A paid informant told the FBI that an executive from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma has documents proving he bribed President Biden with $5 million while he was vice president.
The “trusted” and “highly credible” FBI informant said Burisma paid the bribe between 2015 and 2016 to solicit Mr. Biden’s help in thwarting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company, The Washington Times has confirmed. Mr. Biden was vice president at the time.
Burisma paid an additional $5 million to Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who served on the board at the time and received a $1 million annual salary at the energy company. The scheme was concealed using multiple bank accounts, according to the informant.
Details of the FBI informant’s previously undisclosed allegations were revealed after the House Oversight and Accountability Committee was granted access to the FBI memo in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol on June 8.
In response to these allegations, the GOP-led panel plans a round of subpoenas in the coming days that will seek new financial documents from Biden family associates, sources told The Times.
The panel chairman, James Comer, Kentucky Republican, and ranking member Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, will also review additional FBI memos documenting earlier conversations with the paid informant about the Burisma bribery allegations.
SEE ALSO: Lawmaker reveals details of Burisma-Biden bribe allegation in secret FBI document
No recording equipment or note-taking was allowed when lawmakers viewed the FBI memo on June 8, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, said she quickly memorialized what she read from the memo and wrote detailed notes so she could report it to the media. The information she released was verified independently by The Times from a high-ranking source familiar with the document.
“It was all bribery, to get [Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin] fired and end the investigation into Burisma,” the informant told the FBI in the memo.
The bribery scheme took place between 2015 and 2016, the informant said, when Burisma was “looking to buy a U.S.-based oil and gas company” and wanted to “make the problems go away” with Mr. Shokin.
Mrs. Greene said the informant revealed that the foreigner said he has “two pieces of evidence showing proof of payment to Hunter and specifically, Joe Biden.”
Nobody would find out about the Biden family payments for at least a decade, the informant was told by the Burisma official, “because of how many bank accounts there were.”
The FBI first heard the informant’s bribery claims in 2017 and they reinterviewed him about the matter in 2020.
The bombshell bribery allegations were forwarded in 2020 to Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, who is investigating Hunter Biden on charges related to tax fraud and a gun purchase.
According to House investigators, Mr. Weiss has not provided information about the Hunter Biden probe or whether he is looking into the FBI informant’s allegations about the bribery scheme.
Separately, two IRS whistleblowers claim the Justice Department is intentionally slow-walking the Hunter Biden investigation and providing the president’s son with preferential treatment.
The president said allegations that he took bribes from foreigners are “malarkey.”
“Where’s the money? I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Mr. Biden said at the end of a press conference Thursday with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Oversight panel has spent months delving into the Biden family’s foreign business deals and a web of businesses and bank accounts that Republican investigators believe were created to hide a pay-for-play scheme involving Mr. Biden that dates back more than a decade.
Bank records obtained by congressional investigators reveal that Biden family members and business associates received millions in foreign payments from China, Romania and other countries.
Democrats say the investigation is politically motivated and has come up empty. They say the bribery charges were ginned up by Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, and were dismissed by the FBI as groundless. Mr. Shokin was fired without Mr. Biden’s involvement and due to his failure to prosecute corruption cases, Democrats say.
But Mr. Biden boasted about his effort to get Mr. Shokin removed during a Jan. 23, 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Biden said he threatened then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if he did not fire Mr. Shokin.
“If the prosecutor is not fired, you are not getting the money,” Mr. Biden said he told Mr. Poroshenko.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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