House Oversight chair introduces contempt resolution for FBI director

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee unveiled a contempt of Congress resolution for FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday, a history-making motion it says is needed because the agency refused to physically supply a form with a tip from a confidential source.

Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in May subpoenaed any FD-1023 forms — records of interactions with confidential sources — from June 2020 that contain the word “Biden.” 

Comer has claimed the form contains information related to President Biden allegedly accepting a bribe during his tenure as vice president. Several outlets have reported the Justice Department, then under Trump-administration leadership, was unable to corroborate the tip.

The White House has pushed back on the effort, calling it a smear campaign by Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who first met with a witness that detailed the existence of the form.

The FBI wouldn’t turn over the document due to concerns about protecting the source that relayed the tip, but agency briefers sat down for an hour-and-a-half with Comer and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the panel.

The FBI sees the contempt resolution as an unnecessary escalation following an extraordinary accommodation, but Comer said Monday anything short of turning over the document is unacceptable to GOP lawmakers.

“Director Wray’s actions impeded and caused meaningful delays to the Committee’s ability to perform its Constitutional oversight duties. As Director Wray and his staff have willfully failed to comply with the Committee’s subpoena, it is necessary to enforce the Subpoena,” the resolution reads.

The committee plans to meet Thursday morning to vote on the resolution, after which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has pledged to bring it to the full House floor for a vote.

The gesture is largely symbolic; contempt votes serve as a referral to the Department of Justice, which is free to act on – or ignore – the suggestion as it sees fit.

“The FBI 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 Monday.

“The escalation to a contempt vote under these circumstances is unwarranted.” 

Comer has claimed the form contains information related to “an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

“This is yet another fact-free stunt staged by Chairman Comer not to conduct legitimate oversight, but to spread thin innuendo to try to damage the President politically and get himself media attention,” Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said in a statement Monday.

“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.”

Following the briefing Monday, Comer and Raskin left with dramatically different takeaways.

While Comer said the tip has been used as “part of an ongoing investigation, which I assume is in Delaware,” Raskin said FBI briefers said they chose not to advance the investigation given a lack of evidence.

“What we’re talking about here is a confidential human source reporting a conversation with someone else. So we’re talking about is secondhand hearsay,” Raskin said, adding that the source “had no way of knowing about the underlying veracity of the things that he was being told.” 

“And they did whatever investigative due diligence was called for in that assessment period, and they found no reason to escalate it from an assessment to a so-called preliminary investigation,” he added.