Grassley Opens Senate Judiciary FBI Oversight Hearing

Prepared Opening Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Tuesday, September 15, 2026 Director Patel, welcome to your second annual oversight hearing with this committee. I appreciate your attendance today and, unlike Director Wray, you’ve committed to not leaving early. You’re now in Year Two of your directorship. In that short amount of time, you’ve faced many challenges from internal and external forces. It’s not an easy task managing both while at the same time repairing the damage done by your predecessors. You’ll hear Democrats criticizing you for dreamed up failures. They’re going to criticize you for firing many personnel and supposedly weakening the agency. But the numbers show you’ve gotten the job done. According to data provided to the committee, in the past 18 months, total criminal arrests are up 80%, violent crime arrests are up 90% and gang and criminal enterprise arrests are up 30%, as compared to the preceding 18 months. Ensuring the safety of kids is of monumental importance to me. In the past 18 months, the FBI has helped to locate and identify over 11,000 children who were the victims of crime. That’s up 21% from the preceding 18 months. In the same amount of time, the FBI has been involved in the arrest of over 5,000 child predators and human traffickers. That’s up 13% from the preceding 18 months. These predators are the definition of evil, and I applaud your leadership in hunting them down. This, all while Democrats stood idly by while the Biden-Harris administration lost or couldn’t locate tens of thousands of children. The FBI personnel who helped bring these evil predators to justice deserve the thanks of a grateful nation. They’re doing the job the right way – unlike the previous Biden administration. And, during your tenure, nine of the FBI’s Top 10 fugitives have been captured. These data points show solid work by the men and women of the FBI under your leadership. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention whistleblowers. I encourage you to foster an environment where true and legitimate whistleblowers are rewarded and not punished for blowing the whistle. For those you’ve helped , the committee thanks you. I also encourage you to hear them out personally, because they’ll give you the unvarnished view leadership needs to hear, not wants to hear. This Congress, I’ve made thousands of pages of records public thanks in large part to brave whistleblowers. Also, under your leadership, I’ve begun to receive records that I’ve sought for a long time. For example, I received a December 2019 email to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who was heavily involved in Crossfire Hurricane. That email contains information that appears to corroborate existing public evidence that President Trump was the target of a political hit, and the government knew it many years ago. The email ought to be declassified for the public to draw their own conclusions. Speaking of Crossfire Hurricane, today I’ll be making public additional emails relating to a Crossfire sub-case. The case involved at least three discredited FBI officials that Democrats still try to defend: (1) Special Agent Thibault, the anti-Trump agent who violated the Hatch Act for his partisan political conduct; (2) Special Agent Giardina, who reportedly filed a false FISA in the Walid Phares case and was involved in many cases against Republicans; and (3) Special Agent Kevin Gounaud, who wanted to criminally investigate Elon Musk for facilitating an email asking for five things officials accomplished that week. I’m making that email public today. In the records, Giardina asked at least seven times via email in about four weeks to place himself on the Crossfire team and start a new case on Trump. And he did so with the help of Thibault. Based on the records known to date, that case didn’t advance. His efforts, as well as the case he tried to open on Senator Sinema , undercut public statements by former FBI officials that agents don’t get to pick their cases. Notably, his efforts to join the Crossfire team began as early as January 2017, right before Trump took office. And on the day of Trump’s inauguration, Giardina emailed FBI agent Joe Pientka, “I wanted to mention again my interest in joining the case.” For almost a decade now, I’ve made records public showing how a number of now discredited law enforcement and intelligence officials schemed to take out Trump and other Republicans. And here we are, in 2026, still finding records from years ago showing even more evidence of targeting. The overall sustained efforts by the Deep State in the dark corners of the bureaucracy is worse than anything Trump has been accused of. At least he’s upfront and open so people can judge. The previous Democrat administrations, under both Obama and Biden, conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government. That’s arguably worse than Watergate. Which brings me to my next point. Starting in July 2022 , I began asking questions about Operation Round River based on whistleblower disclosures to my office. Based on allegations, Round River was a Foreign Influence Task Force operation that in some cases (1) shut down sources and (2) marginalized information provided by sources on the false assertion of Russian disinformation. This is the same discredited task force you’ll hear Democrats attacking you for terminating. Just last year, Senator Johnson and I released two FBI 1023 documents . The records summarized source reporting about alleged Biden family criminality. Based on information provided so far, it appears the 1023s Senator Johnson and I released were included in Round River. For those in the partisan media, I’m not drawing a conclusion on all the records produced so far. The question presented is whether the Wray FBI fully investigated all allegations or simply swept them under the rug for political purposes. And the records from the government include too many redactions, frustrating our ability to draw conclusions. Regarding redactions, my office has been informed by government officials from multiple government agencies that FBI employee Jodi Peterson is largely responsible for obstruction on many productions, not just Round River. If true, her actions undermine your and this administration’s historic efforts to bring about transparency. Now, I’m concerned about how your predecessors at the FBI handled federal records retention in Round River. As I noted at your last oversight hearing , Prohibited Access files were used in Crossfire Hurricane. That type of file restriction makes documents extremely difficult, if not impossible, to locate for production to Congress or FOIA requestors. I have similar concerns about Round River. For example , an unclassified sentence in an email from FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael DeLauro, a member of the now disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, said: “We apologize for the classification caveats, but our Office of General Counsel has directed us to classify our work this way based on past experience with Crossfire Hurricane.” It appears the Wray FBI intentionally misclassified information which would result in more obstacles to obtaining access. The Foreign Influence Task Force was the same outfit that gave me and Senator Johnson the fake briefing used to undermine our Biden family investigation in 2020. Director Patel, you’re right to shut down that political task force. And lastly, through protected whistleblower disclosures, I’ve obtained case records on Peter Navarro . I’ve long said the manner the Wray FBI treated Navarro at his arrest was unnecessary. These new records show the FBI monitored his appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and other media. I offer these records for additional public transparency about his case. Director Patel, as they have before, I assume the other side, despite many of their own shortcomings, will personally attack you, questioning your ethics, your truthfulness and your abilities. Don’t let that affect you. I’ll give you time to respond. I hope you’ll be the better person and not return the favor with personal attacks, but set the record straight with facts and information [that] we and the public will appreciate. -30-