The FBI has released an unclassified document that alleges Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, “coerced” Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky to pay the Bidens millions of dollars for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired.
The document, which was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, which was based on disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers. It contains information from a confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations they had with Zlochevsky over the course of many years starting in 2015.
According to the document, in 2015 or 2016, during the Obama/Biden Administration, Zlochevsky was introduced to the source at the Burisma office, where the purpose of the meeting was to discuss Burisma’s interest in purchasing a US-based oil and gas business for the purpose of merging it with Burisma for an upcoming initial public offering (IPO) in the US.
During the meeting, the source was told Hunter Biden and former prime minister of Poland, Leszek Miller, sat on the board of Burisma. According to the document, Vadim Pojarskii, Burisma’s chief financial officer, said, “Hunter Biden was not smart, and they wanted to get additional counsel.”
Jumping ahead to a later meeting between the source and Zlochevsky in Vienna, Zlochevsky said of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, “They both did” when asked whether they told Zlochevsky to retain Hunter.
The source further detailed a conversation he had with Zlochevsky in 2017, shortly after President Trump was elected. When asked whether he was concerned about Burisma’s involvement with the Bidens, Zlochevsky said he did not want to pay the Bidens and he was “pushed to pay” them.
The source also noted that, in response to whether he had backup proof of his claims, Zlochevsky said he had “many text messages and ‘recordings’ that show that he was coerced to make such payments” to the Bidens.
The form jumps to a 2019 telephone call between the source and Ostapenko, in which they discussed “various business matters” unrelated to Burisma. When asked about the recent news reports involving the Bidens and Burisma, Zlochevsky asked if the CHS was an ‘oracle’ and said he did not send any funds directly to the ‘Big Guy’ (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden).
However, when asked how many companies and bank accounts he controlled, Zlochevsky said it would take investigators “10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).”
For his part, Joe Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption, and say that his firing, at the time, was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.
White House spokesman Ian Sams released a statement in response to the documents, saying the claims have “been debunked for years” and that “it is well past time for news organizations to hold them to basic levels of factual accountability for their repeated and increasingly desperate efforts to mislead both the public and the press.”
In his statement, Grassley said: “The FBI’s Biden Bribery Record tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee’s Biden family influence-peddling investigation […] That sounds an awful lot like how the Bidens conduct business: using multiple bank accounts to hide the source and total amount of the money.”
Comer has since gone so far as to issue a subpoena to the FBI to turn over the unredacted document to Congress. The FBI did not comply, but instead, made accommodations to allow lawmakers to review the document in a secure setting last month.
These latest developments raise questions about whether Joe and Hunter Biden were indeed involved in a bribery scheme and could open up additional lines of inquiry into the Bidens’ financial dealings in Ukraine. It is unclear what the Justice Department or the FBI will do next, but one thing is certain, this story is sure to draw renewed attention from both Republicans and Democrats in the coming days.
Hunter already runs one out of your house. https://t.co/9mCIwk1He2
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) July 17, 2023
