A paid informant told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that an executive from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma has documents proving he bribed President Joe Biden with $5 million while he was Vice President.
According to Washington Times, the “trusted” and “highly credible” FBI informant said Burisma paid the bribe between 2015 and 2016 to solicit then Vice President Biden‘s help in thwarting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company.
Burisma paid an additional $5 million to the President Biden’s son, Hunter, who served on Burisma‘s board at the time and received a $1 million annual salary at the energy company. The scheme was concealed using multiple bank accounts, according to the informant.
Details of the FBI informant’s previously undisclosed allegations were revealed after the House Oversight and Accountability Committee was granted access to the FBI memo in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol on 8th June.
In response to these allegations, the Republican Party-led panel plans a round of subpoenas in the coming days that will seek new financial documents from Biden family associates, sources told Washington Times.
The panel chairman and Kentucky Republican, James Comer; and ranking member Jamie Raskin (Maryland Democrat), will also review additional FBI memos documenting earlier conversations with the paid informant about the Burisma bribery allegations.
No recording equipment or note-taking was allowed when lawmakers viewed the FBI memo on Thursday, but Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia Republican) said she quickly memorialised what she read from the memo and wrote detailed notes in order to report it to the media. The information she released was verified independently by Washington Times from a high-ranking source familiar with the document.
“It was all bribery, to get (Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin) fired and end the investigation into Burisma,” the informant told the FBI in the memo.
According to the informant, the bribery scheme took place between 2015 and 2016, when Burisma was “looking to buy a U.S.-based oil and gas company” and wanted to “make the problems go away” with Shokin.
Greene said the informant revealed that the foreigner said he has “two pieces of evidence showing proof of payment to Hunter and specifically, Joe Biden.”
Nobody would find out about the Biden family payments for at least a decade, the informant was told by the Burisma official, “because of how many bank accounts there were.”
The FBI first heard the informant’s bribery claims in 2017 and they re-interviewed him about the matter in 2020.
The bombshell bribery allegations were forwarded in 2020 to Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, who is investigating Hunter Biden on charges related to tax fraud and a gun purchase.
According to House investigators, Weiss has not provided information about Hunter probe or whether he is looking into the FBI informant’s allegations about the bribery scheme.
Separately, two IRS whistleblowers claim the Justice Department is intentionally slow-walking the Hunter investigation and providing the President’s son with preferential treatment.
President Biden said allegations that he took bribes from foreigners are “malarkey”.
“Where’s the money? I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey,” President Biden said at the end of a press conference Thursday with United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The oversight panel has spent months delving into the Biden family’s foreign business deals and a web of businesses and bank accounts that Republican investigators believe were created to hide a pay-for-play scheme involving President Biden that dates back more than a decade.