A standoff pitting Congress against federal law enforcement over the FBI‘s refusal to produce to lawmakers a file containing allegations of corruption involving President Joe Biden and Ukraine is set to escalate in the coming days.

Emerging from a briefing with the FBI at the U.S. Capitol on Monday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced his committee will move forward with holding FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress because the bureau is defying a subpoena for the document that he issued early last month.

“Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further,” Comer declared in a statement after the FBI allowed him and the top Democrat on the oversight panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), to view the file in a secure room at the U.S. Capitol but not take custody of it.

🚨🚨🚨

The FBI confirmed the unclassified record alleging then-VP Biden engaged in a $5 million bribery scheme is from a highly credible informant & being used in an ongoing investigation.

The FBI refused to hand over the doc.

I will hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress pic.twitter.com/2p1fNdmBJ1

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) June 5, 2023

The FBI said an “escalation to a contempt vote under these circumstances is unwarranted” as it “demonstrated” a commitment to accommodate the Oversight Committee’s request while also taking precautions “often employed in response to congressional requests and in court proceedings to protect important concerns, such as the physical safety of sources and the integrity of investigations.”

Raskin, who may soon declare a bid for the Senate, disparaged Comer in a statement, saying the chairman is willfully ignoring the “legitimate law enforcement concerns” by the FBI. “Chairman Comer has declared his intent to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress to further promote debunked Republican conspiracy theories,” he added.

The oversight panel is expected to initiate contempt hearings on Thursday. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Fox News the full House will take up the issue next week. If the chamber, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans, were to approve a criminal contempt referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Wray could face a fine and up to a year’s imprisonment if federal prosecutors take up the case. There are also other forms of recourse, including civil enforcement, according to the American Bar Association.

Such a rebuke of the bureau’s chief could happen as some GOP lawmakers are talking about defunding or disbanding the FBI amid concerns about the agency becoming politically weaponized as underscored by special counsel John Durham’s recent report on the Russia investigation.

Prompted to take action by whistleblower disclosures, Comer says the unclassified record he wants to obtain describes an alleged scheme involving Biden, dating back to his time as vice president, and a foreign national. The file references some variant of “five million” and “June 30, 2020,” Comer disclosed in a recent letter to Wray. “These terms relate to the date on the FD-1023 form and its reference to the amount of money the foreign national allegedly paid to receive the desired policy outcome,” he added.

The date mentioned by Comer lands on the calendar about two weeks after Ukrainian officials announced there had been a $5 million bribe aimed at ending an investigation into the founder of Burisma Holdings, the same Ukrainian gas company at which Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board for several years. At the time, Ukrainian anti-corruption prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky said a handful of suspects had been detained but stressed that “Biden Jr. and Biden Sr. do not appear in this particular proceeding,” according to Reuters.

On Tuesday, Comer confirmed the document pertains to Ukraine and that it fits a pattern seen with other countries, such as Romania, and suspicious transactions involving millions of dollars that have been linked to members of Biden’s family. “In this [file] I got to view yesterday, the oligarch who allegedly bribed Joe Biden when he was vice president said that he would make it almost impossible for anyone to find because they were gonna launder it through a series of banks and a series of shell companies,” he told Newsmax.

Raskin said FBI officials shared that the DOJ under the Trump administration looked into the information from a confidential human source about conversations with individuals in Ukraine and top brass signed off on closing an assessment in August 2020 after investigators were unable to corroborate the claims.

The Democrat also said much of the information mirrors allegations that Rudy Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former President Trump, brought forward along with Andrii Derkach, a Russian-backed Ukrainian politician now sanctioned by the United States, around the time of the Ukraine-focused impeachment inquiry.

“We now know what I had long suspected: that Chairman Comer’s subpoena is about recycling stale and debunked Burisma conspiracy theories long peddled by Rudy Giuliani and a Russian agent, sanctioned by former President Trump’s own Treasury Department, as part of the effort to smear President Biden and help Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign,” Raskin said.

