Comer: FBI says Biden bribery probe ‘ongoing,’ involves ‘shell companies’
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Monday that an FBI informant file accusing President Biden of a $5 million bribery scheme while he was vice president involves “shell companies” — and that FBI officials told him it’s part of an active investigation.
Comer (R-Ky.) reviewed the informant file, which he said came from a “highly credible informant,” in person at the Capitol and told reporters afterward that he will move to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt for not handing over a physical copy to the panel.
“The claims made in the document are consistent with what we found and disclosed to you all in Romania. It suggests a pattern of bribery where payments would be made through shel🔯l accounts and mul🐼tiple banks,” Comer said.
“There’s a term for that, it’s called money laundering … So we feel that this accusation is consistent with a pattern that we’re seeing, frankly, in other c🍨ountries.”
Comer said that “FBI officials confirmed that the unclassified FBI-generated record has not been disproven and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.”
A source familiar with the review told The Post that names were redacted from the file the FBI brought to the Capitol, except for Biden’s.
The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), also reviewed the document and told reporters it was his understanding the matter isn’t under investigation — though reporters pressed him repeatedly as he seemed to evade giving an answer.
Raskin, a lawyer, ultimately provided an imprecise reply, telling the press, “I must have missed that because I’ve not heard that this is part of any ongoing inv🙈estigation.”
Raskin also contended that the claim was “second-hand hearsay” and that the source lacked direct knowledge of💜 any purported corruption by the pre🌠sident.
White House spokesman Ian Sams accused Comer Monday of staging a “fact-free stunt” in a bid to “spread thin innuendo to try to damage the President politically and get himself media attention.”
“As Senator Grassley admitted, they aren’t ‘interested in whether or not theꦰ accusat𒁏ions are accurate,'” Sams claimed, “which rings even truer now that it’s been publicly reported that the Trump Administration’s Justice Department looked into this claim three years ago and found nothing credible.”
Last week, CNN cited anonymous sourcing to report that the file “has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020.” Giuliani worked at the time as then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
A source told The Post on Friday that the information on the 1023 form was provided to the FBI independent of Giuliani, but that it was unclear if Giuliani’s agitation caused the FBI to review a previously obtained lead.
On Monday, Raskin was evasive about whether the tipoff was independent of a cache of documents assembled by Giuliani and sent in early 2020 to the US attorney’s office in Pittsburgh for review, saying only that the matter “surfaced after Rudy Giuliani was making particular allegations” about Ukraine and the Biden family.
First son Hunter Biden earned up to $1 million per year working for the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma from 2014 to 2019. He joined the company’s board shortly after his father assumed the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio.
Comer said Monday that the source interviewed by the FBI in June 2020 about the bribery allegation was so trusted by the FBI that he has been paid sꦺubstantial amounts of money by the𝄹 US government.
“The confidential human source who provided information about then Vice President Biden being involved in a crimin🌳al bribery scheme is a trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over 10 years and has been paid over six figures,” the Kentucky Republican said.
“These are facts and no amount of spin and frankly lies from the White House or congressional Democrats can change this information. At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassifiedꦍ record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee. And w🐠e will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday.”
Comer said he assumes the active investigation is in Delaware, w🌠here US Attorney David Weiss is leading a probe of Hunter Biden over alleged tax fraud, illegal foreign lobby🔴ing and other crimes.
Hunter partnered in many of his bౠusiness ventures with first brother James Biden, with whom the president golfed on Sunday.
“Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further,” Comer said. “Americans have lost trust in the FBI and its ability to enforce the law impartially, and demand answers, transparency and accountability. The investigation is not dead. This is onl🎉y the beginning.”
It’s unclear what US policy then-Vice President Biden might have traded for money.
One possibility raised by Republicans is Joe Biden allegedly plugging US support for Ukraine’s natural gas industry in 2014 just days after his son Hunter secretly joined Burisma. In December of that year, to support the country’s energy sector, including the natural gas industry.
Biden also used US aid as leverage to pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who investigated Burisma, though evidence presented at Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial for pressuring Kyiv to investigate the Bidens indicated that America’s allies in Europe 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 files from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, photographs, and witness r📖ecollections.
