There’s been an ongoing battle between the House oversight committee and the FBI over a document called an FD-1023. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer demanded the document be turned over to his committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray at first said no and then later agreed to a compromise. As Jazz pointed out yesterday, the compromise was to allow Comer and the ranking Democrat on the committee to come to FBI headquarters to view the document. Chairman Comer said that wasn’t good enough and today it appears Directory Wray has made a new offer:

The FBI is scheduled to bring an internal law enforcement document that some Republicans claim will shed light on an allegation that then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a criminal scheme with a foreign national to Capitol Hill on Monday for House Oversight Chair James Comer and ranking Democratic member Rep. Jamie Raskin to review, spokespeople for the two lawmakers told CNN…

The top two members will receive a briefing from the FBI and review the FD-1023 form behind closed doors in a secure SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility at the Capitol rather than going to FBI headquarters, as the bureau had initially offered.

So the briefing will take place this week but obviously the public won’t learn what’s contained in the the FD-1023. According to CNN, it contains an allegation made by a whistleblower that Joe Biden, back when he was vice-president, was involved in a scheme to make changes to US policy in exchange for $5 million. They money would have been paid to his family business. CNN is eager to point out that these allegations have not been proven to be true.

While the document contains the allegations made by an unnamed whistleblower, it doesn’t provide proof that they are true, people briefed on the matter said. The FBI and prosecutors who previously reviewed the information couldn’t corroborate the claims…

CNN previously reported that the form in question has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020, people briefed on the matter said.

The allegations of wrongdoing by the then-vice president, many originating from sources in Ukraine, were dubious enough that former Attorney General William Barr in early 2020 directed they be investigated by a US attorney in Pittsburgh, in part because Barr was concerned that Giuliani’s document tranche could taint the ongoing Hunter Biden investigation overseen by the Delaware US attorney.

So, let me get this straight. There’s an unfounded allegation about the president which is of dubious authenticity and which was passed along by a known partisan. The whole thing may have arisen from a foreign country with ulterior motives?

Great! How soon until someone publishes it in full? I mean, that is what we do with unsubstantiated allegations of dubious authenticity passed along by known partisans, possibly arising in foreign countries with ulterior motives…isn’t it? That’s exactly what happened with the Steele Dossier after all.

The document was briefed to the president for reasons that remain murky and that gave CNN justification to write about some of the allegations in the document. And once CNN had crossed that line, Buzzfeed News published the entire document on the grounds that people had a right to see what everyone was talking about.

Sadly, Buzzfeed News is no more and the person who actually made the decision to publish the dossier, Ben Smith, moved to the NY Times and then on to his newest venture Semafor News. So I’m assuming Semafor is eager to publish this completely unsubstantiated allegation about Biden. After all, there’s no reason not to inject a bunch of unverified stories into the news. The point is that it could be true and that’s more than enough to put it out there.

Even if it turns out, years later, that the allegations were mostly or completely false and no one who pushed them in newspapers or on television will apologize for doing so…so what? That’s how we do things. Publish the FD-1023 now!

Can you imagine it actually happening? Honestly I can’t. Because of course the media maintains different rules for Democrats. But who knows, maybe someone will get hold of this and put it out there. Democrats will then scream blood murder about the irresponsibility of doing such a thing and we can all sit back and have a good laugh.