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Leaked Messages From UAW Official Reveal a Big Cause of Unions’ Decline

By: Rachel Greszler / September 28, 2023

A local UAW president speaks on a picket line

A leaked UAW official’s message reveals the union’s strategy for wounding and weakening U.S. companies—the very companies its members rely on for their paychecks. Pictured: Jesse Ramirez, president of the United Auto Workers Local 230, speaks on a picket line during a strike outside a Stellantis distribution center in Ontario, California, on Sept. 26, 2023. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon, AFP/Getty Images)

“If we can keep them wounded for months, they don’t know what to do … this is recurring reputations damage and operation chaos.”

That leaked statement, first reported by The Detroit News, is not a military tactic nor a hostile takeover plan. Rather, it’s a strategy for wounding and weakening American companies, with collateral damage that includes the American economy. And it’s the strategy—expressed in a private group chat on X (formerly Twitter) by United Auto Workers communications director Jonah Furman—of an organization whose foremost mission statement is to “improve and protect” the compensation and work environment of UAW members.

The utter disconnect between the UAW’s strategy of wounding, damaging, and inflicting chaos on the companies upon which its members’ jobs and compensation prospects depend is astounding. Big Labor’s increasingly distorted understanding of unions’ role in America—and of free enterprise and democracy—are a cause of their decline. At their heyday, unions represented about 35% of workers in the U.S. Today, they represent 10% of workers, and only 6% of private sector workers.

Workers realize that the viability of their jobs and the compensation they receive are interwoven with the success of their employers. In science, this is referred to as a symbiotic relationship: two groups working together toward a common goal.

(There will, of course, always be some bad employers who take advantage of workers or deny them a voice in the workplace. And when that happens, the best remedies are for workers to either seek better job opportunities or for those who want to band together collectively to do so.)

But despite surveys that show that teamwork and good relationships with managers are primary components of employees’ engagement and satisfaction, Big Labor seems intent on convincing workers that they must be at war with their employers.

When critiquing the suggestion that unions would do better to abandon their focus on politics and adversarial tactics, two Teamsters union attorneys essentially admitted that creating conflict is how they survive, saying, “It is no secret that such a ‘non-adversarial’ approach would gravely weaken organized labor.” That’s where unions have gone astray, thinking that “it’s us or them.”

Even in 1950, when the only cars Americans could buy were those made by the Big Three automakers, that flawed interpretation of labor unions’ roles was short-sighted. Yes, the UAW was able to drive up compensation above market wages to the benefit of its members, but the result of higher car prices meant fewer families could afford cars and, thus, fewer cars were produced and fewer workers were needed to produce them.

Now, in the globally competitive 21st century, unions inflicting damage and chaos are at odds with unions’ short- and long-term goals. How can companies whose reputations have been crippled and who’ve suffered financial losses somehow pay workers 40% more for 20% less work? That’s like eliminating 11 players from the Arizona Cardinals roster, not allowing players to access to their practice stadium, and expecting them to win the Super Bowl.

Understandably, the Big Three automakers are frustrated.

A Stellantis spokesperson said that the reported comments “are incredibly disturbing and strongly indicate that the UAW’s approach to these talks is not in the best interest of the workforce. We are disappointed that it appears our employees are being used as pawns in an agenda that is not intended to meet their needs.”

GM said that it’s “now clear that the UAW leadership has always intended to cause months-long disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities.” GM also said this “calls into question who is actually in charge of UAW strategy and shows a callous disregard for the seriousness of what is at stake. UAW leadership needs to put the interests of its members and the country over their own ideological and personal agendas.”

And a Ford spokesperson said, “It’s disappointing, to say the least, given what is at stake for our employees, the companies, and this region,” and noted, “For our part, we will continue to work day and night, bargaining in good faith, to reach an agreement that rewards our workforce and allows Ford to invest in a vibrant and growing future.”

If union officials actually want to protect UAW jobs and improve workers’ compensation, then they have to want the Big Three American automakers to succeed and to grow. Considering that U.S. auto production is less than half of what it was two decades ago, success is likely going to require that the UAW work alongside—rather than against—U.S. automakers to help them become more competitive.

To the extent that involves lobbying policymakers, the focus should be on getting the government out of the business of picking winners and losers by its subsidizing of more expensive electric vehicles that require 40% less labor while also seeking to ban gas-powered vehicles that Americans still overwhelmingly desire.

And if unions across America want to increase their membership, they should appeal directly to workers by offering things they value instead of using their dues to get politicians to go against their interests by doing things like attacking secret ballot union elections, restricting employers’ ability to share important information with workers before union elections, and establishing a pathway to force an employer to bargain with a union even if workers don’t want to be represented by it.

