When House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenaed the FBI for documentation that may link President Biden to a bribery scheme perpetrated when he was Vice President, the White House response was oddly overwrought: “For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against @POTUS without offering evidence for their claims.” This was a very strange charge to make concerning a mere subpoena for documents supporting the disclosures of a whistleblower.
Comer’s subpoena gives FBI Director Christopher Wray until May 10 to produce the following: “All FD-1023 forms, including within any open, closed or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden,’ including all accompanying attachments and documents to those FD-1023 forms.” This particular form is used by FBI agents to record statements made by informants and the specified date range suggests that Biden had been reported for taking bribes from a foreign national and that the file was “tidied up” right around the time he nailed down the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
In addition to the subpoena, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Comer sent a joint letter to Wray and Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland taking them to task for sitting on the requested documents: “The DOJ and the FBI appear to have valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people. Therefore, Congress will proceed to conduct an independent and objective review of this matter, free from those agencies’ influence.” The letter goes on to point out that the House Oversight Committee learned of the FD-1023 forms when a “highly credible unclassified whistleblower” disclosed their existence:
Based on those disclosures, it has come to our 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.
It goes without saying that most of the corporate “news” media have either ignored this story or misrepresented the facts. The New York Times, for example, hasn’t published a syllable about the subpoena or its implications. The Washington Post’s “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, dismissed it thus: “A vague request by GOP lawmakers for the FBI to make public a document allegedly about President Biden has led to feverish speculation in the right-wing media and innuendo by some members of Congress.” Nice try. A subpoena from the House Oversight Committee naming a specific form, its contents and date is hardly “vague.”
Meanwhile, according to a Fox News report, Rep. Comer has advised the Justice Department to delay any Hunter Biden indictment until after his committee holds a press conference on May 10 when he will unveil previously unknown details surrounding the Biden family’s business dealings. During a Sunday morning appearance on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Comer said, “My message to the Department of Justice is very loud and clear. Do not indict Hunter Biden before Wednesday.” Comer is concerned that the DOJ may attempt to give Hunter Biden a “slap on the wrist” before other revelations emerge:
[T]he evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son. This is about the entire Biden family, including the President of the United States. So we believe there are a whole lot of tips that the IRS and the DOJ don’t know about because we don’t believe they’ve done a whole lot of digging in this, and we have.
As all this skullduggery comes to light, much of the sound and fury emanating from the Biden administration comes from the “White House spokesman for oversight and investigations,” Ian Sams. The need for a spokesman whose primary function is vilifying members of Congress for pursuing their constitutionally mandated oversight function is telling in and of itself. Sams seems to spend most of his time on Twitter accusing any and all Republicans of bad faith and worse crimes. Friday, for example, he tweeted that the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee is a Chinese sympathizer: “Comer sides with CCP with his votes.”
The White House would probably be better served if they gave Sams the John Kirby treatment. When the story broke concerning Comer’s FBI subpoena, the National Security Council spokesman was questioned about it by a reporter and was immediately yanked from the rostrum. In the end, however, neither stonewalling nor slander will save President Biden if Comer’s committee proves that he has ever been involved in a scheme whereby he was paid by a foreign national in exchange for a favorable policy decision. The Constitution is not ambiguous concerning the proper congressional response to such skulduggery.
Article II, Section 4 explicitly spells out the offences for which a president or vice president can be impeached: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Unlike “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the term “bribery” means exactly what it meant in 1787. House Republicans cannot decline to impeach Biden in the name of political expediency if they expect their party to survive 2024. Even better, the corporate Media won’t be able to bury the story. So, if Comer really has the goods on Biden, the Democrats will force Biden to resign for “health reasons” and Donald Trump will annihilate Kamala Harris in 2024.
