Top Republicans skeptical about alleged Biden bribery tapes
On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) took to the Senate floor to share what he considered a significant development in the controversy surrounding the alleged Joe Biden bribery scandal. The FBI allegedly redacted information from a tip sheet, Grassley said, that claimed there were audio recordings of conversations between Biden, Hunter Biden and a Burisma executive that allegedly bribed the two Bidens.
It was a major assertion from Grassley, who says he has seen the unredacted FD-1023 tip sheet that House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) successfully subpoenaed for. But Comer isn’t rushing to back up Grassley on this point.
We asked the Kentucky Republican how confident he was that these audio recordings between the Bidens and the Burisma executive actually exist.
“I don’t know that I can answer that right now,” Comer told us. “I would talk to Grassley about it. All I know is it was in the form. That’s all I can say. But the FBI didn’t mention it when they briefed on it.”
Comer isn’t the only Republican steeped in the investigation world that is urging caution on the alleged tapes. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who authored a Senate report on Hunter Biden along with Grassley, told a radio host this week that the claims of tapes should be considered “with a grain of salt.”
“This could be coming from a very corrupt oligarch who could be making this stuff up,” Johnson said on the Vicki McKenna Show. “You have to suspend your judgment until you know more.”
Oversight Democrats, predictably, seized on the uncertainty over the tapes and said it was proof Republicans know the uncorroborated bribery allegations aren’t true.
“I actually think they either know that [the tapes] don’t exist or they know that they will never get them,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) told us. “Instead, what they’re doing is using the veiled reference to them to make allegations that will never be able to be proved or disproved, because they’re not going to find them.”
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) cited his familiar refrain when discussing the FD-1023: former President Donald Trump’s DOJ already looked into this and didn’t pursue charges.
“They checked it out and there was nothing there. I don’t know what we can say about it other than Trump’s own Justice Department and FBI team looked into it,” Raskin said.
Republicans contest that the FD-1023 was referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware’s probe of Hunter Biden. But Democrats say this investigation focuses on Hunter Biden’s tax and gun charges, not Joe Biden’s conduct.
— Max Cohen
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