COMMENTARY BY

Rachel Greszler

Rachel Greszler is a research fellow in economics, budget, and entitlements in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research.

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Report: The FBI Illegally Politicized Background Investigations for Republican Presidential Nominees

BY: SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT | SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

A recent report published by America First Legal (AFL) details how the FBI weaponized the federal background investigation process to deny Republican presidents — specifically Donald Trump — the ability to make political appointments in an “institution-wide” violation of the Privacy Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and other federal statutes. Institutional disregard for the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) further contributed to this.

It alleges that during the Trump administration, the FBI illegally conducted politically biased background checks to sabotage potential appointees with selectively “unsubstantiated” and “derogatory” information.

The report, along with a letter detailing its findings, was sent to Republican Reps. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Democrat Sens. Dick Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Gary Peters of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.

Recall the nomination process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Throughout Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, due to unsubstantiated concerns of sexual impropriety, the Senate Judiciary Committee sought a supplemental FBI investigation — supported by the White House — into the allegations.

However, AFL argues that if, at the outset, the confirmation process was conducted fairly and objectively, then a supplemental investigation would never have been necessary. Further, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. field office is notorious for its political bias and is a hub of institutionalized political weaponization. How could any of this supplemental investigation be conducted in good faith?

Obviously, it wasn’t.

As AFL details, because of “procedural infirmities that biased the FBI [background investigation] process in ways that benefited those politically opposed to former President Trump,” several federal laws were broken.

Litigation conducted by AFL, leading to this report, shows that the FBI failed to guarantee Kavanaugh various legal protections.

Because during the process of the background investigation, the FBI “collect[ed] information from the public and third parties concerning nominees without using a form with a valid OMB-approved control number,” the FBI violated the Paperwork Reduction Act’s requirements at 44 U.S.C. § 3512(a).

“By no longer enforcing the MIOG standards, which requires the FBI to seek to offset derogatory information,” the report reads, “the FBI does not ‘make reasonable efforts to assure that [nominee] records are accurate, complete, timely, and relevant, for agency purposes.” As such, AFL contends the FBI violated federal law — 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(6).

The report also argues that the FBI’s disregard for the MIOG caused it to further violate federal law — 5 U.S.C. §§ 552a(e)(1), (e)(2), (e)(3), and (e)(5) — because “the FI or DOJ maintain[ed] in its records information about applicants that [are] likely irrelevant to their qualifications to daily and completely adjudicate cases arising under the Constitution and [relevant] statutes.”

These are just a few of the findings detailed in AFL’s report. And whereas it may sound like legalistic jargon, it is illustrative of a glaring issue in our political system and government: the federal government and federal bureaucracy are thoroughly weaponized against the ideological enemies of permanent Washington.

If someone presents a threat to the regime’s agenda, its allies will mobilize to violate protections legally guaranteed to that person. There can no longer be illusions of political neutrality or fair play.

During Biden’s time in office, the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice rescinded regulations designed to protect political nominees subjected to background investigations of this nature. The deep state subterfuge that plagued Kavanaugh’s confirmation will become the norm unless Congressional Republicans amplify this misconduct and exercise whatever power they have over these rogue agencies.

Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.

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SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT

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IRS Whistleblower Gives Congress More Documents, Boosting His Credibility and Busting the DOJ’s

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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On Monday, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley provided congressional oversight committees nine new documents related to the botched Hunter Biden investigation, according to a letter sent Wednesday morning to the House Judiciary Committee. The letter also contained a redacted 10th new document: the handwritten notes Shapley took during the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting in which Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss allegedly announced to his team that he was “not the deciding official on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden.

Those handwritten notes further bolster Shapley’s earlier testimony about the meeting and debunk counterclaims by the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office that Weiss had not said he lacked authority to charge Hunter Biden. What the other nine documents reveal, however, remains to be seen.

“Yesterday the Washington Post published a story reportedly based on a transcript it obtained of the Committee’s interview of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski,” the letter from Shapley’s Empower Oversight attorneys to the House Judiciary Committee opened. Sobocinski was one of seven attendees at the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, in which — according to Shapley’s previous testimony, corroborated by an email he sent following the meeting — Weiss said he was “not the deciding official” on whether to charge Hunter Biden and that he had been denied special counsel authority to charge the president’s son in D.C. or California.

As The Federalist reported earlier Wednesday based on its review of the transcript of Sobocinski’s interview, “Sobocinski claimed he did not remember Weiss saying he had sought (and been denied) special counsel status or that Weiss had represented that he was ‘not the deciding official.’” Further, “according to Sobocinski, had Weiss said either of those things, he would have remembered it,” with the FBI agent implying Shapley’s claims were false.

