Democrats Blow Biden Bribery Allegations Out Of The Water
The Honorable James Comer
Chairman
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
U.S. House of Representatives
Dear Chairman Comer:
All Members of the Committee have now had an opportunity to review the June 2020
Form FD-1023, which you subpoenaed from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). When discussing the second-hand allegations made by a Ukrainian oligarch that are memorialized in that form, it is important that Committee Members appreciate and convey the full context of what we know about those allegations. In particular, I write today to remind you that in attempting to gather information damaging to the Biden family from Ukrainian sources during 2019 and 2020, Rudy Giuliani received evidence that directly contradicts the allegations in the Form FD-1023. This evidence was turned over to Congress—and made available to both Republicans and Democrats—by Mr. Giuliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, as part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump.
As both the FBI and Mr. Giuliani himself have stated, the allegations relayed to the FBI by the confidential human source (CHS), based on his conversations with a Ukrainian oligarch, in the June 2020 Form FD-1023, largely repeated allegations Mr. Giuliani had previously shared with the FBI.
In 2019 and 2020, Congress thoroughly reviewed and debunked Mr. Giuliani’s allegations, which were based on a theory that then-Vice President Biden caused the dismissal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in order to thwart an investigation of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings (Burisma) and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, while Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board.
As the FBI explained, the allegations were also thoroughly investigated by Donald
Trump’s own Justice Department as part of a formal assessment, which Attorney General Barr assigned to Scott Brady, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. That assessment was closed in August 2020 after eight months of investigative efforts, which included interviewing Mr. Giuliani and the CHS, as well as reviewing suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks. Mr. Brady’s team found insufficient evidence to warrant escalating this assessment to a preliminary or full investigation, and it was closed with the concurrence of Mr. Brady and high-level Department of Justice (DOJ) officials.
As part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, Congress learned that
Mr. Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch and the owner of Burisma, whom Republican
Committee Members appear to have identified as the source of the allegations memorialized in the Form FD-1023, squarely rebutted these allegations in 2019.
Despite being interviewed as part of a campaign by Mr. Giuliani and his proxies in 2019 and 2020 to procure damaging information about the Biden family, Mr. Zlochevsky explicitly and unequivocally denied those allegations.
Specifically, Mr. Zlochevsky denied (1) that anyone at Burisma had “any contacts” with then former Vice President Biden or his representatives while Hunter Biden served on the Burisma board, and (2) that former Vice President Biden or his staff “in any way” assisted Mr.
Zlochevsky or Burisma.
Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are recorded in a written document produced by Mr.
Giuliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, to the House Committees overseeing the first impeachment inquiry concerning former President Trump in January 2020.
Thus, this information has been available to the Oversight Committee since that date. Moreover, the FBI obtained the document when it seized Mr. Parnas’s phone pursuant to a warrant in 2019.
It was therefore in the possession of the DOJ at the time Mr. Brady was evaluating Mr. Giuliani’s allegations regarding Burisma and the Biden family.
According to reports, Mr. Giuliani was eager to get information directly from Mr. Zlochevsky regarding Hunter Biden’s work as a member of Burisma’s board of directors. Mr. Giuliani charged one of his associates, Lev Parnas, with sending a series of questions for Mr. Zlochevsky to Vitaly Pruss, another long-time associate of Mr. Giuliani who was a close friend of Mr. Zlochevsky.10 Mr. Zlochevsky’s answers to those questions were memorialized in a document titled “VPanswers July7th 2019.” The metadata for the document indicates that it was created by Mr. Pruss.
After receiving Mr. Zlochevsky’s responses, Mr. Parnas forwarded the document via text messages on July 8, 2019, respectively, to Mr. Giuliani and to Victoria Toensing, an attorney working in conjunction with Mr. Giuliani on his Ukrainian efforts to gather damaging information about the Bidens. Mr. Giuliani reportedly was “not satisfied” with Mr. Zlochevsky’s answers, and according to Mr. Parnas, was “furious” that Mr. Zlochevsky did not provide the factual support he wanted.12 The questions and answers by Mr. Zlochevsky set forth in the document include the following:
Were you aware that Hunter Biden had met at [sic] with State Department officials in both May 2015 (Blinken) and December 2015? What did you understand the purpose of those contacts were?
