Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a threatening message to the Justice Department and the FBI, warning them to preserve all documents from the Biden administration — and warning them that "accountability is coming" under the second Trump administration.
Hawley is referring to the criminal prosecution and conviction of anti-abortion activists who blocked the entrances to clinics in Tennessee — which is explicitly illegal under a 1994 federal law to protect civil rights.
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"With sunlight now on the horizon, I'm not surprised by last-ditch efforts to stonewall the incoming administration. But those efforts will fail," Hawley wrote. "As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will hold the chairmanship of a Subcommittee in the forthcoming Congress, I intend to investigate your respective agencies' illicit actions over the past several years. If your staff are presently destroying relevant documents, then the American people will learn about that too, and will learn who gave the orders to do so."
Hawley concluded by demanding of Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray — the latter of whom is a Trump appointee — "you must immediately take all necessary steps to preserve all documents, records, and other materials generated by your agencies during your respective tenures in office. You must cease any bad-faith document destruction. And you should prepare for the real justice to come."
All of this comes as Trump nominates former GOP congressional staffer and MAGA loyalist Kash Patel to take over as FBI director, which has raised alarms among observers as he has promulgated numerous conspiracy theories and vowed to "come after" journalists critical of Trump.
Read the full letter here.
