FBI Director Christopher Wray indicated that an agent who headed the agency’s Detroit Field Office when FBI operatives allegedly entrapped people into planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor is currently in charge of the D.C. Field Office.
“[Steven M.] D’Antuono was the special agent in charge of the … Detroit field office and is now the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office,” Wray clarified to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during his Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz called the move “astonishing.”
A judge acquitted two men and declared a mistrial for two others in April after their October 2020 arrests for allegedly plotting to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, with their defense contending the FBI conceived and encouraged them into the plot. D’Antuono took charge of the FBI’s Detroit Field Office in 2019 and was announced as the D.C. Field Office’s leader just days after the arrests.
“That case as I understand it is now pending a re-trial,” Wray testified. A federal judge in June ordered a new trial for the two alleged kidnapping plotters who had not received a verdict, Forbes reported.
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Cruz also expressed the belief that the FBI and broader Justice Department have become “thoroughly politicized” and Wray has been “unwilling” to root out the problem.
“I think this is a problem that began during the Obama administration, I think it metastasized with career officials during the Trump administration and I think it continues and is even worse today under the Biden administration,” Cruz said.
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