Christopher Wray, the FBI director, declined to say Tuesday whether the recent New York hush-money guilty verdict against Donald Trump and three other indictments amount to “election interfering” just five months before the November 2024 election.

Bill Hagerty, a member the Senate Appropriations Committee (R-TN), asked Wray if the federal indictments and conviction of Trump in New York amounted to a level that the FBI is concerned about. The FBI director stated that he could not comment on “pending criminal prosecutions in state courts.”

Wray, an appointee of Trump, said: “It is not something I would do.” Hagerty clarified: “I am talking about using governmental authority to influence an election.”

Hagerty stated that “we witnessed” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last Thursday “doing just that, using a flimsy and made-up theory with a criminal conviction.”

Hagerty referred to a recent post by Open Society Foundations chairman Alex Soros on X, in which he advised Democrats to repeat the slogan convicted felon so that it could be imprinted into voters’ minds. “Alvin Bragg did exactly that. He facilitated the imprint.” Is this a coordinated attempt to interfere in the election, or just a random coincidence?

Republicans claim that all four criminal charges against Trump are political in nature and reflect President Joe Biden’s attempt to influence the election of 2024. The Republicans have criticized Bragg for hiring Matthew Colangelo as the lead in the hush-money case. They note that Colangelo, a former high-ranking Justice Department official who left the Biden administration just one year prior to the April 2023 indictment of Trump by Bragg’s office, was working in Bragg at the time.

The senator, after Wray refused to answer Hagerty’s question again, said that he would “move to the federal level,” referring the decision of Attorney General Merrick to appoint Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump, resulting in two separate indictments respectively in Washington, D.C., in Florida in 2023.

Garland has appointed Jack Smith as the prosecutor for Trump, President Biden’s opponent. Hagerty asked: “Is this coordinated interference in an election to target your opponent using the Justice Department?” Hagerty added that the way in which the “legal stars aligned” in this case is deeply worrying.

Wray declined to answer again but said: “I can assure you that we will do our part.”

Wray continued, “We have a responsibility to protect our elections against threats and we can do this by investigating them.”

Garland had spent several hours in front of members of the House Judiciary Committee when the FBI director gave his testimony. The attorney general denied that Trump was attempting to politicize the justice system and said that Republican lawmakers were merely intimidating.

Garland declared, “I won’t be intimidated.” “And neither will the Justice Department be intimidated.” We will continue doing our jobs without political influence. We will continue to defend our democracy without any compromise.