Comer insists on Treasury’s release of Burisma records for Biden probe.

A Top House Republican Investigator Urges Treasury Department to Hand Over Suspicious Financial Activity Reports

A top House Republican investigator urged the Treasury Department to hand over suspicious financial activity reports associated with Burisma as part of an alleged bribery scheme linked to the Ukrainian energy giant’s owner and Joe and Hunter Biden.

Confidential FBI Informant Alleges Criminal Bribery Scheme

A paid confidential FBI informant told the bureau in June 2020 that a foreign national allegedly claimed he had funneled $5 million to Joe Biden when he was vice president and $5 million to Hunter Biden in an alleged “criminal bribery scheme.”

Fact-Checking Joe Biden’s ‘Bidenomics’ Push

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen a letter Wednesday seeking access to documents and bank records linked to Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings in Ukraine and China on file with her department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Allegations of Bribery and Foreign Business Transactions

Comer told Yellen that his committee “has reviewed government documents that allege President Biden, while serving as Vice President, solicited and received a bribe from a foreign source in return for certain actions” and argued that “these allegations are consistent with the Committee’s ongoing investigation of the Biden family’s foreign business transactions — transactions that subpoenaed bank records have revealed allowed Biden family members and associates to profit over $10 million from foreign sources.”

Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the “foreign national” involved in the alleged “criminal bribery scheme” aimed at shaking an alleged investigation into Burisma by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner. Zlochevsky also allegedly referred to Joe Biden as the “big guy.”

The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the number of bank accounts involved.

“The FBI has been sitting on allegations for years that Joe Biden solicited and received a bribe while he was Vice President of the United States,” Comer said Wednesday. “We have no confidence that the FBI did anything to verify the allegations contained within this record and may have intentionally withheld it during the investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax evasion.”

Comer pointed out that “an IRS whistleblower said that this critical evidence was withheld from tax investigators who have since revealed they had potentially corroborating evidence during the investigation.”

IRS whistleblowers revealed to Congress this month that alleged bribery claims related to a Ukrainian oligarch and the elder and younger Biden were not relayed to IRS and FBI investigators on the Hunter Biden case in Delaware.

Comer said Wednesday that his committee “is continuing to pursue financial records to follow the Bidens’ money trail to help inform legislative solutions to strengthen public corruption laws” and argued that Yellen “must provide financial records related to Burisma executives and entities to help further our investigation to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens, President Biden is compromised, and national security is threatened.”

The House chairman told Yellen to hand over by July 12 all suspicious activity reports filed by financial institutions from April 2014 to the present related to Burisma and all of its affiliates and subsidiaries.

Comer also told Yellen to hand over all such records linked to Zlochevsky, Burisma official and Hunter Biden associate Vadym Pozharskyi, and Alexander Kotlarsky, a Ukrainian businessman who reportedly introduced Hunter Biden business partner and fellow Burisma board member Devon Archer to Zlochevsky.

The House Republican also told Yellen to turn over all suspicious activity reports linked to Vuk Jeremic, who was Serbia’s minister of foreign affairs from 2007 to 2012 and the president of the United Nations General Assembly from 2012 to 2013. Jeremic was also a Hunter Biden associate who consulted at the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

Comer told Yellen to provide all documents on the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, a think tank where Jeremic is president and which was established with help from CEFC.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the committee’s ranking member, insisted Thursday that records he obtained from 2019 showed that “Zlochevsky denied (1) that anyone at Burisma had ‘any contacts’ with then former Vice President Biden or his representatives while Hunter Biden served on the Burisma board, and (2) that former Vice President Biden or his staff ‘in any way’ assisted Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma.”

Zlochevsky allegedly said that “we never had contacts with VP Biden during his visits to Ukraine” and that “no one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement.”

The Ukrainian oligarch also reportedly said “No” when asked if Joe Biden or his vice presidential staff helped Burisma in any way with business deals or with any other forms of assistance.

Former Attorney General William Barr said this month that the bribery allegations were forwarded to U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the Delaware federal prosecutor who led the investigation into Hunter Biden, but IRS whistleblowers said that the bribery allegations from a confidential informant were never made known and therefore were never investigated by them.

The whistleblower claims came from two IRS criminal investigation, or IRS-CI, agents who played key roles in the Hunter Biden investigation — Gary Shapley, a supervisory special agent with the IRS’s criminal investigation, and an unnamed IRS case agent who is referred to as “Whistleblower X.”

The duo originally spoke with Congress in May but sent follow-up statements to congressional investigators in June to say the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office never told them about the alleged bribery claims.

Shapley said that “as a result of the CHS information being concealed by prosecutors from the IRS-CI and FBI investigators assigned to this investigation, we were unable to follow alleged criminal activity as would normally be completed in an investigation.”

Whistleblower X’s attorney told Congress the agent had “never seen this FBI Form 1023 and that he does not recall ever hearing about this information being turned over in any meetings with the prosecution team in Delaware.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also revealed this month that a less redacted version of the form he has viewed says Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of his conversations with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (two of the former and 15 of the latter) as an “insurance policy.”

Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.

Shapley said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf instructed FBI and IRS investigators not to ask witnesses about “dad” (Joe Biden) or about “the big guy.”

Joe Biden said the bribery allegations were “a bunch of malarkey” when asked about them this month after he first quipped, “Where’s the money? I’m joking.”

Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun.

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