Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent an extensive letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, announcing that dozens of FBI human sources gave the agency "criminal information" about Hunter Biden, James Biden and Joe Biden himself dating back to his time as vice president. In addition, Grassley stated that Justice Department officials attempted, in many cases successfully, to discredit the information transmitted by whistleblowers as "foreign disinformation."
According to Grassley's letter, first revealed by Fox News, the confidential human sources were handled by several FBI field offices across the country, including the Seattle field office.
However, the senator explained in his letter that an FBI working group within the Washington field office torpedoed the investigations into the complaints by falsely discrediting the information transmitted as foreign disinformation.
According to Grassley, the efforts of said office "caused investigative activity to cease."
The senator said in the letter that multiple U.S. attorney's offices investigated one of the sources and their information, demonstrating that the FBI task force falsely discredited some of the allegations.
"Based on the information provided to my office over a period of years by multiple credible whistleblowers, there appears to be an effort within the Justice Department and FBI to shut down investigative activity relating to the Biden family," Grassley wrote to Garland and Wray. "Such decisions point to significant political bias infecting the decision-making of not only the Attorney General and FBI Director, but also line agents and prosecutors."
"Our Republic cannot survive such a political infection and you have an obligation to this country to clear the air," the senator added.
.@ChuckGrassley letter to Director Wray, AG Garland "I've been made aware that at one point in time the FBI maintained over 40 Confidential Human Sources that provided criminal information relating to Joe Biden, James Biden, and Hunter Biden.” 👇https://t.co/d2TBGrxIrL pic.twitter.com/XftbEAlsz8
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) October 26, 2023
Grassley noted in the letter that "there is — and has been — an effort among certain Justice Department and FBI officials to improperly delay and stop full and complete investigative activity into the Biden family, including but not limited to FD-1023s referencing the Biden family."
FD-1023s are reports the FBI generates to document confidential reports from human sources. One of the most famous FD-1023s of recent months, which was based on information transmitted by a "highly credible" FBI source, stated that Hunter and Joe Biden were bribed by Ukrainian tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, CEO of Burisma, the gas company where Hunter Biden served as director, receiving a salary of about $80,000 per month.
Zlochevsky and Burisma were being investigated by Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor whom the Government of Ukraine fired under pressure from Joe Biden during his time as vice president. The FBI source said Shokin's firing was related to the alleged bribery, which the White House denied.
According to Grassley, in December 2019, the FBI's own Washington Field Office closed a "205B" kleptocracy case on Zlochevsky, an investigation that had been ongoing for almost four years after a Corrupt Practices Act group Abroad from the same office opened the investigations.
The timing of the closure of said investigation raises suspicion because it happened right in the middle of the first impeachment trial against Donald Trump.
In 2020, the Republican senator revealed that an FBI Field Office meeting was held in Pittsburgh where Hunter Biden's business dealings and related investigations were discussed.
In March of that year, an assessment was opened in that FBI office to analyze the information about the Bidens provided by Trump's then-lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who leaked the details of the computer lost by Hunter in Delaware. As a result of the assessment, several FBI and DOJ officials detected an FD-1023 from March 1, 2017, that had been discarded in the first instance by the agent in charge.
"When that FD-1023 was discovered, Justice Department and FBI officials asked the handler for the Confidential Human Source to re-interview that CHS," Grassley said.
Then, when the new interview was conducted, a new FD-1023 was created in June 2020, alleging a criminal scheme between then-Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden, and Zlochevsky.
For this reason, Grassley asked Garland and Wray if the DOJ and FBI had correctly followed up on the information or, on the contrary, had quietly closed the investigations.
The Republican senator also stated that federal prosecutors and officials in the Pittsburgh office were very limited in their abilities to investigate the complaints because most of their work was reduced to the evaluation and verification of data. However, they could not issue subpoenas or search warrants.
Grassley ultimately demanded a response to his letter from the FBI and the Department of Justice by November 17.
