Speaker McCarthy ‘confident’ FBI will produce document on alleged Biden bribery scheme following call with bureau chief

by Chris Lange

 Chris Lange, FISM News

 

The House Oversight Committee appears to have made a breakthrough in its quest to investigate an alleged pay-for-play scheme involving President Joe Biden and foreign nationals during Biden’s vice presidency.

The Republican-led committee has been attempting to gain access to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) document purported to contain information about an alleged criminal scheme.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an appearance on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” yesterday that he is “confident” that the FBI will provide Republican House investigators with the informant file. McCarthy said that he had spoken directly with FBI Director Christopher Wray in a telephone call about the Bureau’s non-compliance with a congressional subpoena for the file.

“I explained to the director that we will do everything in our power, and we have jurisdiction over the FBI, that we have the right to see this document,” the Speaker said. “I believe after this call we will get this document.”

BUREAU DOES NOT DENY DOCUMENT EXISTS

The House Oversight Committee investigating alleged Biden family corruption issued a subpoena for the file earlier this month after an informant alerted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of its existence.  

The bureau’s acting Assistant Director for Congressional Affairs Christopher Dunham responded to the subpoena on the May 10 deadline with a warning that the release of “unverified or incomplete” information could “harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputational interests, or create misimpressions in the public.”

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said that Dunham’s statement showed “that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists” and that the FBI is “refusing to provide it to the Committee.” 

“We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both.”

INVESTIGATION INTERFERENCE

Comer sent a letter to Wray on Friday accusing the agency of interfering with the committee’s investigation by failing to produce key documents and information related to Biden’s conduct during his tenure in the Obama administration. 

“The FBI’s delay in producing a single, unclassified record is unacceptable,” Comer wrote in a statement. “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The FBI must provide this record to Congress without further delay. The American people demand the truth and accountability for any wrongdoing. That starts with getting this record.”

The FBI justified its flouting of the subpoena on the basis that “contemporaneous public materials cite prior letters and public releases that suggest a significant amount of information is already available.”

Comer, however, argued that the information contained in the sought-after file was not “provided in any of the materials cited by the FBI or publicly reported.”

Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) penned a May 3 letter to Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland advising that a whistleblower had alerted Grassley that the Justice Department and the FBI were in possession of documents concerning a scheme “involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said in a statement.

What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.

White House spokesperson Ian Sams asserted that “House Republicans have shown no evidence of any policy decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. national interests” in a Wednesday tweet. “That’s because they can’t.”

Congressional Democrats have accused their Republican colleagues of trying to “dig up dirt” on the Biden family in an effort to divert attention away from a multitude of criminal charges and allegations against former President Donald Trump.

This article was partially informed by The Daily Wire, the New York Post, and The Washington Examiner reports.

DONATE NOW