House Republicans will no longer vote to hold FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in contempt of Congress this week, saying that they reached a last-minute agreement with the director late Wednesday to reveal more details related to FBI documents that contain allegations against Joe Biden.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) had planned to hold a contempt vote in his committee Thursday and has publicly derided Wray for failing to comply with a subpoena that demanded he hand over in full an FBI document that contained unsubstantiated allegations about Biden and his family. The allegations predated Biden’s presidency.
The FBI had said it needs to protect its confidential sources and would not physically provide the form. Instead, it allowed Comer and Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, to review a redacted version of the document — which is known as a 1023 form — in a secure area on Capitol Hill on Monday.
But Comer said he still wanted the full document in his possession and would go forward with the contempt vote. In a statement Wednesday, Comer said Wray agreed to allow all members of the committee to review the materials and would be making available two additional documents referenced in the original 1023 form.
“Allowing all Oversight Committee members to review this record is an important step toward conducting oversight of the FBI and holding it accountable to the American people,” Comer said in a statement.
The contempt vote would have arrived as federal prosecutors appear to be nearing a decision on whether to indict former president Donald Trump and could be damaging to the Justice Department’s public image during a period of expected heightened scrutiny. Wray was nominated by Trump in 2017 and confirmed on a 92-5 vote.
The FBI fought to stave off the contempt vote and said it had been making “extraordinary accommodations” to comply with the subpoena while still protecting its sources.
Tensions on Capitol Hill have escalated this week after lawmakers viewed the form in question, with both Raskin and Comer publicly sharing disparate retellings of what occurred in the secured meeting.
Raskin said the FBI and Justice Department under then-Attorney General William P. Barr reviewed the allegations contained in the form and determined there were no grounds of further investigative steps. Comer has asserted that the FBI representatives in Monday’s meeting refused to answer some of his questions because they said the information in the form was being used in an ongoing investigation.
And Barr said in an interview with a conservative news outlet Wednesday that the investigation had not been closed down and that the tip was passed along to the Delaware Attorney General’s office for further investigation.
The Justice Department declined to comment on whether the tip was sent to Delaware.
According to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail sensitive information, the allegation in the document came to the FBI through the Pittsburgh field office, where Barr had created a channel for allegations involving Ukraine. That included materials Rudy Giuliani — who was then President Donald Trump’s personal attorney — had gathered from Ukrainian sources claiming to have damaging information about Biden and his family.
The allegation contained in the document was reviewed by the FBI at the time and was found to not be supported by facts, according to the people familiar with the investigation, and the investigation was subsequently dropped with the Trump Justice Department’s sign-off.
In his statement Wednesday, Comer accused the FBI of providing “a false narrative to the media.”
“The case is not closed as the White House, Democrats and the FBI would have the American people believe,” Comer said.
If Congress had voted to hold Wray in contempt, lawmakers could have referred the matter to federal prosecutors, who would then have decided whether to file criminal charges.
In 2012, the Republican-controlled House voted to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over certain documents. In 2019, the Democratic-controlled House held two top Trump Cabinet secretaries in contempt, Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, for blocking various investigations.
None of these resulted in federal prosecutions.
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
