Schumer, Wyden Call on FBI Not to Investigate Biden Before Election: Could ‘Undermine the Rule of Law’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) are calling on the FBI to refrain from opening any investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family prior to the 2020 election.

“We write regarding press reports concerning materials allegedly describing activities by Hunter Biden, and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop,” the two wrote in a Thursday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray. “We are deeply concerned about the possibility that in response to these reports the Trump administration will take actions before Election Day that would seek to damage the Democratic presidential candidate and undermine the rule of law.”

The duo singled out President Donald Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as purveyors of potentially bad information, writing that attempts by them “and others to perpetuate narratives” related to the issue “closely track a longstanding effort of Russia and its proxies to amplify false and misleading allegations and themes.”

Reports on the issue in question began in The New York Post

 on Oct. 14. Several publications have declined to cover them, citing the idea that the laptop referenced by Schumer and Wyden may have contained false information planted by Russia.

The president, meanwhile, has called on the Justice Department to take action. “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Trump said in a Tuesday interview on Fox & Friends. “He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election.”

That dynamic has inspired anxiety for Democrats, who still recall former FBI Director James Comey’s decision 11 days before the 2016 presidential election to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information.

“The FBI has a critical role to play in safeguarding our elections and, in partnership with the intelligence community, is responsible for exposing and combating both foreign cyber and influence efforts targeting our electoral process,” Schumer and Wyden wrote. “In carrying out this critical national security mission, law enforcement’s handling of this matter must be above politics and beyond reproach.

“We therefore urge you to resist pressure from President Trump and other partisan actors to take any actions intended to benefit President Trump politically on the eve of the election,” they added. “Succumbing to such pressure would deeply undermine our national security interests and the credibility of law enforcement,

and could have devastating consequences for the resiliency of our democracy.”