Former President Trump’s GOP allies are seeking dirt on President Biden and other Democrats amid the former president’s impeachment, and this week they are targeting Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is pushing the claims of an influence-peddling operation, prompting fierce denials from the White House.
The unverified claims involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden are murky, but they are being aired by the 89-year-old Iowa Republican, who was invited to make a presentation to the Senate Republican Leadership Committee on Wednesday about the claims made by an unnamed foreigner. .
Grassley doesn’t have much to say, aside from an FBI Form FD-1023 that states the unnamed alien claimed to have two taped phone conversations with then-Vice President Biden and 15 taped phone conversations with Hunter Biden, revealing what the Iowa senator described as an “alleged bribery scheme.”
Biden allies say Grassley is trying to recycle unsubstantiated and debunked claims former President Trump made before the 2020 election accusing Biden of doing political favors as vice president to help Hunter Biden’s Ukraine-related businesses.
“Republicans are once again reminding Americans that they are doing Donald Trump’s dirty political work, and that tells you all you need to know about the seriousness of these political stunts,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. .
“Republicans in Congress openly admit that they are peddling debunked conspiracy theories in a shameful attempt to improve their political prospects heading into 2024,” the spokesman said.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and his supporters floated the claim that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to stop the investigation of his son, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for being member of the board of Burisma. a Ukrainian energy company.
The Associated Press at the time described the accusation as “a widely discredited theory”.
Grassley does not know if the phone recordings exist or if the FBI was able to locate them. But he says the FBI has been very reluctant to discuss the information contained in the document, even though it is not classified.
Grassley, the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, are the only two Capitol Hill Republicans who have read the unredacted version of the document .
Other GOP lawmakers have read a redacted version that removed the reference to the unnamed alien’s claim.
“I was asked to make a presentation to the caucus,” Grassley said of his briefing. “I read the unredacted version [of the FD-1023 form]so I know more than the members of the House Oversight Committee.
“The only judgment we’re trying to make is whether the FBI is doing its job,” he said. “They haven’t communicated with me.”
Grassley also discussed the issue in detail during a speech on the Senate floor on Monday.
“As I have asked on several occasions since I made public the existence of 1023: What, if anything, has the Justice Department and the FBI done to investigate?” he said
The veteran lawmaker said he is trying to get the FBI to share the FD-1023 form, a standard document that describes a source’s allegations, more widely with the public and the media. According to the Society of Former FBI Special Agents, the FD-1023 is the form used by special agents to record raw, unverified reports from confidential human sources.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said this month that the FBI and the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Bill Barr reviewed the allegations made by the unnamed foreigner and found not to merit further investigation.
Raskin said the FD-1023 form Grassley and Comer reviewed contained a complaint from the unnamed alien who relayed a conversation with another person and that the source could not corroborate the information.
Raskin dismissed the claim as “hearsay” and argued that the “confidential human source said he had no way of knowing the underlying veracity of the things he was being told,” according to a New York Times report .
NBC News, citing a senior law enforcement official, reported this month that the FBI and Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, reviewed the allegation in 2020 and finding that the bribery charge was unfounded.
Republican senators say that if any evidence emerges that Biden was involved in improper activity that benefited Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden handsomely to serve on its board, it could shake up the political landscape ahead of the election. of 2024.
Some GOP senators are skeptical of the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the allegations against the Bidens, despite Trump’s Justice Department’s initial assessment that they did not warrant further investigation.
“I think the FBI is the greatest law enforcement agency in the history of mankind, but some Americans, many Americans, have lost a lot of confidence in them,” said Senator John Kennedy ( R-La.), who cited then-FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to investigate both Hillary Clinton and Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
Republicans in the House and Senate who are aligned with Trump have deepened the argument that the FBI and Justice Department have been weaponized for political reasons.
Kennedy asked Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee “and tell us what’s going on.”
“If they say, ‘We’ve got 1023, we’re investigating,’ I think you’ll see most people back off,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (NC), another Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Republican lawmakers want to know more about why Brady, the U.S. attorney, decided not to investigate the allegation.
“Why on earth, if you really think there’s no ‘there’, wouldn’t you answer the simple question of how you come to that decision?” Tillis said, summing up a discussion among his fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee Thursday morning.
“If there’s an active investigation, we withdraw, we let the investigation go,” he said. “It’s not unprecedented to say, ‘Let’s get to the facts that allowed a U.S. attorney not to pursue this.’
Tillis said Republicans are “suspicious.”
“There may be an active investigation [and] they don’t want it known,” he said. “Why don’t they solve the problem by telling us the facts that led them to not go ahead.”
Still, even some Republican senators are skeptical of an anonymous claim that Biden was involved in a bribery scheme.
“I’ve known President Biden for probably 25 years. I like him, I respect him, I disagree with him more times than not, but if you ask me, ‘Is Joe Biden the type of person who would accept a bribe of 5 million dollars,’ my answer is, in my experience, no,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.C.) said at a business meeting of the Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Graham is the committee’s ranking member and has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
So far, GOP senators have been largely content to leave the Biden investigation to Comer and other Republican members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
But the slow progress, combined with growing concerns about Trump’s legal troubles, have prompted GOP senators to look for ways to get more involved in pushing for the FBI to look into Biden’s dealings before he wins the 2020 election.
A Republican senator familiar with internal conversations said Republican senators have barely talked to each other about the 37-count indictment that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump last week.
Instead, they are focusing on trying to level the political playing field by finding a “game changer” they hope will put some scrutiny on Biden, the senator said.
