Miranda Devine: FBI, Director Christopher Wray Are in for a Rude Wake-up Call Over Hunter Biden Investigation

Conservative News DailyAugust 2, 2022

FBI Director Christopher Wray always seems a little too pleased with himself. But on Thursday, the smirk may be wiped off his pretty face when Republican members of the House Oversight Committee start grilling him on the mounting evidence that something is very rotten inside the agency Wray runs.

At the top of the list is the curious question of why the FBI apparently did nothing with Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was handed to two agents on Dec. 9, 2019, by John Paul Mac Isaac, the alarmed owner of the computer repair shop near the Biden family homes in Greenville, Del., where Hunter had dropped off his MacBook eight months earlier.

Among other potential crimes to be found on the abandoned laptop, you would expect the FBI to be interested, on national security grounds, in the incriminating evidence of a corrupt foreign influence-peddling scheme run by the Biden family throughout Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

Equally curious is why the FBI apparently did nothing with another voluminous trove of corroborating material, given to it in October 2020 by Hunter’s former business partner, Navy veteran Tony Bobulinski, including emails and other documents that replicate those on Hunter’s laptop.

Bobulinski has said he was interviewed for several hours by FBI agents, as part of an investigation into Hunter, after he held a bombshell press conference on Oct. 22, 2020, alleging that then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had lied when he claimed to have no involvement in Hunter’s foreign deals. Bobulinski also said that Joe Biden was the “Big Guy” referred to by Hunter’s partners in encrypted messages and intercepted voice messages.

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the fiscal year 2023 budget for the FBI in Washington, DC on Wednesday, May 25, 2022. — Congress members could air their grievances over how FBI Director Christopher Wray and his agency are handling the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, speaks to guests during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, April 18, 2022, in Washington. — Hunter Biden was being surveilled by the FBI at least since 2018.

According to one email, the “Big Guy” was slated to receive a 10% stake in Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden’s lucrative joint venture with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

On the feds’ radar

We know the FBI was surveilling Hunter on Oct. 23, 2018, because agents showed up to the Biden family’s local high-end grocery store in Greenville, at the same time as Delaware state police arrived to investigate a strange incident in which his sister-in-law-turned-lover, Hallie Biden, had thrown his new gun in a trash can, only to find it missing when Hunter instructed her to retrieve it.

We also know that the FBI was wiretapping Hunter’s partners at the Chinese firm, CEFC, which was a front for Chinese military intelligence, so agents would have picked up some or all of the conversations the VP’s son had between 2015 and 2018 with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming, director Jianjun Zang and associate Patrick Ho, the Chinese spies who would give him millions of dollars.

The FBI’s surveillance of Ho was revealed during his bribery trial after he was arrested at JFK Airport on November 18, 2017. In a voice memo on his laptop, Hunter described Ho, who paid him $1 million as a “legal retainer,” as the “spy chief of China,” which intelligence experts say is an exaggeration.

President Joe Biden speaks about the economy during a meeting with CEOs in the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington, Thursday, July 28, 2022. — President Biden was slated to receive a 10% stake in Hunter and Jim Biden’s joint venture with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

We also know that Hunter has been under investigation since 2018 by the US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, for possible tax and money laundering activities, as well as potential foreign agent violations, and that a grand jury in Delaware has heard testimony from several of his former business partners and lovers.

We know that at least one of those witnesses was asked “who is the Big Guy,” suggesting that the investigation into Hunter Biden may involve his father.

So why, in the face of all this evidence, has the FBI done nothing at least to allay fears that the president is compromised when it comes to China?

Now Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says whistleblowers have come forward with allegations that the FBI was covering up the Hunter Biden information. There was “a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”

Grassley claims that the FBI was investigating Hunter’s “criminal financial and related activity” in 2020, and it may have a “potential counterintelligence component.’”

Grassley sounds alarm

Grassley laid out the allegations last week in a letter to Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In August 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten “opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease. Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” Grassley wrote.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks during a committee business meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 28, 2022. — Sen. Chuck Grassley says whistleblowers have come forward with allegations that the FBI was covering up the Hunter Biden information.

Further, Auten, a veteran intelligence analyst, was central to the FBI’s farcical Crossfire Hurricane investigation, in July 2016, of the phony Steele dossier “pee tape” cooked up by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to smear then-candidate Donald Trump as a Russian agent.

Grassley’s whistleblowers also accused Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault of “falsely portray[ing] as disinformation evidence acquired from multiple sources that provided the FBI derogatory information related to Hunter Biden’s financial and foreign business activities, even though some of that information had already been or could be verified.”

Were Thibault or Auten involved in the handling of Hunter’s laptop or Bobulinski’s information?

Was Hunter or Jim Biden, or indeed Joe Biden, ever given a defensive briefing from the FBI to warn them that CEFC was a front for Chinese intelligence?

Video shows Hunter Biden at Blue Water Wellness in Newburyport, Mass., smoking and drinking during a float therapy session on Jan. 30, 2019.

If no defensive briefing was given, says a seasoned former intelligence official, that could indicate that FBI counterintelligence already was investigating one or more of the Bidens.

An alternative theory is that Hunter, despite being a degenerate crack addict at the time, may have become an informal FBI source during the Biden vice presidency, because of his extraordinary access, thanks to his father’s influence, to the Russian oligarchs in Vladimir Putin’s inner sanctum and to top Communist Party officials in China.

“The hope was that Chris Wray would move away from the politicization at the FBI,” John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

“But this whistleblower complaint very clearly on his watch [says] these FBI agents were attempting to influence the outcome of the 2020 election by suppressing derogatory information about Hunter Biden and potentially Joe Biden …

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe looks on as President Donald Trump presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former football coach Lou Holtz, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, in Washington. — Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe criticized the FBI under Wray’s authority.

“People need to understand that when we talk about our intelligence authorities, it is the FBI that is the primary domestic authority for investigating and leading to the prosecution of election influence and election interference.

“It’s really a problem when the agency that is responsible for investigating those things is engaged in those things.”

Biden son’s fed aid?

There are hints of possible collaboration with the feds on Hunter Biden’s laptop, in his contacts and calendar entries. Twelve entries in his contacts are labeled “FBI” or “Federal Bureau of Investigation” or “Special agent,” some of which contain phone numbers but no names for two FBI offices in Pennsylvania, in Newtown Square and Fort Washington.

There is an empty entry for the “FBI Special agent in charge” in Milwaukee, Wis., as well as an entry with a phone number and pager number for “DEA agent,” presumably referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is interesting in light of the preponderance of illegal drug activity captured on Hunter’s laptop.

Six entries labeled either “ATF” or “BATF,” presumably for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, contain no phone number or name, but two are designated “Special Agent/polygraph.”

The bulk of the law enforcement contacts on Hunter’s laptop — 16 in number, including what may be duplicates — are for the Secret Service, which had the task of protecting Hunter, whose code name, we can reveal for the first time, was “Chieftain.”

The Secret Service accompanied the VP’s wayward son on various foreign adventures, which must have given Hunter an air of official gravitas when he needed to impress prospective business partners in China and Russia, where bodyguards provide a certain cachet, especially if they are supplied by the US government.