House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a new sense of faith that the FBI will finally give Congress an informant file reportedly alleging that President Biden took bribes from foreign countries while he was vice president.
McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he felt confident that FBI Director Christopher Wray will hand over the document after he spoke to him on the phone Friday.
“I wanted to be very clear with the FBI director that Congress has a right and we have the jurisdiction to oversee the FBI,” he said in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
“This is one piece of paper that a chairman of a committee has requested to see.”
Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena for the file — which a whistleblower claimed links Biden to a “criminal” pay-to-play scheme.
But the FBI refused to supply it and replied to the request with a six-page letter raising various objections.
On Friday, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) again demanded the bureau release the file to Congress and rejected its claims that the details are already public.
Two days later, McCarthy said he had made progress convincing Wray that he must hand over the document.
“I explained to the director that we will do everything in our power and we have the jurisdiction over the FBI and we have the right to see this document,” he said on Fox News. “I believe after this call, we will get this document.”
The FBI was ordered to turn over the file by noon May 10 and is more than a week late in delivering it.
In flouting the subpoena, the bureau had previously argued that it had source protection concerns and that details were already public.
The FBI said that “contemporaneous public materials cite prior letters and public releases that suggest a significant amount of information is already available.”
Comer, however, said the substance of information in the file — reportedly created or modified in June 2020 — hadn’t been “provided in any of the materials cited by the FBI or publicly reported.”
A whistleblower alerted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of the informant file’s existence and Grassley brought it to Comer’s attention.
An FBI spokesperson previously told The Post that the claims in the file haven’t been verified.
“An FD-1023 form is used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting by a confidential human source. Documenting the information does not validate it, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information verified by the FBI,” the rep said.
“Revealing unverified or possibly incomplete information could harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputations, create misimpressions in the public, or potentially identify individuals who provide information to law enforcement, placing their physical safety at risk.”
