Former Attorney General Bill Barr explained Thursday why Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is sorely confused about Justice Department actions taken to investigate claims of a bribery scheme involving Joe Biden.
What did Raskin say?
After the FBI met with Raskin and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comey on Monday and showed them a document detailing a confidential human source’s allegations that Biden had been involved in a criminal bribery scheme, Raskin dismissed the allegations.
Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat, claimed the Justice Department had investigated the allegations in 2020 but decided not to move further because then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady “found no evidence to corroborate” them.
What did Barr say?
As TheBlaze reported, Barr has already disputed Raskin’s recollection of what happened.
But in a new interview with Fox News, Barr described Raskin as “confused” and explained what happened with the contents of that now-infamous FD-1023 form.
Barr said he assigned Brady the task of vetting the document to determine its credibility. He established this “intake process,” he explained, because there were a number of ongoing investigations related to the Biden family and he wanted to avoid “proliferating investigations around the country going in to the election year, all related to the Bidens.”
“We also wanted to protect the integrity of the investigations that were going on,” Barr said. “So this was a screening, a clearinghouse function to check evidence out before sending it to the ongoing investigations.”
Barr, meanwhile, also disputed Raskin’s claim that the document contained information provided by Rudy Giuliani. That is just flatly untrue, he said.
“It was stuff that was developed within the department and the FBI from [a] confidential human source. And that information was checked out and it was determined that it was not likely to have been disinformation,” he said.
“It doesn’t say whether it’s true or not. But there was no sign that it was disinformation,” Barr added. “And so it was provided to the ongoing investigation in Delaware to follow up on and to check out.”
Later in the interview, Barr said the protracted investigation into Hunter Biden, which is being led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, is damaging the nation.
The investigation has been ongoing for more than four years, and its lack of conclusion is leaving Barr personally “flummoxed” and “impatient,” he admitted.
“I think it’s time to fish or cut bait and find out what actually happened in that investigation,” Barr said.
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