3 Potential Scandals Plaguing The FBI-Biden Bribe Saga
BY: BEN WEINGARTEN
JUNE 12, 2023
9 MIN READ
FBI Director Christopher Wray narrowly avoided contempt of Congress proceedings last week over his refusal to provide the House Oversight Committee with an unclassified document memorializing a trusted informant’s allegation that then-Vice President Joe Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian energy oligarch Burisma.
Dramatic as the near-rebuke may have appeared, and as explosive as the contents of the FBI’s concealed FD-1023 form seem to be, the trio of apparent scandals this saga touches on transcends its immediate significance.
Influence Peddling
The first scandal — hiding in plain sight for years yet never fully exposed, let alone prosecuted — concerns the Biden family’s potentially criminal, national security-imperiling, public trust-eroding influence peddling. The reality of this influence peddling makes the stunning allegation of a Joe Biden bribe seem infinitely more plausible than it might otherwise appear.
The House Oversight Committee’s recent review of thousands of records from subpoenas to four banks — which preceded its pursuit of the FD-1023 — shows that “Biden family members and business associates created a web of over 20 companies,” the majority of which were formed during Biden’s vice presidency. Through this web, “the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies” [emphasis original] during and after the then-vice president’s tenure.
Millions seem to have come from a company controlled by a corrupt Romanian oligarch and entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party. The money flowed to Biden family members, many of whom possessed no discernible relevant skills or experience. And at times, there was no evidence they rendered any services.
These findings build on the earlier work of Republican Sens. Charles Grassley — who, alongside House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, pressed FBI Director Wray to produce the FD-1023 — and Ron Johnson. The duo detailed dubious Biden family dealings with Russian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian nationals as well — Ukraine, of course, being the famously corrupt country of origin for the alleged Biden bribe.
The Biden family’s apparent monetizing of Joe’s office — including in Ukraine — alongside its apparent efforts to disguise associated transactions dovetail with the bribery allegation.
“After foreign companies sent money to business associates’ companies,” the House Oversight Committee has reported, “the Biden family received incremental payments over time to different bank accounts. These complicated financial transactions appear to conceal the source of the funds and reduce the conspicuousness of the total amounts made into the Biden bank accounts.”
Consistent with this practice, Chairman Comer has intimated that the FD-1023 suggests then-Vice President Biden “asked that the [alleged bribe] money be sent through shell companies and various banks to launder it to where no one would know about it.”
Several additional red flags — beyond the FBI’s steadfast unwillingness to share the document until under duress — suggest this is a serious allegation.
Chairman Comer has disclosed that FBI officials confirmed the FD-1023 “has not been disproven and stated several times the information contained within it is currently being used in an ongoing investigation.”
The source of the bombshell allegation is an informant reportedly considered “highly credible” by the FBI, as evinced by his more than 10 years serving the agency, and the $200,000-plus compensation the bureau has doled out to him for his work. The informant supposedly heard about the bribe directly from its source. The specifics of the allegation — supposedly with a nexus to Burisma — the logic to it, and the supposed evidence substantiating it, further speak to its veracity.