WASHINGTON – Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) can’t say for sure that Joe Biden once asked for a bribe, but he does know someone said it happened.
And if the FBI doesn’t declare the mysterious claim true or false, Comer announced Then this week, Republicans will seek to arrest Bureau Chief Christopher Wray for contempt of Congress — while Comer tirelessly spreads the bribery rumor.
It’s the latest chapter in the House Oversight Committee chairman’s search for dirt on the President’s family. So far, the investigation has revealed that shell companies allegedly routed foreign money to family members linked to Hunter Biden’s self-enrichment schemes. This began with the end of his father’s vice presidency and continued while Joe Biden was out of office.
Comer has shown no connection to the president himself, an omission the Kentucky Republican is angered by Stories from the New York Times and even Fox News. But Comer told HuffPost that he thinks the bribery allegation is what brings the rest of his material together, and he said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican of California) stands behind him.
“The New York Times wants to say, ‘Well, there’s nothing there about Joe Biden,'” Comer said. “Here we have someone who is very credible and claims he solicited bribes.”
Republicans in Congress have sought to tarnish the Justice Department’s image this year as it investigates former President Donald Trump and prosecutes his supporters for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol riots. Comer and his colleagues have criticized the FBI’s refusal to comment on information about the bribery allegation as suspicious, possibly another example of the so-called deep state protecting the Bidens.
It’s an FBI document, an FD-1023 form, that reflects a tip from a confidential source in June 2020, at the height of the presidential campaign. It refers to what Comer called a “bribery plot with a foreigner” when Biden was vice president — the kind of damaging allegation Trump pressured the President of Ukraine to make in 2019, which eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment .
Comer is already familiar with the June 2020 tip. Although he didn’t see the document himself, he was “basically reviewing something related to witness testimony,” he told HuffPost. But he wants the FBI to turn it over.
In his first reaction The FBI told Comer earlier this month that disclosing the material risked compromising a confidential source and jeopardizing ongoing or future investigations. And it suggested that an FD-1023 form alone would lack the context that Comer is looking for.
“An FD-1023 form documents information provided to an FBI agent,” wrote Christopher Dunham, the FBI’s acting assistant director of congressional affairs. “Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or correlate it with other information known or developed by the FBI.”
Comer said all they had to do was redact the source’s name and complained that the FBI wouldn’t even confirm the document’s existence.
“They won’t tell us whether or not they’ve looked into it, whether or not they even have the form, let alone what they found or if there’s an ongoing investigation,” he said.
Comer initially asked the FBI for all June 2020 FD-1023 forms that mention the name “Biden.” This week, in a follow-up letter to the office, he restricted the search to documents that also included the terms “30. June” and “five million,” which Comer said was “the amount of money the foreigner allegedly paid for.” “The Desired Policy Outcome” by Biden — as if the FBI was simply having trouble finding the document.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said Comer is not really trying to get to the bottom of the allegation because his subpoena only asked for FD-1023 forms and attachments.
“Chairman Comer has not subpoenaed any information regarding, or any response to, the FBI’s investigation into this matter, or any further information about it,” he said Thursday. “It’s just this one sheet of paper.”
Raskin told HuffPost that he himself knew nothing of the substance of the allegation and that staffers from the Democratic Committee had been barred from investigating Republican members.
“It’s someone providing a hint of subjective information about a tip on an unconfirmed, unconfirmed basis,” he said. “That’s all.”
Republicans learned of the form from a whistleblower, one of several whose allegations recently came to light on Capitol Hill. Member of the Oversight Committee, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said this week that the whistleblower who told Republicans about the form is highly credible and “fears for their lives.” But Comer said the FD-1023 whistleblower was not the same one linked to a whistleblower Comer claimed lost earlier this month.
Some of the whistleblowers proved less convincing than initially advertised. A former FBI agent who alleged corruption at the Justice Department was someone who felt the FBI should not be prosecuting the Jan. 6 rioters and who flatly refused to do his job. Another reportedly obstructed an investigation on January 6 because he believed a conspiracy theory that the riot in the Capitol was government-orchestrated.
And Comer was a bit cocky about his work. Before releasing a summary of the Oversight Committee’s preliminary findings from its investigation into shell companies associated with Hunter Biden and other family members, Comer announced that the material “Judgment Day” for the White House. But after the report came out, Fox News host Steve Doocy said complained that Comer “did not present any evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegal.”
Still, Comer hinted this week that he had implicated Biden in criminal activity with the bribery charge while he was serving as vice president.
“The vice president started his family to capitalize on influence,” Comer said said on Fox Business in an interview about the FBI subpoena. “By that point, his political career was most likely over, so he was trying to make money. And unfortunately he did it during his tenure, and through these shell companies in a way that is very illegal.”