On the one hand, $11.3 billion isn’t even a rounding error these days — not within the obscenity of Joe Biden’s federal budget proposal of $7.3 trillion. On the other hand, what has the FBI done to earn that sum, which would be a $661 million raise from last year?

FBI Director Christopher Wray tried to make that case when he appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies on Tuesday. And in doing so, he used the oldest trick in the budgeting book: He cried, “Wolf!”

“Just in the time that I’ve been FBI director,” Wray said, “we’ve disrupted multiple terrorist attacks and cities and communities around the country. We need funding to continue protecting America from terrorism.”

We’ll give Wray credit: He knows what buttons to press. Instead of vowing to improve the bureau’s performance and to crack down on its interference in our elections and its weaponization against conservatives, he invoked images of a terrorist attack here at home:

Given those calls for action, our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw a twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home. But now, on top of that, increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, not unlike the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russian concert hall back in March.

Wray was referring to the vile and murderous March 22 attack by Tajik nationals on Moscow’s Crocus City concert hall. There, the terrorists walked in with automatic weapons and began firing indiscriminately on the 6,200-seat venue, leaving 137 dead and more than 180 wounded. Such venues are, of course, among the softest of soft targets, and that Moscow attack reminds us that there are precious few boundaries among terrorists. Indeed, C.J. Chivers’ account of the 2004 Beslan school attack by Chechen terrorists is one of the most unsettling things you’ll ever read.

Wray was certainly scaremongering, but this isn’t to say that the terrorist threat our nation faces isn’t elevated these days. How could it not be, given Biden’s wide-open southern border and our nation’s utter cluelessness about how many of the 10 million illegals who’ve poured across our southern border on Biden’s watch are terrorists bent on doing us harm? So we have to ask: Where the heck has Director Wray been for the past three and a half years? Certainly not calling for Biden to close our borders and enforce our nation’s immigration laws.

Wray added that without the big raise, he wouldn’t be able to fill some 1,000 new (and apparently necessary) positions at the bureau. “That’s fewer tips and leads followed,” he said, “fewer terrorist attacks detected. That’s a significant concern in a heightened terrorist threat environment. It helps out the terrorists, the cartels, the violent gangs, the Chinese government, the hackers, the child predators. I can go on and on.”

But it wasn’t all bad news at the FBI this week. On the bright side, Marcus Allen, a patriot and an FBI whistleblower, recently had his security clearance reinstated after the bureau had yanked it in 2022 in retaliation for his testimony about the January 6 riots. As a letter Allen received from FBI HR reads, the bureau’s decision to reinstate his security clearance “is based upon a determination that the original security concerns have been investigated and have been sufficiently mitigated.”

More likely, the bureau realized it was on thin ice, given the federal government’s prohibitions against whistleblower retaliation.

“While I feel vindicated now in getting back my security clearance,” said Allen, “it is sad that in the country I fought for as a Marine, the FBI was allowed to lie about my loyalty to the U.S. for two years. Unless there is accountability, it will keep happening to others. Better oversight and changes to security clearance laws are key to stop abuses suffered by whistleblowers like me.”

Whether Wray gets the $11.3 billion he’s asking for is yet to be seen. But in any case, the result will be at odds with the real and radical reform that Allen and his fellow whistleblowers have been calling for and that we covered in April.

The problem at the FBI is trust. And the real solution to this politicization and weaponization was put forth recently by Allen’s fellow whistleblower, former agent Steve Friend: “I think it needs to be shattered and scattered.”