In an escalating clash over a document allegedly linking former Vice President Joe Biden to a criminal bribery plot, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer (R), vowed to start proceedings to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress.
Despite Comer and the committee’s Ranking Member Jamie Raskin having viewed and received briefings on the subpoenaed FD-1023 form at a secure location in Capitol Hill on Monday, Comer stressed that the FBI had not fully complied with the subpoena to physically hand over the document.
The controversial FD-1023 form purportedly lays out a $5 million bribery plot involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national, suggesting that policy decisions may have been exchanged for financial gain.
The Oversight Committee’s Republicans and the FBI had been locked in negotiations about the form’s release.
Initially, the FBI offered to let Comer review the form at their headquarters, but facing contempt charges, they eventually agreed to transport the document to Capitol Hill.
However, Comer announced Monday that this still fell short of the subpoena’s demands, stating, “At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee.”
He followed this up by declaring that contempt hearings would be initiated on Thursday.
Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, stressed the importance of the allegations, arguing that Congress must look deeper into the matter.
“Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further,” he stated, asserting that investigation “is not dead” and that this “is only the beginning.”
According to Comer, FBI officials admitted that the unclassified record had yet to be disproven and was still relevant in an ongoing investigation, facilitated by a reliable human source who had been contributing to the bureau for over a decade.
Comer added, “These are facts and no amount of spin and frankly, lies from the White House or congressional Democrats can change this information.”
This confidential informant, who provided information on Biden, had been a long-standing source for the FBI, working on various separate investigations, and was found to be highly credible by the FBI.
Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, downplayed the allegations and the document, suggesting that the information was merely “a conversation with someone else.”
He pointed out that the information wasn’t firsthand but was instead, “secondhand hearsay.”
The existence of the FD-1023 form came to light after GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Chairman Comer were tipped off by a whistleblower, who claimed that the document—dated June 30, 2020—outlined a bribery scheme involving Biden and a foreign national for influencing policy decisions.
The FBI uses the FD-1023 form to record unsubstantiated information from confidential human sources.
While the form records information as relayed to an FBI agent, it does not validate or corroborate this information with other known FBI data.
The document allegedly provides an explicit account of the purported criminal operation’s methodology and purpose, detailing a monetary exchange for policy decisions.
