FBI’s Chris Wray to Speak With Rep. James Comer on GOP’s Biden Probe

In a letter Tuesday, a top FBI official told lawmakers that while the bureau doesn’t generally share information from confidential human sources, it had “identified additional information that we are prepared to offer the committee as an extraordinary accommodation.” The official also noted that investigative reports, like the one subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, “include leads and suspicions, not conclusions of investigators based on fuller context.” 

“Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI,” wrote Christopher Dunham, an acting assistant FBI director.

The FBI said it would cooperate with the committee and had committed to providing information responsive to the subpoena “in a format and setting that maintains confidentiality and protects important security interests and the integrity of FBI investigations.” The bureau said Wednesday’s planned phone call was meant to provide additional details of its “extraordinary accommodation to satisfy the subpoena request” and that Comer’s threats of escalation were unnecessary. 

Comer rejected a request from the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, to participate in Wednesday’s call. In a prepared statement, Raskin said Comer was seeking to “create a spectacle by holding the FBI director in contempt of Congress for the first time.”

“That is why they have issued a subpoena for a single document which the committee chairman has already seen, according to his own public statements,” Raskin said, in an apparent reference to Comer’s indication on Fox News that he had reviewed the document.

“This subpoenaed document, by definition, reveals nothing more than an unverified and unsubstantiated tip made to Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which presumably led to no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” Raskin said.

Comer and other top Republicans showed the preliminary findings of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings in early May. At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers released financial records showing how the president’s son, Hunter Biden,

Republicans pointed to the transactions as proof that the president’s family members traded on the Biden name. But after months of investigating and insinuating that the Biden family had engaged in criminal conduct, Comer didn’t identify a specific policy move Biden made in office that may have been influenced by the foreign payments. When asked to do so, Comer remarked on Biden traveling overseas as vice president and discussing foreign aid in the final year of the Obama administration.

Like a previous memo issued in March, the report earlier in May didn’t identify any payments to President Biden, who has long denied playing any role in his family members’ business dealings.

Comer released the report as he faced growing pressure from Republicans to show progress in his committee’s investigation into the Biden family. At the May 10 news conference, Comer said he was “very pleased” with the committee’s work so far and previewed what he called a “new phase that is armed with information” from the bank records.

For Hunter Biden, the House inquiry represents only part of a broader swirl of scrutiny. The Justice Department is nearing a decision on whether to bring criminal charges against him in a yearslong investigation focused on his taxes and whether he made false statements in connection with a 2018 gun purchase, according to people familiar with the inquiry. The younger Biden has said he handled his affairs legally and appropriately.

Write to C. Ryan Barber at [email protected] and Sadie Gurman at [email protected]