using -- invoking your various legal powers to get that data from companies, that's been done in the case of gathering this data? >> in gathering metadata? >> yeah. >> again, i don't know the specifics, but i feel kconfiden that has happened because metadata is often something we look at. we have a variety of legal tools that let us do that under certain circumstances. >> what about the cell tower data that was reportedly scooped up by the bureau on the day during, in fact, while the riot was underway? what's happened to that data? do you still have it? has it been retained? do you have plans to retain it? >> again, whatever we're doing with cell phone data, i'm confident that we're doing it in conjunction with our appropriate

legal tools and working -- >> here's what i'm trying to get at, and i think it's what senator lee was trying to get at. how are we going to know what you're doing with it and how do we evaluate the bureau's conduct if we don't know what authorities you're invoking, what precisely you're doing, what you're retaining? you said to him repeatedly you weren't familiar with the specifics. you've now said it to me. i'm not sure how this committee is supposed to evaluate anything that the bureau is doing. you're basically saying j, just trust us. how do we know? do we have to wait until the end of the investigation to find out what you've done? >> certainly i have to be careful about discussing an ongoing investigation, which i'm sure you can appreciate. but all the tools we have are done in conjunction with prosecutors and lawyers from the justice department. now, if there's information we can provide you before an investigation is completed that goes through what some of the authorities we have, the tools we have, et cetera, we could probably provide some

information like that that might be useful to you to help answer the question. >> that would be helpful. thank you. i'll hold you to that. let me ask you about some of the things that have been reported in the press. particularly there have been a series of reports that the bureau has worked with banks in the course of the investigation into the january 6 riot and both before and after, and that some banks, particularly bank of america, may have handed over data for 200-plus clients who may have used their credit or debit cards to make purchases of the d.c. area. what do you know about this? has bank of america voluntarily handed in information to the bureau about specifics? >> i would have to look into that. >> has the fbi accepted information from similar entities? >> i do not know that. i know we work with financial institutions in a variety of ways all the time in a variety of investigations, but exactly the specifics of what may or may

not have happened here, that i don't know as we're sitting here talking today. >> i'm sure you can appreciate my concern here, is that 12uc34303 prohibits financial institutions from turning over client records, unless, of course, they have reasonable suspicion a crime has been committed. the recent reports say the financial institutions were doing this without any indication of a crime, they were just turning over reams of consumer data. that would obviously be a major legal problem and legal concern. could you try to get me answers to some of these questions? i appreciate that you say you don't know today, you're not aware of what's going on, but could you follow up on this? >> i would be happy to see if there is information we can provide you on the subject. we have a variety of ways we work with financial institutions in particular, and there are a number of legal authorities who say when you can and can't do that. i don't want to get out over my

skis and try to characterize what happened in this specific instance, but i'm happy to look into it and see if there's more information we can provide. >> what about facebook, google, twitter, amazon, has the fbi had contact with those platforms following the events of january 6? >> we certainly have with a number of the social media companies in connection with the 6th. so that much i know. >> has the bureau sought to compel any of those companies to turn over user data related to the 6th? >> i can't tell you the specifics here, but what i will tell you is that we -- i feel certain that we have served legal process on those companies which we do with some frequency, and we have received information from some of those companies. whether that's true of every single one of the companies you listed, i can't say for sure but i suspect it is because we work with the social media companies quite a lot. >> are you aware of any of the

companies voluntarily turning over data to the bureau in r relation to the events of the 6th? >> sitting here right now, i'm not sure. >> is the fbi currently pressuring any of these social media platforms or tech platforms to include back doors in their software that would help defeat encryption? >> are we pressuring -- >> are you encouraging, are you pushing for, is it your desire to get such access? >> we are not trying to get back doors. that is a criticism that gets leveled our way by people who don't understand our position often, so i appreciate the opportunity to address it here. we are concerned about encryption, especially default encryption from a lot of these platforms, and we are concerned that if these companies continue to move in the trajectory they're moving, we're going to find ourselves in a situation

