A House committee is barreling toward a contempt vote Thursday against FBI director Christopher A. Wray, with the chairman accusing Mr. Wray of orchestrating a coverup by withholding subpoenaed documents that allege President Biden took bribes.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has drafted the contempt resolution and set a vote for Thursday unless Mr. Wray turns over the documents detailing an informant’s claims that Mr. Biden took bribes from foreign nationals when he was vice president in the Obama White House.
“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. Once Director Wray confirmed the record’s existence, the FBI started their coverup by leaking a false narrative to the media,” said Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican.
The Washington Times reached out to the FBI for comment but did not hear back. The FBI previously said that turning over the document would endanger the safety of sources and the integrity of ongoing investigations.
Meanwhile, former Attorney General William Barr disputed the assertion made by the committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, that the FBI had shut down the investigation of the bribery scheme.
Mr. Raskin said the FBI’s investigation during Mr. Barr’s tenure determined that there were no grounds to continue the probe.
“Attorney General Barr named Scott Brady, who is the U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, to head up a group of prosecutors and FBI agents who would look into all of the allegations related to Ukraine,” Mr. Raskin said. “They decided there [were] no grounds to escalate this investigation. So if there’s a complaint, the complaint is with the Attorney General William Barr with the Trump Justice Department and the team that the Trump administration appointed to look into it.”
Mr. Barr later told the Federalist that the case was never shut down.
“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” he said. “On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
Mr. Comer and Mr. Raskin were briefed by FBI officials Tuesday about the unclassified document that was subpoenaed by the committee in May. The document, known as an FD-1023 form, details the information provided by a confidential informant.
After viewing the document, Mr. Comer announced he would move forward with contempt proceedings against Mr. Wray for not turning over a physical copy of the file.
“FBI officials confirmed that the unclassified FBI generated record has not been disproven, and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation,” Mr. Comer told reporters after the FBI briefing at the Capitol.
He said the document suggests a pattern of bribery with the payments funneled through shell accounts and multiple banks.
“There’s a term for that, it’s called money laundering,” Mr. Comer said. “So we feel that this accusation is consistent with a pattern that we’re seeing, frankly, in other countries.”
He described the confidential FBI source as a “trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over 10 years and has been paid over six figures.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.