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House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding a document from the FBI they say outlines an unverified and unspecified “alleged criminal scheme” involving a foreign national and President Biden when he was vice president.
Comer on Wednesday issued a subpoena to FBI Director Christopher Wray for the document, marking an escalation in Republicans’ investigation of Biden himself after largely focusing on the foreign business activities of his son Hunter Biden and other family members and associates.
In their letter to Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Grassley and Comer said that it had come to their attention that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice president Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”
“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” their letter said.
The subpoena to Wray orders him to producer all FD-1023 forms, “including within any open, closed, or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden’.”
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) criticized the Republican subpoena in a statement, claiming it is a “partisan stunt.”
“Committee Republicans are recycling unsubstantiated claims floated by Senate Republicans by issuing a subpoena to the FBI to require the release of a June 2020 tip from an unknown informant,” Raskin said. “During this same time period, Rudy Guliani and Russian agents, sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, were peddling disinformation aimed at interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Given Chair Comer’s commitment to ‘dismantle’ the FBI, it’s no surprise that he would rely on these unverified tips to attack President Biden in one more baseless partisan stunt.”