According to the transcript, Sobocinski tried to discredit Shapley’s testimony and the email he had sent following the October meeting by stressing that Shapley had not drafted the email during the meeting and thus the notes were not really “contemporaneous” with Weiss’s supposed statements.

In its Wednesday letter to the Judiciary Committee, Shapley’s legal team responded to Sobocinski’s objections by providing the committee a redacted copy of Shapley’s “contemporaneous handwritten notes,” in order to let the committee “access the truthfulness and reliability of Mr. Sobocinski’s testimony.” Empower Oversight, which represents Shapley, further stressed in its letter that, unlike Shapley, Sobocinski took no notes during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022.

Shapley’s handwritten notes taken during the meeting do indeed track the email summary he sent later that evening. In his notes, he wrote: “Weiss stated— He is not the deciding person.” This provides strong corroboration for Shapley’s email and his testimony.

Conversely, Sobocinski has nothing to corroborate his (lack of) recollection of the meeting. Sobocinski has also proven himself not credible by testifying that Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden anywhere, anytime — well, kinda, sort of, not really.

While Shapley’s credibility remains bars above Sobocinski’s, the bottom line is it doesn’t really matter what Weiss said during the October meeting. What matters is what happened and whether Biden’s Department of Justice refused to pursue tax felony charges in other venues and kept Weiss from doing so himself. What matters is whether the DOJ and FBI interfered in the Hunter Biden investigation.

On the first question, Americans may never get a clear answer, as Weiss continues to obfuscate and cover for Attorney General Merrick Garland. But on the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the Hunter Biden investigation, there is already overwhelming evidence establishing this scandal — and it isn’t merely coming from Shapley or his fellow IRS whistleblower. Rather, another whistleblower exposed the burying of the FD-1023 form, which implicated both Hunter and Joe Biden in a Burisma bribery scandal. That whistleblower also revealed to Sen. Chuck Grassley that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an “assessment” in August 2020 to improperly discredit “verified and verifiable” derogatory intel about Hunter Biden.

The nine new documents Shapley provided to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee may add even more evidence of the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the investigation of the president’s son. But unless and until the committees vote to release that information publicly, they will remain secreted from the American public. Likewise, the redacted portions of Shapley’s handwritten notes will remain confidential as potentially protected taxpayer information until the relevant congressional committees authorize their release.

That may happen sooner than originally planned, however, now that the White House is attempting to spin the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden as misinformation, with an assist from the DOJ and FBI lawyers representing Sobocinski.

2023-09-13 Letter to House Judiciary – 10-7-22 Notes by The Federalist on Scribdhttps://www.scribd.com/embeds/671047106/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-eqkS2VXSh3XTA40s9ZCt

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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‘Highly Credible’ Whistleblower: CIA Offered Six Analysts Hush Money To Shut Them Up About Covid Lab Leak

BY: JORDAN BOYD | SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

The CIA offered hush money to six CIA analysts who concluded that Covid-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, a “multi-decade, senior-level, current” CIA officer alleged to Congress.

The news of the suspected payoff broke in two letters penned by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to CIA Director William J. Burns and former CIA Chief Operating Officer Andrew Makridis.

In the letter to Burns, SSCP Chairman Brad Wenstrup and HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner detail the testimony of “a highly credible senior-level CIA officer” who alleged the CIA used a “significant monetary incentive” in an attempt to discredit Covid lab leak evidence analyzed by its officers. The unnamed whistleblower told the committees that six of the seven CIA analysts charged with uncovering the origins of Covid “believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low-confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.”

The chairmen noted that these Covid Discovery Team members were “multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise” who were well-qualified to give that kind of assessment. Yet, the CIA, unsatisfied with its analysts’ conclusion, allegedly dangled “financial incentives” in front of the officers in an attempt to “change their conclusion in favor of a zoonotic origin.”

“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis,” the committee chairmen noted.

The whistleblower indicated that a financially motivated flip-flop may have occurred, which led to “the eventual public determination of uncertainty.”

The CIA is one of two intelligence agencies that still claims it is “unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” according to a 10-page declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published in June.

The committee chairmen demanded the CIA hand over all documents, communication, and financial transaction information involving the agency’s virus origins investigation team by Sept. 26. They also requested that the CIA give up the Covid discovery team’s communications with other government agencies.

“Any improper influence exerted by the CIA will be investigated to ensure accountability from the intelligence community,” the committee chairmen warned.

In their letter to Makridis, the Republican chairs asked for a voluntary transcribed interview that would grant them an understanding of the “central role” he played in creating the Covid discovery team and failing to determine the virus’ origins.

The CIA’s wide-sweeping rejection of lab leak evidence is unusual given the growing number of government agencies, like the FBI and U.S. Department of Energy, finally admitting Covid likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.

