The U.S. attorney assigned to look into the Biden family’s deals in Ukraine, including allegations of pocketing a $10 million bribe, told House lawmakers that the Justice Department and FBI significantly hobbled his investigation.
Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, described to lawmakers in a closed-door interview on Monday that the top brass at the FBI showed intense interest in his investigation of the Bidens’ ties to a Ukrainian energy company. The bureau, he said, tried to slow down or halt his investigation at every turn.
According to a transcript reviewed by The Washington Times, Mr. Brady said the FBI special agents he assigned to work on the investigation were frequently stalled or blocked from pursuing the case by top officials at FBI headquarters.
At one point, his team was blocked from advancing the investigation for five months.
“It was incredibly challenging, and we did not make much progress at all,” said Mr. Brady, who resigned as U.S. attorney in February 2021.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen tasked Mr. Brady in 2020 with determining the credibility of evidence and claims related to the Bidens and their business dealings in Ukraine.
SEE ALSO: House investigators seek proof of Biden’s $200K loan from brother
A key piece of evidence under Mr. Brady’s review was the transcript of an interview with one of the FBI’s most credible confidential human sources who said he was told that then-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden each accepted a $5 million bribe from the owner of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Mr. Brady determined that the allegation was credible enough to warrant further investigation and alerted three U.S. attorney’s offices, including the Delaware office investigating Hunter Biden on tax fraud charges.
None of them followed up.
Mr. Brady conducted his investigation while Mr. Biden was running for president and concluded weeks before the 2020 election, when Mr. Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee.
“I think there was reluctance on the part of the FBI to really do any tasking related to our assignment … looking into allegations of Ukrainian corruption broadly and then specifically anything that intersected with Hunter Biden and his role in Burisma. It was very challenging,” Mr. Brady told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Brady’s agents, assigned to him from the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, were required to obtain an unusual level of permission from FBI headquarters to advance every aspect of the investigation, he said.
SEE ALSO: Biden accused of pocketing a $5 million bribe while vice president
In at least one instance, 17 FBI officials were required to sign off on extending Mr. Brady’s pursuit of Ukraine-related information involving the Bidens.
“There was a larger group at the FBI, including FBI headquarters, that had eyes on what was happening, and which required signoff for any investigative steps that FBI Pittsburgh was asked to take by us,” Mr. Brady said.
The House Judiciary Committee interviewed Mr. Brady as part of its inquiry into whether the Justice Department interfered in the federal government’s investigation into Hunter Biden on tax fraud and gun violations and whether investigators were blocked from pursuing evidence of corruption involving President Biden.
Separately on Wednesday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, alerted FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “an effort among certain Justice Department and FBI officials to improperly delay and stop full and complete investigative activity into the Biden family.”
Mr. Grassley, who has been investigating the Biden family’s foreign business deals for several years, said he has tracked more than 40 confidential sources who have provided allegations to the FBI of crimes related to the family’s business deals.
Mr. Biden, now under a House impeachment inquiry into the corruption allegations, has denied them all and said he was not involved in his family’s business deals.
Mr. Brady’s investigation involved one of the most sensational allegations, bribery of Mr. Biden, while he was vice president, and his team determined it was credible enough to warrant more examination, he told House lawmakers.
The allegations are described in an unclassified document that the FBI had concealed for years.
In the document, a longtime credible FBI source reported that Burisma executives told him they hired Hunter Biden to serve on the board of their gas company to “protect us through his dad from all kinds of problems.” The source also told the FBI that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky claimed in 2015 or 2016 that he had to pay $5 million to Hunter Biden and $5 million to Vice President Biden in exchange for their help shaking off a corruption probe into the company.
Mr. Brady’s investigative team “felt that there were sufficient indicia of credibility … to merit further investigation” into the claim.
In late October 2020, Mr. Brady’s office provided the document and a “substantive briefing” on their findings to the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware, which was investigating Hunter Biden on the tax fraud and gun charges.
Among those at the briefing was Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, whom IRS whistleblowers have accused of slow-walking or interfering in their probe of Hunter Biden in the tax fraud case. The whistleblowers said Ms. Wolf also blocked their attempts to follow evidence they discovered that may have implicated Mr. Biden, who was then the Democratic presidential nominee.
The group listened to the presentation by Brady’s team without asking any questions and never followed up on it, Mr. Brady said.
He told investigators that his office had difficulty developing a channel of communication with the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware regarding his probe of Ukraine and the Biden family.
“I think there was both a skepticism of the information we were developing, that we had received, and skepticism and then weariness of the information,” Mr. Brady said. “I think they were very concerned about any information-sharing with our office.”
Mr. Brady said the lack of cooperation forced him to intervene on behalf of his investigators and involve David Weiss, then the U.S. attorney for Delaware who has since been appointed special counsel in the Hunter Biden tax fraud and gun crime case.
Mr. Brady said he was kept in the dark about crucial developments in the federal government’s developing case against Hunter Biden.
He did not learn about Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop until he read about it in the news.
Mr. Brady said he was surprised that the FBI did not alert him to the laptop sooner.
“Especially, as has been reported, there’s information relating to Hunter Biden’s activities on the board of Burisma in Ukraine that might have been helpful in our assessment of the information that we were receiving about him,” Mr. Brady said. “I would have expected that to be shared.”
House investigators have been examining the Biden family’s business deals for months, scouring bank records and interviewing witnesses who worked with Hunter Biden or played a role in investigating him or other family members.
The investigation, led by the Republican majority, has determined that Biden family members and their associates pocketed more than $20 million from business deals with China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania and other countries by leveraging Mr. Biden’s powerful position.
Investigators have also determined that Mr. Biden was not only aware of the business deals but also phoned in or showed up in person at his son’s business meetings.
Last week, lawmakers produced a $200,000 check to Mr. Biden from his brother James Biden, who had just been paid from a business deal with a rural hospital operator. The check was labeled as a loan repayment.
Democrats have dismissed the allegations against Mr. Biden as baseless and politically motivated.
Justice Department officials have not responded to an inquiry from The Times about Mr. Brady’s testimony. Mr. Garland denies taking steps to shield Mr. Biden or his son.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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