The FBI director, Christopher Wray, has missed his deadline to hand over to Congress a document that’s said to detail alleged corruption by President Biden when he was vice president. He is now likely to be the first FBI director ever to be held in contempt of Congress. 

The chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer, asked for the document with details on a purported “criminal bribery scheme” document in early May, but Mr. Wray and the FBI have continuously declined to turn it over. 

“The FBI’s decision to stiff-arm Congress and hide this information from the American people is obstructionist and unacceptable,” Mr. Comer wrote in a statement on Tuesday. The Oversight Committee “will now be taking steps to hold the FBI Director in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena.”

Shortly after Mr. Comer threatened to hold Mr. Wray in contempt of Congress on May 25, the director agreed to a phone conversation on Wednesday. It is not known whether this is just a courtesy call, or if the director could be substantively engaging with House Republicans on the issue of congressional oversight. 

Just hours before the Tuesday deadline, the FBI’s acting legislative affairs chief, Christopher Dunham, sent a letter to Mr. Comer throwing cold water on the prospect of disclosing the whistleblower report. 

Mr. Wray is worried about “chilling effect that could flow from the wide dissemination of investigative files,” according to the letter, which was originally obtained by Punchbowl News. 

Mr. Dunham wrote in the letter that the FBI has “identified additional information” about the whistleblower report and that Mr. Wray “looks forward to discussing how we plan to make that information available to the Committee during your call” on Wednesday. 

Should Mr. Wray be held in contempt of Congress, it is likely that nothing will come of it. Following such resolutions, the Department of Justice is authorized to pursue criminal charges against those individuals. It’s unlikely that the Democrat-controlled Justice Department, of which Mr. Wray is an employee, would move against him.

By contrast, President Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has been convicted of defying a congressional subpoena during the January 6 Select Committee investigation, for which he was held in contempt. He’s been ordered to serve four months in prison, a sentence he’s appealing. 

On Tuesday morning, Speaker McCarthy raised the stakes for Mr. Wray. “If he misses today’s deadline to turn over subpoenaed documents to Congress, I am prepared to move contempt charges against him,” Mr. McCarthy said on Twitter. 

The whistleblower form allegedly details a $5 million payment that was paid to the future president when he was vice president. The whistleblower came forward on June 30, 2020 in a letter sent to Senator Grassley, who shortly thereafter launched his own investigation into then-Vice President Biden’s troubled son, Hunter, and how the larger Biden family may have profited from Hunter’s years of influence peddling and trading on the Biden family name.

Some two weeks before that disclosure was made to Mr. Grassley, Ukrainian officials held a press conference at Kyiv to report that someone attempted to pay $5 million in a bribe to end an investigation into the company’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. 

At that time, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency denied any link between the alleged bribe and the Bidens, Reuters reported.

Speaking with Fox News on May 25, Mr. Comer said that the whistleblower report detailing the alleged bribe is part of a pattern with the president’s family. “The reason that I think it’s very credible is this claim was made years before anyone knew about these different shell companies and knew exactly what the Biden family did in counties like Romania and China to get money,” he said. 

Mr. Comer first requested that the FBI turn over the whistleblower report on May 3. The subpoena asked the FBI to release an unclassified version of the report that “allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.”

“The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national,” Mr. Comer wrote in a statement at the time. “The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself.”

When the FBI failed to turn over the information by the original deadline — May 10 — Mr. Comer sought a meeting with Mr. Wray, who declined. Briefings on the issue given to the Oversight Committee staff from the FBI have left Mr. Comer wanting. 

It was announced Friday that Mr. Comer would have a phone call with the FBI director on Wednesday to discuss the unclassified whistleblower report.

“If FBI Director Wray fails to produce the requested record by May 30, I will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” Mr. Comer wrote in a statement on May 25 before the phone call had been scheduled. 

“The FBI’s refusal to produce this single document is obstructionist,” Mr. Comer wrote to Mr. Wray on May 24 before his threat to hold him in contempt. “Public corruption, influence peddling, federal ethics/financial disclosure regulations, and national security matters are directly within the purview of the Committee’s oversight authorities.”

“The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national,” Mr. Comer wrote in a statement. “The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself.”

Mr. Grassley has previously investigated the nature of Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, which allegedly also involved the president’s younger brother, James (who like Hunter Biden has long been accused of trading on the Biden family name to make money).

In October 2022, Mr. Grassley’s Senate office sought information related to the Biden family’s involvement with business entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party. “The Justice Department’s and FBI’s continued silence on these matters is deafening and further erodes their credibility,” Mr. Grassley wrote at the time. 

“Simply put, enough is enough — the Justice Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter Biden investigation,” he added.

While congressional Republicans have long focused on Hunter Biden as the nexus of possible payment schemes to the family, the whistleblower report being sought by Messrs. Comer and Grassley could be the first instance of a whistleblower directly tying the sitting president to foreign entities.