(NewsNation) — FBI Director Christopher Wray, asked about several proposals from Project 2025 at a congressional hearing Wednesday, said he does not support them.
Project 2025 is a handbook outlining what conservative groups led by the think tank The Heritage Foundation want to see should former Republican President Donald Trump win the presidency in November. Much of it is about giving the executive branch more power. Critics have blasted it as extremist, “authoritarian” and even dystopian.
Trump and his campaign have disavowed Project 2025, with the former president saying he agrees with some of it, and disagrees with other aspects. Many top officials and political advisers under his administration, and some currently involved in his campaign, contributed to it, though.
Project 2025’s authors, in a previous statement to NewsNation, said that they are “not affiliated with any candidate.”
Wray clarified he has not reviewed Project 2025 himself and that he is not familiar with the details of it.
It came up several times during the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing over the FBI, where he was also questioned on the investigation into the shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, asked Wray about one of the recommendations in Project 2025 that would force the FBI director and Department of Justice to report directly to the president.
“I don’t think that would be a wise reporting structure,” Wray answered. “I think the structure that we’ve had for decades now makes sense.”
Acknowledging that he was appointed by Trump, Wray stressed that the “independence” of the FBI is what matters to him.
“We need to be able to do our work in a way that is free from political will,” he said.
Authors of Project 2025 write that it is “essential” for a conservative administration to place a high priority on “reforming the DOJ and its culture to align the department with its core purposes and advance the national interest.”
“Critically, this must include the FBI,” they wrote. “Anything other than a top-to-bottom overhaul will only further erode the trust of significant portions of the American people and harm the very fabric that holds together our constitutional republic.”
Asked about Project 2025’s proposal to eliminate the FBI’s general counsel, Wray said this would also not be a good idea.
“I think the FBI’s Office of General Counsel serves an incredibly important role, including in terms of advising our workforce,” Wray answered. “We have 38,000 people, the idea of having an organization like ours, an independent law enforcement agency like ours that doesn’t have its own general counsel’s office doesn’t make sense to me.”
NewsNation has reached out to Project 2025 via a press email for comment.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said that Project 2025 wants the FBI to be subordinate to the president, and not the American people. She asked Wray about the importance of the agency being politically neutral.
“That is one part of a larger plan to undermine our democracy, to remove the checks and balances that have protected us, and ultimately to subvert our freedoms,” Jayapal said.
In response, Wray reiterated the FBI needs to function independently.
“It means following the facts wherever they lead no matter who likes it,” Wray said.
A Republican committee member, New York Rep. Jefferson Van Drew, criticized Democratic lawmakers for their focus on Project 2025, arguing his colleagues only brought it up to make Trump look bad.
“2025 has some things in it that they believe are really going to offend American people, and it very well may, and so they want to pin it on the presidential candidate,” Van Drew said. “He didn’t author it, he didn’t condone it, he didn’t put his seal of approval on it — it’s getting old.”
