Former Attorney General William Barr dispelled House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) claim that the Justice Department ended the $5 million bribery probe allegedly linked to President Joe Biden.
In defense of Joe Biden, Raskin argued over and over again the Trump administration resolved an informant’s claims of an alleged arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions between now-President Joe Biden and a foreign national.
Raskin claimed Barr directed the allegations to his “handpicked prosecutor” who allegedly found “no grounds” to open a preliminary investigation.
“What I learned was that Attorney General Barr named Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, to head up a group of prosecutors who would look into all the allegations related to Ukraine,” Raskin said. “In August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation,” and so “they called an end to the investigation.”
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Barr smashed Raskin’s defense and revealed the U.S. Attorney in Delaware received allegations from an informant. Hunter Biden is under investigation by the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, a Trump administration appointee, for potential gun and tax violations.
“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told the Federalist. “On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress in March that Weiss has the autonomy to recommend charges against Biden family members, but Joe Biden’s attorney general has also admitted that he must sign off on the charges. Garland refuses to appoint a special counsel to put a degree of separation between the investigation and himself.
Raskin’s claims, directly contradicted by Barr, come as the Oversight Committee will vote Thursday at 9 AM to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress. The FBI remains defiant toward the committee’s subpoena of the FBI’s file, even though Comer offered several accommodations.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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