Could you provide me with a quote from Wray stating that listening to the information is not a crime? All I could find is a statement (in an article about the Stephanopoulos interview) that Wray believed anyone contacted by a foreign power offering information that could influence an election should notify the FBI about the contact:
At a Senate hearing on May 7, FBI Director Chris Wray said such attempts should be reported. Trump appointed Wray after firing James Comey. “My view is that, if any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state about influencing or interfering with our election, then that is something that the FBI would want to know about,” Wray testified.
Asked about this statement by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump said, “The FBI director is wrong.”
In other words, the issue isn’t whether to read the information or not but whether to notify the FBI or not. Trump seems to believe that he (or anyone else, perhaps) should be allowed to decide whether or not to contact the FBI based on his judgment of how “bad” the information is:
During an interview in the Oval Office that aired last night on ABC News, Trump said that he would “want to hear” whatever information a foreigner was offering and that accepting compromising information about a challenger does not count as foreign interference. “The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it,” he said. “When you go and talk, honestly, to congressmen, they all do it. They always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
Trump added: “You don’t call the FBI. … Oh, give me a break — life doesn’t work that way.” (same article from Washington Post)
Al Gore did notify the FBI; Donald Trump Jr. did not.
Saying that he would read the information does not make Trump a traitor any more than saying you wanted to kill someone makes you a murderer. But resorting to terroristic threats can be prosecuted. And concealing evidence of attempts by a foreign power to interfere in our electoral process should be prosecutable as well.
