Former Attorney General William Barr and top Republicans insist Democrats misled the public by claiming the Trump-era DOJ closed an investigation into an alleged bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has confirmed the existence of an FBI confidential human source form alleging Joe Biden engaged in a “criminal bribery scheme” for five million dollars from a yet-unnamed foreign national, but he has continually refused to hand over the document to Congress, despite a congressional subpoena ordering him to do so. The FD-1023 form is dated June 30, 2020.
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Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has scheduled a contempt of Congress hearing for Wray on Thursday.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, repeatedly claimed on Monday following an FBI briefing that Barr and his “handpicked prosecutor” Scott Brady, then the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, ended the investigation into the bribery claims in 2020. But Barr said that is false.
“It’s not true,” Barr soon told the Federalist. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is handling the federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. It is up to U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump-appointed holdover, to decide whether to indict the president’s son. In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations, with Weiss a rare exception.
Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also contended that the information in the FD-1023 is being used in an “ongoing” investigation and the confidential human source is highly credible and has worked with the bureau for over a decade.
“The FBI is attempting a cover-up and Democrats are doing their bidding by lying to the American people. A trusted confidential human source obtained information from a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden,” Comer told the Washington Examiner. “This information is memorialized in an official FBI record and Attorney General Barr handed it over to the U.S. Attorney in Delaware. The FBI must produce this record to the House Oversight Committee’s custody. If not, we will take action on Thursday to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress.”
The FBI brought the FD-1023 form to Capitol Hill on Monday and allowed Comer and Raskin to view it then, and the duo held competing press conferences after the briefing from the bureau.
Raskin said he learned from the FBI that Barr named Brady in 2020 to “head up a group of prosecutors and FBI agents who would look into all of the allegations related to Ukraine” starting that June. The Democrat contended the group “spent the summer on it and as I understand it in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation” and so “they called an end to the investigation.”
Raskin said Barr and Brady “were the ones who decided … that there were no grounds to escalate this up the investigative prosecutorial chain,” and so “if there is a complaint, it is with Attorney General William Barr, the Trump Justice Department, and the team that the Trump administration appointed to look into it.”
This contradicts Barr’s contention that the matter was not actually closed but was sent to Delaware for further review.
Raskin called it a “debunked FBI tip” and claimed that “much of the information provided by the source was information” that former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani “had already provided the FBI” and that Barr and Brady “found no evidence to corroborate Mr. Giuliani’s allegations.”
Raskin’s claims contradict what has been revealed by Comer and Grassley.
Comer, who is conducting an investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, said in his Monday press conference that “FBI officials confirmed that the unclassified, FBI-generated record has not been disproven and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.” He added that the confidential human source “is a trusted, highly-credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over ten years and who has been paid over six figures.”
The Comer-led House Oversight Committee also tweeted on Tuesday that “Democrats are spreading disinformation about yesterday's FBI briefing on the Biden bribery record.”
The committee said the DOJ “conducted an ‘assessment’ on separate material provided to the Department in January 2020” and that “the FD-1023 was generated by the FBI on 6/30/20 based on another FBI record from 2017.” The GOP said the assessment was closed out in August 2020 and that the FBI “refused to answer” what information was part of the assessment.
The GOP-led committee stressed that “the FBI confirmed multiple times that the information contained within the FD-1023 is being used in an ongoing investigation” and argued that, despite the Democratic claims of Giuliani’s involvement, the FD-1023 “stands on its own.”
Grassley said on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday that “in last week’s phone call with Director Wray, I also asked him if the 1023 is part of an ongoing investigation” and that “he answered that it’s relevant to an ongoing investigative matter.” Grassley said that “from that vague answer, it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s part of an ongoing investigation otherwise it wouldn’t be relevant to one” and that “it’s also reasonable to conclude that the FBI finds it reliable enough to continue using it several years later.”
The Iowa Republican argued “partisan media, most likely in conjunction with the Biden FBI, have misleadingly reported the 1023 is from a tranche of information provided by Rudy Giuliani” but that “news reports last week dispel that notion and make clear the 1023 information that we request is independent” of Giuliani.
“Today, I can say that based upon unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures the FBI source in the 1023 has been paid at least two hundred thousand dollars by the FBI since the source was opened and operational,” Grassley said. “High dollar payments obviously mean the FBI believes the source to be credible and reputable. That makes sense since Director Wray said the 1023 is relevant to an ongoing investigative report.”
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Whistleblower allegations emerged last summer that FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 that was used by FBI headquarters to mislabel accurate information about Hunter Biden as disinformation, according to disclosures made public by Grassley. Whistleblowers also said Timothy Thibault, the now-former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite the fact that some of the details were known to be true at the time.
“So, is the FBI looking at bribery allegations against members of the Biden family? Is U.S. Attorney Weiss looking into this?” Grassley asked from the Senate floor this week. “Did the FBI follow normal investigative process and procedure? Or did they try to sweep it under the rug? For example, did the FBI try to improperly use the August 2020 Brian Auten assessment to shut down the 1023 reporting by falsely labeling it disinformation?”