Christopher Wray (via YouTube).
House Oversight Chair James Comer is preparing land it like The Hindenberg.
Again.
The Kentucky Republican seized the gavel in 2023, promising to reveal damning information about the “Biden Crime Family.” So far, he’s come up empty, despite raining subpoenas down on the president’s extended family and every financial institution they ever dealt with. Now he’s preparing a contempt of Congress referral accusing FBI Director Chris Wray of hiding damning information about President Biden taking a bribe from a foreign government when he was vice president.
“The FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee,” Comer told reporters yesterday. “And we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday.”
The latest kerfuffle concerns an FD-1023 form memorializing an unverified tip from a confidential human source in June of 2020 alleging a foreign bribery scheme several years prior involving the then-VP. And if this sounds like something Rudy Giuliani was flogging all over conservative media in the run-up to the 2020 election, that’s because it is.
Comer and his fellow traveler, Senator Chuck Grassley, have scrupulously avoided mentioning what country might be involved in this alleged scheme and what the official action was. But Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on Oversight, confirms that it’s the same old allegations about Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Biden twisting Ukraine’s arm to fire its corrupt prosecutor Viktor Shokin — allegations which were already investigated and rejected by the Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr.
Not that Barr didn’t try real hard to make that particular stupid game of fetch happen. The AG tasked former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady with vetting Rudy’s bullshit, some of which came from literal Russian spy Andrii Derkach, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020 for trying to interfere in that year’s election. Brady looked into the tip, determined that it didn’t bear escalation, and reportedly closed the investigation in August of that year.
But having promised to find something to tie Joe Biden to the bog standard sleaze that his family is involved in, Comer and Grassley have now fixated on seizing the document and making it public. And they don’t care that compromising human sources is not really how you “back the blue.”
For his part, Wray has let the senior members of the committees see the document behind closed doors at the FBI.
Raskin emerged, confirming that he’d viewed the document, and it was the same frothy mix of ranting and black hair dye that Giuliani was emitting three years ago: “We now know what I had long suspected: that Chairman Comer’s subpoena is about recycling stale and debunked Burisma conspiracy theories long peddled by Rudy Giuliani and a Russian agent, sanctioned by former President Trump’s own Treasury Department, as part of the effort to smear President Biden and help Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign.”
Comer’s staffers appear to be getting desperate, whispering to Politico that “Giuliani’s name doesn’t appear in the document at all.” As if airbrushing the president’s hapless lawyer out of the narrative will suddenly make the story credible.
If Comer were smarter, he’d take the win. Allowing this allegation to sit out there unverified, ever the white whale of corruption, is undoubtedly better than dragging it into the light and reminding Americans exactly why they dismissed it as nonsense the first time. But no one has ever accused Jamie Comer of being smart.
At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee and we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings. Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further. Americans have lost trust in the FBI’s ability to enforce the law impartially and demand answers, transparency, and accountability. The Oversight Committee must follow the facts for the American people and ensure the federal government is held accountable.
TL, DR? Chris Wray is Deep State. Bill Barr is Deep State. Scott Brady is Deep State. And everyone at the FBI who looked at Rudy’s spy fantasies and said, “LOL, nope!” is Deep State. And if they don’t all admit it, Jamie Comer’s gonna throw ’em all in jail!
House GOP tees up contempt vote for FBI director as Biden probe heats up [Poitico]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