Raskin with new statement about document/allegation at the center of GOP move to hold Wray in contempt: pic.twitter.com/NQXUij2CGM

— Jordain Carney (@jordainc) June 5, 2023

Comer insisted that FBI officials confirmed the allegations have “not been disproven.” Further, the information comes from a “trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for years,” the chairman said. And, according to Comer, FBI officials stated “several times the information” contained within the FD-1023 form is “currently being used in an ongoing investigation.”

Though the chairman did not divulge what active investigation that may be, it is known that U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware is looking into the tax affairs of Biden’s adult son Hunter, who says he expects to be cleared of wrongdoing.

The president’s team has dismissed Comer’s inquiry as nothing more than a political exercise. “This is yet another fact-free stunt staged by Chairman Comer not to conduct legitimate oversight, but to spread thin innuendo to try to damage the President politically and get himself media attention,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement this week.

One of Comer’s GOP colleagues on the House Oversight Committee suggested the FBI fears that the stakes are considerably high for its informant at the center of the controversy.

“Just left [a] meeting for House Oversight. The [FBI] is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) tweeted on Monday.

The COVID pandemic exposed the weakness of America’s supply chain. Over-regulation, congested ports, and supplier shortages all combined to drive up the price and lead times of the products the United States imports from around the world. The supply chain has recovered, for the most part, as the global economy has slowed and shippers began utilizing ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, alleviating the congestion in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Today, however, the supply chain is once again teetering on the brink of a catastrophe, this time at the hands of labor unions and mother nature.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents approximately 22,000 West Coast dock workers, reached a tentative agreement with an “association representing the U.S. West Coast employers of port laborers on some key issues,” in April 2023. These negotiations have been dragging on for nearly a year, and the contract between the “Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the union expired on July 1, 2022.”

The deal has yet to be ratified, and there are still many open issues that remain to be resolved. Last week, members of the ILWU effectively “shut down operations at some marine terminals at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Similar actions shut down or severely impacted terminal operations at the ports of Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle, and Hueneme.”

The COVID-driven congestion of West Coast ports, combined with the threat of labor actions by dock workers there, have driven many supply chain professionals to divert shipments to the Gulf and East Coasts of the United States. In fact, according to Bloomberg, “West Coast container volumes were down 10% in the first quarter of 2023, compared to the same period in 2019. Gulf ports saw a 43% increase in goods over the same period.”

But ports in the Gulf and East Coasts may find themselves on the outside looking in. A significant drought is lowering the water level of Gutan Lake in Panama and  the Panama Canal, resulting in both weight limits and rising surcharges for vessels traversing the canal.

The Panama Canal Authority has reduced the draft (how deep a ship can sit in the water) from 50 feet to 44 feet, which can reduce a ship’s payload by up to 40%, per Bloomberg. Some ocean carriers began charging per-box container fees of $300-500 on June 1 in response to draft limits. Cargo rates will “rise on other routes if low water levels for shippers to find alternatives — especially in the peak shipping months of August and September when retailers build inventory ahead of the holiday shopping season.”

If the Panama Canal continues to see its depth decrease, and the cost of shipping via the canal rise, companies will have to either utilize the Suez Canal to service East and Gulf Coast ports or rely on West Coast ports — the same ports that are under threat of a work stoppage.

Interestingly, the challenges faced by the Panama Canal could contribute to inflation in the United States, forcing the Federal Reserve to continue increasing interest rates. Steamship companies are raising rates and imposing surcharges for companies shipping via the Panama Canal. Since ships will carry approximately 40% less cargo, companies will need to ship more containers, failing to take advantage of full container load pricing. This will drive inflation. In fact, research shows that a 20% increase in shipping costs will raise the inflation rate by 0.15 percentage points one year later.

A West Coast dock workers’ strike, combined with shrinking water levels in the Panama Canal, would have a devastating impact on the U.S. supply chain and the nation’s economy.

One person missing from this discussion is Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Perhaps ‘Mayor Pete’ has once again gone on vacation, as he did during the negotiations with railroad workers in the Fall of 2022.

Jim Nelles is a Navy veteran and supply chain consultant based in Chicago. His articles have appeared in the Washington Examiner, Newsweek, Foxnews.com, and the Daily Wire. He has served as a chief procurement officer, chief supply chain officer, and chief operations officer for multiple companies.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.