Def worth reading: 2017 review of Chris Wray's actions, by emptywheel

[Grasswire2]

My jaw dropped at the knowledge that Wray was/is close to Karl Rove, who fed him a lot of information. Lengthy article, full of tidbits and connections. Here's just a bit of it:

While most people are noting that Wray is Chris Christie’s personal lawyer in Bridgegate, I’m at least as interested in some of the things he did while at DOJ, as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division.

Wray was on the border of a lot of torture decisions in 2004 — the ACLU database of torture documents is full of entirely redacted documents involving him.

Wray was involved in one of the noted field trips to Gitmo to watch torture.

And he also charged David Passaro, the only CIA person (Passaro was a contractor training Afghans to be paramilitaries) ever charged for torture. DOJ seized a bunch of documents Passaro had which would have shown that CIA’s chain of command had approved torture. Whatever you think of Passaro, I strongly believe he was denied due process in a number of ways.

To Wray’s credit, he was the first to review Stellar Wind data for information that might need to be disclosed as discovery to defendants.

While Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Wray was involved in negotiations with lawyers for Chiquita (including Eric Holder) that resulted in Chiquita’s executives avoiding all penalties for materially supporting Colombian terrorists.

..... also while AAG DOJ in the early days of the Plame investigation, Wray provided inappropriate briefings to John Ashcroft about what Ashcroft’s buddies had said during FBI interviews.


much, much, much more at link

https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/06/07/trump-fbi-nominee-christopher-wray-gave-inappropriate-briefings-to-john-ashcroft-during-plame-investigation/

[UTUSN]

1. K& big R#5