US Senator Chuck Grassley and US Congressman James Comer on Thursday released an FBI record containing allegations of a bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden's family and Ukraine
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2023) US Senator Chuck Grassley and US Congressman James Comer on Thursday released an FBI record containing allegations of a bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden's family and Ukraine.
The lawmakers said they obtained the partially redacted record via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistle-blowers.
"For the better part of a year, I've been pushing the Justice Department and FBI to provide details on its handling of very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme. While the FBI sought to obfuscate and redact, the American people can now read this document for themselves," Grassley said in the statement.
The FBI record, known as an FD-1023, contains allegations from a confidential human source (CHS) that lawmakers have previously touted as highly trusted.
The source's reporting alleges that executives with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma hired Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, to protect the businessmen through his father. Burisma was seeking to start operations in the United States, but was facing a corruption probe by then-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.
"Don't worry Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad," Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevsky purportedly told the source, who expressed concerns about the situation.
Zlochevsky also purportedly told the source that Burisma had to pay $5 million to both Hunter and Joe Biden as part of the arrangement.
Following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election, Zlochevsky told the source that he was not happy about the election outcome. When asked about concerns regarding the deal with the Bidens, Zlochevsky said he was "pushed to pay" the family, according to the source.
However, Zlochevsky expressed confidence that nobody would find out about the deal, since Shokin had already been fired as chief prosecutor, the source said.
Zlochevsky also claimed that he had text messages and recordings to prove that he was coerced into paying the Bidens to get Shokin fired, the source said.
Moreover, Zlochevsky claimed it would take investigators years to trace the records of payment to the Bidens, having not sent funds directly to the "big guy," which the source said he understood to mean Joe Biden.
"The FBI's Biden Bribery Record tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee's Biden family influence peddling investigation," Comer said in the statement.
Internal Revenue Service whistle-blowers told the committee that they had never been made aware of the FBI record during their own investigation into the Biden family's conduct, despite possibly having corroborating evidence, Comer added.
Joe Biden maintains that he and Hunter Biden never spoke about the latter's foreign business dealings.
