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That’s a opinion not a reality .. we liberals look syd every part of what is written … cant’t help if it’s inaccurate … when we point out it’s inaccuracy why would we need to digest an inaccurate statement ???Yet you failed by only attacking the Senate report and ignoring the other sources.
SOP on the left, attack the article without digesting the substance...which you ignored.
Epic fail.
Exactly.Great, great, another Hunter thread. Trump had 4 attorney generals, as well as house and senate majorities during his 4 years and still nothing, Just like with the Hillary things. Try to get some sleep.
As for a source I don’t care where it comes from if it’s inaccurate I will point it out Republican or liberal …Only problem you have is some 50% or more of the sources are from what you people call 'least biased' and approved for leftist consumption.
That’s you best a childish picture… figures never can defend your issue
Who checks the fact checkers?In other words you don’t have a reliable for information … I have found in the past that nothing I say has no merit either … it’s liberal BS … even though I use government sources, like government PDF files on a Republican hearing … example the Benghazi hearing all nine of them that I used the answers they came to … even thought the republicans did’t like the answered they got now when I post the answer it’s now liberal source … when I used Factcheck.org a fact checker out of pen state made up of Republican students who were there to check liberal sources and republicans sources … when I use their answere to a question they are now liberal sources … what I have come to realize anything that proves you wrong or made up and the fact that I used Republican sources it’s now liberal bull shit .. … when I ask you to point out a source I research in what they said not what party it’s from .. I go to more then one fact checker if they all say the same then I accept it’s answers on how much truth is to what they are saying and how much is it distorted … by you not give me something to work with tells me … you don’t research anything unless it’s negative against democrats … going to make a secon post on Hillary … these are the facts from the hearing on her emails from a PDF file from the hearing and James come at tow weeks before the election …
It is BS when you don't back up your claims with proof.Let’s take Hillary Clinton … when she left office it is required of her to turn in all of her phones to turn in all he commutations and computers … she did that … this is all on a government web site hearing in this matter … her 30,000 emails trump made a issue with because he knew they couldn’t be recovered … they were destroyed by federal lawyers and her lawyers by federal regulations they went through them … she had nothing to do to destroy her ohones or hard drives or any documents that might have been on them … when you hear republicans say she used a illegal server that’s incorrect … she used a unauthorized server … the server to this day that she used has never been hacked to date… … the reason they weren’t Authorize was they never went through a security check if their people to authorize use them … the company chose not to … now some republicans made a remark that the server was in her house in he basement bathroom … that was a lie … the whole email incident was nothing more then a attempt of the trump comity to smear Hillary and put question in mind to vote against her, it worked … at the end of the government looking into her emails what the found was emails that had a problem the said the were classified documents did not have the classified stamp on them so comey said they were irregular but wasn’t s crime to arrest her on… the republicans refused to accept the answer … she only had a sever that wasn’t authorized by the government and that made it a issue to republicans where they called it illegal it wasn’t illegal … but this is what they used to justify their means .. now everything I wrote here you will call it liberal zBS even thought it came from a Republican PDF file
That has been proven to be false.Shokin refused to prosecute corruption.
Poor baby...........That’s you best a childish picture… figures never can defend your issue
The links are your reality.That’s a opinion not a reality .. we liberals look syd every part of what is written … cant’t help if it’s inaccurate … when we point out it’s inaccuracy why would we need to digest an inaccurate statement ???
it's not a case I don't like the article this article before it's a case i have seen before... I know you don't like fact checkers but not just one but everyone I looked at said this is a BS story .... again if you are fact-checking the article you'll find a big BS behind it ... is all i have to say ...Who checks the fact checkers?
So you don't like the article is what you're trying to say?
in my post, I said it all came from the PDF of Hillary's email hearings .f you choose not to google Hillary's Email hearing PDF file that's your choice ... I am not here to prove me wrong that's your job... not going to waste my time doing research then have you say that's a BS site ... that's what you and your repub-lie-clowns do ...It is BS when you don't back up your claims with proof.
That has been proven to be false.
still with the childish pictures says it all, ya got nuttin' ...Poor baby...........
so you didn't go to the Government PDF file on Hillary Clinton's email hearing ... I get it you don't want to know if it will burst the bubble that you stay in...or you're lazy ...they have it on her email hearing and all 9 of her Benghazi hearings ... you want to believe conspiracy theorist the rest of your life that's fine with me but don't expect me to believe your Bull shi sources ...That is pure insanity, billy.
one of the things I don't get ... why are they going after Hunter Biden... he doesn't work for the government ... why do they waste their time on these nothing stories ...A report that is part of the congressional record doesn't prove it's accurate.
And yes, it has been debunked, or rather, rendered as one big 'MEH'
in other words, there is nothing in it that will implicate Joe Biden.
...what does this report tell us?
On one level, not much. The headline chapter—Hunter Biden and Burisma—repackages largely known facts related to how U.S. government employees dealt with Hunter Biden’s position on the board of the Ukrainian company but offers no evidence that his role had any impact on U.S. foreign policy or the anti-corruption advocacy of Vice President Biden. As Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheyney of Politico wrote, the report “is largely a compilation of previously public information—some of it rehashed anew by witnesses who already testified during the House’s impeachment inquiry last year.” It spills a lot of ink, for example, to end up at the same place that multiple witnesses testified publicly to nine months ago during the impeachment inquiry: U.S. officials viewed former Burisma head Mykola Zlochevsky as a corrupt bad actor, and officials within the State Department had expressed concerns about Hunter Biden’s role at the company. But Johnson and Grassley dug up no evidence of malfeasance on the elder Biden’s part.
The rest of the report reads like a compilation of loosely connected short stories, none of which really makes all that much sense. One section describes various financial transactions by members of the Biden family but provides no evidence linking those transactions to corruption or otherwise providing evidence-based context for what they mean. Another is composed largely of spreadsheets cataloging Hunter Biden’s use of Secret Service protection. A later bit fixates on a one-off New Hampshire town hall given by John Kerry in 2019. And the report spends many pages incoherently defending against criticisms in the minority staff report.
On a textual level, therefore, the majority report is a bit of a head-scratcher.
What to Make of the Johnson-Grassley Report on Biden and Burisma
The report doesn't break any new ground and highlights the decline of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.www.lawfaremedia.org
GOP senators’ anti-Biden report repackages old claims
Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley's interim report largely relies on previously known information.www.politico.com
The report relies on vague assessments already revealed publicly
Hey dimmie, no reasonable prosecutor, remember?Get some charges and get it before a judge. If he is found guilty, I' cuss about him call him name, right with you. But for now, it's like OJ before he got caught stealing his stuff back from those people. Between the time of the murders and the strong arm theft years later, people said to him "how ya doin Mr. Simpson, or OJ?" Not "hey convict, ya murdering scum." So that is how I am about Joe Biden. Now dumbass Hunter is another thing. He has admitted tax crime and weapon's violation under oath. Maybe you can write emails to the judge to reject, but I doubt the judge will. Still, you don't have a crime on Joe, but have fun trying. I don't mind or anything. I just won't join in your fun and games.
I want one! Where can I get one?
so you didn't go to the Government PDF file on Hillary Clinton's email hearing ... I get it you don't want to know if it will burst the bubble that you stay in...or you're lazy ...they have it on her email hearing and all 9 of her Benghazi hearings ... you want to believe conspiracy theorist the rest of your life that's fine with me but don't expect me to believe your Bull shi sources ...
seems you missed a lot or you chose to not accept what was said by the people in the hearing on the recorded record ... it seems you missed everything ...I watched everything at the time.
from one long winded to another long-winded thats fact checkThis article is quite revealing, ties all kinds of lies that were previously told into fact. Long read but well worth it.
March 29, 2023
Ukraine and the FBI: Profiles in Corruption
By John O'Connor
Two cases of corruption have recently come to the fore, both involving foreign countries. Significantly for U.S. citizens, both of these shed light on questionable activities of Hunter Biden regarding vital United States foreign interests. Whether they also provide inference to be drawn about President Biden’s document retention then becomes question for the jury of public opinion.
One of these cases involves the recent raid by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the home of Ukraine's most corrupt oligarchic Igor Kolomoisky for allegedly embezzling one billion dollars from Ukraine's two largest oil companies. This follows sanctions on Kolomoisky by the United States in 2021 in a ban on travel into the United States for him and his family. Zelensky knows he must punish corruption to continue to receive foreign aid for his war against Russia.
The second corruption case to come to light is the indictment of former high level FBI counterintelligence agent Charles McGonigal. While the head of the FBI's counterintelligence office in New York from 2016 to 2018 and thereafter, he had undisclosed corrupt relationships featuring large amounts of cash payments with both agents of corrupt Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and agents of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller has stated was closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Both cases are quite clearly stomach-turning stories of a high-level FBI agent using his position to advance the adverse interest of foreign rivals. However, at first blush they appear to have little to do with any serious connection with the United States, so why should any of us care?
Let's first pick the low hanging fruit about which we've previously discussed regarding Igor Kolomoisky. Please recall that in April and May of 2014, Hunter Biden and his partner Devon Archer were hired as directors by Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, each for $1 million annually. Hunter Biden also received lucrative assignments for a law firm with which he was associated. The controlling owner of Burisma? Yes, you guessed it: Igor Kolomoisky, the majority silent partner behind the seeming number one official (but really number two), Burisma President Mycola Zlochevsky. The number three official was Vadym Pozharskiy.
After Hunter was hired, good things began to happen for Igor Kolomoisky. For instance, he was finally able to get a visa to travel into the United States for him and his family which required influence with the State Dept.
After our Ukrainian point man, then-Vice President Joe Biden, pushed through $3 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine, much was routed for Ukraine's biggest financial institution, PrivatBank, $1.7 billion of which went to loans of PrivatBank from its branch in Cyprus. The loans were to six companies secured by contracts for delivery of goods from overseas companies. The money flowed out to the vendors, but goods never floated in, and the owners of PrivatBank made $1.7 billion, all through these overseas shell companies. The chief owner of PrivatBank? Igor Kolomoisky, a client of Hunter Biden.
Eventually, PrivatBank went into the hole for $5.6 billion, all seemingly into the pockets of Kolomoisky and associates. Kolomoisky was not arrested or imprisoned and lived with impunity in Ukraine through 2016. However, as Vice President Joe Biden was leaving office, Kolomoisky fled Ukraine. Had he previously been protected, we ask?
When Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigated Burisma for corruption and raided the home of Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden became extremely active. The upshot was that Hunter’s father famously got Shokin fired by threatening to withhold $1 billion in financial aid unless he was terminated.
Corruption cases filed against Burisma were settled favorably to Burisma, after the cases were switched from Shokin’s prosecutorial office to a nongovernmental National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) influenced by an FBI agent placed by FBI Director James Comey.
Now to McGonigal. McGonigal took cash from Oleg Deripaska’s agent to help lift U.S. sanctions against him and investigate a rival oligarch, both tasked using American intelligence resources. He also took money from a former Albanian intelligence officer to convince corrupt Prime Minister Rama not to award oil drilling contracts to certain Russian front companies and steer them to companies with whom he was associated. What was one company? It appears to have been CEFC China Energy.
A key link noted in the McGonigal indictment to the Albanian prime minister was an unnamed person who in fact is one Dorian Ducka. Ducka was employed by the Chinese global energy firm CEFC; he was also so close to Prime Minister Rama that he held the title of Albania's “adviser of investments.” It appears that CEFC was corruptly influencing Rama to get drilling contracts.
Hunter Biden was also retained by CEFC, an official of which gave him a 3.16 carat diamond and a $100,000 shopping spree. Hunter and associates made an easy five million dollars arranging the purchase by CEFC of U.S. and Canadian Energy assets which had to be approved by U.S. government agencies.
Recall that Tony Bobulinski claimed, in reference to his and Hunter’s CEFC dealings, that 10% of the venture's ownership was for “the Big Guy,” who he claimed, quite reasonably, was Joe Biden.
In 2017, the United States indicted CEFC official Patrick Ho for trying to bribe officials in Chad and Uganda to obtain oil drilling contracts for CEFC. Ho’s first call after arrest? James Biden, Joe Biden's brother.
Quickly, Hunter represented Ho to hire Ho’s criminal defense lawyer, Ed Kim. Kim quickly asked Hunter for the names of certain FBI officials whom Hunter knew. We do not know their names but it's logical that one might be CEFC-influenced FBI agent, Charles McGonigal.
Recall that McGonigal’s conduit to Rama was the CEFC's Dorian Ducka. On Hunter’s laptop has an e-mail chain with his CEFC group about “taking care of” with “remuneration” Dorian Ducka for his help early on. It seems that a major activity of CEFC was corrupt procurement of energy assets for the energy hungry importer, China. Did the CEFC believe it was buying influence with United States government through Hunter? That certainly is a possible inference. CEFC has now declared itself bankrupt, sanctions that do not happen unless the Chinese government wants it to happen. The public heat on CEFC, especially after Hunter’s laptop was discovered was clearly too much even for China.
Now let’s return to Burisma. While Joe Biden has claimed to have no connection to Hunter’s business dealings, the laptop from hell shows Burisma #3 Pozharsky emailing Hunter for his unspecified help shortly after Hunter was hired. Then a year later, ss Shokin turned up the pressure on Burisma, Pozharsky met with Vice President Biden, as arranged by Hunter Biden for which Pozharsky thanked Hunter by e-mail. Months later, Shokin was fired.
When Hunter was auditioning to be hired by Burisma, he sent a lengthy e-mail about Ukrainian offshore drilling prospects as affected both by Russian actions and U.S. sanctions, sounding suspiciously like it had been lifted from a U.S. high level intelligence briefing. The purpose was not, it seems, to convince Hunter’s prospective client that he himself was a brilliant foreign policy adviser. Rather, it was to convince the recipient that he had access to confidential intelligence resources, as the intelligence jargon of his report proves.
We now know that the Penn-Biden Center for Global Engagement was started by Vice President Biden as he left office. It was financed by a reported $67 million in Chinese money. We know that the most valuable U.S. intelligence tools are presidential briefings. Presidential briefings from 2013 through 2016 were among the documents recently uncovered at the Penn Biden Center. There is a picture on Hunter’s laptop of the bankers box of documents with the word “important” scrawled on top with reference to the documents contained in the box.
A number of classified documents were found at Joe Biden's home purportedly rented by Hunter for $50,000 a month. That seems like a lot of money. In short, it may well be that these classified documents had been curated, selected and used for a specific purpose. Hunter is still receiving profits from his 10% ownership in the multi-billion-dollar Bohai Harvest fund financed by the bank of China.
Is there a connection here to the soft reboot of our China policy by the Biden Administration? That same administration is also going easy on the corrupt Albanian regime heavily connected to the main Mexican drug cartel, Sinaloa, along with Albania laundering cartel money and serving as the main European entry point for cocaine. Rama’s corrupt, drug enabling government has not been sanctioned recently by the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. However, Roma’s conservative rival and former prime Minister Sali Berisha, out of office for eight years and not the seeming imminent problem that the current prime minister is, was sanctioned for corruption. But the man closest to Rama is also close to Hunter Biden, that is, Dorian Ducka.
A final note: oligarch Oleg Deripaska played a prime role in pushing the Russiagate canard against President Trump. Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailed how the Justice Department’s #4 official, Bruce Ohr, lobbied to help Deripaska, explaining to his associates that Deripaska was helping to get Donald Trump.
And, yes, Christopher Steele of Steele Dossier fame was working for the Clinton campaign, but his main years-long patron was – you guessed it – Oleg Deripaska. One of the first FBI reports on Christopher Steele came to the FBI via its London agent to the New York Field office for handling. The agent in charge: Charles McGonigal.
Do we remember Donald Trump was impeached for his call to new Ukrainian President Zelensky, seeking a corruption investigation of the Bidens. Who was Zelensky’s main supporter recently entering the country from his 2016 exile? Igor Kolomoisky.
Lastly, recall that a main witness in the impeachment proceedings against Trump was former Ukraine Ambassador Maria Yovanovich, who had been installed right before Trump took Office, at the behest of VP Joe Biden.
So, when Trump took office, his enemies were in place and they got him before he could get them. James Comey being one such prominent figure, Yovanonich another, and Putin’s friend Deripaska yet another.
When Biden Administration acolytes dismiss any suggestion of corrupt dealings centered around Hunter Biden, perhaps involving his father, and poo-pooing the seemingly problematic retention by his father of valuable classified documents, perhaps raised eyebrows are in order.
Fact checkers came about after Conservatives started asking questions about left wing agendas. You know the left engages in lie after lie to hide their motives.I know you don't like fact checkers but not just one but everyone I looked at said this is a BS story
still with the childish pictures says it all, ya got nuttin' ...
so you didn't go to the Government PDF file on Hillary Clinton's email hearing ...
I like Rumpole's quote, don't you?A report that is part of the congressional record doesn't prove it's accurate.
Kinda looking like the recent and up and coming Whistleblower testimony, under oath, is blowing big fat holes in your post.from one long winded to another long-winded thats fact check
Several Republican lawmakers have objected to a plea deal between the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden, the president’s son, claiming it was “a slap on the wrist.” We’ll explain the plea and what we know about several other offenses Republicans say Hunter Biden committed, some of which are unsubstantiated.
The Justice Department investigation, which was ongoing during former President Donald Trump’s term and is headed by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, has led to an agreement by Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for not paying federal taxes. The DOJ reportedly will recommend a sentence of probation. Hunter Biden also agreed to enter into a pretrial diversion program for a felony charge of firearm possession by a user of a controlled substance.
In a June 20 statement, the day the agreement was announced, Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican conference chair, summed up the Republican reaction. “This is the epitome of the politicization and Weaponization of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice as they give a slap on the wrist to President Biden’s son – a tax fraud and corrupt pay-to-play criminal,” Stefanik said. “It’s never been more clear that we have a two-tiered system of justice when you have the son of the sitting President of the United States selling our country out to the highest bidder, laundering money, committing tax fraud, accepting bribes, illegally obtaining a firearm, and shamefully avoiding child support.”
We’ll start with “tax fraud” and the plea deal.
Tax and Gun Charges
Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay taxes, according to a June 20 letter from the office of David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware leading the federal probe.
Hunter Biden speaks during the World Food Program USA’s 2016 McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony. Biden was chair of the group’s board. Photo by Kris Connor/WireImage via Getty Images.
The prosecutors said Biden made over $1.5 million in taxable income in both 2017 and 2018, but didn’t pay the more than $100,000 in federal income tax he owed by the filing deadline for each of those years. He paid off his outstanding tax debt in 2021.
For each count, Hunter Biden could face up to one year in prison and a fine of at least $100,000. But news outlets reported that, as part of the deal, the Justice Department plans to recommend a sentence of probation for the tax charges, potentially sparing him any jail time.
Hunter Biden also was charged separately with a single count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, a felony offense.
In his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” Hunter Biden, who struggled with drug use for years, wrote that he relapsed and was regularly using drugs in 2018, the year that he possessed a firearm in Delaware, according to the charging documents. Politico reported in March 2021 that when buying the gun, Biden answered “no” to a question on the firearm transaction form that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Biden had the gun for about two weeks, before his then-girlfriend found it and discarded it in a trash bin that was behind a local grocery store.
The felony gun charge ordinarily carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and other penalties, including fines. However, Biden agreed to enter into a not-yet-disclosed pretrial diversion agreement for the gun offense, the court documents say.
Diversion programs “divert certain offenders from traditional criminal justice processing into alternative systems of supervision and services,” according to a Justice Department manual. Successful completion of a diversion program could result in criminal charges being dropped or reduced, “or a more favorable recommendation at sentencing.”
The two agreements still have to be approved by a federal district judge and any penalties would be based on U.S. sentencing guidelines and other factors, Weiss’ office said.
While Stefanik and other Republicans have called this a “sweetheart deal” or a “slap on the wrist” for Hunter Biden, some legal experts have said the DOJ did not go easy on him.
Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel, said that first-time tax offenders “rarely get prosecuted” and it’s “even rarer” for them to be jailed.
“And false gun applications sadly also almost never get prosecuted or jail time. So this is if anything harsh, not lenient,” he wrote in a June 20 tweet.
Renato Mariotti, another former federal prosecutor, also tweeted that “[m]isdemeanor tax charges are rarely charged on their own, without felony tax counts.”
Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and a sentencing expert, told the New York Times that prosecutors may have felt pressure to charge Biden.
“Everyone is paying attention and the facts are not in dispute, so a failure to bring charges would create the perception that there was some sort of special treatment or leniency being given to the president’s son,” the newspaper quoted him saying.
But he predicted that most prosecutors would say these offenses in general wouldn’t warrant making this a federal case “unless there’s reason to be concerned that there’s a public safety issue or the trust that everyone is treated equally under the law is at stake.”
‘Laundering Money’
As other Republicans have done, Stefanik stated as fact that Hunter Biden is “laundering money” — a charge that has not been substantiated.
The Justice Department reportedly has been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including for money laundering. Stefanik’s office referred us to a New York Times story from March 2022 that said the DOJ’s tax probe was “widened in 2018” to include potential violations of “money laundering rules.”
Republican members on the House oversight committee have been investigating Hunter Biden since 2020. In an interim report released in November 2022, the Republicans on the committee claimed to have potential evidence of money laundering, alleging that “Hunter Biden and James Biden, President Biden’s brother, American banks have generated at least 150 SARs,” or suspicious activity reports.
Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions are required to “report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity” to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, as explained on the Treasury website.
The House Republican committee report said it obtained “several SARs that implicate Hunter in criminal activity.” The committee report featured one filed by JPMorgan Chase regarding transactions that the bank said “may be associated to prostitution or adult entertainment services.”
Banks file millions of such reports every year. In fiscal year 2022, FinCEN received “approximately 3.6 million suspicious activity reports,” and it has projected that it will receive about 3.7 million SARs in FY 2023, which ends Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The mere filing of such reports doesn’t mean that a crime has occurred.
“The reports reflect compliance officers’ concerns regarding a transaction; they do not, however, represent proof nor imply a criminal investigation in the matter,” Maria Nizzero, a Dow Jones research editor, wrote in an article about SARs reports in September 2020.
On the day Hunter Biden’s plea agreement was announced, Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House oversight committee, was asked by a reporter why he thought his committee would be able to uncover criminal evidence that federal prosecutors so far have not found.
“Well, I’ve wondered did the prosecutor find all the shell companies?” Comer said. “Did the prosecutor go through the suspicious activity reports, where six different American banks suggested that the Bidens were involved in a money-laundering scheme through various shell companies?”
The federal investigation is ongoing. But so far the committee has only “suggested” — as Comer said — that Hunter Biden has laundered money. The committee hasn’t proved it, despite what some Republicans have claimed.
Bribery Claim
When Stefanik referenced Hunter Biden “accepting bribes,” she is referring to allegations contained in a recently unearthed, and unverified, report from an FBI informant who said that years ago, a Ukrainian oligarch bribed Hunter and Joe Biden.
The existence of the report was revealed on May 3 by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and Comer when they sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. It said a whistleblower had brought to their attention that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”
That same day Comer issued a subpoena seeking the document from the FBI.
According to the FBI, “the FD-1023 is the form our special agents use to record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources (CHSs). FD-1023s merely document that information; they do not reflect the conclusions of investigators based on a fuller context or understanding. Recording this information does not validate it, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI in our investigations.”
Furthermore, the FBI said, ”Protecting this type of information from wider disclosure is crucial to our ability to recruit sources and ensure the safety of the source or others mentioned in the reporting.”
Wray ultimately allowed Comer and members of his committees, Republicans and Democrats, to view a redacted version of the documents (with the name of the informant withheld) in person in a secure facility at the Capitol.
According to legislators who have viewed the documents and spoken to DOJ officials about them, the report contains information from a trusted FBI informant passing along an allegation that an executive with the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings — for which Hunter Biden served on the board of directors from 2014 to 2019 — paid bribes of $5 million to both Hunter and Joe Biden. Republican Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Marjorie Taylor Greene, both of whom viewed the documents, said that executive was Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
“It was all a bribe to get [former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor] Shokin fired,” Greene said.
Some background: Trump was impeached in the House in 2019 (and later acquitted by the Senate) for attempting to influence Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce the opening of an investigation into Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s efforts when he was vice president to get Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, to fire Shokin, who was widely viewed as ineffective at prosecuting corruption. In early 2018, Biden boasted that he threatened Poroshenko with losing $1 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. if he didn’t fire Shokin, who was removed in March 2016.
As we have written, Biden’s actions were in line with the administration’s stated objective to remove Shokin, and at the time the international community and anti-corruption advocates in Ukraine were also calling for Shokin to be removed from office for his failure to aggressively prosecute corruption.
In December 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that Zlochevsky was under investigation by Ukrainian and British authorities for “alleged criminal wrongdoing,” and the article quoted anti-corruption advocates in Ukraine who were concerned that Zlochevsky would be protected from prosecution because of Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma.
“If an investigator sees the son of the vice president of the United States is part of the management of a company … that investigator will be uncomfortable pushing the case forward,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Wall Street Journal.
In July 2019, Kaleniuk told the Washington Post that “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.”
The New York Times in September 2019 reported that while Shokin “was not aggressively pursuing investigations into Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma … the oligarch’s allies say Mr. Shokin was using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team, and that left the oligarch’s team leery of dealing with the prosecutor.”
Whether or not Shokin’s removal may have aligned with the desires of Zlochevsky, there’s no evidence outside of the FBI’s FD-1023 form, which has not been publicly released, that Zlochevsky reportedly attempted to bribe the Bidens.
Grassley and Comer have been careful to note that the allegations are unproven, and that they are only seeking to find out more about the extent of the FBI investigation into it.
