House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., spread disinformation Monday after viewing the unclassified FBI document, according to former Attorney General Bill Barr.
Raskin claimed to the media the document showed the FBI "closed down" an investigation into a whistleblower's allegation of a $5 million bribery scheme by then-Vice President Joe Biden, but Barr — who was the Trump administration attorney general at the time — told the New York Post on Thursday the unclassified document was merely signing off on the credibility of the informant.
"Mr. Raskin seems confused about the limited scope of Mr. [Scott] Brady's review," Barr told the Post.
"The Pittsburgh office was simply adding evidence to ensure that it was not disinformation before passing it on to one of the already existing investigations underway in the department."
Brady, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, "was not authorized to open his own investigation," but was merely reviewing the credibility of the FBI informant before passing the information to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, according to Barr.
"In other words, he was assessing the credibility of the evidence, not investigating its ultimate merits," Barr told the Post.
"That's why the evidence was passed on to Delaware. Nothing was closed."
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., also refuted other Raskin claims about the information being related to findings by former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
"That the Department of Justice team of prosecutors and FBI agents under U.S. Attorney Scott Brady determined that there were no grounds to escalate their probe from an initial assessment of the allegations surfaced by Rudy Giuliani to a preliminary or full-blown investigation and that it was therefore closed down," Raskin claimed, which was refuted by Comer, Greene, and Barr.
Brady was assigned by Barr in January 2020 to look into the allegations and Giuliani information, the Post reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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