(The Daily Signal) — Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said Thursday that the FBI should move quickly to release a document alleging that President Joe Biden was part of a bribery scheme when he was vice president.
“Maybe there is nothing to see from this [FBI] form. I hope that’s the case. If so, the FBI should be forthcoming,” Perry told The Daily Signal in a phone interview about Republican lawmakers’ effort to obtain the document.
“It is bad for the country, bad for the president, bad for the presidency, and bad for the FBI to let questions linger,” Perry said. “If there is nothing to see, so be it.”
Perry, besides being chairman of the House’s most conservative caucus, is a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which on Wednesday subpoenaed a specific FD-1023 form, an unclassified FBI record.
Republican lawmakers say the FBI form alleges a scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national related to an “exchange of money for policy decisions.”
The subpoena gave the FBI a week to produce the information.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., decided to issue the subpoena after a whistleblower made a legally protected anonymous disclosure to the office of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. Grassley has a long history of working with government whistleblowers.
The Treasury Department’s suspicious activity reports, also known as SARS, showed multiple members of the Biden family receiving millions going back to Biden’s eight years as vice president from 2009 until 2017.
“The question is, why were these large amounts of money paid out? For what?” Perry said in the interview with The Daily Signal.
Asked whether the allegation could constitute an impeachable offense for the president, Perry was cautious.
“Selling the country out for personal gain … if it occurred and if it’s proven, it doesn’t get much worse,” Perry said.
The government whistleblower that brought the information to light likely will stay anonymous for protection, Perry said.
It’s possible that the House oversight committee’s investigators would interview or depose him in a nonpublic setting. However, that might not be necessary.
“The revelations are concerning and credible. The FBI should be forthcoming,” Perry said. “We would be concerned about the safety of the whistleblower. I don’t believe it’s completely necessary [to depose the whistleblower]. The 1023 [form] might have everything we need.”
When a reporter asked about the matter during the White House press briefing Thursday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby referred the question to the Justice Department, parent agency of the FBI.
The Biden White House dismissed the matter as the latest of several “unproven, politically motivated attacks” in a statement issued Wednesday evening to several media outlets by Ian Sams, a special assistant to the president in the White House Counsel’s Office.
“For going on five years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks against the president and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests,” Sams said in the written statement. “When it comes to President Biden’s personal finances, anybody can take a look: he has offered an unprecedented level of transparency, releasing a total of 25 years of tax returns to the American public.”
Comer and Grassley signed a letter Wednesday about the subpoena to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In it, the lawmakers write:
“We have received legally protected and highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures. Based on those disclosures, it has come to our attention that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose.”
Fred Lucas
Fred Lucas is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of "The Right Side of History" podcast. Lucas is also the author of "Abuse of Power: Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump."