WE NEVER APPROVED OR ASKED HIM TO CONDUCT THOSE MEETINGS
ON BEHALF OF BURISMA
Did you ever learn why VP Joe Biden asked for Shokin to be fired as PG?
WE LEARNED ABOUT IT FROM NEWSPAPERS AND INTERNET. WE
NEVER HAD CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN DURING HIS VISITS TO
UKRAINE
Please detail any contacts you had with VP Joe Biden and his office from 2013 through 2019. Did Hunter ever facilitate any of those contacts?
NO ONE FROM BURISMA EVER HAD ANY CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN OR
PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM DURING HUNTER BIDEN’S ENGAGEMENT
Did VP Biden or his staff assist you or your company in any way with business deals or meetings with world leaders or any other assistance?
NO
Did you ever become aware of documents suggesting $900k was paid to Hunter
Biden for “lobbying” his father?
NO
These statements directly contradict and refute the allegations in the Form FD-1023. They are further evidence of former Attorney General Barr’s own warning that “[t]here are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, there are a lot of cross-currents, and we can’t take anything we receive from the Ukraine at face value.”14 As Senator Johnson who, as Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation into the allegations involving Burisma recently conceded in discussing the information in the Form FD-1023: “That’s what this person says, but again, take that with a grain of salt. This could be coming from a very corrupt oligarch who could be making this stuff up.”
Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department. Indeed, as part of their own investigation into these allegations in 2020, Republican Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Finance Committees interviewed State Department officials who confirmed that calls for Mr. Shokin’s dismissal were based not on any investigation of Burisma, but rather, on his failure to pursue corruption in Ukraine, including at Burisma.16 Moreover, Shokin was dismissed by the Ukrainian Parliament in 2016 with the broad support of the U.S. and other Western nations, as well as international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, based on his failure to prosecute corruption in Ukraine and his continued protection of Ukrainian oligarchs.17 Further, as has been widely reported, any probe by Ukrainian authorities into Burisma became dormant once Mr. Shokin was appointed prosecutor general in early 2015.18 Senior State Department officials also confirmed in the Senate investigation that U.S. policy in Ukraine was in no way influenced by, and did not benefit, Hunter Biden.
The Form FD-1023 reports unsubstantiated, second-hand hearsay allegations. During his
June 2020 interview recounting conversations with a Ukrainian oligarch years after they took place, the CHS explicitly noted that it is not unusual for Ukrainian business executives to brag and show off and that he could not offer any opinion supporting the veracity of the allegations he was relaying. For this reason, the full factual context surrounding the form—including Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements contradicting the reported information—is crucial to properly understanding these allegations. In this case, that context includes not just repeated and failed efforts in 2019 and 2020 by Mr. Giuliani, Senate Republicans, and Trump’s Justice Department to find support for these allegations, but also clear evidence that then-Vice President Biden’s actions carried out the policy of the United States, its allies, and its international partners to combat corruption in Ukraine.
Very truly yours,
Jamie Raskin
Ranking Member
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news.yahoo.com /house-democrats-document-refutes-gop-014057045.html
House Democrats Have Document That Refutes GOP’s Biden Bribery Claims
Isabella Ramirez 3-4 minutes 6/29/2023
Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesThe evidence is stacking up against Republicans’ (thus far unfounded) claims that President Joe Biden was the recipient of a foreign bribery scheme while serving as vice president.
House Oversight Committee Democrats on Thursday unveiled a document filled out by Mykola Zlochevsky—who their colleagues across the aisle allege may have handed Biden a $5 million kickback—in which the Ukrainian oligarch says he never interacted with Biden when he was vice president.
While Hunter Biden did once serve on the board of Burisma, an energy company Zlochevsky co-founded, he doesn’t seem to have gotten any help from his dad—at least according to Zlochevsky.
“WE NEVER HAD CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN DURING HIS VISITS TO UKRAINE,” the questionnaire read. “NO ONE FROM BURISMA EVER HAD ANY CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN OR PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM DURING HUNTER BIDEN'S ENGAGEMENT.”
In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote that Rudy Giuliani received the evidence during the 2019 impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.
