By Mike Huckabee
May 31, 2023
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Show of hands: how many of you thought FBI Director Christopher Wray would comply with House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer’s subpoena from a month ago and turn over the document alleging that President Biden was paid by foreign interests for policy decisions?
Anyone? Ah, I see no one thought Wray would meet yesterday’s deadline. Class, you were all correct. The FBI has formally refused to provide the Oversight Committee with the material they seek, even though this is an unclassified document, and Comer says he will hold Wray in contempt of Congress.
Accordingly, as John Solomon reports in JUST THE NEWS, the FBI’s announcement has prompted the Kentucky congressman to “begin proceedings” to hold Wray in contempt. But Comer says he still plans to meet with Wray on Wednesday; other news accounts say this meeting will take place over the phone.
Comer called Wray’s decision “obstructionist and unacceptable.”
As we’ve discussed in detail, the House Speaker doesn’t have to wait for Attorney General Merrick Garland to jail Wray for contempt of Congress --- as if that would ever happen --- but can do it on his own authority, at least if Wray ventures to Capitol Hill for any reason. (Just speculation, but maybe that’s why this “meeting” is taking place over the phone!) Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that Wray be sent to the ‘congressional brig’ if he doesn’t hand over to Congress the subpoenaed document.
The NEW YORK POST concurs that Wray has scheduled a phone call with Comer on Wednesday. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had attempted to mitigate the dispute with his own phone call to Wray on May 19, and he’d had the impression Wray was going to comply. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, head of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, was, shall we say, perturbed. “The Bureau is developing a serious reputation problem through its spate of failures and overreach,” he said last week, “and leadership is doing it no favors by attempting to stiff-arm Congress. The FBI knows exactly what document Chairman Comer and I are seeking, and if they know us at all, they know we will get it, one way or another. If the FBI truly cares about protecting the agency’s reputation, they’d cooperate.”
As the POST says, Congress does have a few tools to encourage compliance from subpoenaed executive-branch agencies such as the FBI. They can go to court, or they can withhold funding. Or they can impeach. How about all three?
https://nypost.com/2023/05/29/
The FBI put out another statement that said in part, “The FBI remains committed to cooperating with the Committee in good faith...any discussion of escalation under these circumstances is unnecessary.” On the contrary --- the FBI has not been acting in good faith, and their lack of cooperation is the reason for any escalation.
Rep. Comer appeared on Tuesday’s HANNITY TV show, and said Wray still hasn’t even admitted they have this document. (Of course, they haven’t said they don’t.) This document, called a Form 1023, supposedly includes an FBI agent’s notes from interrogating a confidential human source (CHS) about the Biden family business. “He’s given us the runaround for three weeks,” Comer said. “He’s just stalling...so we don’t have confidence in Director Wray. We’re already in the process of drafting legislation to hold an Oversight Committee markup next week to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress.”
According to Comer, the FBI has had this document for four years. “We don’t know if they’ve even investigated it.” That information was the other piece the Oversight Committee asked for and did not get. Comer fears they never did, as that would be consistent with the DOJ’s approach to the U.S. Attorney’s investigation of Hunter’s taxes and finances.
“There’s a pattern,” he said, “within our federal government, when looking at any type of wrongdoing by the Biden family, that people in the government bureaucracy have told rank-and-file government employees to stand down, or to give them the file and don’t worry about it. That’s basically what Director Wray has told me.
“I have demonstrated a pattern of Joe Biden traveling all over the world and weeks after he leaves a country, his family starts mysteriously getting wires from that foreign country into shell companies that then are wired back to the individual family bank accounts. That’s not normal behavior.”
He says the contempt document, once it’s drafted, will likely end up being similar “to what the Democrats did to Steve Bannon.” When Hannity pointed out that Lois Lerner and Eric Holder were also held in contempt with no results, Comer said that since they’ve already demonstrated this pattern of behavior within the Biden family, “this is a credible accusation and we want answers.”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
As THE HILL reports, once the Oversight Committee approved the contempt measure, it would then go to the full House for a vote. Looks as though it will be another one of those straight party-line votes, which the Democrats will use to say this is a partisan move. And we’d say it certainly is a partisan move: the Democrats’ party-line vote against a contempt charge for someone who clearly deserves it will be purely partisan.
Again, this contempt charge almost certainly will not be enforced by the political hack who occupies the attorney general’s chair, the esteemed Merrick Garland, so this will be, as THE HILL says, “little more than a formal admonishment.”
THE HILL also reported that in a letter on Tuesday from acting Assistant FBI Director Christopher Dunham to Comer, he told Comer the FBI had “identified additional information that we are prepared to offer the committee as an extraordinary accommodation.” It’s not clear what that information might be, but it sounds fishy. If it’s something they want to give Wray instead of “the” document, he’d better keep his eyes on the prize and not bargain it away.
Dunham also reminded Comer that this Form 1023 records an unverified tip, using the same sort of language the FBI has used before to rationalize its non-compliance while saying it’s committed to compliance. Releasing this document, he wrote, could have a “chilling effect” on other CHS’s, when they are “critical to the FBI’s ability to build cases, including those against violent gangs, drug cartels, and terrorists.” Good grief; that’s laying it on a little thick, don’t you agree? As we’ve discussed, there are ways to let key members of the committee see this document without releasing any identifying information.
Former FBI Director James Comey, also known as the King of Gaslighting, went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to talk about the Durham Report and the “mistakes” the FBI had made. Someone who listens to this without knowing very much about what’s in the report will think the “competent, honest and independent” FBI just messed up a number of “small things” but “in the main” conducted itself well in a “complex investigation.” MSNBC is one of the few places he could say this without being laughed out of the studio. “The View” is another; maybe they’ll have him on.
As long as you haven’t just had a meal, it shouldn’t be a choking hazard for you to see this brief clip.
RELATED NEWS: Speaking of the ‘Justice’ Department and news that might cause acute nausea, the DOJ is calling for those convicted of January 6-related offenses to pay the government huge fines to offset the money they took in from legal defense funds. They say this is because they don’t want any guilty party to profit from criminal behavior. A DOJ prosecutor suggested that these defendants should not be able to “capitalize” on the “notoriety gained in the commission of” their crimes.
Never mind that the only reason many pleaded guilty was that they knew they would otherwise be tried before a Trump-hating DC jury. They saw the writing on the wall and hoped to avoid a lengthy sentence. (We saw how that went.) That money might have helped “offset” the loss of pay for the families of those prisoners locked away for years in pre-trial detention. Imagine how much they might have suffered financially.
How dare they confiscate that money. This had better not be over. If prisoners’ families can’t keep the funds, the thing to do would be to return them to those who donated it (who surely, if they had their way, would want them to keep it). They should NOT go to the government.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/
Also somewhat related: If you wonder why so many people suspect that the court system in places like DC and New York City has been thoroughly corrupted by politics, consider the case of the black female employee of a New York gym who was fired after being late to work 47 times in 10 months. The jury believed her “feminist litigation firm’s” claims that she was a victim of racial and sexual discrimination and awarded her $11 million in damages.
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