An unidentified executive with the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy firm Burisma reportedly held onto recordings of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden engaged in allegedly corrupt behaviors, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said on the Senate floor on Sunday.
Grassley read confidential information from the FBI FD-1023 form that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee had threatened FBI Director Christopher Wray with a criminal contempt of Congress charges over. Information provided to the FBI found on that form, dated June 30, 2020, alleged that Joe Biden, as vice president, had accepted a $5 million bribe from Burisma.
Bribes were part of the normal cost of doing business in Ukraine. Burisma’s chief Mykola Zlochevsky faced several fraud investigations but was never charged. The FBI considered him corrupt, according to a former Obama State Department official. The Obama State Department struggled with Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma due to its corruption.
The FD-1023 indicated that a Burisma executive had made 17 recordings of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden over the course of several years starting in 2015.
The senator said two of the recordings were between Joe Biden and the unnamed executive.
“According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden,” Grassley said. “According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden.”
Grassley continued: “The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden … The Justice Department and FBI must show their work … They no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.”
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate dodged questions about why the FBI redacted the information about the phone calls from the copy of the FD-1023 that it provided to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee when pressed on the subject by Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
“We redact to protect sources and methods,” Abbate said. “The document was redacted to protect the source as everyone knows. This is a question of life and death potentially.”
Scalise Calls for Release of Recordings
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., called for the release of the recordings.
“It seems like justice is not being administered fairly,” Scalise told The Daily Mail, pointing to how Hillary Clinton escaped charges after destroying over 30,000 emails off her server and how the Biden family has been so far off the hook for being involved in an alleged bribery scheme. “That’s not how justice works, and it undermines the what’s good about our justice system. And so I think that’s the biggest frustration.”
Former White House Stenographer Accused Joe Biden of Corruption
This is not the only time complaints about Joe Biden’s corruption were reported to the FBI.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick accused Joe Biden of engaging in a corrupt scheme in Ukraine in April aboard Air Force Two. He lodged a complaint about the episode with the FBI in February.
McCormick also accused current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan of being an accessory to a crime related to the procurement of Ukrainian gas during the then-vice president’s trip to Ukraine in 2014.
“… [H]e’ll discuss with them medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.” Sullivan said according to the White House press release from the trip.
Republicans likely will press harder to obtain action against Biden as the 2024 election approaches. Biden’s alleged criminality likely will be used to blunt the fallout from former President Donald Trump’s prosecutions.
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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