House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) did not directly dispute claims from the Committee’s chairman on Monday that an FBI document allegedly showing that then-Vice President Joe Biden was engaged in a criminal bribery scheme is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said the FBI “confirmed that the unclassified FBI generated record has not been disproven, and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.”
Speaking with reporters after meeting with the FBI, Raskin initially sought to downplay the credibility of the document, calling it “second-hand hearsay.”
When asked if Comer had told the truth about there being an ongoing investigation into Biden, Raskin said that didn’t know what Comer said but that he does know about the criminal investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, by the U.S. attorney in Delaware.
“What I know is that the FBI, Department of Justice team under William Barr and Scott Brady, in the Western District of Pennsylvania terminated the investigation, they said there were no grounds for further investigative steps. So they ended that,” he said. “Now, in terms of another investigation. You know, I can’t speak to that. I’ve seen nothing about that, and other than published reports.”
When asked again if the document was part of an ongoing investigation, Raskin said, “I must have missed that, because I’ve not heard that this is part of any ongoing investigation.”
Raskin said that he would not go into the details of the allegations contained in the document, in part to protect the FBI source, who he said could be revealed if he disclosed details.
“Abstracting from the particulars of this case, we’re talking about something pretty extraordinary here, which is an FBI document that is a report of a confidential human informant,” he said. “And the FBI depends on these people in order to make their cases. And so obviously, they are categorically, absolutely interested in maintaining the confidentiality of these people’s identities and their identities can obviously be deduced from certain kinds of facts. If you start releasing interview documents that they’ve, you know, they’ve confided in the FBI. So we want to be very careful about that and I would think that that’s not a partisan issue. That’s something all of us should agree to.”
WATCH:
Rep. Jamie Raskin on key document in Biden probe: "I must've missed that because I've not heard that this is part of any ongoing investigation." pic.twitter.com/5Y8OpibQrx
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) June 5, 2023