Although the FBI has decided to allow the full House Oversight Committee to see a document concerning bribery allegations against President Joe Biden, the fact remains that the document is not a confidential item, but committee members won't get to make it public, Rep. Ben Cline said Thursday on Newsmax.
"It's a shame that it's come to this, a staredown that ultimately resulted in the FBI backing down and allowing members to view the document," the Virginia Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "But only members of the Oversight Committee, and only in camera, which means in private, so they don't get to have the document."
Oversight Chair James Comer on Wednesday called off a vote scheduled for Thursday to charge FBI Director Christopher Wray with contempt of Congress after the bureau offered to allow the full committee access to the document.
But the document, said Cline, is a public item and contains an "allegation from a source, that is a credible source, that the Biden family was engaged in pay-to-play and that the president was actually engaged in bribery and changed policy as a result of money [that was] sent."
Cline said the House Judiciary Committee, under Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is ready to pursue the facts, and the Oversight Committee is "doing a great job of bringing all that information to light and laying it out for the American people."
But still, the mainstream media is engaged in a double standard in the matter, Cline said.
"Imagine what you would have had had this been a Republican president accused of taking bribes," said Cline. "There would not have been an ounce of media coverage on anything other than this story."
If the investigation moves forward, Cline said the concern is that there are "partisans in the Department of Justice" and that Attorney General Merrick Garland has "no interest in pursuing charges against Democrats."
"He has focused his attention on biased charges against other Republicans, including investigations into President [Donald] Trump, so we don't anticipate this DOJ, absent enormous political pressure, taking action," said Cline. "Hopefully there will be that pressure if the facts come to light and necessitate those charges."
Cline also dismissed a question that perceptions about Biden's age may be the reason charges haven't been pursued against him.
"I think the press shop in the White House loves to spin that 'nice old man' story, but we also know that Joe Biden has been a senator longer than I've been alive," said Cline. "So what you have is a senator vice president and a president who's been trading on his name [and] whose family has been trading on his name for many, many years, getting rich. Now the facts are coming out."
Cline also on Thursday commented on the revolt that took place earlier this week when 11 Republicans refused to further procedural votes on a pair of GOP bills, and whether it means a move to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal on the debt ceiling he reached with Biden.
"There are meetings going on between the conservatives and the Freedom Caucus that initiated this rejection of the rule this week," said Cline. "I'm a member of the Freedom Caucus, so I'm in contact with those individuals. They're talking to Kevin McCarthy about moving forward."
However, the debt ceiling bill results were "so disastrous that it destroyed a lot of the relationship between the Freedom Caucus and Speaker McCarthy," said Cline.
"We need to rebuild that if we're going to move forward with Kevin as speaker," he said. "It remains to be seen whether that will be able to be rebuilt. Those discussions will determine whether we can be aware [and] whether we can move forward."
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