The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has released evidence that puts serious doubt on GOP assertions that the FBI overlooked evidence that President Joe Biden took a bribe from a Ukrainian oil billionaire while vice president.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin wrote to House Oversight Committee head James Comer saying Congress had information "that clearly contradicts the claims" against Biden in an FBI form that Republicans have used to accuse the president of corruption.
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Rudolph Giuliani, the disgraced former New York City mayor, flew to Ukraine in 2019 to help then-president Donald Trump find information on Biden, who was planning to run for president in 2020.
Giuliani and his allies met with FBI agents to accuse Biden of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to pressure Ukraine's then-president, Petro Poroshenko, to remove Viktor Shokin in the Obama administration's last months.
Shokin later claimed that this was the reason he was fired, and Republicans-most notably Giuliani-have called Biden's work urging Poroshenko to fire him a personal errand, even though he was expressing the wishes of the US government, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other Western entities.
Per The Independent, an FBI informant said that Burisma's founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, paid the then-vice president $5 million to campaign for Shokin's termination.
The Burisma founder maintained years ago that his business never had any interaction with the older Biden, according to a transcript of a conversation with Zlochevsky that Giuliani associate Lev Parnas presented to Congress during the first impeachment of Trump.
The transcripts were from a 2019 interview with Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky, who paid Hunter Biden $50,000 monthly to participate on the board. Zlochevksy founded Burisma. Ukrainian energy ministry. He fled the country on corruption accusations.
Republicans claimed that Zlochevsky, a Burisma businessman, paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each during the Obama-Biden administration to convince the Ukrainian government to remove prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma.
President Biden has long claimed he pressured the Ukrainian government to remove Shokin for corruption. According to Daily Mail, he boasted in 2018 that he threatened to withhold foreign aid if they did not.
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Republicans want the FBI to release an FD-1023 document from a paid informant detailing Zlochevsky and the Bidens' plot to hide the money's origins through 20 shell firms.
Raskin is countering with a three-page transcript of a July 7, 2019, conversation from the 2019 Trump impeachment investigation. Raskin stated the Oversight Committee got Zlochevsky's taped discussions with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas' transcripts.
Zlochevksy is also probed about Hunter's meetings with State Department officials, including now-Sec. Antony Blinken, in May and December 2015. A 2015 Hunter Biden laptop email shows Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi praising Hunter for meeting his father at a charity function.
Raskin claims that FBI agents inspected the FD-1023 as part of Rudy Giuliani's corruption charges and found nothing worth investigating. Raskin is using what the committee has to debunk Republican claims, even if the FBI has not confirmed that.
Comer stated that Raskin's transcript did not refute the FD-1023's statements and denied that Giuliani made them. If Ranking Member Raskin feels the FD-1023 form is pointless, he should join us in asking the FBI to release it. Ranking Member Raskin lies again about the FBI's Biden bribery record. Rudy Giuliani didn't provide the FBI with this record.
Comer said he saw the FD-1023, in which a Burisma official says then-Vice President Biden asked and received a $5 million bribe for specific acts. The CEO claims he paid "the big guy" indirectly using so many bank accounts that it would take ten years to untangle.
