Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray recently told Congress that information about the Biden family’s bribery scheme was unknown to him or the agency until recently. The director’s testimony seems to be at odds with assertions made by a former U.S. attorney.
Wray Misdirects Congress Over FBI’s Burying Of Credible Biden Bribery Reporthttps://t.co/QOVbBfpiJn
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) December 6, 2023
While testifying before Congress, Wray told lawmakers that he had not learned of the confidential human source’s (CHS) report that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma bribed the Biden family until “much, much, much more recently than anything around 2020.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IO) grilled the FBI director on the agency’s handling of reporting on the Biden family’s link to Burisma from June 2020. The Iowa congressman pointed out that the CHS’s report was “highly credible” and resembled the Biden family’s corruption.
In June 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr ordered the U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to review evidence associated with the Ukrainian energy giant and the Biden’s.
During the review process, then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady requested for the FBI to interview a CHS who had reported that Burisma offered Hunter Biden a seat at the table, which the first son ultimately took up.
In July 2023, Wray released an FD-1023 form, which FBI agents use to confirm reports by confidential human sources. The document summarized CHS’s report that Burisma had bribed then-Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter with $5 billion each so that the then-vice president could protect the corrupt Ukrainian energy company “from all kinds of problems.”
The lucrative bribes added to the $4 million that Burisma reportedly paid Hunter and the first son’s then-business partner Devon Archer for serving on the company’s board of directors.
In his testimony, Wray failed to provide a specific timeframe for when he learned of the FD-1023 document.
The FBI director’s comments don’t seem valid, considering that in Brady’s testimony to Congress, the former U.S. attorney said the FBI’s headquarters were required to “sign off for any investigative steps that FBI Pittsburgh was asked to take by” Wray’s office.
“It was my understanding that they could not take any steps absent the approval, the review and approval of FBI headquarters, not just the leadership of FBI Pittsburgh,” Brady said during his testimony.
Brady added that every 30 days, the FBI had to renew the assessment it had established alongside the U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh relating to Ukraine. In the case involving Burisma and the Biden family, Brady testified that “it required 17 different people, including mostly at the headquarters level to sign off on it before the assessment could be extended.”
