Add FBI Director Christopher Wray to the list of major officials justifying a dangerously armed arrest of a peaceful pro-life activist. And Wray, like Attorney General Merrick Garland, refused to explain why a pre-dawn SWAT raid was necessary.

The irresponsibility, the lack of accountability, the arrogance, and the tacit endorsement of thuggish tactics together amount to an almost-criminal abuse of government power.

Without rehashing the whole backstory, suffice it to say that noted pro-life activist Mark Houck’s attorney had offered to have Houck voluntarily appear for arrest paperwork if the Justice Department intended to prosecute him for what was an astonishingly spurious charge of interfering with access to an abortion clinic. (Houck had done no such thing, but that’s beside the point here.) Houck had no criminal record. Nobody has yet offered a single reason why a single agent in riot gear (much less 20) was needed for a dawn arrest raid in front of Houck’s seven children when Houck already was thoroughly cooperative.

Repeat: Despite six months of demands from Congress and high-profile press coverage, not a single public explanation.

Garland, demonstrating contempt for Congress and the public, refused in a Wednesday Senate hearing to offer such an explanation. What I had missed is that Wray had done the same thing the day before in an interview with Fox News's Brett Baier.

Just as Garland did the next day, Wray said the decision to use an armed raid was made by an FBI specialist and that FBI specialists usually get it right. Well, we knew the first part, and the second part, even if true, is utterly immaterial.

The obvious point, the point Wray and Garland smugly refuse to address, is that in Houck’s case, the use of force was so obviously out of proportion both to the alleged crime (which a jury has since laughed out of court) and to Houck’s offer of cooperation, and was so obviously likely to cause a traumatic experience for Houck’s young children, that a public explanation should be mandatory. And if the explanation isn’t a good one, an effusive public apology should be mandatory too.

Instead, Wray gave the smokescreen about how “commanders on the ground” decide which arrest procedures to use, and “ those processes were all followed in this case .”

Well, who gives a damn? The question isn’t whether some field agent followed some process. The question is why this was the process, this manifestly abusive process, chosen for this situation. Wray has had six months to review this case. It is his job to review this case, especially if senators demand it, which they did months ago . If a police officer uses what appears to be excessive force in an arrest, it is the police commissioner’s job to review the circumstances and the officer’s actions — and to report the results of that review to the public.

Failure of the superior official to do so should cost that official his job. Instead, what Wray effectively is saying is: “I control the most powerful police force in the world. I answer to nobody. We can do whatever we want to anybody we want, without explaining ourselves. Just try and stop us. We have the SWAT teams. You don’t.”

Everyone should fear such thuggishness just as much from a well-coiffed man in an expensive suit as from a backroom mob boss. Through this incident and through countless others , Wray has proved to be a menace to society. His menace should be frog-marched right out of his office.