President Donald Trump is criticizing FBI Director Christopher Wray after he warned Russia is continuing to try to “influence” the U.S. elections.
The president took the stage in Minnesota on Friday to question why Wray is not focusing on other sources of foreign interference.
“You saw the head of the FBI yesterday started to go, ‘Russia, Russia’s looking at our election,’ Russia,” Trump said.
He added, “Here we go again, Russia, Russia, Russia. I said, ‘What about China? What about North Korea? What about Iran?’ They don’t mention anybody else. The narrative seems to be Russia.”
Watch his comments below:
"You saw the head of the FBI yesterday go, 'Russia, Russia'" — Trump throws FBI Director Wray under the bus pic.twitter.com/TdY9w51nf2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020
Wray appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday, as IJR previously reported.
“I think the intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections primarily through what we could call malign foreign influence,” Wray said.
Wray explained how this election cycle differs from 2016.
“There was also an effort to target election infrastructure, you know cyber targeting — we have not seen that second part yet this year or this cycle. But we certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 through what I would call more the malign foreign influence side of things,” Wray said.
According to Wray, Russia’s efforts are focused on “denigrat[ing] Vice President Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
The director of the National Counter intelligence and Security Center warned on Aug. 7 Russia, China and Iran were all trying to interfere with the election, as IJR previously reported.
Regarding China, Wray made it clear the FBI is opening a new counterintelligence investigation related to China “every 10 hours” because of their efforts to acquire technology and other sensitive information.
During his press briefing on Wednesday, Trump said mail-in ballots are a more significant threat to the election than foreign influence.