Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray in the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday over his bureau's targeting anti-abortion activist Mark Houck in a raid on his home.
“How on earth did Mark Houck end up having the FBI send several armed agents along with local authorities to arrest him at gunpoint?” Roy asked. “Did you approve of that?”
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Wray insisted that decisions about "the manner of arrests are not something that the FBI director approves" and was conducted in the FBI's Philadelphia division.
"Do you approve of the raid now in retrospect? Do you think it was appropriate?" the Texas congressman asked.
Wray paused and didn't answer.
Roy pressed again, "Do you think it was appropriate for a father to have armed FBI agents, local agents to his home, arrest him at gunpoint for an alleged violation of the [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act a year after the alleged incident? It was after the father had said through his lawyer that he would appear voluntarily. Do you believe that FBI agents should go to the home of a father in the Philadelphia suburbs?"
The FBI director said he would not "second-guess the career agents on the ground."
CHIP ROY: “Your job is to protect the American people from a tyrannical FBI storming the home of an American family”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 12, 2023
WRAY: “I could not disagree more with your description of the FBI as tyrannical.”
ROY: “You don't believe it's tyrannical that FBI agents were a part of storming… pic.twitter.com/Pudtt7uFTu
"But your job is to second guess!" Roy pushed back again. "Your job is to protect the American people from a tyrannical FBI storming the home of an American family!"
Wray disagreed with the description of the FBI as "tyrannical."
"You don't believe it's tyrannical that FBI agents were a part of storming a father's home in suburban Philadelphia?" the Republican congressman asked.
The FBI director insisted that the agents "did not storm his house."
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Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) ended debate on the subject due to time constraints.
Houck was arrested Sept. 23, 2022, following a federal indictment alleging two violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act stemming from an alleged shoving incident outside a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood. In February, he was found not guilty.