House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said he would try to peel off as many Republicans as possible to join Democrats on the committee in opposing contempt charges against the FBI director.
Speaking to reporters after votes on Monday, Raskin said the pledge by Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress is “absolutely ridiculous,” saying the bureau has complied with everything the committee has asked them to do.
THE FIGHTS THAT LAY AHEAD IN CONGRESS WITH DEBT CEILING IN REARVIEW
“Any Republican who describes himself or herself as pro-law enforcement will be in a very strange position to be putting the FBI director in contempt for doing his job,” Raskin told reporters Monday night. “It’s part of a war on law enforcement that the GOP is engaged in, and I think it’s sad.”
In early May, Comer subpoenaed an FBI-generated FD-1023 tip sheet that he says alleges then-Vice President Joe Biden partook in a $5 million bribery scandal with a foreign national. The FBI briefed and made the document available to both Comer, who had previously seen it, and Raskin on Monday but refused to release it to the whole committee, which Comer said violated the subpoena and pledged to hold Wray in contempt of Congress. An FD-1023 document is used by agents to collect unverified tips and information from human sources. The source of this tip was described as “highly credible” by both Raskin and Comer, though they differed on whether the information itself had been disproven or not.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has told reporters the full House will take up the contempt charges after the Oversight Committee approves them, setting up a potentially historic vote to hold the director of the FBI in contempt of Congress.
“The committee has gotten exactly what the committee has asked for, which is this document,” Raskin told reporters on Monday. “And so we were there today reading the document, looking at the document, and then the chairman said, ‘Oh, well, we want to get the physical document itself.’ So they keep relocating the goalposts in order to find some reason to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress for the first time in American history.”
Raskin compared this attempt by Comer to members refusing to testify in front of the Jan. 6 Select Committee after they received a subpoena. While the five sitting members subpoenaed weren’t held in contempt of Congress, the committee and the House voted to hold multiple people in contempt of Congress, including Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows, the ex-chief of staff to former President Donald Trump.
If a contempt vote is brought to the full committee, which Comer has said he will do on Thursday, Raskin said the Democrats will “embarrass” the Republicans on the committee for making “a vast mountain range out of a tiny molehill.”
Raskin said the Justice Department had already looked into and discredited this tip, saying it relates to the information former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani provided the department in 2020 regarding Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. But Comer said the FBI confirmed Monday that the document is being used in an active investigation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“The chairman has been saying that this is now part of an ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution. I didn’t pick that up,” Raskin said Monday night. “But if it’s true, all the more reason that specific documents should not be released from the investigation. Of course, the Department of Justice has an ironclad long-standing policy: You don’t release documents from an ongoing investigation.”
Wray could turn over the document to the full committee and avoid contempt proceedings. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would allow the full House Foreign Affairs Committee to view the Afghan dissent cable after Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said he would hold a hearing on contempt charges later this month.
