On Monday, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, refused to dispute claims from the Committee’s chairman that an FBI document allegedly shows that then-Vice President Joe Biden was engaged in a criminal bribery scheme and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has said that the FBI “confirmed that the unclassified FBI generated record has not been disproven, and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.”
While discussing the matter with reporters after meeting with the FBI, Raskin attempted to downplay the credibility of the document, calling it “second-hand hearsay.”
After being asked if Comer told the truth about an ongoing investigation into Biden, Raskin deflected by claiming he didn’t know what Comer said but that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the president’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,” Raskin 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 FBI document was part of an ongoing investigation, Raskin claimed, “I must have missed that, because I’ve not heard that this is part of any ongoing investigation.”
He went on to say that he would not discuss the details of the allegations contained in the document, claiming that he needed to protect the FBI’s source.
“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,” Raskin 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.”
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