Advertisement

FBI director Wray says the right things about protecting voters. But he needs to say more.

Prominent on the list of people President Donald Trump plans to fire if he wins reelection is FBI Director Christopher Wray, whose truth telling is undercutting increasingly erratic presidential campaign messaging.

Last week, as Trump loyalist and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe held a rushed news conference asserting that Iran was interfering in our election to "damage President Trump,” Wray read an even-handed statement about protecting our election, appearing to distance himself from Ratcliffe’s partisan focus.

Wray has shown a steely commitment to a secure election and to speaking truth at risk of his job. Late last month, Wray told Congress there was no historical evidence of widespread mail-in ballot fraud, undermining a Trump campaign meme. On Oct. 5, Wray led intelligence agency leaders in a remarkable set of coordinated public statements committing to disseminate accurate information on foreign interference and protect the election process. In doing so, Wray acted as a strong counterweight to Trump’s dog whistles to militia groups — purportedly to deter voter fraud, but implicitly to discourage targeted voters and interfere with the election process.

Wray offered the FBI as “the primary investigative agency” responsible for protecting elections, declaring that if the FBI sees indications of “federal election crimes, we’ll aggressively investigate and … take appropriate action, including seeking criminal charges where warranted.”

With voting well under way, Wray needs to go a step further.

Public commitment would reassure

Wray can reassure the public that the FBI has set in motion plans to deter or arrest anyone illegally interfering with voters. Under federal law, anyone who “intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right ... to vote” for a candidate for federal office can be fined or imprisoned.

Such public commitments to fair law enforcement are directly responsive to widespread concern. It is fed by Trump’s persistent messaging aimed at discouraging minority voters from exercising the right for which the late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and other civil rights heroes risked their lives.

A woman waits to vote in Miami on Oct. 19, 2020.
A woman waits to vote in Miami on Oct. 19, 2020.

In a recent Fox News interview, President Trump called for deploying local sheriffs to do poll watching. Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that tactic and other Trump ideas were pulled straight from the "Jim Crow playbook" used to keep Black people from voting.

There are now signs that such tactics are being put into action.

Extraordinary challenges: Voter intimidation is surging in 2020. Fight for the right that begets all other rights.

Trump has told supporters to go to polls in battleground states to “watch very carefully” — in Philadelphia County, for example, with its 43.6% Black population capable of tipping Pennsylvania for Democrat Joe Biden.

With such pronouncements, it is understandable that concern about local police at polling places in 2020 is more than twice as high among Black citizens as among white citizens.

Notably, Trump’s tactics have backfired with some Black Americans, motivating them to vote early in person or show up on Election Day well provisioned for a long line. Indeed, interference threats proved empty in 2016. Election protection groups advise citizens to turn out to vote and prepare to report any incidents.

Voters need to hear more from FBI

The FBI can serve our democracy by enforcing election laws should anyone try to hinder voters while purporting to be "policing” irregularities. This is a delicate dance considering that many Americans remember the bureau’s history under J. Edgar Hoover of surveilling, disrupting and demonizing lawful civil rights activities such as nonviolent demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Fortunately, after Hoover and Watergate, President Jimmy Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell reinforced the FBI’s proper nonpartisan, equal-protection law enforcement role when Carter named William Webster as FBI director. Webster was a by-the-book, Republican-appointed federal judge who later became President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director.

A question of legitimacy: The Supreme Court is helping Republicans suppress voters. Make it bigger to fix democracy.

Last December, responding to Attorney General William Barr’s unprecedented public attack on his independent inspector general’s report validating the FBI’s 2016 Russia investigation, Webster wrote: “The rule of law is ... the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.”

Those words lend force to Director Wray’s commitment to a fair, secure and lawful federal election in 2020 — and they underscore the urgency of continuing messages from Wray that FBI agents are on alert, ready to fulfill this charge.

Frederick Baron is a former Justice Department associate deputy attorney general and Executive Office for National Security director who now practices law in California. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor who writes on national affairs.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How is FBI protecting election and voting? America needs to hear more.