The HPSCI determined in 2022 that intelligence agencies, including the CIA, “downplayed the possibility that SARS-CoV2 was connected to China’s bioweapons program based in part on input from outside experts.” Those same agencies, along with bureaucrats, corporate media, and Big Tech, scrambled in 2020 to censor suggestions that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab specializing in gain-of-function coronavirus research.

Documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in June later linked U.S. taxpayer dollars to the research conducted by the WIV lab staff, who were the first to fall ill at the onset of the pandemic.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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EXCLUSIVE: FBI Lies About ‘Highly Credible’ Source Claims Were Leaked to NYT And Spoon-fed to Weiss

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 05, 2023

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.”

However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.

Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

The Emails

The never-before-seen emails provided late last week by the Department of Justice to the Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project director, Mike Howell, in response to a court order, included an email thread revealing how the Times story landed in Weiss’s lap.

“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.

The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.

Given the sweetheart deal Weiss’s top Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf later tried to gift to Hunter Biden, this latest revelation raises the question of whether (and, if so, when) Weiss’s staff informed him of the CHS’s reporting that Burisma paid $5 million each in bribes to both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

These questions are now more important than ever because the just-released emails show Weiss’s staff sharing with him The New York Times’ false reporting that portrayed evidence coming from the Pittsburgh FBI office as sourced solely to Rudy Giuliani. But that’s not true — not by a long shot. At a minimum, Wolf and others in the Delaware office knew that — but Weiss might not have.

The Background

As The Federalist previously reported, contrary to the Times’ reporting, in the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr directed the Western District of Pennsylvania to serve as an intake office for any evidence related to Ukraine. U.S. Attorney Scott Brady was then charged with screening the evidence to ensure disinformation did not reach the other offices handling investigations related to Hunter Biden or Ukraine.

While some of the evidence Brady’s team screened came from Giuliani, agents also independently discovered a separate line of intel originating from a “highly credible” CHS who had worked under the Obama administration. Agents interviewed that CHS in late June 2020 and memorialized the CHS’s reporting in an FD-1023 form.

Americans would later learn the contents of that FD-1023 when a whistleblower informed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office of its existence. Then, after FBI Director Christopher Wray dragged his feet in responding to congressional inquiries, Grassley released a minimally redacted copy of the unclassified document to the public.

The unredacted portions of the FD-1023 confirmed Giuliani had nothing to do with the sourcing of the intel. On the contrary, according to the form, the longtime CHS had personally conversed with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and the company’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii.

The FD-1023 memorialized explosive reporting from the CHS, including the following:

Pojarskii claimed Hunter Biden was paid to serve on Burisma’s board of directors to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma, but Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had been coerced to pay bribes of $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Zlochevsky expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory, but then told the CHS that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had 17 recordings of the Bidens but had never paid Joe Biden directly.
The “Big Guy” moniker was used to refer to Joe Biden — a significant detail because the CHS interview predated the public release of material contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop, including information that established the “Big Guy” was one of Joe Biden’s nicknames.
Burisma discussed purchasing a U.S.-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million.

When news first broke of the FD-1023 and its damning indictment of the Bidens, Democrats and their paramours in the press tried to bury the story with a one-two punch. First, they framed the evidence as originating from Giuliani and part of a foreign disinformation operation. Grassley’s release of the actual FD-1023 destroyed that narrative.

Second, they falsely represented to the American public that Brady had already investigated the FD-1023 and closed the investigation as meritless. But as The Federalist first reported, that claim was blatantly false.

“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist after Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin falsely claimed that “the former attorney general and his ‘handpicked prosecutor’ had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe.”

“On the contrary,” Barr told The Federalist, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

BY: JORDAN BOYD | AUGUST 29, 2023

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The corporate media’s reaction, or lack thereof, to ex-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s Fox News interview this weekend is the latest proof that no amount of Biden corruption evidence or corroboration will deter the propaganda press from protecting their preferred political candidate.

Shokin, the man tasked with investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma, admitted that he believes then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, who was paid tens of thousands of dollars every month to sit on the company’s board, were bribed in exchange for his firing.

“Do you believe that Joe Biden or Hunter Biden got bribes?” asked “One Nation” host Brian Kilmeade.

“I do not want to deal in unproven facts, but my personal conviction is that yes, this was the case,” Shokin said, through a translator. “They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?”

QUESTION: " Do you believe that Joe Biden or Hunter Biden got bribes?"

"My firm personal conviction is that, yes, this was the case. They were being bribed." – Former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin. pic.twitter.com/VdbGn714RV
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) August 28, 2023

Shokin maintains that if his team was allowed to finish out the Burisma probe, “we would have found the facts about the corrupt activities that they were engaging in, that included both Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and others.”

