WASHINGTON — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) can’t say for sure that Joe Biden as soon as requested for a bribe, however he is aware of somebody mentioned it occurred.
And if the FBI gained’t declare the mysterious allegation true or false, Comer announced this week, then Republicans will search to carry bureau Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress ― with Comer relentlessly selling the bribery rumor within the meantime.
It’s the newest chapter within the Home Oversight Committee chair’s quest for filth on the president’s household. To date, the probe has discovered shell firms allegedly funneling overseas cash to relations linked to Hunter Biden’s self-enrichment schemes, beginning on the finish of his father’s vice presidency and persevering with whereas Joe Biden was out of workplace.
Comer has not proven a hyperlink to the president himself, a failure for which the Kentucky Republican has been skewered by New York Occasions tales and even Fox Information. However Comer instructed JHB he considers the bribery allegation to be the factor that pulls the remainder of his materials collectively, and he mentioned Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has his again.
“The New York Occasions needs to say, ‘Properly, there’s nothing there pertaining to Joe Biden,’” Comer mentioned. “Right here we’ve somebody very credible who alleged that he solicited a bribe.”
Congressional Republicans this 12 months have sought to tarnish the Justice Division’s picture because it investigates former President Donald Trump and prosecutes his supporters for his or her involvement within the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Comer and his colleagues have solid the FBI’s refusal to cough up data on the bribery allegation as itself suspicious, doubtlessly one other instance of the so-called deep state defending the Bidens.
At concern is an FBI doc, an FD-1023 type, that displays a tip from a confidential supply in June 2020, on the peak of the presidential marketing campaign. It pertains to what Comer has known as a “bribery scheme with a overseas nationwide” when Biden was vp — the type of damaging allegation that Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to supply in 2019, ultimately leading to Trump’s first impeachment.
Comer is already aware of what the June 2020 tip says. Although he hasn’t seen the doc itself, he’s reviewed “principally one thing pertaining to testimony,” he instructed JHB. However he needs to the FBI handy it over.
In its preliminary response to Comer earlier this month, the FBI mentioned that disclosing the fabric might danger endangering a confidential supply and compromising present or future investigations. And it steered that an FD-1023 type by itself would lack the context Comer is on the lookout for.
“An FD-1023 type paperwork data as instructed to a line FBI agent,” wrote Christopher Dunham, the FBI’s performing assistant director for congressional affairs. “Recording the knowledge doesn’t validate the knowledge, set up its credibility, or weigh it towards different data recognized or developed by the FBI.”
Comer mentioned all they must do is redact the supply’s title and complained that the FBI wouldn’t even verify that the doc existed.
“They gained’t inform us whether or not or not they seemed into it, whether or not or not they even have the shape, a lot much less what they decided or whether or not there’s an ongoing investigation,” he mentioned.
Comer had initially requested the FBI for all FD-1023 types from June 2020 that point out the title “Biden.” This week, in a follow-up letter to the bureau, he narrowed the search to paperwork that additionally embody the phrases “June thirtieth” and “5 million,” which Comer defined is the amount of cash “the overseas nationwide allegedly paid to obtain the specified coverage end result” from Biden ― as if the FBI had been merely having a tough time discovering the doc.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the highest Democrat on the Oversight Committee, mentioned Comer shouldn’t be truly attempting to unravel the allegation, as a result of his subpoena solely requested for FD-1023 types and attachments.
“Chair Comer didn’t subpoena details about the FBI’s investigation of it, or any response it needed to it, or any additional details about it,” he mentioned Thursday. “It’s simply that one sheet of paper.”
Raskin instructed JHB that he himself didn’t know something in regards to the substance of the allegation and that Democratic committee staffers had been shut out of the Republican members’ probe.
“It’s any person introducing on an unverified, uncorroborated foundation, a suggestion of subjective details about a tip,” he mentioned. “That’s all it’s.”
Republicans discovered in regards to the type from a whistleblower, considered one of a number of whose allegations have been highlighted on Capitol Hill lately. Oversight Committee member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) mentioned this week that the whistleblower who instructed Republicans in regards to the type is very credible and “fears for his or her life.” However Comer mentioned the FD-1023 whistleblower shouldn’t be the identical one linked to an informant whom Comer claimed had gone lacking earlier this month.
Among the whistleblowers have turned out to be much less compelling than initially marketed. One former FBI agent alleging corruption within the Justice Division was somebody who didn’t suppose the FBI ought to go after Jan. 6 rioters and principally refused to do his job. One other allegedly obstructed a Jan. 6 investigation as a result of he believed a conspiracy concept that the Capitol riot had been orchestrated by the federal government.
And Comer has been a bit grandiose about his work. Earlier than releasing a abstract of the Oversight Committee’s preliminary findings from its investigation of shell firms linked to Hunter Biden and others in his household, Comer proclaimed the fabric would result in “Judgment Day” for the White Home. However after the report got here out, Fox Information host Steve Doocy complained that Comer had supplied “no proof that Joe Biden did something illegally.”
Nonetheless, Comer steered this week that with the bribery allegation, he’s implicated Biden in prison exercise when he served as vp.
“The vp arrange his household to revenue from influence-peddling,” Comer mentioned on Fox Enterprise in an interview in regards to the FBI subpoena. “At that time his political profession was greater than doubtless over, so he was attempting to become profitable. And sadly he did it whereas he was in workplace, and he did it in a method by these shell firms that’s very unlawful.”