Top House Republican Reveals Next Steps in Biden Family Investigation

(Left) House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) holds a news conference to present preliminary findings into their investigation into President Joe Biden's family, in Washington on May 10, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images); (Right) FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the president's 2024 budget request for the agency in Washington on May 10, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that more witnesses and sources will come forward in connection with his committee’s investigation of alleged influence peddling and bribery on behalf of President Joe Biden’s family.

“I think we’ve done as much as we could do with the obstacles we’ve had to overcome,” Comer told Fox News over the weekend. “No one thought I would get bank records. No one thought we would get access to the Treasury, Cabinet’s suspicious activity reports, but we would not take no for an answer.”

Comer added that his job as head of the House Oversight Committee is to “follow the money” in relation to the investigation, adding that “we have more bank records coming in.” Elaborating on his plans, Comer said that he is “going to start bringing in key figures” in the Biden family’s business deals “for depositions, and I think we’re on the right track, even though we’re having to fight the FBI, fight the [Department of Justice], fight the Democrats in Congress, and fight the mainstream media.”

His investigation is centered now on indirect wire transfers to members of the Biden family while he was vice president. Those wire transfers were made through shell companies to nine members of the Biden family, he told Fox, adding that the discovery of an FBI 1023 form means that the Justice Department chose not to investigate whistleblowers’ bribery allegations.

“Even though they will tell you and you heard in the testimony when [Republican Senators] Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley grilled the deputy FBI director as to why they wouldn’t release the Form 1023, they said, ‘Well, we don’t want to endanger the life of our paid informant who’s one of our most trusted, highest paid, most credible FBI informants,’” Comer told Fox.

The chairman added, “So if this is the case and the FBI informant’s that credible and the FBI informant tells the FBI that the vice president of the United States took a bribe from a foreign national in exchange for foreign policy and foreign aid, then why did the FBI not investigate it?”

Again alleging that federal agencies have taken a hands-off approach to the evidence, Comer said the Internal Revenue Service would only look at possible tax evasion-related claims against Hunter Biden, the president’s son who has long been targeted by Republicans for criticism for his business dealings.

“They didn’t want to investigate the shell companies. They didn’t want to investigate the money laundering. And then we know the Department of Justice hasn’t done anything, so there’s a pattern here where the federal government, the deep state bureaucracies, have turned a blind eye to Joe Biden,” he said.

Earlier this month, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee announced that the FBI has decided to provide access to the aforementioned FD-1023 that Comer was trying to obtain for weeks under the threat of subpoena. Republicans had warned FBI Director Christopher Wray that he would be held in contempt of Congress if he did not produce the documents.

However, the form hasn’t been released to the public. Comer and other members of the House Oversight Committee could only review it in secret.

“After weeks of refusing to even admit the FD-1023 record exists, the FBI has caved and is now allowing all members of the Oversight and Accountability Committee to review this unclassified record that memorializes a confidential human source’s conversations with a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Joe Biden,” Comer said in a statement.

Responses

While Wray had told Republicans on May 31 that the document exists, the FBI has continued to be reluctant to hand the form over. The FBI previously told Comer in a letter on May 10 that releasing the forms could put their confidential sources at risk.

“Confidential human sources often provide information to the FBI at great risk to themselves and their loved ones,” the FBI said, in part, in a letter (pdf). “Protecting the identities and information provided by confidential human sources from unnecessary disclosure or undue influence is therefore critical not only because of safety concerns but also to avoid chilling their candor or willingness to continue reporting to the FBI.”

During a recent news conference, Biden responded to a question about allegations of corruption by calling it a “dumb question.”

“Why did the Ukraine FBI informant file refer to you as the big guy?” a New York Post reporter asked him.

“Why’d you ask such a dumb question?” Biden replied.

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) previously dismissed Comer’s and other Republicans’ claims, asserting they are politically motivated in nature.

On June 4, while appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Raskin claimed that the investigation was politically motivated and contended that Barr’s DOJ closed the investigation while President Donald Trump was in office.

Raskin accused the Republican majority of “closing out” the Democrats and said that, as a result, he’s uncertain about the contents of the FD-1023 form. However, from public reporting, he said he understands the form suggests a connection to Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine.

Mimi Nguyen-Ly and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.