“The founder and CEO of Burisma started bringing in people who could provide protection for him. Hunter Biden was among them and the corruption network expanded as a result,” Shokin explained. “So yes, to answer your question, there was no doubt in my mind that Burisma was engaged in illegal activities.”

Shokin concluded the interview by mentioning that several attempts on his life have already been made.

A cursory internet search shows corporate media largely ignored Shokin’s further confirmation of the Bidens’ Burisma corruption. The handful of outlets that did mention the interview focused more on discrediting Shokin than heeding his testimony.

“The fired Ukrainian prosecutor is not a reliable narrator,” The Washington Post alleged.

Anyone who suggests otherwise, the author notes, is siding with Republicans who “have spent years suggesting that Biden’s motives were actually the opposite — that this was an effort to insulate Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that his son Hunter Biden worked for, from an investigation by Shokin.”

The article claimed that evidence that the elder Biden fired Shokin to protect Burisma “remains meager.” That is a lie.

Contrary to years of denials and lies from the propaganda press, there is “overwhelming evidence” — even without Shokin’s corroboration — that Biden leveraged his authority in the Obama administration to orchestrate Shokin’s removal to benefit the company his son was being paid by.

Biden business associate Devon Archer told Congress earlier this month that Burisma heads expressed their desire for Shokin to be fired.

The FD-1023 form that the FBI desperately tried to conceal from Republican investigators also contained testimony suggesting the Burisma chief coordinated with the Bidens to kill Shokin’s investigation. The “highly credible” confidential human source who gathered the information for the form reported that Burisma chief Mykola Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings, including two of Joe Biden, that prove he “was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”

Biden himself even bragged in 2018 about threatening to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loans from Petro Poroshenko, the then-president of Ukraine, unless Shokin was canned. That pressure came shortly after Biden gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada explicitly calling for the end of corruption, the excuse he and American corporate media would use for urging Shokin’s firing.

When his interview with Shokin aired, Kilmeade said “that Viktor Shokin told him in the interview that no one had asked him for an interview despite his central role in the alleged Biden corruption scandal.” Corporate media outlets aren’t interested in hearing Shokin’s testimony because his claims run counter to the Biden coverup they’re spinning.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Attorney Weiss Colluded With DOJ To Thwart Congressional Questioning, Emails Show

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | AUGUST 28, 2023

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and shared exclusively with The Federalist establish that on multiple occasions, the Department of Justice intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to the Hunter Biden investigation. This revelation raises more questions about the June 7, 2023, letter dispatched to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan under Weiss’s signature line, in which the Delaware U.S. attorney claimed he had “ultimate authority” over charging decisions related to Hunter Biden. It also suggests Weiss and the DOJ may have conspired to mislead Congress.

Did the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs respond to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson’s May 9, 2022, letter seeking information concerning the Hunter Biden investigation? Weiss posed that question to one of his lead assistant U.S. attorneys, Shannon Hanson.

“Not to my knowledge,” Hanson replied, followed soon after with a second email noting that Joe Gaeta, the then-deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legislative Affairs, was working on a response. And although Grassley and Johnson had addressed their May 9, 2022, inquiry solely to Weiss, DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs would intercede on his behalf, responding in a letter dated June 9, 2022, that the DOJ would not respond to the questions posed.

The following month, Grassley and Johnson dispatched another letter requesting information related to the Hunter Biden investigation, addressing this letter to Weiss, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Again, the Office of Legal Counsel intervened, telling Weiss’s office in an email reviewed by The Federalist that it would “take the lead on drafting a response” to Grassley and Johnson’s letter.

These never-before-seen emails establish the Department of Justice and U.S. attorney collaborated in responding to congressional inquiries and were among the first batch of documents provided to the Heritage Foundation following a court order last week in Heritage’s FOIA case against the DOJ. That court order required the DOJ to produce, by Aug. 25, 2023, all records collected from Weiss and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf that were responsive to the Heritage FOIA lawsuit.

Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, initiated the FOIA request and then filed suit against the DOJ after the Biden administration attempted to slow-walk the production. Howell told The Federalist the emails show that while Garland was claiming Weiss had the independence to bring whatever charges he wanted, Garland was “simultaneously running communications from Weiss to Grassley through the political controls of Main Justice.” “It is a slap in the face,” Howell said.

Significantly, the emails also call into question the veracity of a series of exchanges between Weiss and Jordan, beginning with Weiss’s June 7 response to the May 25, 2023, letter Jordan sent to Garland. In that May 25 letter, Jordan questioned Garland on the removal of the IRS whistleblowers from the Hunter Biden investigation.

