FBI Director’s ‘Contempt of Congress’ is Part of Bigger Problem
ANALYSIS – FBI Director Christopher Wray has steadfastly refused to provide the House Oversight and Accountability Committee an internal Bureau document that alleges Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Chinese sources.
The committee issued a subpoena for it a while ago. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has said he learned about the allegations from a whistleblower whom he declined to identify but has described as “very credible.”
With the committee’s deadline passing yesterday, Comer has said he will seek to hold Wray in contempt of Congress, rejecting Wray’s offer to allow lawmakers to view the FD-1023 form in a secure location instead of handing over the document.
A contempt vote would be the most significant confrontation between House Republicans and federal law enforcement since the GOP took control of Congress in January.
Wray insists that the FD-1023 form contains unverified claims from a single confidential human source (CHS), and that turning it over is irresponsible. Sources need to know their identities will be protected.
And allegations shouldn’t be publicized without being corroborated.
Wray is right.
In the past, neither party would push much on an issue like this because they understood that need. But they also trusted the Bureau to be nonpartisan.
As the National Review notes:
…the mere fact that a CHS may have alleged that Biden took part in a bribery scheme doesn’t mean it happened. It can’t be dismissed out of hand — there’s too much indication of Biden’s sleazy self-dealing and outright lying for that. But people in positions of authority get falsely accused of wrongdoing all the time. The FBI rightly keeps such allegations under wraps because those people are presumed innocent and the bureau can’t investigate without being discrete. Congress has traditionally given the FBI a wide berth because lawmakers know secrecy is a necessity for competent investigations — and it has assumed that the FBI is competent and non-partisan.
Unfortunately, those days are gone, and the FBI director can’t decide what part of a Congressional subpoena to honor or reject. Wray has no legal basis to keep it hidden.
And due to the recent history of partisanship and politicization at the Bureau, most egregiously the Trump-Russiagate hoax, this is only part of a much bigger problem.
The Bureau can no longer be trusted to be fair and apolitical. As the National Review explains:
[The FBI] is a contented cog of the progressive administrative state. In the Obama years, it was put in the service of the Democratic Party. It marched to President Obama’s beat, whitewashed and abetted Hillary Clinton’s malevolence, undertook to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency, spent years covering its tracks, and insulated his 2020 opponent from scrutiny. It has spent the Biden years helping Democrats craft a political narrative of a nation besieged by white-supremacist domestic terrorism — all the while slow-walking the investigation of the Biden family’s influence-peddling business.
National Review continues:
[FBI] abuses have proceeded under Wray’s stewardship — the FBI’s (a) illegal surveillance under FISA; (b) general participation in the suppression of political speech on social media; (c) specific complicity in the Democrats’ and the intelligence community’s suppression of the Biden influence-peddling scandal; (d) collaboration in the Democrats’ crafting of a political narrative that the country is overrun by white-supremacist domestic terrorists; and (e) retaliation against whistleblower agents who’ve reported to Congress about some of these issues (at least according to three of those agents, who testified under oath at a recent House hearing).
So, while normally, I would be understanding of the director’s arguments and attempts to limit dissemination of a form that could expose investigative sources and methods, in this case, the FBI simply can’t be trusted.
It needs to turn over the document to the committee, with minimal redactions, or Wray should be held in contempt. This is about a much bigger problem.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
