Biden investigation: Democrats make play to discredit FBI bribery document
Reese Gorman
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Democratic staff on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee sent a memo to committee Democrats giving a play-by-play guide to rebut some of the allegations made in the FD-1023 form that alleges Hunter Biden and then Vice President Joe Biden were involved in a foreign bribery scheme.
The FBI-generated FD-1023 tip sheet was released last week by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and has been a focal point of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation led by Chairman James Comer (R-KY). In the document, a confidential human source alleges to an FBI informant that both Bidens were paid $5 million by Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board, to pressure the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor who was allegedly investigating Burisma.
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While the allegations are unverified, Republican members of the committee see it as a key part of their investigation into the Bidens’ foreign business dealings.
“Given the misconduct and politicization at the Department of Justice, the American people must be able to read this record for themselves,” Comer said in a statement at the time of the FD-1023’s release. “I thank Senator Grassley for providing much-needed transparency to the American people. We must hold the Department of Justice accountable for seeking to bury this record to protect the Bidens.”
In the memo, which the Washington Examiner obtained, the Democratic staff on the committee pushed back on the Republicans’ decision to publicly release the document and alleged that it is full of already debunked “conspiracy theories.”
The memo points to a 10-page letter from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who was tasked with finding dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election, urging Comer to stop his investigation into the FD-1023 because it was a “campaign orchestrated by Giuliani and Trump to dig up dirt on the Bidens, and to spread misinformation.
“Never, during any of my communications with Ukrainian officials or connections to Burisma, did any of them confirm or provide concrete facts linking the Bidens to illegal activities,” Parnas said in a letter to Comer last week. “The truth is that everyone knew that these allegations against the Bidens were false. There has never been any actual evidence, only conspiracy theories spread by people who knew exactly what they were doing.”
Ahead of the 2020 election, Parnas was also tasked with getting Zlochevsky on the record about the elder Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings. In 2019, in response to a list of questions Parnas had sent him, Zlochevsky said that “no one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement.”
This is contradictory to what the confidential human source, and Zlochevsky himself, alleges in the FD-1023. The confidential human source tells the paid FBI informant that Zlochevky did pay both Bidens $5 million to deal with the prosecutor. Zlochevsky himself also tells the informant in 2016 that “it costs 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the FD-1023.
“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden [on the board] so everything will be OK,” the informant writes in the tip sheet.
But the informant said the confidential human source could not verify the “veracity” of the claims made by Zlochevsky and how it is “very common for businessmen in post-Soviet countries to brag or show-off.”
While Biden has bragged in the past about the role he played in getting Shokin ousted, Democrats on the committee point to the fact that a number of Western countries wanted Shokin out and that his probe into Burisma was reportedly dormant at the time of his firing.
“Furthermore, the Ukrainian Parliament dismissed Mr. Shokin in 2016 with the broad support of U.S. and other Western nations, as well as international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, because he failed to prosecute corruption in Ukraine and continued to protect Ukrainian oligarchs,” the memo reads. “At the time, Senator Johnson himself supported the U.S. policy towards Ukraine that conditioned funds to Ukraine on the removal of Mr. Shokin.”
In addition to attacking the accuracy of the allegations made in the document, the Democratic staffers also hit Republicans for releasing the FD-1023.
They claim that by releasing the document, they are putting the FBI informant and the confidential human source’s lives at risk.
“To justify the public release of the form, Senator Grassley and Chairman Comer claimed that the DOJ and FBI engaged in ‘obstructive conduct’ by refusing to produce an unredacted version of the FD-1023 in response to Chairman Comer’s subpoena,” the memo reads.
It also says that the FBI had already made a “minimally redacted” version of the document available to all members of the Oversight Committee and that Grassley and Comer’s decision to release the longer version was wrong.
“Chairman Comer’s and Senator Grassley’s decision to release this document further amplifies conspiracy theories at the cost of endangering the safety of FBI sources,” the memo reads. “Furthermore, the allegations in the form have been debunked repeatedly, including by Donald Trump’s own Justice Department and Rudy Giuliani’s failed campaign to collect dirt on President Biden in Ukraine.”
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In a statement, a spokesperson for House Oversight Republicans said the memo is “another piece of garbage that should be thrown in the trash.” They claim that Grassley acquired the document through “legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.”
“Democrats continue to lie about the FBI’s Biden Bribery Record despite public comments from U.S. Attorney Weiss and former Attorney General Barr refuting their claims. Democrats have proven to be untrustworthy in this investigation and it’s past time that the media start scrutinizing their claims,” the statement reads.
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