By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI will launch new probes into the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House during President Joe Biden’s term and the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a top official announced on Monday.
Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster-turned-FBI deputy director, made the announcement on X, where he said he had requested weekly briefings on the cases’ progress.
Both incidents have been popular talking points on America’s right.
The discovery of a small bag of cocaine in a cubby near the entrance to the West Wing two years ago drew excited commentary from Republicans, including then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who said it was implausible the drugs could belong to anyone beyond Biden and his son Hunter – even though the Biden family was away from Washington at the time.
A White House spokesperson said then that the allegations were “incredibly irresponsible.”
The publication of the Supreme Court’s opinion ending the constitutional right to abortion in Politico on May 2, 2022, provoked condemnation from Trump, who called the source of the leak “slime” and demanded that the journalists involved be imprisoned until they revealed who it was.
Previous investigations into both cases, by the Secret Service and the Supreme Court, respectively, ended without identifying who was responsible for the cocaine or the leak.
Bongino has previously alleged, without presenting any evidence, that he was in touch with whistleblowers who told him they were “suspicious” that evidence from the White House cocaine bag “could match a member of the inner Biden circle.”
Bongino also announced more resources for the FBI’s investigation into the placement of pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in Washington.
The bombs, which were later defused, had been planted the night before Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
The perpetrator has never been publicly identified.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter, editing by Ross Colvin and Bill Berkrot)
Comments