House subpoenas FBI file on Biden role in ‘criminal scheme’ as new whistleblower emerges
WASHINGTON — In a stunning development, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena Wednesday for an FBI file that a whistleblower said links President Biden to a “criminal scheme” involving “money for policy decisions” during his vice presidency.
The tip is a potential breakthrough for GOP investigators looking into Joe Biden’s role in his family’s business dealings in countries such as China, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.
Republicans say the file pertains to potential wrongdoing by Joe Biden — rather than possible criminal activity by first son Hunter Biden or another relative that indirectly implicates the president.
The alleged corruption is believed to involve a country other than China, The Post understands. Two sources say the whistleblower is not the same person as the IRS agent who anonymously came forward last month to allege a coverup in the criminal investigation of the first son.
The document subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee is an FD-1023 informant report that was “created or modified in June 2020″ — months before Biden won the presidency— and must be supplied at a meeting on May 10, the subpoena says.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that the new whistleblower tip “raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.”
“The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself,” Comer said.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Comer and Senate Budget Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote, “We have received legally protected and highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”
“Based on those disclosures,” the Republicans wrote, “it has come to our attention that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”
The letter, sent alongside the subpoena, adds, “It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose. Based on the alleged specificity within the document, it would appear that the DOJ and the FBI have enough information to determine the truth and accuracy of the information contained within it. However, it remains unclear what steps, if any, were taken to investigate the matter.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams sought to downplay the news.
“For going on five years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically-motivated attacks against the President and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests,” Sams said.
“That’s because they prefer floating anonymous innuendo, amplified by the megaphone of their allies in rightwing media, to get attention and try to distract and deflect from their own unpopular ideas and lack of solutions to the issues the American people actually care about.”
Sams added, “When it comes to President Biden’s personal finances, anybody can take a look: he has offered an unprecedented level of transparency, releasing a total of 25 years of tax returns to the American public.” (Biden has not released information that would show the source of more than $13 million in income in 2017 and 2018 that he and first lady Jill Biden routed through tax-dodge entities known as S Corporations.)
An FBI spokesman said, “The FBI received the subpoena and the letter. We don’t have any additional comment.” A Justice Department spokesman said, “The department has received the letter, and will decline to comment further.”
Grassley said in a Wednesday afternoon appearance on Fox News that “this comes from credible and unclassified whistleblower disclosures, this possible criminal activity when Biden was vice president, and we want this information.”
“The Justice Department, the FBI needs to come clean to the American people [about] what they did with the document, because we know the document exists,” Grassley said.
Hunter and first brother James Biden reaped millions of dollars from business relationships in countries where their powerful relative held sway during and after his vice presidency.
Then-VP Biden interacted with his relatives’ foreign associates on multiple occasions — even though he denied as a presidential candidate ever discussing overseas business with his family.
Among other foreign ventures, Hunter Biden earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the board of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father was put in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Just days after Hunter joined the board, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, at the time a vice presidential aide, told reporters on Air Force Two en route to Kyiv that Joe Biden would push for US support to Ukraine’s natural gas industry, which later that year was awarded $50 million by Congress.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick told The Post that he contacted the FBI this February about Sullivan’s remarks, which were credited to an anonymous US official in a transcript, but that he never heard back.
Visitor logs show Joe Biden met with his son’s business partner Devon Archer in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer, a since-convicted felon, joined the Burisma board and then-VP Biden attended an April 16, 2015, dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano with Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, which also featured his son’s other associates from Russia and Kazakhstan.
Comer and Grassley wrote to the FBI and Justice Department, “The significant public interest in assessing the FBI’s response to this information, as well as growing concern about the DOJ and the FBI’s track record of allowing political bias to infect their decision-making process, necessitate exacting congressional oversight.”
“The DOJ and the FBI appear to have valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people,” the Republicans added. “Therefore, Congress will proceed to conduct an independent and objective review of this matter, free from those agencies’ influence.”
Comer’s investigation of the Biden family’s influence peddling has featured subpoenas for the bank records of their associates, and Oversight Committee staff recently reviewed Suspicious Activity Reports filed by banks to the Treasury Department alerting authorities to potential crimes.
