Bill Barr: Raskin 'is confused' on role of Pittsburgh prosecutor in Biden case
Former Attorney General William Barr sounds off on 'The Story'
Former Attorney General William Barr on Thursday fired back at a top Democrat who has claimed he shut down a probe into Biden bribery allegations being run out of Pennsylvania during the Trump administration, telling Fox News that he is mistaken.
Barr told "The Story" that a project being run out of the U.S. Attorney's office in Pittsburgh was not a standard probe, but a "clearinghouse" exercise, where evidence could be sent to one prosecutor — in this case, now-former Trump appointee Scott Brady — to be screened for veracity or relevance, rather than having multiple geographically disparate prosecutors attending to the same case.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, previously claimed the Trump DOJ under Barr and Brady "closed down" a probe into the alleged $5 million cash-for-policy bribery scheme now-President Biden is accused of being involved in while vice president.
In recent public remarks, Raskin said the FBI complied with the committee majority's demand they view a document purported to depict the bribery scheme,and that he learned through that meeting that Barr designated the Pittsburgh federal prosecutor's office to look into all allegations — while also mentioning former New York City Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani "surfac[ing]" some of the allegations.
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Former Attorney General William Barr (Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)
Barr and Brady, Raskin said, "were the ones who decided that there were no grounds to escalate this up the investigative prosecutorial chain — So, if there’s a complaint, the complaint is with … the Trump Justice Department.."
On "The Story" on Thursday, Barr said Raskin was "confused" in his description of the "process" and "nature of the exercise in Pittsburgh," telling Fox News he set up the project in the Steel City as an "intake process" to avoid geographically "proliferating" investigations in an election year relating to the family of the Democratic nominee.
"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."
It was through the Pittsburgh process that the information from the FBI-1023 document came about, Barr said, however disagreeing with Raskin's suggestion that Giuliani played any part in that.
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House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. ((Senate Television via AP))
"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 it wasn't the no sign that it was disinformation. And so it was provided to the ongoing investigation in Delaware to follow up on and to check out."
The Delaware probe, focusing on Hunter Biden, continues to move along more than four years in — which Barr suggested may be becoming tenuous.
Barr said that investigation, being led by Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss — whom President Biden retained to purportedly avoid conflict of interest questions — is doing a lot of damage to the nation and the DOJ because of Weiss' "silence" and failure to reach a prosecutorial decision.
"I think it's time to fish or cut bait and find out what actually happened in that investigation," he said.
Earlier Thursday, Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., nixed contempt proceedings against FBI Director Christopher Wray — whom he said was not properly or fully abiding by a subpoena for the bribe document in question.
In a statement, Raskin accused accused Comer of pursuing the "weaponization" of committee power as "part of MAGA Republicans' efforts to discredit and ultimately ‘dismantle’ the FBI."