that no matter how bullet-proof or ironclad the legal authority, no matter how compelling the facts or circumstances, no matter how horrific the crime or the victim, we will not be able to have the content we need to keep people safe. what we say is do beable is fore companies themselves to build in a way to have legal access when confronted with a proper legal authority so they can get access to information and provide it in response to a warrant or a court order. we're not going to have a key, we're not asking for a back door. that's a myth, an urban legend that has been directed our way, but this is a subject that i think the american people need to understand, because decisions that affect the life and blood of americans all over this country, which normally are made by our elected representatives, are, in effect, getting made in corporate offices in big technology companies.

and different people can come down in different places on that balancing, but i would submit that's a balancing that should be made up here and not by one company based on its business model. in the context, for example, of child exploitation, we get -- and to facebook's great credit, we get millions -- millions -- of tips on child exploitation through nickmick every year that helps us rescue hundreds of kids every year. this they move forward in the direction they're moving in, which is a direction apple already went, we'll get tips and that content, that information will drop into the abyss. so the tips will be gone, all those kids will still be out there. the pedophiles who are exploiting them, they'll still be out there. the only thing that will be different is the company nor the law enforcement will know where they are and what they're doing.

i don't think that's a situation we want to find ourselves in, so we would welcome the opportunity to work with the companies, perhaps encourage or incentivized through congress to get to a situation where we can balance strong cybersecurity absolutely. it's a key to us also at the fbi, as well as security for america's children. >> thank you, senator. senator romo is on remote. can you hear me, senator? >> yes. thank you, mr. chairman. director wray, following the january 6th insurrection, you and other senior law enforcement officials were missing from public view, and the people who were providing the briefings to the public were the d.c. acting u.s. attorney and the director of the fbi's washington field office. i hope you agree that at a time like this, it would be very important for high-level law

enforcement, people like you and others, to brief the public to limit the spread of misinformation about what happened and who was behind what happened. wouldn't you agree? >> certainly i agree it's important to prevent misinformation to the extent we can along with our legal responsibilities. >> part of the situation that happened was that -- and you've testified that so far there is no evidence of fake trump supporters committing or provoking violence during the january 6 riot at the capitol. that's part of the misinformation that got out. were you aware of these false cl claims? >> certainly along the way, we've seen a variety of claims by a lot of people since the insurrection on january 6

attack, just like other high-profile attacks. do i recall the last time i heard that specific claim? i don't know for sure. >> this is part of the kind of false information and narrative that got out blaming others such as antifa for what happened. so that is why i think it is really important for you and others like you to be out front. you were asked some questions about hate crimes and you acknowledged there is a rise in hate crimes against the agent pacific islander community. wouldn't you agree calling covid-19 the kung flu or china virus adds to the kind of hate crimes we are seeing rise against the api community? >> i don't know that it's really my place as fbi director to start weighing in on rhetoric, but i can assure you that's not language that i would ever use,

and hate crimes against asian americans and pacific islanders is something we are concerned about, we take very seriously. we are investigating where we have facts sufficient to do that. we're also engaged in a variety of forms of outreach to the public. i think we have done 60-plus training or liaison events with the asian american pacific islander community since just march of last year. we've put out intelligence reports to our partners about hate crimes against that community in particular, and it's something we take very seriously. >> i commend you for working with, i assume, local and state -- state and local law enforcement entities as well as community advocacy groups to deal with the rise in hate crimes against asian americans. in fact, just a few weeks ago, there were lethal attacks on --

there seems to be a targeting of senior asians, and so lethal attacks in san francisco and in new york. these are totally unprovoked attacks. and so i think that we need to continue to focus on what the community can do and what law enforcement can do to make sure that these crimes are prosecuted as the hate crimes that they are, and i think it is also important for leaders to not fan the flames by calling covid-19 the china virus or kung flu. you also testified, and you were asked some questions about the role of social media by these extremist groups, and you said that terrorism moves at the speed of social media. senators warner, klobuchar and i recently introduced the safe