Giuliani passed along the evidence to associate Lev Parnas , and it was turned over to Congress after the FBI seized Parnas’ phone upon his arrest for running an illegal campaign donation operation —which ironically included foreign money payments from a Russian donor to U.S. politicians. At the time, the document had not been made public.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), to whom the letter is addressed, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have boasted that a whistleblower informed them of an FBI document, classified as a FD-1023, in which a confidential source detailed the bribery scheme. Right-wingers have also run wild with claims of incriminating “audio tapes” the source boasts of holding—but Comer has said he won’t rule out that it’s “just a bluff.”
Republicans Admit They ‘Don’t Know’ if Biden Bribery Tapes ‘Really Exist’
Raskin’s letter affirms the questionnaire’s statements “directly contradict and refute” the FD-1023 document, describing the document as full of “unsubstantiated, second-hand hearsay allegations.”
“Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department,” he wrote.
Comer did not comment on Zlochevsky’s answers on the document Thursday, but he reiterated his call for the public release of the FD-1023 document, according to NBC News .
Funny, I thought that AG Barr had already responded to Raskin's letter and told him where he was wrong.
So what we have is another case of partisan political statements? How about we let the investigation come to it's end to see where it goes rather than play partisan games.
These are the facts -
The person who Comer and Grassley said had damning evidence against Biden in the form of recorded phone conversations is on record denying he ever interacted with Biden about anything.
In the lack of any NEW evidence, this is definitive. We all know this will not end well for the Republicans on those committees, so why pretend otherwise.
Raskins letter was written yesterday.
Who has the evidence?
This reminds me of a scene from the classic movie "On the Waterfront." When investigators wanted the books from an obviously corrupt union they were told "we were robbed last night." It seems only the union's records were taken. This case with the Bidens is just as obvious.
We don't know what the House committee has or doesn't have, they don't release that to the public until the very end and you should know that. If this will be so bad for Republicans why do you seem to want them to stop the investigation? Why wouldn't you want them to go to the very end and lose credibility in the end?
But Raskin was already speaking publicly about this in early June when Barr responded. So Raskin's letter from yesterday is just another reply.
The only thing that is obvious is the desperation of the American right wing.
Their demi-god Trump is going down and the right desperately wants to drag Biden down with him.
Now your "explanation" is that there is no evidence of Bidens corruption in Ukraine because the "evidence" is in the wrong hands. SO, you want to endlessly accuse Biden of things you have absolutely no evidence of. I might as well accuse Trump of killing Martin Luther King Jr.
If the Republicans keep this up, it will rapidly become more ridiculous than the Steele Dossier.
Far right media repeats conspiracy theories thousands of times to the point it become baked into MAGA brains. It is now far right dogma that Biden wanted the Ukrainian prosecutor fired because he was looking into Hunter Bidens work at Burisma. There is zero evidence of this. Biden wanted the prosecutor fired because he was refusing to investigate corruption in Ukraine and that investigation of corruption was essential for the western nations to approve continuing financial aid to Ukraine.
We get stuck with far right conspiracy theories that never pan out and never end.
That is right. The FBI has has the Hunter Laptop since 2019. It hasn't seen the light of day.
If the Republicans keep this up, it will rapidly become more ridiculous than the Steele Dossier.
Ah, you admit the Steele Dossier was BS! That's progress!
Why? Just because he has the same personal ethics coach as Adam Schiff?
I think you said that already. Do you have any substantive rebut of Raskins letter or are you just going to flap your lips?
Utter nonsense.
This article is about specific allegations concerning Burisma and Ukraine, which you evidently know nothing about.
Do you have any substantive rebut of Raskins letter or are you just going to flap your lips? It is a simple question.
Really... so you know ALL the evidence that the House Committee has in it's possession right now? Do share...
We all know all the evidence that the House committee has, and they have admitted that thus far they have nothing. Sure they can keep "investigating" for two more years until the election. After all, there were 7 or 8 Benghazi hearings done to smear Hillary Clinton for the approaching 2016 election.
I recall the FBI using it as if it were factual.
You keep pounding that drum, I'll wait for the investigation to conclude.
But you still haven't answered why you want the Republicans to end the investigation now? Are you a closet Republican and trying to help your favorate party save face?
