At a press conference last week, a reporter asked President Joe Biden , "Why did the Ukraine-FBI informant file refer to you as 'the big guy'?"

Biden replied , "Why'd you ask such a dumb question?"

I don’t know, sir. Maybe it’s because you were referred to as “the big guy” who was slated to receive 10% of potential profits from a joint venture between members of your family and Chinese energy giant CEFC in an email found on your son’s laptop, and because one of his former business partners, Tony Bobulinski, has gone on the record to say you are 1,000% “the big guy.” And we just find it curious that the reference has turned up again in a whistleblower’s allegations that Biden was the recipient of a $5 million bribe. That’s probably why.

Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY) has already pieced together the money trails from Chinese and Romanian nationals to nine members of the Biden family, including a grandchild. As he explained in a press conference last month, the funds were transferred via a network of up to 20 shell corporations set up by Hunter Biden and his associates.

Comer recently said his committee had gone through the records from just one bank so far and that it has yet to look at records from at least 10 additional banks.

Although the legacy media is doing their best to ignore the story, Republicans are focusing on a June 30, 2020, FD-1023 in which a confidential human informant alleged President Joe Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from a top-ranking official at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, in exchange for policy decisions. It took the threat of contempt of Congress charges for FBI Director Christopher Wray to allow committee members to view the unclassified document, but not before redacting 10% of the text.

It’s been widely reported the executive was Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky , Burisma’s founder. Zlochevsky offered Hunter Biden a highly paid seat on its board of directors in April 2014 while his father was serving as President Barack Obama’s “point man” in Ukraine.

Last Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took to the Senate floor to first remind his colleagues he has seen the unredacted version of the document and then to inform them that “the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden, [Zlochevsky], allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings.” Grassley said the foreign national possesses “15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden” and two recordings of calls between him and then-Vice President Biden.

He added, “These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot. The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden.”

Last week, sources familiar with the House Republicans’ investigation into the 1023 told the Federalist that the whistleblower alleged the Bidens “coerced” Zlochevsky into paying them a total of $10 million in bribes. According to the sources, Zlochevsky told the informant he had made recordings of his conversations with the Bidens because of his concern that his payments might one day be discovered. He also reportedly explained to the whistleblower he had not paid “the big guy” directly and “that it would take some 10 years to unravel the various money trails.”

Comer told Fox Business last week, “This is going to be hard for Biden to explain, and it’s not going to go away. … I think, eventually, the mainstream media will turn on Joe Biden and start asking the real questions. What did they do to receive all this money?”

He noted, “We have more bank records coming in, but we’re going to exceed $10 million this week, and I think we’ll get up to between $20 million and $30 million.”

Referring to the media, Comer said, “They know there’s something wrong here. They know all the allegations have merit because of where Joe Biden was, because of what we’ve seen on tape before, where Joe Biden bragged about firing that prosecutor.”

He added, “They know that this family created these shell companies. They know this family was money laundering. They were profiting off Joe Biden’s influence. The media knows that — they’re just not covering it.”

Moreover, we’re not hearing anything about what, if any, steps the FBI took to investigate these allegations. So far, it appears the FBI did little or nothing.

Given the seriousness of the allegations made in the 1023 and the high credibility of the informant, there is one big burning question the FBI must answer: What, if anything, did the FBI do about this extraordinary information?

The FBI’s response will tell the public all it needs to know about its transformation from a once-apolitical domestic intelligence and security service into the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party.

Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner, Power Line, the Western Journal, and AFNN and is a past contributor to RedState, Newsmax, and Bongino.com . Her articles have appeared on many sites, including RealClearPolitics, MSN, and the Federalist. Please follow Elizabeth on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn .