House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican-California) has expressed confidence that the FBI will comply with Congress’s request to release an informant file that allegedly implicates President Biden in bribery scandals involving foreign countries during his vice presidency.
McCarthy revealed his optimism following a discussion with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In an interview with Fox News, McCarthy emphasized Congress’ oversight authority over the FBI and stressed the importance of reviewing the subpoenaed file. The House Oversight Committee had earlier issued a subpoena for the document based on a whistleblower’s claims of a “criminal” pay-to-play scheme involving Biden.
The FBI, however, responded with a six-page letter, raising objections and refusing to provide the file.
Committee Chairman James Comer (Republican-Kentucky) repeated the demand for the file and dismissed the FBI’s argument that the details were already public knowledge.
Despite the May 10 deadline, the FBI failed to submit the file, citing source protection concerns and saying that information was already available to the public.
Representative Comer responded that specific details in the file, reportedly created or modified in June 2020, were not included in any of the previously referenced materials or public reports.
The existence of the informant file came to Comer’s attention through a whistleblower who had initially alerted Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican-Iowa). Grassley then shared the information with Comer.
An FBI spokesperson pointed out that the claims in the file remained unverified.
The spokesperson emphasized that documenting information does not validate its credibility and warned against the potential harm that disclosing unverified or incomplete information could inflict.