“It is a very serious allegation,” Grassley said. “I wish I could say that I knew it was true or untrue.”
On June 12, Grassley added the detail that according to the 1023 form, “the foreign national possesses fifteen audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden” and “two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden” that “were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot.”
Grassley later told CNN, “I don’t even know where they [the recordings] are. I just know they exist, because of what the report says. Now, maybe they don’t exist. But how will I know until the FBI tells us, are they showing us their work?”
In remarks after his arraignment on charges related to handling classified documents, Trump framed the allegation in more definitive terms, saying that “evidence revealed Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine.” Again, to date, there is no evidence that actually happened.
There is some dispute about the status of the DOJ’s investigation into the alleged bribery.
The Washington Post, citing “people familiar with the investigation,” reported that the “allegation contained in the document was reviewed by the FBI at the time and was found to not be supported by facts, and the investigation was subsequently dropped with the Trump Justice Department’s sign-off.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said the “assessment was closed after a determination was made that there were no more investigative steps to be taken and the evidence collected did not meet FBI’s standard for opening a preliminary or full-scale investigation—namely that the assessment had not developed an articulable factual basis to reasonably indicate a crime may have occurred.”
But in a “Fox News Sunday” interview on June 11, Bill Barr, attorney general under Trump, disputed that, saying, “investigation of the allegations made in that document was not closed down.” Barr said the allegation was vetted in the DOJ’s Pittsburgh office.
“They actually went back and developed more information that apparently had been overlooked by the FBI,” Barr said. “And they developed this 1023 that has a lot of detail. And then they took it to the Delaware and to other offices and briefed them on it for their use and for follow up. … They were simply performing a unique and limited task of vetting information that would then go to pending already open investigations.”
It’s unclear what the status is of a possible bribery investigation, now that, in an investigation out of the DOJ office in Delaware, Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to not paying his taxes on time in exchange for probation.
Chris Clark, attorney for Hunter Biden, released a statement saying, “With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.”
But the last line of the press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the charges filed against Hunter Biden ends with the sentence: “The investigation is ongoing.”
In a press conference on June 20, Comer said he didn’t know what to make of that.
“I think everyone in America wants to know, what do you mean by, ‘This is an ongoing investigation’?” Comer said.
Comer said the FBI that day had made available to him two other FD-1023 forms that were referenced in the initial form. Comer said the forms mentioned Burisma and Hunter Biden and some sort of an investigation into fraud, but he said the documents were so heavily redacted, “you really couldn’t tell anything.” Comer is seeking at least one other 1023 form as well.
Asked about the bribery allegations, Joe Biden on June 8 said, “Where’s the money? I’m joking. It’s — it’s a bunch of malarkey.”
Child Support Case
Stefanik added “shamefully avoiding child support” to a list of offenses by Hunter Biden that show “we have a two-tiered system of justice.” But the child support dispute has been handled by an Arkansas court.
Hunter Biden fathered a child with Lunden Roberts, who filed a petition for child support on May 28, 2019, nine months after their daughter was born. Hunter Biden agreed to pay $20,000 a month in 2020, and to make payments retroactive to November 2018.
According to court documents, Hunter Biden denied the pair had a relationship or a child, and agreed to take a DNA test — which, Roberts said in a court filing, established that he was the father. In his memoir, which chronicles his struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction, Hunter Biden said that he had challenged Roberts’ claim because “I had no recollection of our encounter.”
In a Dec. 23, 2019, filing, Roberts said that Hunter Biden was “a complete stranger” to her child and “has never seen the child.”
In 2020, the court ordered Hunter Biden to start making monthly child support payments on Feb. 1, 2020, and to pay a lump sum for retroactive payments as well as Lunden’s attorneys fees and costs (see page 70). The final court order, dated March 12, 2020, said Hunter Biden also would pay for the child’s health insurance. The amounts he was ordered to pay are redacted in those documents.
The case, in the circuit court of Independence, County, Arkansas, was reopened by Hunter Biden on Sept. 12 to ask that the child support payments be reduced. His attorney said in a May 1 hearing that he was paying $20,000 a month and had paid $750,000 in total, according to CNN.
The New York Post reported on June 20 that the two parties had reached a private settlement, but Roberts’ lawyer told the Post the details had not yet been finalized. We reached out to Hunter Biden’s lawyer on the matter and haven’t received a response.
finally, when you fact-check an article written by a right-wing propagandist this is what you really missed the truth
