FBI Heads Off House Oversight Committee Contempt Vote With Compromise
By: HuffPost
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON — Republicans have backed down from a threat to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) had planned to initiate contempt proceedings against Wray on Thursday if the bureau refused to provide a form documenting an unverified tip that Joe Biden took a bribe when he was vice president.
The Justice Department offered to brief all members of the House Oversight Committee about the document after having briefed just Comer and the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), on Monday.
Comer had said he would still seek to hold Wray in contempt if he didn't let the committee have its own copy of the form, but Comer said late Wednesday that he had accepted the all-member briefing.
"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," Comer said in a news release.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested this week that if the full oversight committee could see the document, "then there's no need for contempt," and Comer had seemed open to the idea.
"The speaker makes the ultimate call," Comer told HuffPost on Tuesday. "But obviously, the more eyes that lay on it, the better."
According to both Comer and Raskin, a reliable FBI source told the bureau in June 2020 that someone else told him that, sometime during his vice presidency, Biden took a $5 million bribe from someone in Ukraine, but the source could not corroborate the information. Former president Donald Trump's attempt to pressure the Ukrainian president to push a similar story about the Biden family's corruption in Ukraine led to Trump's first impeachment.
The FBI's refusal to hand over the document had become the latest talking point supporting the sweeping GOP narrative that the federal government's lead law enforcement agency and the entire Justice Department has been "weaponized" by liberals against all they consider good in American life — especially Trump and his supporters.
"If this document were incriminating a political opponent versus a political ally, it wouldn't have to be subpoenaed," Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told HuffPost. "It would have long since been leaked and disclosed to the public."
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a moderate Republican and former FBI agent, said he'd been trying to help the two sides reach a deal, potentially by redacting identifying information.
"We can achieve compliance with the subpoena while simultaneously protecting the source," Fitzpatrick told HuffPost. "I'm the only FBI agent in Congress, so I'm offering my perspective to help all sides facilitate a resolution."
Comer told HuffPost on Tuesday that he didn't care who the source of the tip was. He said that when he viewed the document on Monday, the FBI's redactions were a problem.
"They redacted information that I believe would pinpoint the banks and the location of where this bribe actually happened," Comer said.
At the same time, Comer admitted that he doesn't know if the bribery allegation is true, just that it fits a pattern of shell companies funneling payments from foreign sources to members of Biden's family — a pattern that Comer has documented through bank records, but one that hasn't implicated Biden himself. The tip implicating the president is the missing link.
"My belief is that Christopher Wray and high-ranking FBI officials never even knew this form [documenting the tip] existed until I requested it," Comer said. "Therefore, no one vetted this allegation because it's kind of hard to believe."
Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, said the material had been funneled to the FBI by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and that Trump's attorney general, William Barr, signed off on closing the case in August 2020.
The Oversight Committee said Tuesday that the DOJ assessed material it received in 2020, around the time Barr confirmed the FBI was looking at Giuliani's material, but that the form Republicans are trying to subpoena was created by an FBI agent in June 2020 "based on another FBI record from 2017."
This week, Barr told The Federalist that the assessment wasn't closed down and that it was instead "sent to Delaware for further investigation."
Raskin doubled down on Wednesday, saying the FBI had told him that the form created in June 2020 pretty much echoed Giuliani's material and that the allegation against Biden went nowhere — even if the FBI is using the material in another investigation, as Comer has insisted.
"The FBI confirmed that much of this information was the same as information Mr. Giuliani had previously provided," Raskin said in a lengthy statement, concluding that "the key fact shared by the FBI in its briefing was that the assessment opened in January 2020 to evaluate Mr. Giuliani's allegations against President Biden and his son was closed in August 2020."
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The Republicans backed down. Wray will not give them the document, he will show it to them.
A difference without a distinction.
Another Jordan failure.
Jordan is a fool and an incompetent. A Republican, then.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested this week that if the full oversight committee could see the document, “then there’s no need for contempt,” and Comer had seemed open to the idea.
They worked something out. All they wanted was for people to see the document. I'm the only one that wanted Wray held in contempt no matter what. Good for them. Maybe I'll meet up with Wray in a dark alley some day!
Wray won. The FBI will retain custody of the document.
No John, Wray needs the same thing Comey lusted for the other day: A Biden victory in 2024.
Wray is a Republican.
If he wants Biden to win its because he has seen how diseased the Republican Party has become.
And Manchin is a democrat.
If he wants Biden to win
It will be to keep his job.
Sounds like someone is saying if a republican gets elected, they are going to attack the FBI and work it in to their own image of what they think it should be.
Wray is a POS Establishment government official. He doesn't give a fuck who is in charge so long as they are Establishment and play by those rules.
The Establishment protects their own.
Also, if Wray is such a great "Republican" he should want to take Brandon down. Especially with all of the mishandled classified documents- many of them from when he was Senator- and they still don't have access to all of them.
Brandon should be the most investigated President in history with all of the money laundering in his family. But Wray can't seem to find the time; or the means. Too damn busy investigating Jan 6th rioters; and parents that have taken an interest in their children's education.
Do you want or expect the nation's premier law enforcement agency to be anti-establishment?
JR, who has the actual document, is moot. Its what in the document that's important.
threatening someone you don't even know?
I don't threaten people.
No you make promises don't you?
No pronouncements!
you think you're so tough
you're not
I don't propose to be tough
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You going to murder an FBI officer Vic?
Is that what I said?
Try agian Steevie
Those are your words, Vic. I can only imagine what you would do to Wray in dark alley.
A handie?
Yet his quote is his and his alone. Perhaps Vic can tell us what he would do to Wray in a dark alley?
Are you Vic's sock puppet? You're always speaking for him
not with you
I'd like to know that too because it sounds to me like he's threatening the FBI director. The FBI may not show up at every single gay rights protest in the country but they're pretty good at responding to online threats against their own.
Yes, they are.
It only takes one email or phone call
Salacious misanthropy?
So all of this is about a supposed 'tip' someone gave? So it is not really even part of an investigation, just what someone told them....
This is the GOP's steele dossier. and they are too stupid to realize it.
Cool. So the FBI will use it to spy on Democrats and the media will spend the next year hyping it as proof of Biden's corruption? So the Biden special counsel will appointed soon, I guess.
and Biden will spend the next hundred years complaining about it.
my comment was not really about the steele dossier alone. even though you didnt get it, i feel sure some others here did.
No one appears capable of telling us what this "document" proves.
According to Greene today someone alleges they heard something from someone else that says a bribe was paid. we went through this shit with these people 4 years ago. this is giuliani written all over it. we all know where his "intelligence ' has led.
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Well of course no one here can tell you what the document even says because the document has not been released to the public. And nobody in the public knows how much if at all Giuliani had a hand in the making of this document or the information it contains. But because of the questions that are raised it should be investigated. From what was released by the FBI they are in the middle of an investigation.
Don't you want to know the truth of it?
The document proves that a paid FBI informant, not Giuliani, came to the FBI and alleged Burisma bribed Joe Biden 5 million dollars through multiple bank accounts. At the same time the bribe was paid we also have proof that Burisma was sending emails to Hunter Biden demanding high ranking American officials help shut down investigations of Burisma founder Nikolai Zlochevskyi. There's much more "there" there than ever existed for the collusion hoax.
But I'm sure it was Hunter's deep experience in energy that inspired Burisma to hire Hunter, right?
The paid informant didnt make the allegation. He repeated the allegation that someone else had given him.
The allegation came from a burisma executive.
Now that Trump has been indicted for conspiracy and obstruction of justice we can expect Comer and Jordan to become more frantic than ever.