WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans who read an FBI informant file accusing President Biden of a role in a $5 million bribery scheme said Thursday that it involved the Ukrainian company Burisma — but Biden tauntingly retorted, “Where’s the money?”
“It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Biden told a Post reporter when asked about the bribery claim hours after FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed to let rank-and-file House Oversight Committee members read a June 2020 document in a bid to avoid being held in contempt.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) gave reporters an accounting of the file after reading it at the Capitol, saying Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky allegedly told the FBI source “that he paid $5 million to one Biden and he paid $5 million to another Biden. And it was all a bribery to get [former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor] Shokin fired.”
Greene, whose account was confirmed by a third Republican member of Congress who read the document Thursday, said the file also described how in 2015 and 2016, Burisma “was looking to buy a US-based oil and gas company, and this came from being advised by [first son] Hunter Biden and his partners.”
“Around the time of this meeting was when Joe Biden as vice president had said that the prosecutor Shokin was corrupt. They hired Hunter on the board to make the problems go away,” she said. “Hunter advised that they could raise more money if they bought a US company.”
Hunter Biden earned up to $1 million per year from 2014 to 2019 to serve on the board of Burisma, despite having no relevant industry experience.
Then-VP Joe Biden met with a Burisma executive at a DC dinner in April 2015 — with the meal forming the basis of The Post’s explosive first report on Hunter’s abandoned laptop.
Greene added the FBI’s informant said he cautioned Burisma against the acquisition and instead suggested hiring a specialized attorney to resolve their legal issues, noting the source had told the firm’s executives it would look bad to “buy another US company while you’re under investigation.”
“This is common practice in Russia, in Ukraine. It’s common practice, it’s part of business there. That’s how their culture works, that they will pay bribery money in order to get business deals done,” she said.
The owner had also allegedly told the informant he was not pleased with the result of the 2016 election, won by Donald Trump.
“He said no, he was not happy,” Greene said, reading from her notes. “Remember he had invested a lot of money into the Bidens to make his problems go away.. He did say that it would take 10 years for all of us to find out the payments made to the Bidens because of how many bank accounts there were.”
Later, Zlochevsky allegedly “told the informant that he has two pieces of evidence showing proof of payment to Hunter and specifically Joe Biden.”
However, that evidence apparently is not described in the file, nor is it clear what precisely the document accuses President Biden of doing.
The Oversight Committee has not yet acquired President Biden’s bank records and although Biden often boasts of releasing his personal tax returns, he has not revealed in detail the sources of more than $13 million in income in 2017 and 2018 that was routed through an “S corporation” between 2017 and 2019.
Hunter wrote in emails retrieved from his former laptop that he had to share up to “half” of his income with his father, though Joe Biden has denied ever discussing business interests with his relatives.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who also read the informant allegation Thursday, said the file has “damning evidence” that the commander-in-chief “sold out his country.”
“The allegations in this document are worse than has been reported so far. There is damning evidence the sitting President of the United States sold out his country in an ongoing bribery scheme,” Mace said.
“The American people and media deserve to see the evidence. We are encouraging the Oversight committee to continue its investigation by seeking out additional bank records and re-reviewing the [Treasury Department Suspicious Activity reports]. We should follow the facts.”
The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed bank records for some of first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business partners, but it’s unclear if the panel has sought the records of any members of the Biden family, including the president.
Other wealthy post-Soviet businesspeople worked with Hunter Biden, including Russian oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who shopped for US property investments with the then-second son and allegedly explicitly described an expected quid pro quo to a colleague — as his cellphone company MTS was under federal investigation by the Obama-Biden Justice Department.
The Biden family’s links to Burisma have drawn scrutiny for years.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden allegedly pushed US support for Ukraine’s natural gas industry during a trip to Kyiv just days after Hunter quietly joined Burisma in April 2014. Obama administration visitor logs indicate he met with Hunter’s partner Devon Archer, also on Burisma’s board, the same month.
In December 2014 while Biden was leading the US policy toward Ukraine, Congress approved $50 million to support Ukraine’s energy sector, including the natural gas industry.
Biden also boasted of using $1 billion in US aid as leverage to pressure Ukraine to fire Shokin — though House Democrats presented evidence during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial that US allies had also advocated for the prosecutor’s ouster due to his own corruption.
During and immediately after his vice presidency, Joe Biden interacted with Hunter and James Biden’s associates from China, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, according to laptop records, photos and witness recollections.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) read the informant file on Monday. Raskin claimed afterward that a preliminary review of the claim by federal investigators in 2020 resulted in no further action, though Comer said it was subject to an “ongoing” investigation and former Attorney General Bill Barr came forward to rebut Raskin’s claim the probe was “terminated.”
Comer said the 2020 informant file was based on information from a decade-long paid FBI source that emerged after a review of information originally provided to the bureau in 2017.