Congressional Democrats defended the FBI’s refusal to provide a subpoenaed informant file to Congress that allegedly links President Joe Biden to a $5 million bribery scheme.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has until Tuesday to deliver the unclassified document that is a record of an interview the FBI conducted with an informant. The document allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions between now-President Biden and a foreign national. The Justice Department did not deny the existence of a record.
ICYMI: FBI Director Chris Wray & James Comer are scheduled to meet in the coming days as the Oversight Chair threatens to hold Wray in contempt of Congress if he refuses to turn over a doc a whistleblower claims shows Biden was involved in a bribery schemehttps://t.co/Z18YyJhZyp
— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) May 25, 2023
Wray agreed to schedule a meeting with House Oversight James Comer (R-KY) for this week about the status. The scheduled meeting comes after Comer threatened to hold the FBI in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over the unclassified file.
“It just sounds preposterous to me that you will hold the FBI director in contempt over a tip sheet that they think someone submitted to the FBI,” House Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Punchbowl News. “[Comer is] making a mountain out of something that is not even a molehill.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), an Oversight Committee member, claimed Comer’s effort to force transparency from the FBI was an “assault” on the bureau.
“It’s part of the assault on the FBI that the Republicans have launched, fueled by Trump’s hatred of the FBI,” he said.
House Republicans on the Oversight Committee see the FBI’s lack of cooperation differently.
“I think it’s clear and obvious that the DOJ, the FBI, Christopher Wray, Merrick Garland, and many others are protecting the Bidens,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) exclusively told Breitbart News on Thursday.
“It has direct evidence of Joe Biden himself getting paid from a foreign national for foreign policy decisions,” she said. “So, it’s a real pay-to-play scheme when Joe Biden was Vice President.”
Comer called the FBI’s position “obstructionist.”“The FBI’s refusal to produce this single document is obstructionist. Nevertheless, to narrow the breadth of the subpoena, we are providing additional terms based on unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures that may be referenced in the FD-1023 form: ‘June 30, 2020’ and ‘five million,’” Comer said.
“The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people,” the FBI issued a statement to reporters. “Releasing confidential source information could potentially jeopardize investigations and put lives at risk. The FBI remains committed to cooperating with Congress’s oversight requests.”
The FBI’s refusal to provide the document comes as Comer seeks to investigate the Biden family in a wide-ranging probe.
In March, the investigation identified three Biden family members who collectively received $1.3 million, wired through a Biden associate from a Chinese energy company two months after President Joe Biden left the vice presidency.
In May, it found the Biden family business over the course of several years received at least $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling.
In total, nine Biden family members received payments from the family foreign business ventures, including two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren, Comer revealed.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Just crooks trying to defend other crooks is all I see.