Even though the House committee addressed that letter solely to Attorney General Garland, Weiss responded to the inquiry on June 7 in a letter, which opened: “Your May 25th letter to Attorney General Garland was forwarded to me, with a request that I respond on behalf of the Department.” Weiss then claimed that, as Garland had stated, the Delaware U.S. attorney had “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution…”

Two more letters would soon follow, the first being to Weiss from Jordan on June 22. In that letter, Jordan reiterated the Judiciary Committee’s need for substantive responses, before asking Weiss for more details “in light of the unusual nature of your response on behalf of Attorney General Garland…” Specifically, Jordan asked for information concerning the names of individuals who drafted or assisted in drafting the June 7, 2023, letter, as well as details concerning the drafting and dispatching of the letter.

Weiss responded in a June 30 letter that he was not at liberty to provide substantive responses to the questions concerning an ongoing investigation. The Delaware U.S. attorney then sidestepped questions about the DOJ’s role in drafting the June 7 letter, stating only that he “would like to reaffirm the contents of the June 7 letter drafted by my office” — a statement representing that the Delaware office had composed the letter.

Weiss then proceeded to “expand” on what he meant when he said in his June 7 letter that he had ultimate charging authority, writing:

As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district. If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case. If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary, after the above process, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.

Of course, having ultimate authority and being assured that you would be given ultimate authority, if need be, are two different things. But the scandal goes beyond Weiss not having the authority to charge Hunter Biden, to what clearly seems to be an attempt by the DOJ and Weiss to mislead Congress.

It’s important to remember that when Weiss sent the June 7 letter to Jordan, the whistleblowers’ transcripts had not yet been released. Thus, neither Weiss nor the DOJ knew the specifics of the whistleblowers’ testimony, leading them to represent to Congress that Weiss had ultimate decision-making authority — something Weiss would later have to massage. Weiss’s questionable statements didn’t end there, however. In the June 30 letter, Weiss represented to Congress that he had drafted the June 7 letter.

But why would Weiss draft the June 7 letter? That letter was not even addressed to Weiss. And the emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation establish that even when congressional oversight letters were addressed directly to the Delaware U.S. attorney, Weiss did not answer them. Instead, the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs intervened and spoke on his behalf.

There is a second reason to suspect Weiss did not draft the June 7 letter: the footnote reference in the correspondence to the Linder letter.

Tristan Leavitt, a former Capitol Hill staffer and the president of Empower Oversight, which is helping represent IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, told The Federalist that when he “worked on Capitol Hill (particularly on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which did regular oversight of the Justice Department), the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs frequently referenced the otherwise-obscure Linder letter in response to congressional oversight.”

“It’s hard to imagine the letter was widely known outside of Justice Department headquarters,” Leavitt continued, “especially in U.S. attorneys’ offices, which almost never respond directly to congressional correspondence.”

Conversely, it is easy to imagine Main Justice drafting the June 7 letter on behalf of Weiss to provide Garland cover and to seemingly corroborate the attorney general’s Senate testimony that he had given Weiss full authority to make charging decisions in the Hunter Biden investigation.

That cover may soon be blown away, however, thanks to the Heritage Foundation.

“The only reason these documents are starting to trickle out is because we sued for transparency,” Howell told The Federalist. “We’ve faced taxpayer funded resistance at every step of the way and haven’t given up,” he added, noting that “the DOJ is under a judicial order to continue this production.”

The next round of responsive documents is due by Oct. 31, and since none of the documents produced to date include references to Jordan’s May 25, 2023, letter, it seems likely we’ll see those emails in the next batch — unless House Republicans seek access to them first through a subpoena.

This article has been updated since publication.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Op-ed: Biden’s Ambassador Gutmann must answer for a colossal problem surrounding Penn Biden Center

By Richard Painter , John Pudner Fox News | Published August 17, 2023 4:00am EDT

The vitriolic exchanges between partisans regarding charges against the past president and family of the current president are obscuring scrutiny of another ethical question important to our national security. According to reports, the U.S. and Germany have given a combined $127 billion to Ukraine during the war, while the Chinese coordinate with Russia. And yet, the Chinese gave $100 million to the University of Pennsylvania under the watch of the current U.S. ambassador to Germany. Confusing?

Yes, and it demands the current U.S. ambassador to Germany, Amy Gutmann, the former president of the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the Penn Biden Center where classified documents were found in January 2023, answer some questions from Congress.

Joe Biden and Amy Gutmann — Penn President Amy Gutmann and Vice President Joe Biden at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center on Jan. 15, 2016. (Ed Hille/Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

It has been revealed that Penn used the Penn Biden Center for schmoozing with donors during the Biden 2020 presidential run throughout 2019 and 2020. Meetings also were confirmed to have taken place there with future members of Biden’s “kitchen cabinet,” including Antony Blinken.

