Apparently, the FBI is refusing to provide Republicans in Congress with a document outlining past allegations of bribery involving Joe Biden.
Details of these allegations have largely not even been made public, although these Republicans, like Rep. James Comer (Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), have gotten a whole lot of airtime out of the claims anyway. Grassley even said in a recent interview on Fox News that he’d read the document, but he declined to discuss its actual contents — though he didn’t hesitate to rant about the accusations in general.
Grassley explicitly said in that same interview that he wasn’t presently interested in the actual truth of the claims against Biden, instead tying his claimed concern to whether the FBI was taking its role to conduct investigations appropriately seriously. Yet, the reality is that by carrying water for this whole thing, Comer and Grassley have inherently legitimized the claims — without even fully explaining what was actually alleged!
They’ve now gotten behind a threat of contempt of Congress proceedings against Trump-picked FBI Director Christopher Wray in the event that fellow authorities don’t give the Republicans actual copies of the materials they want. It’s unclear this threat, even if fulfilled, would actually mean much, though. Democrats in the last Congress led contempt proceedings against a slew of Trump allies who were never actually charged once the matter moved to the prosecuting authorities responsible for making those follow-up decisions. Presumably, any contempt proceeding targeting Wray would culminate in a potentially similar outcome.
“Today, FBI Director Wray confirmed the existence of the FD-1023 form alleging then-Vice President Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national,” Comer said Wednesday in a prepared statement. “However, Director Wray did not commit to producing the documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. While Director Wray – after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed – has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena. If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.”
Grassley has said Republican investigators intend to make the document public after they receive it, further promoting these hollow rumors.
