An FBI document released Thursday as evidence of bribes paid by Ukrainian businessmen to President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, isn’t as clear cut as Republican lawmakers have portrayed it.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley released the document, which is at the heart of allegations that the Bidens took action to aid the energy company Burisma Holdings, on whose board Hunter Biden served.
House GOP leaders claim the document, referred to as an FD-1023 form, is evidence the Bidens were each paid $5 million in bribes when the elder Biden was vice president, to help remove Ukraine’s chief prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
The document, however, doesn’t actually make that claim. It contains recollections from late 2015 to June 2022 made to the FBI by a confidential source. The source claimed to have had conversations with Ukrainian businessman Mykola Zlochevsky, who said he was coerced into paying the Bidens.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation criticized the lawmakers for releasing the document.
“Today’s release of the 1023 — at a minimum — unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source,” the bureau said in a statement. “Throughout the FBI’s engagements with Congress, we have been guided by our obligation to protect the physical safety of confidential human sources and the integrity of sensitive investigations.”
The White House sought to discredit the document and noted that the allegations were already investigated by the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump.
“It is remarkable that congressional Republicans, in their eagerness to go after President Biden regardless of the truth, continue to push claims that have been debunked for years and that they themselves have cautioned to take ‘with a grain of salt’ because they could be ‘made up,’” said White House spokesman Ian Sams.
Efforts to damage Joe Biden over his dealings in Ukraine have blown back on Republicans in the past. Indeed, Trump was impeached in 2019 because he sought to press Ukrainian officials for damaging information on Biden, going as far as to withhold military aid to the country. Trump was impeached by the then-Democratic House and acquitted by the Republican-led Senate
However, the US attorney in Delaware has said that the allegations are part of an ongoing, active investigation.
The document was released without “critical context” as a “transparently desperate attempt by Committee Republicans to revive the aging and debunked” conspiracy theories against Biden and at the cost of endangering the safety of FBI sources, said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight panel.
Raskin cited a briefing that FBI officials gave to the committee in June saying the document was reviewed as part of an assessment done by federal investigators that was ultimately closed due to insufficient evidence. Raskin also said that Zlochevsky has said no one from Burisma ever had contacts with Joe Biden while Hunter Biden was involved with the company.
Biden’s actions to remove Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin have been subject to scrutiny for years. Biden and his allies, including officials in Europe, said Shokin needed to be removed because he was corrupt.
In early 2016, Biden pushed Ukraine to fire Shokin, a position that was in line with official US foreign policy and other allied nations. Although Shokin had been investigating Burisma, the probe had long been dormant by the time Biden was pushing for his ouster, a former Ukrainian official told Bloomberg News in May 2019.
The conversations cited by the FBI source took place from 2016 to 2019, according to the document. Zlochevsky said it cost $5 million to “pay one Biden” and $5 million to pay “another Biden,” the document states.
However, the document doesn’t say Zlochevsky specified payments were made directly to Joe and Hunter. According to the source, Zlochevsky made references only to paying “the Bidens.”
Zlochevsky also told the source he had 17 recordings involving the Bidens, two that included Joe Biden and 15 with Hunter Biden, according to the document.
The source met Zlochevsky in person once and spoke to him twice on the phone and, therefore, “is not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity of Zlochevsky’s aforementioned statements,” the document states.
Hunter Biden has previously said taking the Burisma role may have been “poor judgment” as his involvement with the Ukrainian energy company became a lightning rod during the 2020 presidential campaign.
--With assistance from Billy House.
(Updates with comments from Raskin starting in the 11th paragraph)
