The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has canceled an upcoming meeting that would have discussed holding Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray in contempt for failing to turn over requested documents.
At issue was an unclassified FBI memo identified by a whistleblower that contained information about an investigation into President Joe Biden’s alleged participation in an international bribery scheme, as reported by The Dallas Express. The document, an FD-1023 form, included information from an informant concerning the matter.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the committee’s chairman, released a draft of the contempt resolution on June 7, explaining, “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.”
“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 continued. “Once Director Wray confirmed the record’s existence, the FBI started their coverup by leaking a false narrative to the media.”
“The case is not closed as the White House, Democrats, and the FBI would have the American people believe. 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,” Comer said. “The informant had first-hand conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden.”
“Americans have lost trust in the FBI’s ability to enforce the law impartially and demand answers, transparency, and accountability,” Comer claimed. “The Oversight Committee must follow the facts for the American people and ensure the federal government is held accountable.”
Following this, FBI Director Wray reversed course and permitted the committee to review the unclassified document and several attending items referenced in the FD-1023.
Comer celebrated the victory, saying, “After weeks of refusing to even admit the FD-1023 record exists, the FBI has caved and is now allowing all members of the Oversight and Accountability Committee to review this unclassified record that memorializes a confidential human source’s conversations with a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Joe Biden.”
“Allowing all Oversight Committee members to review this record is an important step toward conducting oversight of the FBI and holding it accountable to the American people,” he concluded.
Having reviewed the document, members of the committee expressed differing interpretations of the information.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said the document offered “damning evidence the sitting president of the United States sold out his country in an ongoing bribery scheme.”
“The American people and media deserve to see the evidence. We should follow the facts,” Mace continued, per Fox News.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking opposition member on the committee, denied that the memo held any real value.
“What we’re talking about here is a confidential human source reporting a conversation with someone else. So [what] we’re talking about is secondhand hearsay,” Raskin claimed, per reporting from The Hill.
Raskin also suggested that the informant “had no way of knowing about the underlying veracity of the things that he was being told.”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks