Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday that most media outlets were not asking crucial questions on whether the FBI and the Justice Department followed normal procedures when investigating Biden family bribery allegations or brushed the information “under the rug.”
Grassley made the comments from the Senate floor when discussing the FBI-generated FD-1023 form he released last week. The form featured allegations that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter pressured Burisma co-founder and CEO Mykola Zlochevsky into paying them millions of dollars each in exchange for pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
“Much of the media’s reporting has missed the essential question,” Grassley said. “That essential question is this: Did the Justice Department and the FBI follow normal investigative process and procedures to run the information down or did they sweep this information under the rug?”
Grassley said that the government engaged in “obstructive conduct” by making key redactions from the FD-1023 when it provided a copy of the document to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, including “references to the alleged audio recordings between then-Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden, and the foreign national.”
“It also redacted references to text messages and financial records that allegedly existed to prove the criminal act was done. Those redactions are an obstructive conduct by the United States. Why? Because this was an unclassified document. It’s not even marked law enforcement sensitive,” Grassley added.
The longtime senator said that his main goal was to hold the DOJ and the FBI accountable.
According to the FD-1023, Zlochevsky allegedly told the FBI’s confidential human source (CHS) that during a meeting in August 2016, it cost him “5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another.”
Zlochevsky allegedly said that it was “too late to change his decision,” which CHS understood as meaning that Zlochevsky “already had paid the Bidens, presumably to ‘deal with Shokin.’”
An addendum to the report from June 2020 says that Zlochevsky told CHS that he had “17 recordings” involving his interactions, including two with Joe Biden. The other 15 were with Hunter Biden.
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In reaction to this and other pieces of evidence obtained by lawmakers, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy indicated that the House could be moving closer toward an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden over the bribery allegations.
McCarthy said in a Monday interview that other alleged bribes to the Biden family have come from countries like Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and China.