The pee tape vs. the bribe tape
Byron York
THE PEE TAPE VS. THE BRIBE TAPE. Yesterday’s newsletter discussed the growing frustration among Capitol Hill Republicans about the FBI’s apparent reluctance to investigate an allegation, from a trusted bureau confidential source, that Joe Biden accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe when he was vice president.
GOP lawmakers are not vouching for the allegation’s accuracy. They’re not saying it’s true. Instead, they’re saying it is a serious charge and that it should be seriously investigated. They believe the FBI has suppressed, rather than investigated, the matter, and they are growing impatient with what they see as disparate treatment by the FBI in this case versus a sensational allegation against former President Donald Trump back in 2016-2017. Call it the pee tape vs. the bribe tape.
Start with the bribe tape. The allegation against Biden is contained in an FBI document known as an FD-1023. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has seen the document in its complete, unredacted form, as given to Grassley by an anonymous whistleblower. In light of that, Grassley and Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the FBI show the document to Congress.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray refused. Then, after Comer threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress, the FBI relented and showed the document to some members of the House. Still, the FBI made lawmakers go through all sorts of top-secret rigmarole — they could only view the document in a SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility, even though the document is not classified. And then, the document the FBI showed lawmakers was a partially blacked-out version of the 1023.
That made Republicans mad — especially Grassley. By comparing the original document he had been provided by the whistleblower with the document shown to Congress by the FBI, Grassley could see what the FBI had blacked out. In a speech on the Senate floor on June 12, he told the world. “I want everyone to remember that I have read the unredacted version,” Grassley said. “The 1023 produced to the House committee redacted a reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them — 17 such recordings. According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden. According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden. These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot.”
Then, Grassley got to his main concern: “So, as I’ve repeatedly asked since going public with the existence of the 1023, what, if anything, has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?” According to Grassley, the answer was, not much. And that, to Grassley, showed a striking contrast between the FBI’s willingness to investigate the current president versus the previous one.
“Based on the facts known to Congress and the public, it’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI will use every resource to investigate candidate Trump, President Trump, and former President Trump,” Grassley said. “Based on the facts known to Congress and the public, it’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI haven’t nearly had the same laser focus on the Biden family.”
That contrast — between the FBI’s zealous investigation of Trump and its grudging investigation of Biden — has led some investigators to compare the bureau’s handling of the “bribe tape” to its handling of the “pee tape” in the Trump years.
In 2016, the now-famous Steele dossier alleged that Russian intelligence had a video of private citizen Donald Trump, a few years earlier in a room at Moscow’s Ritz Carlton hotel, watching as two prostitutes performed a kinky “golden showers” sex act. The alleged video became known among Trump-Russia aficionados as the “pee tape.”
The FBI tried desperately to confirm the existence of the tape. It could not be confirmed. Instead, the story seemed to come from barroom gossip and joking, with the original source being Charles Dolan, an American public relations man with ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
There was no “pee tape.” Nevertheless, the FBI investigated furiously and treated the alleged existence of the tape as top-secret national security information. In January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed outgoing President Barack Obama on the alleged tape and then traveled to New York to brief President-elect Donald Trump as well. This is an account of that meeting between Comey and Trump, from my book Obsession:
Comey and top FBI officials prepared meticulously for the moment. The director held a planning meeting with [Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, and the top supervisors of Crossfire Hurricane, which was the name FBI officials had given to their Trump-Russia investigation. They came up with a plan for Comey to broach the Moscow hotel story to Trump privately, apart from the other intel officials, and then gauge his response. … The FBI hoped that, once Comey hit Trump with the Moscow hotel story, the president-elect might “make statements about or provide information of value to the pending Russia interference investigation,” according to [a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael] Horowitz. Perhaps it might even be something self-incriminating. Given that hope, Comey made plans, once the meeting was over, to dash out of Trump Tower and immediately write down everything he could remember from the meeting. It might be evidence someday.
And that is what the FBI did — about an allegation that had no basis in fact and appeared to be part of a political smear campaign against Trump. No one could even confirm that a tape existed, much less what it showed. But then, in a move that should have surprised no one, word of the Trump Tower meeting quickly leaked to the press, touching off years of false and sensational commentary about the “pee tape.”
Today, some of those involved in the Hunter Biden matter are thinking back to that moment as they consider the claim, in the 1023 form, that there is a Biden “bribe tape.” Has the FBI taken the alleged “bribe tape” as seriously as it took the alleged “pee tape”? Jason Foster, who, as an aide to Grassley, was involved in the Trump investigations, is now founder of the independent firm Empower Oversight, which is representing one of the current IRS whistleblowers. I asked him for his thoughts on the two tape allegations. Here is his response:
“The infamous pee tape allegations and the Biden bribe tape allegations both similarly: 1) involved a confidential human source; 2) who the FBI had previously paid for information; 3) relaying compromising details from a foreign source; 4) about a major party candidate for president — but the way the D.C. establishment treated them couldn’t be more different.
“The FBI director briefed the pee tape allegations to the president and president-elect shortly after the election, it leaked to the media immediately, and the country was thrown into years of turmoil and scandal with multiple investigations that never substantiated the initial claims.
“However, according to whistleblowers, the FBI buried the Biden bribe tape allegations in a secret file for years, limited access, and kept it from the IRS investigative team most qualified to trace the money if the allegations were true. There was no special counsel, no breathless 24-hour news coverage, and apparently no serious effort to determine whether it was true through any official investigation. No one would know about the potential existence of the tapes if a whistleblower had not shown the unredacted version of the 1023 source report to Sen. Grassley, who described it on the Senate floor.”
So, that is where things stand right now. The important thing to remember about the alleged “bribe tape,” and the bribery allegation itself, is this: It might be true. It might be false. It might be the product of miscommunication. It might be a political hit job. But whatever the case, the only way to determine its truth or falsity is by investigation. If you don’t investigate, you’ll never know.
That’s what Republicans want to learn. They want to make sure the FBI fully investigates the allegations against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. If a full investigation does not confirm the accusations, so be it. But the GOP wants to know that it will be done. And so far, the FBI will not say.
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