The Fact Checker: GOP alleges Biden was involved in criminal scheme

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As vice president, Joe Biden sold his influence to the highest bidder. He is unfit to be President of the United States.

Representative Elise Stefanik (RN.Y.), in a tweet, May 4

This is a very serious allegation. I wish I could say I knew it was right or wrong.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), in an interview on Newsmax, May 3

A vague request by GOP lawmakers for the FBI to release a document allegedly about President Biden has led to feverish speculation in right-wing media and innuendo from some members of Congress, like Stefanik. The White House dismissed the report as another in a long line of failed efforts by Republicans to implicate Biden in illegal activity.

Here’s a guide to the story as it stands now, based on interviews with congressional staffers.

Grassley, a ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, sent a May 3 letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland saying they had obtained information through whistleblower disclosures that somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy exists an unclassified FD-1023 form that alleges that Biden, as a vice- president, received money from a foreign national in exchange for favorable political decisions. They said the document included an accurate description of how the alleged criminal scheme was used as well as its purpose.

The Comers committee issued a subpoena for the document with unusual specificity stating that the document was created in June 2020, suggesting lawmakers are certain the form exists. But neither the letter nor the subpoena reveals the country or the policies in question.

The FBI needs to explain whether or not that’s accurate, Grassley said in a May 3 interview on Fox News. But this is based on information that we get from what I think are very credible sources within the ministry.

The FBI has not commented on the letter.

An FD-1023 form is used to record the information of a person whom the FBI considers to be a confidential human source (CHS). This means that it would not be advice from an unknown person that would result in an internal summary known as Form FD-302, but from someone who had been vetted and assessed by the FBI as potentially useful for investigations.

Yet, these sources may not be reliable and such statements are essentially unverified advice. Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was a CHS during the FBI’s investigation into possible links between the Trump administration and Russian agents; he even received payments for his information. He was fired for cause after speaking to the media and many of the allegations he made were proven to be false.

At this point, the claim about Biden can only be called unsubstantiated, though that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from erroneously suggesting that Biden is all but doomed.

Has the complaint been investigated?

It’s not clear. Grassley-Comer’s letter notes that the allegation is so specific that the Justice Department and the FBI should have had enough information to determine the truth and accuracy of the information contained in the document. The subpoena asks for forms that could be in open or closed folders, as well as restricted access folders. It suggests lawmakers are questioning whether the report, once received, was stored in a way that made it more difficult for investigators working on other cases to access it.

The date of the report, June 2020, suggests it was received during the Trump administration, just months before the presidential election. Given Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to tag Biden with criminal activity, it might come as a surprise that Justice Department officials decided against prosecuting.

Do we know the country concerned?

The letter does not name the country. In a May 4 interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Comer said: I know the country and I know the political decisions, but I’m not free to say that.

John Solomon, a former Washington Post reporter who now runs the conservative Just the News news site and is a Trump ally, reported that multiple officials said the case involved Ukraine-related dealings and politics. when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president.

As vice president, Biden was responsible for managing relations with Ukraine, but he pursued policies developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Interestingly, in June 2020, hacked conversations of Biden speaking with Ukrainian officials when he was vice president appeared on the tapes of the conservative One America News network which the New York Times said had been misleadingly edited to making conversations seem harmful.

In 2020, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, actively sought information in Ukraine to discredit Biden, with particular emphasis on any connection between Bidens’ public anti-corruption efforts in the country and his son Hunter Bidens. , lucrative service on the board of a gas company owned by an oligarch. who had been the target of anti-corruption investigations. US intelligence agencies had warned the Trump White House that Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, The Washington Post reported.

It should be recalled that Trump’s first impeachment was for his efforts to tie more aid to the country to having the Ukrainian government investigate Bidens’ actions in the country as vice president. Republicans have never given up on proving that Trump had a reason to do so.

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