House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer introduced a resolution Wednesday to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena requesting an informant file on an alleged $5 million bribery scheme involving President Biden.
“We have been clear that the FBI must produce the unclassified FD-1023 record to the custody of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability,” Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “To date, the FBI has refused to comply with our lawfully issued subpoena and even refused to admit the record’s existence up until a week ago.”
Comer, 50, also accused Wray of “leaking a false narrative to the media” about the FD-1023 form, apparently referring to reports that the file originated in documents Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020.
Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) repeated claims from those reports after viewing the informant file with Comer on Monday, saying the investigation was based on “secondhand hearsay” and had been “terminated.”
“The case is not closed as the White House, Democrats, and the FBI would have the American people believe,” Comer responded in his statement Wednesday. “The FBI created this record based on information from a credible informant who has worked with the FBI for over a decade and paid six figures. The informant had first-hand conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden.”
Comer later accused Raskin of having “lied to the American people” about the case and said he sat beside the ranking member as the FBI informed them “four times that this was part of an ongoing investigation” as they reviewed the FD-1023 form.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr also said Tuesday that Raskin was incorrect to claim the investigation was “terminated.”
“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist, adding that it was “sent to Delaware for further investigation” by US Attorney David Weiss.
Barr had asked Scott Brady, the US attorney for Pittsburgh between 2017 and 2021, to look into the matter and forward all relevant information to Weiss, who is conducting a separate probe of first son Hunter Biden for potential tax fraud and lying on a federal gun purchasing form.
Comer has said the form was “heavily redacted” when he reviewed it on Monday. A source familiar with the review told The Post that all the names in the document were redacted except for Joe Biden’s.
His resolution states that the redactions have prevented the committee from being able to “interview the individuals involved, request documents from them or their companies and corroborate or disprove the confidential human source’s (CHS) statements.”
Comer issued a subpoena for the document on May 3, after which a back-and-forth ensued between him and Wray. Ultimately, the FBI director offered to let Comer and Raskin review the document on Capitol Hill.
“The FBI has continually demonstrated its commitment to accommodate the committee’s request, including by producing the document in a reading room at the US Capitol,” the bureau said in a statement Monday. “The escalation to a contempt vote under these circumstances is unwarranted.”
The committee will consider the resolution Thursday morning.