BIDEN NOMINATES UPENN PRESIDENT FOR AMBASSADORSHIP FOLLOWING CHINA DISCLOSURE COMPLAINT

A colossal problem surrounding the Penn Biden Center that has been largely brushed off is the audio of Ambassador Gutmann’s Senate confirmation hearing where she said she had no knowledge of Chinese money flowing into the university. However, according to congressional testimony from Paul Moore, former head investigative counsel for the Department of Education during the Trump administration, there is a tape recording of the Penn Biden Center being discussed in an event in China coinciding with a massive influx of money being donated to the university while Gutmann was university president.

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This claim goes against what the university said in the past, that “The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity.” The Chinese money – apparently close to $100 million – was given to the university itself, but the Penn Biden Center’s name apparently was dropped all over the place in order to raise it.

How many of those donors actually visited the Penn Biden Center, and perhaps got a chance to see the president’s rarely used office, we won’t know without visitor logs that Penn may or may not provide to Congress. We also don’t know who might have looked in the locked closet where Biden’s classified unauthorized documents were stashed for almost six years.

The Chinese government of course knows about this money donated to Penn and where it came from. They also know whether Ambassador Gutmann was forthcoming with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about it during her 2021 confirmation hearing.

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EXCLUSIVE: CHINESE DONORS TO UNIVERSITY HOUSING BIDEN THINK TANK HAVE TIES TO HUNTER’S BUSINESS DEALS, CCP

The $100 million question is, if Amy Gutmann is compromised by China with her denials and not being forthcoming about soliciting Chinese donations to Penn while she was visiting China during her tenure as Penn’s president. Is there a security risk that needs to be immediately addressed?

A major aspect of this problem is Gutmann’s current role in Germany as U.S. ambassador as Germany itself is central to military intelligence about Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia and U.S. aide to Ukraine. China, however, is coordinating with Russia.

Ambassador Gutmann should be brought back to Washington to testify before the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, as well as the Senate, about her past dealings with China. Members of Congress should do their job on this instead of simply pressuring current Penn President Liz Magill to answer questions about what happened at the school while Gutmann was at the helm. Gutmann is the U.S. ambassador, and the potential security risk.

Penn Biden Center — Former Vice President Joe Biden joins University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann to discuss global affairs at the school’s Irvine Auditorium on Feb. 19, 2019 in Philadelphia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Elite universities constantly argue that they are private and it’s none of the government’s business what they do, all while they take millions of dollars in federal subsidies and millions more from undisclosed foreign donors. These universities have been living off tax dollars for decades while amassing billion-dollar endowments. The least they can do is not pose a risk to our national security by being a gateway for foreign donors, and potentially also foreign intelligence officers, to get access to high level U.S. government officials.

The broader issue at work, however, is how Chinese money significantly influences universities throughout the U.S. The Justice Department had an investigation program into it, but Attorney General Merrick Garland closed the FBI’s so-called China initiative in February last year immediately after over 160 members of the University of Pennsylvania faculty and other universities signed an open letter calling for Garland to shut down the program.

These opponents of DOJ‘s China initiative used arguments against racial profiling as the excuse to nix the investigation. The faculty letter was part of a larger university battle against the program that included Penn, Harvard and the University of Minnesota.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland — Attorney General Merrick Garland (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

THE NEXT BATTLEFIELD WITH CHINA IS THE COLLEGE CAMPUS

The DOJ’s website lists a string of real criminal cases that the China initiative had brought against academics over a four-year span who were caught dealing with China on espionage charges or not disclosing foreign donations and other financial ties they were required to disclose. The DOJ should be capable of avoiding racial profiling and enforcing laws vital to our national security at the same time.

Even though Gutmann at her 2021 confirmation hearing acknowledged that Penn took some Chinese donations, she insisted it did not affect the university’s values. Guttmann also denied that Penn set up a Confucius Institute on campus linked to the Chinese government through funders.

The problem is that Confucius Institutes are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese government influence in foreign universities. We still need to know what Ambassador Gutmann knew about the $100 million raised from China during the last few years of her Penn presidency and why she was unable to recall it in her Senate testimony.

Gutmann in Germany — Ambassador Amy Gutmann, front left, joins NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, second from left, during NATO air exercises at the Jagel Air Base in Berlin on June 20, 2023. (Cuneyt Karadag/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

It remains clear that our entire system of ethics in this country remains highly politicized. Democrats and Republicans focus on the other party while ignoring their own issues. The lesser of two evils strategy does not justify selective enforcement of our nation’s laws, and if we continue down this path of polarization, our nation could end up in dangerous waters.

