FBI redacted most of additional informant files on alleged Biden bribery scheme: Comer
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Tuesday that he read two additional FBI informant files related to an alleged $10 million bribery scheme involving President Biden and first son Hunter Biden — but that more than half of the content was redacted.
Comer (R-Ky.) said that it was “a total waste of my time” to review FD-1023 files provided by the FBI at a secure reading room at the Capitol because the March and December 2017 files were so heavily blacked out.
The Oversight chairman read the files just hours after the first son formalized a plea deal with Delaware US Attorney David Weiss for a probation-only plea deal to two misdemeanor tax fraud counts and a felony firearms count related to lying about his drug use, which can be expunged after two years.
Comer said he was alarmed by Weiss saying in a public statement that his office’s investigation is “ongoing” — despite Hunter’s legal team saying his legal jeopardy is “resolved” — noting that the Biden administration previously cited the “ongoing” investigation by Weiss to limit document production to Congress.
“I need to know what the US attorney meant by this is an ‘ongoing’ investigation because the reason the FBI and the Treasury Department won’t give me all of the evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens is because they say it is part of an ongoing investigation,” Comer told reporters.
“So is it a real ongoing investigation or is this just an attempt to obstruct and block our committee from providing oversight? That’s a very important line in what [Weiss] presented to the American people today and nobody knows what that means.”
The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, also read the 2017 documents Tuesday and told reporters “they’re not relevant” to the allegation that Joe and Hunter Biden accepted $5 million apiece to do the bidding of Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which separately paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year to serve on its board from 2014-2019.
Raskin (D-Md.) declined to answer The Post’s question about whether President Biden’s bank records are needed to definitively prove or disprove the allegation.
“I’m not going to do any more interviews,” Raskin replied. “I’ve got a place to get.”
Comer said that the FBI brought two 2017 files referenced in a June 2020 informant document that committee members already read, but failed to bring a 2018 file that was referenced in a footnote. The earlier documents reportedly prompted the FBI to re-interview its source in June 2020 about a prior reference he made to the Bidens receiving bribes.
“In the original 1023 there were two footnotes, that’s how we knew there were additional 1023s. One of them was referencing 2017 and one of them was referring to 2017,” Comer said.
“I asked, ‘Where’s the one in 2018?’ And they would talk about it.”
One of the 2017 informant files “referenced Hunter Biden and Burisma — there was one line that wasn’t redacted about Hunter Biden and Burisma,” Comer said.
“I don’t know what the US attorney looked at, but we’re going to do a very thorough investigation,” Comer said, adding he would demand that the FBI produce the 2018 file and unredacted content in the 2017 documents.
“Our investigation is of Joe Biden, it always has been… this is still an investigation of Joe Biden,” said the Oversight Committee chairman.
“The president’s son obviously is a person of interest in the investigation. We believe that we have already brought out overwhelming evidence that would suggest money laundering, wire fraud, racketeering, being an unregistered foreign agent — very serious crimes that for whatever reason weren’t dealt with in the plea agreement today.”
Comer said that he’s aware of reports based on documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop regarding a Maltese bank account opened by a Burisma executive at roughly the same time as the bribery allegations were first made.
“We’re looking into that,” Comer said of the Maltese bank. ‘We know exactly what you’re talking about.”
Comer recently identified nine Biden relatives who allegedly received foreign income from shady figures in China and Romania — and has argued they were selling access to their powerful relative, who frequently visited and engaged with the leaders of nations where his son and brother James Biden pursued ventures.
The bribery allegation was made by a longtime paid FBI informant whom the bureau assessed was highly credible, though the source’s identity is not publicly known. The source said the Ukrainian businessman claimed to have 15 audio recordings of Hunter Biden and two recordings of Joe Biden as “insurance.”
The June 2020 informant file says that a Burisma executive referred to Joe Biden as the “big guy” in communications with the FBI tipster — significant because the nickname wasn’t publicly known until October 2020 in connection with The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden laptop communications showing that Joe Biden was penciled in for a 10% cut in a Chinese business deal.
As vice president, Joe Biden met with at least two of his son’s colleagues on the Burisma board, including since-convicted felon Devon Archer, who joined the board alongside Hunter, and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, who attended an April 16, 2015, dinner at Washington’s Cafe Milano restaurant with Joe Biden and wrote Hunter a thank-you email the following day.
Just days after Hunter quietly joined Burisma’s board in April 2014, Joe Biden visit Kyiv while pushing US support for Ukraine’s national gas industry and later in 2016 push out a prosecutor who at one point investigated his son’s company.
President Biden has sought to laugh off the bribery allegations.
“Where’s the money?” Biden said at a press conference this month, quickly adding, “I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey.”