tech act which would pull back section 230 immunity from tech companies for things like civil rights violations and wrongful death suits. do you think that exposing these companies to civil liability would force them, basically, to take extremist content off of their platforms? o take these kinds of content more seriously and do something about it? >> senator, i want to be careful not to get out ahead of the rest of the administration in weighing in on certain pieces of legislation, but having said that, i think there are a few things i could say. one is while the immunity under section 230 has obviously helped the evolution of the social media industry, it's also allowed it to avoid a lot of the burdens and risks that other brick and mortar companies have had to face. and it means that important decisions that affect many

aspects of society that would normally be made by the people's elected representatives are now being made in corporate offices in the industry. and so while i can't comment on specific legislation, i certainly can tell you that i see the value, maybe is the best way of putting it, of incentivizing online platforms to address both elicie illicit on their platforms and to assist law enforcement to deal with criminals who use those platforms to address americans. >> there is also the concern that entities such as facebook and twitter do more to control, modify this kind of content and this could encourage extremists to use encrypted platforms, so that's another area we're going to need to address. i wanted to turn briefly to your

testimony that identifies lone wolf actors as a concern for you, and i think that with regard to normal factors, we need probably a whole society approach. so what can we all do to deal with the problem of lone wolf extremists? >> so i appreciate the question. we do consider that the lone actor. i sort of stopped using the term w "wolf" because i feel like it gives them too much credit. but lone actors, whether they're domestic violence extremists, is a real threat because, a, it's so pervasive, and b, unlike someone working in part of the a large group, someone working alone has few people they're in contact with, meaning there are fewer dots to connect, et cetera, which makes it harder for us to get in front of. what we desperately need is more

and more situations where the members of the public who know that person, who see the transformation, who see things starting to change in ra way thy know is different and it's become much darker and more dangerous, those people need to speak up, contact law enforcement, whoever they trust in law enforcement, to alert people to the threat. and the good news, if there is any good news in this, is that we are seeing that happen more and more in this country. we've had lots of people, as heartbreaking as it must be, turn in family members when they see this transformation because they know that having us or our partners intercede may not only prevent that person from committing an attack against an innocent person, but also may in some instances result in that person being offramped to get help as opposed to potentially being killed by law enforcement or incarcerated or something else.

so we need the people -- we always say if you see something, say something, and most people picture the abandoned backpack in a greyhound bus terminal. obviously we want people to see something and say something there. we also need people if they see something about somebody to say something. the more of that we can have and the more members of congress as key voices in their communities and in your home states can encourage people to do that, that's one of the key weapons we have as a country, to use your phrase, whole of society defense against this threat. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator cotton. >> director wray, welcome. first i want to say i was deeply saddened by the losses of the deputies, and i want to express my condolences to their family and those working with them at the bureau. my wife and i are extremely

grateful for the work they did to keep the community safe. you say the fbi assesses home-grown violent extremists one of the greatest threats to the home lland. these are individuals primarily in the u.s. who are not receiving individualized direction from global jihad terrorist organizations but are inspired largely by isis and al qaeda to commit violence. what you're saying there, director wray, if i understand, dangers from other extremists, like racial supremacist groups, anarchist groups. the greatest threat we have with extremism remains from jihadists, is that correct? >> i think the key word there is international. i don't have the written statement for the record in front of me. but what i would say is we view -- let me step back. what we view as the most dangerous threat to americans

today is largely lone actors, in some cases small cells, if you will, largely radicalized online, already here in the united states, attacking soft targets, using crude readily accessible weapons motivated either by jihadist inspirations or by a variety of domestic inspiration. we have the hves, the home-grown violentie tropical storm herminist -- violent extremists. that bucket is the terrible threat we face as a country. >> i want to talk about the other kind of potential threat. obviously extremists remain an important part and the fbi is trying to keep foreign extreme

iextreme -- extremists from entering our shores, correct? >> correct. >> and also there is work to keep foreign terrorists from obtaining i.d.s, correct? >> that's part of our homeland aga defense, if you will. >> and we could query our database until the cows come home, but there is nothing we can do otherwise. is that correct? >> certainly we depend on our homeland security to make that part effective. >> is it true that iran shares little information about potential travelers or immigrants coming to our country? >> i'm not sure i know the answer sitting here today, but i would be flabbergasted if the answer were anything other than

yes, it's still the case. >> it's still the case that libya and syria are both countries that lack effective control over significant parts of their territory and, therefore, cannot provide information from people coming to our country? >> i believe that's the case. >> what about myanmar, also known as burma, where there was a military coup last week. does the united states now face individual threats coming from burma? >> i'm not sure about burma, but i suspect the answer is the same. >> finally, is it true that north korea remains uncooperative in providing information about north korean internationals that might come to the united states? >> i have rarely heard north korea mentioned in terms of cooperativeness. >> syria, iran, burma, north korea were among the nations from which president biden lifted travel restrictions by executive order his first day in

office without any plan in place. each of them represents a real threat to the united states. i want to turn to another kind of threat we face, which is crime and gang violence in particular. unfortunately, both drug trafficking and violent crime are now on the rise in the united states. are street gangs driving a significant part of violent crime on streets across america? >> well, certainly when i go around and i've talked to state and local law enforcement in all 50 states, i think the number one issue you would hear about from maybe all of them is violent crime. what drives it in each city, state, town is different, but it's not just the national gangs, you know, the ms-13s, the 18th street gangs, et cetera, a lot of times it's the neighborhood gangs that are top of mind when you talk to chiefs and sheriffs around this country. >> and those gangs of whatever type, they often use violent crime as a way to expand their territory and exert more

control -- money-making enterprises like drugs and robbery? >> yes. >> let's talk about ms-13 since you raised it. ms-13 is gang notoriety for particularly brutal crimes over the years and they continue to expand their influence in the united states, is that right? >> i know we've made significant strides over ms-13 over the last 18 months or so, but it is a very significant gang threat, and the brutality, the savagery and the level of kind of organization that exists there is something that has to be taken extremely seriously. >> it remains primarily a central american and an el salvadorean gang, correct? >> certainly. >> they don't hand out membership cards or have a

membership directory. unless they're named by another gang member, do you still use methods like gang tattoos to identify who are members of ms-13? >> that is one piece that would be relevant. we're also talking to witnesses and informants, collecting information from partners, et cetera. >> i know that your safe streets task force and your national gang intelligence unit and others often work closely with the department of homeland security to find and prosecute and deport these gang members. in your professional opinion today, is immigrations and customs enforcement deporting too many or too few ms-13 gang members? >> i don't know that i've tracked the deportation rate of ms-13 members. when we come across ms-13 members in this country, our focus has been locking them up and putting them in federal prison as much as we can, which is where we would like to have

them. in addition to the units that you listed off, i think correctly, i would also cite our tag, our transactional group, which is a task force we have in el salvador, because we also have some pretty effective results with u.s. law enforcement working with el salvador law enforcement, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the other two countries in the triangle to take down some of the ms-13 members in their home country as well. so it's the two pieces together. i can't say sitting here right now anything about the immigration posture, but certainly when we find ms-13 gang members here, we want to put them in orange jumpsuits where they get to spend a lot of time in our prisons. >> thank you. when it comes to ms-13, it won't surprise you to know i support the lock-up policy but i also support the domestic policy.

