House committee to hold contempt hearing on FBI Director Chris Wray

By
Suzanne Downing
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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced the committee will conduct a contempt hearing for FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday at 9 a.m.

The move comes in response to Wray’s violation of a congressional subpoena by not providing unclassified documents sought in a broadening investigation into foreign payments tied to President Joe Biden and his family.

Wray’s refusal to release the documents has added fuel to Republicans’ growing concerns about potential corruption within the FBI, perceived as favoring left-leaning politicians. The FBI director’s noncompliance has provoked significant backlash from GOP leaders who argue it undermines the agency’s credibility.

Republicans continue to press their claims of partisanship within the bureau, based on an ongoing investigation into the Biden family receipt of millions of dollars in foreign payments.

Jim Geraghty, writing in the Washington Post, explains why Americans should care:

“Let’s assume that, as President Biden’s fans insist, there’s no evidence of lawbreaking in the deals that had foreign companies paying more than $10 million to Biden family members during and after Biden’s years as vice president,” Geraghty wrote.

“And no doubt, the House Oversight Committee led by Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has its own preconceived narrative that Biden is on the take from all kinds of shady characters. An indictment of bribery or corruption would require proof that, at some point while in office, Biden acted or influenced a U.S. government policy decision to benefit one of those companies, and the House Oversight Committee, so far, does not have that proof.

“Yet we’re still left with a motley collection of odd and unsavory figures sending a lot of money through a lot of companies to a lot of members of the Biden family, with little explanation why. Comer contends that bank records confirm more than $10 million in payments, run through at least 20 businesses, mostly limited liability companies, to the president’s son Hunter Biden; the president’s brother, James Biden; James’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; Hallie Biden (widow of Joe Biden’s son Beau, who died in 2015); Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter’s current wife, Melissa Cohen; and, as Comer noted, ‘three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.'” the columnist wrote in May.

Chairman Comer, referring to an anonymous informant who brought the allegations to light, said the person was a “trusted, highly credible informant, who has been used by the FBI for over ten years and has been paid over six figures.”

“We need answers, transparency, and accountability,” Comer stated during his announcement, voicing frustrations mirrored by many Americans who have lost faith in the FBI’s ability to impartially enforce the law.

The White House has dismissed the allegations surrounding the Biden family, insisting that these claims are unfounded.

Wray served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division in George W. Bush’s administration, from 2003 to 2005. On June 7, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Wray to be the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replacing James Comey, who was fired by Trump a month earlier.

Wray barely survived the Trump administration and was kept on by President Biden in 2021.

He has contradicted both the Trump and the Biden Administration official party lines at times. For instance, this year, he told Fox News he supports the theory that the Covid-19 virus may have leaked from a Wuhan, China laboratory. On March 2, 2021, Wray told a Senate committee that the Jan. 6 surge into the U.S. Capitol was a case of domestic extremism.

Majority members of the Oversight Committee are:

The Democrat minority consists of: