In a Senate floor speech on Monday, Chuck Grassley said an FBI document that he had seen, detailing unverified claims of a confidential source, revealed that a Ukrainian gas company executive who allegedly bribed President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden made audio tapes of phone conversations with them.
While he did not say that the FD-1023 form disclosed any of the supposed conversations between the president, his son and the Burisma official, the senior Republican senator for Iowa claimed it said there were 17 such recordings in the executive's possession.
House Republicans are investigating accusations of bribery and corruption on the part of Joe Biden during his time as vice president. It has been claimed that Biden pushed for Ukraine's top prosecutor at the time to be fired in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the Burisma board between 2014 and 2019. Hunter Biden denies any wrongdoing.
Asked about the allegations in a press conference on Thursday, Joe Biden said: "Where's the money? I'm joking. It's a bunch of malarkey."
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, along with Grassley, subpoenaed the FBI for access to the FD-1023 form in May, and House members were finally able to view the document behind closed doors last week.
NBC News reported on June 2, citing a senior law enforcement source, that the FBI and a U.S. attorney appointed by former President Donald Trump had reviewed the allegations against the Bidens in 2020, but had found the claims to be unsubstantiated.
Grassley said while speaking to the Senate that the FD-1023 document he had read showed "the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them—17 such recordings."
He continued: "According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden. According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden."
Grassley said the document noted the confidential human source as saying the recordings "were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot."
He also said the FBI form "indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden."
Trump's former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, previously claimed that Joe Biden assisted his son with his business dealings in Ukraine—an allegation the president has denied. Hunter Biden has said he did not discuss his business dealings with his father.
According to Fox News, which has not seen the form but spoke to several sources who were aware of its contents, the confidential source referenced "the Big Guy," who is said to be Joe Biden, but added that the Burisma executive told the source that he "didn't pay the Big Guy directly."
Newsweek reached out to the White House and a lawyer for Hunter Biden via email for comment on Tuesday. The FBI declined to comment.
Grassley said that a copy of the FD-1023 document provided to the House Oversight Committee was "filled with redactions," while the version he and Comer had read "had maybe two or three half-inch redactions, not whole sentences redacted."
Mention of the audio recordings was redacted in the version shown to the House Overside Committee, he said.
The FBI had shown the form to Congress, but did not give possession of it, despite being unclassified, he said. Grassley accused the Biden administration and the FBI of "playing games with the American people."
An FD-1023 form is "used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting by a confidential human source," the agency has said.
The FBI previously told Newsweek that such forms only report a human source's claims, rather than additionally weighing the truth of those claims against other information the FBI has obtained.
While such information was "critical to the work of the FBI," it said, "revealing unverified or possibly incomplete information could harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputations, [or] create misimpressions in the public."
It is not publicly known whether the recordings supposedly mentioned in the FD-1023 form exist, whose possession they would be in or what they might contain.
Who Is Mykola Zlochevsky: Former Ukraine Minister Allegedly Behind FBI Hunter Biden "Tip?"
Mykola Zlochevsky was identified by a U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Committee on Finance report in 2020 as the owner of Burisma.
He founded the company in 2002, which began gas production in 2006, and, as of 2019, held 35 licenses for hydrocarbon production in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Zlochevsky was the Ukrainian Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources from 2010 to 2012, before becoming a member of the nation's National Security and Defense Council—both positions he held under former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.
The Ukrainian Supreme Anti-Corruption Court is seeking to try him in absentia over allegations of trying to bribe Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office with $5 million in benefits, Ukrainian outlet Slovo i Delo reported in February.
One source familiar with the contents of the FD-1023 document suggested to Fox News that Zlochevsky could be the confidential source cited in the form, but added that the Burisma executive's identity is redacted.
Update 06/14/23, 7:32 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from the FBI.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
