House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Monday he will begin the process of holding FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress, despite viewing and being briefed by bureau officials on the subpoenaed document that alleges President Joe Biden was involved in a criminal bribery scheme.
The FBI brought the document in question – an FBI-generated FD-1023 form that allegedly describes a $5 million criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions – to Capitol Hill on Monday for Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to review in a secure SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), resulting from a back-and-forth between committee Republicans and the bureau over whether it was in compliance of his subpoena.
The FBI initially offered to allow Comer to review the document at FBI headquarters, but amid Comer’s threats to hold Wray in contempt of Congress, the bureau offered additional accommodations to bring the physical document to Capitol Hill.
Despite the accommodation, Comer said Monday that the FBI is still not in compliance with the subpoena to turn over the physical document to the committee.
“At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee,” Comer said in a statement. “And we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday.”
“Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further,” Comer wrote. “The investigation is not dead. This is only the beginning.”
The FBI, on Monday, said the move to hold the director in contempt is unwarranted, as the bureau has “continually demonstrated its commitment to accommodate the committee’s request, including by producing the document in a reading room at the U.S. Capitol.”
“This commonsense safeguard is often employed in response to congressional requests and in court proceedings to protect important concerns, such as the physical safety of sources and the integrity of investigations,” the FBI said in a statement. “The escalation to a contempt vote under these circumstances is unwarranted.”
Meanwhile, Comer said FBI officials confirmed Monday that the unclassified FBI-generated record “has not been disproven and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation by a confidential human source who provided information about the vice president by being involved in a criminal bribery scheme is a trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over ten years and has been paid over 6 figures.”
Comer added, “These are facts and no amount of spin and frankly, lies from the White House or congressional Democrats can change this information.”
Fox News Digital first reported Friday that the confidential human source who provided the Biden information to the FBI was a “pre-existing” FBI source who has been used in multiple investigative matters separate from the Biden information.
The source told Fox News Digital that the confidential human source was used by the FBI for “at least several years” before the generation of the June 2020 FD-1023 form that detailed the Biden allegations.
The source also told Fox News Digital that the confidential human source has been “consistently reviewed by the FBI” and has been “found to be highly credible.”
The source said the individual participated in investigative matters during the Obama administration.
Raskin, on Monday, downplayed the document and the briefing on it, as well as the allegations, by saying the source may be credible but the information that the source reported came from “a conversation with someone else.”
“The work we’re talking about is secondhand hearsay,” Raskin said. “And so it’s not the source, the confidential source, who is the origin of the particular claim … that that confidential source is the person who reported it. That someone else was saying this.”
The revelations of the document come after Comer and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, were approached by a whistleblower who said the FBI was in possession of a document – an FD-1023 form dated June 30, 2020 – that explicitly detailed information provided by a confidential human source who alleged that Biden, while serving as vice president, was involved in a $5 million criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national in exchange for influence over policy decisions.
The information in the FD-1023 form, according to the whistleblower, reveals “a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose” and details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.
An FD-1023 form is used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources. The form is used to document information as told to an FBI agent, but recording that information does not validate or weigh it against other information known by the FBI.
White House spokesman Ian Sams slammed Comer for conducting “yet another fact-free stunt,” saying he is not conducting “legitimate oversight,” but instead, spreading “thin innuendo to try to damage the president politically and get himself media attention.”
“As Senator Grassley admitted, they aren’t ‘interested in whether or not the accusations are accurate,’ which rings even truer now that it’s been publicly reported that the Trump Administration’s Justice Department looked into this claim three years ago and found nothing credible,” Sams said.
But Comer and sources stressed to Fox News that the document is currently being reviewed in an ongoing investigation.