Biden's Alleged Briber Bragged It Would Take a Decade to Uncover Payments : FBI Docs
UPDATE, March 22, 2024: On Feb. 14, FBI informant Alexander Smirnov was charged by a special counsel with “fabricating claims” about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, seeking bribes from Burisma, according to The New York Times. The special counsel claims Smirnov lied for “political” reasons.
The CEO of Bursima Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that hired Hunter Biden, told a confidential FBI source that it would take investigators over ten years to find records of illicit payments to President Joe Biden, according to an FBI report released by Congress Thursday.
Burisma Holdings, which was previously under investigation by Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin — until Shokin was fired, allegedly at Joe Biden’s behest in 2016 — had hired Hunter to join its board of directors at a salary of $50,000 per month, despite his having no experience in the energy industry.
Mykola Zlochevsky, the CEO of the company and a former Ukrainian government minister, told a confidential FBI source that the company had made illicit payments to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden to receive political protection and that it would not be possible for investigators to find the payments, according to a redacted FBI Confidential Source Report from 2020 on the conversation.
“Zlochevsky responded it would take them (investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden),” the source reported in 2019, while also noting that Zlochevsky said “he didn’t want to pay the Bidens and he was ‘pushed to pay’ them.”
The payments were allegedly made so that Hunter Biden would “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Burisma, at the time, was seeking to purchase a U.S. company to expand its business as well as stave off a corruption investigation by Shokin, which the source claimed Zlochevsky cited as the reason for the payments.
While the source had advised Zlochevsky against the measure, “Zlochevsky responded that he appreciated [source]’s advice, but that ‘it’s too late to change his decision.’ [The source] understood this to mean that Zlochevsky had already paid the Bidens, presumably to ‘deal with Shokin.’”
At a panel discussion in 2018, Biden recounted an instance in 2016 when, as vice president, he told Ukrainian officials that “if the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money” — referring to the United States’ insistence that Shokin be fired in exchange for aid.
The confidential source’s report was released to the public by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley and Comer received the report from whistleblowers at the FBI, though they had requested it from the Bureau on May 3 after being made aware of its existence.
The report also includes incriminating statements made against both Hunter and Joe Biden by Zlochevsky, namely that “it costs 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden,” suggesting that both Bidens received payments from Burisma Holdings.
The source noted that “at [the] time, it was unclear … whether these alleged payments were already made.”
Zlochevsky is currently a fugitive in Ukraine on separate corruption charges in the country, with his whereabouts being undetermined.
However, he told the source that “he has many text messages and ‘recordings’ that show that he was coerced to make such payments,” to the Bidens.
“[T]hese recordings evidence Zlochevsky was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired,” the report read.
It is a federal crime for a public official to receive a bribe in exchange for performing an official act.
Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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