PHILADELPHIA — President Biden’s supporters are willing to give him a pass on allegations he accepted a $5 million bribe from a Ukraine businessman, but less forgiving are independent voters who will be crucial in the general election next year.
Mr. Biden has laughed it off as “a load of malarkey.”
The crowd was equally dismissive of the bribery allegations at his campaign kickoff Saturday with union leaders, many of whom came from out of state to fill the ballroom at Philadelphia’s convention center.
“It’s one of many conspiracy theories trying to bring Biden down,” said Bill Sciblo, a union representative with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in New Jersey.
His viewpoint was typical of the union activists in the pro-Biden crowd, though most were fully aware of the allegations that Mr. Biden and his family have pocketed money from foreigners in influence-peddling schemes.
Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign got another break on Tuesday when federal prosecutors in Delaware struck a deal with the president’s son, Hunter Biden. The deal ends at least part of the DOJ’s probe of Hunter Biden’s finances with his guilty plea to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges and likely no jail time.
SEE ALSO: Hunter Biden charged with failing to pay federal income tax and illegally having a weapon
One of the most serious allegations out there that directly linked Mr. Biden to a bribe came to the attention of the FBI as early as 2017 but only recently emerged in public.
An informant told the FBI that Mr. Biden, while vice president in the Obama administration, was paid $5 million by an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. The same executive made a separate $5 million payment to Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, according to Republican lawmakers who reviewed an FBI document known as an FD-1023.
The document detailed the information provided to the FBI by a confidential human source described as “a trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for years,” according to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican.
All told, the Burisma executive spent $10 million in exchange for pushing the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma for corruption, according to Mr. Comer and other lawmakers who viewed the FD-1023.
While Mr. Biden’s Democratic base is willing to look the other way, it’s not enough support to carry him to a second term in 2024. He also needs the support of independents. In the 2020 election, Mr. Biden won unaffiliated voters by a margin of 52% to 43%.
Many independents say they are alarmed about the growing bribery scandal that is engulfing the Biden family.
Paul McDole, an independent who lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a key Philadelphia-area battleground for the 2024 election, called Mr. Biden “unethical.”
“His entire family is corrupt,” Mr. McDole said, as he walked off a commuter train. “Everyone keeps trying to distract voters from that by talking about Trump and the documents. But the bribery claims should be taken seriously because it’s also a national security threat.”
Polling suggests the Biden campaign should be concerned about how the bribery allegations are perceived by independent voters.
A Rasmussen survey released last month found that 69% of likely U.S. voters believe the accusations of foreign influence peddling are serious, including 52% who say it’s very serious. The poll found that 72% of unaffiliated voters say it’s at least a somewhat serious scandal, compared to 88% of Republicans and 49% of Democrats who said the same.
That compares to 26% who don’t think the accusations amount to a serious scandal and 15% who say it’s not at all serious.
The same poll found that 65% of unaffiliated voters think it’s at least somewhat likely Mr. Biden personally profited from a pay-for-play scheme. That compares to 85% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats.
A Convention of States Action poll released last week showed that 50.7% of independent voters believe the Biden family received payments from foreign nationals to influence U.S. policy. The same poll found that 89.8% of Republicans and 11.2% of Democrats believe the Biden family received payments from a foreign national in exchange for influencing policy.
Other polls also show Mr. Biden is in trouble generally with independent voters. A recent Gallup poll showed that Mr. Biden’s approval rating among independents is mired at 33%, down from 37% at the end of 2022 and a drastic drop from 61% at the beginning of his presidency.
Former President Donald Trump is in a similar position. His base dismisses the federal and state criminal charges against him as politically motivated. But Mr. Trump also struggles with independent voters.
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week found that roughly 34% of independents and Republicans are less likely to vote for Mr. Trump because of his criminal charges in New York and Florida.
About 11% of those voters said the criminal charges make them more likely to support Mr. Trump. A 51% majority said it doesn’t make a difference.
The FD-1023 document, dated June 30, 2020, details FBI agents’ interviews with a “highly credible” confidential source who detailed multiple meetings between Mr. Biden and a top Burisma executive.
According to lawmakers who reviewed the documents, which were not classified but highly protected by FBI officials, the Burisma executive asked the informant for help linking Burisma with a U.S. energy company. The alleged meetings occurred in 2015 or 2016 when Mr. Biden was vice president and spearheading Ukraine policy.
The source asked the Burisma executive why help was needed if the company had Hunter Biden on its board. The executive responded that Hunter was “dumb” and that he had paid $5 million to Hunter Biden and $5 million to Mr. Biden through a variety of accounts that would take years to disentangle.
The executive is believed to be Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, though that remains unconfirmed.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said last week he read the FD-1023 with minimal redactions and it included a claim that the Burisma executive kept 15 audio recordings of conversations with Hunter Biden and two with Mr. Biden as “sort of an insurance policy” in case got into “a tight spot.”
“That’s why it’s important that the document be made public without the necessary redactions for the American people to see,” Mr. Grassley said.
The confidential source said Burisma paid the Bidens because Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was probing Burisma and that would make it hard for the firm to enter the U.S. market, according to lawmakers.
Mr. Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he pushed Ukraine to fire Mr. Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion of U.S. aid.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Mr. Biden recalled telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2018.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired,” Mr. Biden continued. “And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Mr. Trump was impeached by the Democratic-run House for urging Ukraine to investigate similar allegations of corruption involving Mr. Biden. The Republican-run Senate acquitted Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden’s defenders maintain that he urged Mr. Shokin’s firing because he was corrupt, and that the Obama administration’s official policy position was that the prosecutor should be fired.
An FD-1023 form is used by FBI agents to record interviews with confidential human sources, but it doesn’t validate the information.
It also remains unclear if the recordings do exist and whether they show what is alleged by the confidential human source. Mr. Grassley stopped short of claiming the recordings are real, only that the FBI and Justice Department should investigate their existence.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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