This is why the House Republicans have not impeached Joe Biden. They have nothing because there is nothing.
An FBI source, a Burisma deal and the Bidens and details that don’t match up
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
The Fact Checker for the Washington Post, Rupert Murdoc's Paper who is also owner of Fox News.
August 30, 2023 at 3:00 a.m. EDT
“They [Burisma] were wanting to enter into the U.S. energy market through an IPO, and they felt like they couldn’t conduct an initial public offering if they were under investigation for corruption in Ukraine. So that’s what it all pertained to. That’s where the supposed bribe happened … They also wanted to buy an existing energy company, and I believe it was in Texas.” — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight committee, in an interview on Fox Business Network, June 12
Congressional Republicans recently released an FBI document from 2020 that makes a shocking allegation about President Biden — that he and his son Hunter were involved in a foreign bribery scheme with a Ukrainian business executive. Republicans have long been investigating Hunter Biden’s business affairs, as recounted on a recovered laptop, and some have suggested the claim could be the basis for a possible impeachment inquiry of the president.
The four-page document that the Republicans released, an FD-1023 form, is the kind used to record information from a person the FBI considers a “confidential human source” (CHS). That means the information would not be a tip from an unknown walk-in, but from someone who had been vetted and assessed by the FBI as potentially helpful for investigations. Still, such individuals can be unreliable and any statements by a CHS are basically unverified tips.
The identity of this FBI source and any connection to Ukraine remain unknown, and the FBI has not publicly confirmed any tips the person supplied in the document. Moreover, the person was interviewed by telephone in 2020 about conversations that took place as many as four years earlier. Nonetheless, some Republicans have treated the document’s allegations as true. “As Vice President Joe Biden sold his influence to the highest bidder,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Republican leadership, said on social media in May. “He is unfit to be President of the United States.”
While the document recounts conversations that cannot be independently verified, The Fact Checker can shed light on a business transaction described in those conversations, comparing the document’s account with publicly available information. The transaction concerned the alleged desire of Mykola Zlochevsky, the chief executive of the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, to purchase a U.S.-based company. During the period described in the document as starting in late 2015 and extending two or three months into 2016, Burisma did make a deal with a company based in Texas. This agreement sparked the interest of conservative media, as there are similarities to the FBI source’s account of what Burisma sought.
But upon examination, the facts don’t add up.
To test whether any other business transaction might match with the FBI source’s account, The Fact Checker examined all available news reports in Ukrainian, English and Russian concerning Burisma from September 2015 to April 2016. We also scoured emails from that period in Hunter Biden’s apparently abandoned laptop. No other deal matches this one. Because conservative outlets have speculated that the Texas deal is the one discussed by the person in the FBI document, that is the one we will fact-check. A representative for Hunter Biden declined to comment.
In a way, as Comer’s comment to Fox Business indicates, the Burisma deal in question is the linchpin of the GOP accusation that the Bidens were bribed.
Hunter Biden in Ukraine
Hunter Biden was a board member of Burisma, and the FBI’s CHS suggests that, according to Zlochevsky, Hunter was hired so that problems faced by the company could be handled by his father, who was then vice president. Chief among those problems, according to the FBI source, was Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin.The FBI source alleges that Zlochevsky said he paid Joe and Hunter Biden each $5 million to “deal with Shokin.” The Shokin reference — suggesting Burisma wanted him fired — raises an immediate red flag about the accuracy of the allegation, as we have documented previously that Shokin was actually in Burisma’s camp, having not taken action against corruption to the frustration of the international community.
Devon Archer, a fellow Burisma board member, said in a closed-door interview with lawmakers on July 31 that he was told at the time of Shokin’s firing that it was a setback for the company, according to a transcript. “That’s what was I told, that it was bad for Burisma,” he said. “But I don’t know. I don’t know if it was good or bad.”
Archer noted that Ukrainian business executives have a tendency to “exaggerate, tell fibs” — a point he noted is also acknowledged in the FBI document, which he indicated he had read. “CHS explained it is very common for businessmen in post-Soviet countries to brag or showoff,” the FBI document says in describing the individual’s account.
