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‘They Want To Be In Charge’: Sen. Josh Hawley Calls For ‘Top To Bottom Housecleaning’ At FBI

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Republican Sen. John Hawley of Missouri called for a “top to bottom housecleaning” at the FBI Wednesday, citing revelations from Special Counsel John Durham’s report.

Durham released a report on the origins of the FBI investigation of allegations that former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia Monday that found that the FBI “did not and could not corroborate” the claims from the now-discredited Steele Dossier. The FBI acknowledged the findings of the Durham report in a statement released Monday.

“What we learned from the Durham report is the Clinton campaign successfully leveraged the FBI to try and rig a presidential election in 2016 and they just about got away with it. I mean, they just got about it done,” Hawley told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump administration official. “We know in 2020 they did successfully interfere in the election suppressing the Hunter Biden story as you’ve just been detailing. So what needs to change? For one thing, all the leadership has to change. The leadership of the FBI has got to go.”

“I listened to the director Chris Wray testify time and again, there is no problem at the FBI they don’t have a cultural problem. Yeah they do,” Hawley continued. “They are lying to courts. They’re lying to the American people. There needs to be a thorough top to bottom housecleaning.”

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Hawley also referenced the FBI’s reported involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story. Journalist Michael Schellenberger reported that the FBI paid Twitter almost $3.5 million to reimburse the company for time spent responding to requests from the agency and contacted Twitter about potential leaks involving Hunter Biden prior to the New York Post reporting on the contents of a laptop Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop.

“I was just the other day in Kansas City, where I’m from in Missouri, I was just talking to FBI agents there, you know these are good folks in the field, right, they’re doing the work,” Hawley told Kudlow. “You come to Washington and you see who is in charge here. We’re not talking about your normal law enforcement stand up kind ever guys here no, we’re talking about politicians who are running the show here. It’s politicians are in charge of the FBI now. These people want to run American elections.”

“Let’s call it like it is, Larry. They want to be in charge of the country. They didn’t want Donald Trump in 2016. They didn’t want the public to have a choice so they tried to ensure that the public didn’t have a choice, they tried to intervene,” Hawley said. “We cannot allow that to happen. If that means we need to reconfigure FBI, we need to change their authorities, we’ve got to change their leadership, we should do it because we’ve got to preserve this country.”