>> director wray, thank you. it's been a long day and i appreciate you're at the tail end of the questioners, so i appreciate your endurance. i first want to associate myself with maybe not the heat you received from senator whitehouse but definitely the spirit that he was talking about, and i appreciate your commit at some time meet his concerns which are concerns i've heard on both sides of the aisle. it's very hard to play our constitutionally mandated role if we don't have the information to do the oversight of your agency. so i do appreciate your commitments. i also want to join what is, i think you've seen, bipartisan condolences for the losses of daniel alfin and lauren schwarzenberger. they made the greatest sacrifices, which is dying in the line of duty for our nation. are any of the other officers who were injured, i hope they're

recovering well? >> they are. i had an opportunity to go down after the shooting not just to meet with laura and dan's families, but also to visit the hospital, and happily, i think the four injured agents should make a full recovery. >> would you please express from the entire committee not only our condolences to the families but our robust concern for their recovery and their well-being, and should they need anything, you obviously have allies here in their well-being. >> thank you, senator. >> you and i have had a treasured conversation, you showed me the honor of coming to visit with me. you sat in my office before you stepped into that job, and i really appreciated the challenge we still have around this country around racial issues, and the urgency for the fbi, which has abused its power before, whether it's investigations of martin luther king or other ways to set the example for the largest driver in many ways as we pledge

allegiance to this flag as a driver for a trusted nation. i just want to ask you, though, about your team. we know that diverse teams are better. everybody from harvard business school to every top business consulting agency has shown study after study that diverse teams are stronger teams, but especially ones in law enforcement to have such a mandate that you have, having diversity is really important. so i guess my first question is, how diverse is the fbi's work force now in terms of gender, religious and racial diversity? >> so, senator, this is a topic that, as you may recall from our prior vifsit, is very important to me personally and something i've tried to make as a priority. we're addressing it in a variety of ways, but in terms of results, i guess i would characterize it as cautiously optimistic. so on the racial diversity

front, our special agent class has been more diverse with each year over the past few years. in each case more, certainly, than the diversity percentage of the work force that exists, and this year, which i think is a bright spot, the percentage, the racial diversity of our applicant pool is much higher than it was in years past. on gender, much the same. applications -- diversity applications is up significantly. the gender diversity of iconical classes is up. i've set aggressive targets for our field offices and those targets for the most part have been exceeded. we've done a number of things to try to address the issue. we've had diversity recruitment events which were easier to do pre-covid, but that a lot of times i would go to in different parts of the country myself and

speak at. we have a very encouraging project we've started with 300 entertainment which focused historically on colleges and universities, trying to recruit our pipeline there. >> could you share that data with the committee of the progress that you're making? >> sure. i think there is definitely information we could provide separately. >> and then your leadership team? can you provide the diversity of the leadership team that you have around you? >> sure. i will say -- yes is the answer, but i will say that on that front, i've recently appointed -- we have -- i'm not sure how much you may remember about our structure, but we have at the very top of the fbi six eads, executive assistants directors, each one of them is over a branch that has multiple divisions. so just over the last couple of months as people retire, i've replaced one of the eads with an

asian american woman who oversees our human resources branch, and one of the other of these six eads with an african-american male who oversees our intelligence branch which includes not just our entire intelligence function but our private sector engagement and our law enforcement partner engagement as well. i also appointed the first -- >> i want to honor the time here. i know you'll be available to discuss that more and get me information. >> yes. >> in the minute or so i have left, i think a lot of the questioning has been very illustrative of a lot of challenges we face, and i appreciate that from members of both sides of the dais here. we've talked about extremist groups that were at the capitol, we've talked about many others, but as i see interviews of folks, there were many people who just said, i'm here because president trump, now former

president trump, wanted us here. it seemed that this lie that was told over and over again that many people felt like their government had betrayed them, that in court case after court case, republican official after republican official were all just dead wrong, really believed in the lie and felt like they were left with no choice but to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. i guess i would just ask to begin with, attorney general barr said he had not, quote, seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election. do you believe with attorney general barr's statement that there is absolutely no evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? >> i agree with attorney general barr. >> and to be crystal clear on this, as fbi director, who these would be federal crimes, you're aware of no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the