They wanted to believe it. Remember when Comey said he couldn't rule out the thought of Trump being there with Russian prostitutes?
Here we sit, with you and Texan blabbering back and forth, and nothing coming from either of you to refute anything in Raskins letter.
You know what....maybe they are admitting it over on one of their group seeds!
Or so we are told.
If you dont address the seeded article I am going to have to start deleting you. Your vague belief that Joe Biden is a crook is not a debating point.
What about Comer's committee and the Democrats letter to him?
If you have nothing to say about it just stop talking.
Back to the drawing board GOP nutcases.
Joe and Jill Biden's taxes are public going back over 20 years. If they ever had any unreported or illicit income it would be traceable. They did not!
Who really believes that Joe Biden is a criminal?
All the gop has is false unfounded accusations!
"Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" - GOD
Comer is an idiot and this letter proves that the GOP committee is pursuing the Republican version of the steel dossier
Oh heck...millions and millions of people. Joe even admitted that he got "the son-of-a-bitch fired.
Then there is the China bribery thingy still being investigated.
and? There were reasons the US government wanted him fired, as did the other NATO nations, that had nothing to do with bribery related to Hunter Biden.
Try and educate yourself for a change.
GOP had evidence disproving Biden bribery claims in 2019, top Democrat says
Republicans have had evidence debunking their own bribery allegations against Mr Biden since 2019
By Andrew Feinberg
Jun 29, 2023 06:02 PM
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has released evidence that casts significant doubt on GOP claims that the FBI ignored evidence that President Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian energy mogul during his time as vice president.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin reminded his GOP counterpart that Congress has had evidence “that directly contradicts the allegations” levied against Mr Biden in an FBI form which Republicans have claimed to be proof of alleged corruption on the part of the president.
“As part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, Congress learned that ... the Ukrainian oligarch and the owner of Burisma, whom Republican Committee Members appear to have identified as the source of the allegations memorialized in the Form FD-1023, squarely rebutted these allegations in 2019,” Mr Raskin said.
The Republican accusations against Mr Biden have largely been based around similar claims floated nearly four years ago by Rudolph Giuliani, the disgraced former New York City mayor who in 2019 traveled to Ukraine to help then-president Donald Trump dig up dirt on Mr Biden, who was then preparing to launch his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election.
Mr Giuliani and his allies met with FBI officials to accuse Mr Biden of having accepted millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for pushing Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, to fire his country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in the waning months of the Obama administration.
Mr Shokin later claimed that this was the reason he was fired, and Republicans — most notoriously Mr Giuliani — have said Mr Biden’s work urging Mr Poroshenko to sack Mr Shokin was a personal errand, even though Mr Biden was expressing the wishes of the US government, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and other Western entities when he communicated the Obama administration’s demand that Mr Shokin be shown the door.
An FBI informant, who The Independent previously identified as most likely being Mr Giuliani, alleged that Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma — the Ukrainian energy firm which employed Mr Biden’s son Hunter as a board member — paid the then-vice president $5m to push for Mr Shokin’s firing.
But according to a transcript of an interview with Mr Zlochevsky which Giuliani associate Lev Parnas provided to Congress during the first impeachment of Mr Trump, the Burisma founder said years ago that his company never had any contact with the elder Mr Biden.
In his letter, Mr Raskin wrote that the Ukrainian executive “explicitly and unequivocally denied” the allegations of bribery. He said Mr Zlochevsky also “denied (1) that anyone at Burisma had “any contacts” with then former Vice President Biden or his representatives while Hunter Biden served on the Burisma board, and (2) that former Vice President Biden or his staff “in any way” assisted Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma”.
Mr Raskin added that the “full factual context surrounding the [FBI form] —including Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements contradicting the reported information — is crucial to properly understanding these allegations”.
“In this case, that context includes not just repeated and failed efforts in 2019 and 2020 by Mr. Giuliani , Senate Republicans , and Trump’s Justice Department to find support for these allegations, but also clear evidence that then-Vice President Biden’s actions carried out the policy of the United States, its allies, and its international partners to combat corruption in Ukraine,” he said.
It's all hearsay. No facts are forthcoming
Like I said: "We was robbed last night!"