Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax that he believes FBI Director Christopher Wray, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, is "probably misinformed" about his agents' actions.
"I know they're not supposed to be misinformed over there, but his agents were meeting — many of the agents — on a weekly basis and routinely taking down [social media] posts," Paul said during a Wednesday night appearance on Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show." "I think the evidence from the court trial will show that some of the posts did have to do with COVID origins.
"Now he is right — the FBI, at the top level, did investigate and did promise and did reveal that they believe that the virus did leak from the lab in Wuhan [China]. But the interesting thing is how many mixed signals we get from them."
Paul said that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had been trying unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting with the assistant director of weapons of mass destruction at the FBI for months. According to Paul, this official investigated the COVID-19 leak and possible origins from a lab. While questioning Wray on Wednesday, Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., asked for a meeting directly, Paul said, and it was arranged within an hour.
"So while the FBI has come out in favor of confidence that the lab leak occurred, why don't they want to share that with the rest of Congress or with the public?" he asked. "This stuff needs to be made public. It needs to be declassified.
"We voted unanimously a couple of months ago to declassify all the COVID information to try to let the public make their decision on this, and yet there is still this dragging of feet."
"I don't quite get it, but I do believe the record will show that FBI agents did meet with those members of social media and Big Tech and did suppress opinions on this," he continued. "We know for a fact that they were meeting and suppressing. Even things they thought to be true but not to be to their advantage they were suppressing with regard to vaccines."
The senator from Kentucky also discussed a law he's introducing that would "prevent and make it illegal for the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security or any official from government to sit down with media and bully, imply, discuss, or in any way try to influence that media to take down constitutionally protected speech."
"Congress needs to take a stand on the First Amendment," Paul said. "It shouldn't be necessary, but it is necessary because government is meeting every week with Big Tech trying to take down opinions. And when Wray says it's not happening, he's not being honest."
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