2020 presidential election, correct? >> we are not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome in the presidential election. >> all right. well, i have great respect for senator kennedy and i see him as a friend. i'm not going to abuse the incredible power dick durbin has given me right now, though power is going through my head, but i'm going to police myself and defer to the good senator kennedy. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i didn't hear you. did you call me -- >> i called you mr. chairman. >> thank you, sir. thank you, sir. that sounds very good. >> thank you again, mr. chairman. mr. director, i've listened from my office to your testimony today. tell me who had the authority to call out the national guard on january 6. >> my understanding -- well, my

understanding is that the decisions to call up the national guard in one sense are the responsibility of the secretary of defense, but in another sense, it would have to be -- >> mr. director, i'm sorry so interrupt you, but i think we can agree that the fbi had credible information that there was likely to be violence from january 6. can we agree on that? >> i don't know that we had assessed its credibility. we certainly had information that was concerning about the potential for violence in connection with the january 6 events. and as we've discussed here this morning, one piece of information that was most specific that i'm aware of was passed quite -- >> based on that information, and i'm sorry to interrupt, but we just keep nibbling at the edges and dancing around the issue. i'm not asking you to throw anybody under the bus, chris, i get it. but we need to find out what

happened. now, if you were king for a day, based on the information you had, maybe not at the time but later on, would you have called out the fbi? i mean, the national guard? >> you know, senator, as you said, i really want to be careful not to be armchair quarterbacking others. i think the national guard, we have seen, can play a very important role in crowd control. >> excuse me for interrupting. i'm not trying to be rude, but my time is limited. who made the call not to -- based on your information, who made the call not to call out the fbi, whether they should have or shouldn't? >> not to call out the fbi? >> i'm sorry, i'm tired. the national guard. >> well, i would defer to others who were more involved in that discussion, but from what i have heard, from what i have read, my

understanding is that at one stage of the process, the local government was of the view that it did not need the national guard's assistance. >> who do you mean by the local government? the mayor? >> yes. >> so the mayor didn't call out the national guard. >> at the beginning. >> what do you mean by the beginning? >> in the day or two leading up to the 6th. as to exactly how it played out on the 6th itself, i'm not sure -- >> clearly our people were overrun by the nut jobs. so we're making progress here, okay? so the mayor of the city government decided not to call out the fbi -- the national guard ahead of time. what about the house sergeant-at-arms? >> i don't know what role the house sergeant-at-arms played with respect to the national

guard. >> how about the senate sergeant? >> same answer. >> how about the capitol police, the chief of capitol police? did the chief of capitol police make the call not to call out the national guard? >> i don't know the answer to that. my understanding is that the law enforcement officials here with responsibility over the capitol, that there were varying -- differing views about whether or not the national guard was appropriate, when and at what level, but all i really know about that is the same you've seen of press coverage of events. >> okay. that's all on that. i've listened to your comments about diversity and i thank you for your good work there. i think any fair-minded person has to conclude that the diversity is a strength, not a

weakness. but this subject comes up a lot, and i think it's going to come up a lot again, and that's not a criticism, that's just an observation. do you believe that the fbi is a systemically racist institution? >> no. having said that, i do believe the fbi needs to be more diverse and more inclusive than it is and that we need to work a lot heard at that and we're trying to work harder on that. >> do you believe the fbi is a sys systemically sexist or misogynistic institution? >> again, that's not the way i would describe the fbi that i know and see every day. but, again, it's a place where we need to be more diverse and inclusive, and we need to work harder at that, and we are working harder at that, and we

have some strides to make to be satisfactory by my estimates. >> i respect that. director wray, have you ever been to hong kong? >> no. >> if congress passed a bill and said to the good people of hong kong who yearn for freedom, come to america. we're going to follow our friends in britain. come here. if you want to get out of the thumb of the communist party, come to america. we'll welcome you. do you think the fbi and law enforcement has the ability to screen for spies? one of the criticisms of the proposition i just stated is we would be living with spies. do you think, based on your knowledge of security, we could catch most of the