Both the House Oversight Committee and Judiciary should be pursuing the truth, not partisan politics. For the good of our national security, Amy Gutmann must be called to testify about any possible ties to China, especially as she is serving as U.S. ambassador to Germany as the war in Ukraine continues.

John Pudner is president of Take Back our Republic Action.

Richard W. Painter is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. He is the author of “Taxation Only With Representation: The Conservative Conscience and Campaign Finance Reform” (2016) and (with Peter Golenbock) of “American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law in America, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender.”

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Top House Republican rips ‘damning picture’ of Biden with Hunter-linked adviser on 2015 Ukraine trip

By Jessica Chasmar | Fox News | Published August 10, 2023 1:04pm EDT

FIRST ON FOX: House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., is blasting a “damning photo” showing then-Vice President Joe Biden with his Hunter Biden-linked current adviser aboard an Air Force Two flight during his infamous 2015 trip to Ukraine.

Amos Hochstein, President Biden’s current special presidential coordinator, was apparently in communication with Hunter and Hunter’s associates at Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings when the first son was serving on the firm’s board, according to emails previously reported by Fox News Digital.

A photo taken by White House photographer David Lienemann shows Biden being briefed by Hochstein aboard Air Force Two on his way to meet Ukrainian leaders in Kiev on Dec. 6, 2015, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if they did not fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.

“This damning picture of then Vice President Joe Biden on Air Force Two en route to Ukraine talking with Amos Hochstein is just further evidence that Biden and senior officials in the Biden Administration not only knew of Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings, but also that Joe Biden was intimately involved while Vice President,” Stefanik told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Biden and Hochstein — This photo taken by White House photographer David Lienemann shows Vice President Joe Biden being briefed by Amos Hochstein, right, aboard Air Force Two on his way to Ukraine on Dec. 6, 2015. (White House photographer David Lienemann)

TIMELINE OF BIDEN ADVISER’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH HUNTER, MEETINGS WITH VP ABOUT BURISMA RAISES QUESTIONS

“At the time of this photo, Hochstein was in communication with Hunter Biden and Burisma where Hunter served on the board,” she continued. “We also know that this photo was taken on Air Force Two ahead of Joe Biden’s now infamous meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, where Biden threatened to have aid withheld if a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma was not fired.”

“All evidence points directly to Joe Biden being deeply compromised. House Republicans will leave no stone unturned in our investigations into Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling scheme,” Stefanik added.

Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, Hunter Biden — President Biden, Amos Hochstein and Hunter Biden (Getty Images)

Hochstein, who served as special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs under the Obama-Biden administration, was tapped as Biden’s special coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security in August 2021, and he was made special presidential coordinator to Biden in February 2022.

BIDEN’S NARRATIVE ON NEVER DISCUSSING BUSINESS DEALS WITH HUNTER CONTINUES TO CRUMBLE

Fox News Digital reported in June that in the summer of 2014, shortly after joining the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, Hunter and his associates at Burisma and his now-defunct Rosemont Seneca Partners discussed speaking with Hochstein for contacts who could help navigate a new tax in Ukraine on private energy companies.

On July 31, 2014, top Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi expressed frustration in an email to the group that the Ukrainian parliament had “voted in favor of the package of laws, among which is a draft law on raising the tax for private gas producers.”

Amos Hochstein, senior energy security adviser for the US Department of State — Amos Hochstein, senior energy security adviser for the U.S. Department of State, listens as President Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Oct. 19, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Minutes later, Heather King, who did crisis communications for Burisma at the time and was in frequent communication with Hunter, said she was concerned by the news.

“This news is very concerning,” she wrote. “I assume you will be sending an email to the State Dept today about this? We will also get you connected with the US Embassy contact so you can hopefully meet with the guy Hochstein recommended as soon as possible.”

Nearly two months later, on Sept. 24, 2014, Pozharskyi emailed another communications consultant, Georgette Spanjich, and copied King, Burisma lobbyist David Leiter and Burisma board member Devon Archer, writing that “Ukrainian authorities are still pushing for further legislative initiatives which are going to cause even more damage to the gas industry.”

Amos Hochstein interview — Amos Hochstein, special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, is interviewed in Houston on Aug. 15, 2016. (James Nielsen/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)

“I am genuinely looking forward to your ideas on how we could influence this process,” Pozharskyi wrote. “Please, note that I am going to share this information with the US embassy here in Kyiv, as well as the office of Mr Amos Hochstein in the States.”

On Nov. 13, 2014, seven weeks after Pozharskyi said he would forward Burisma’s response to the Ukrainian tax hike to Hochstein’s office, Hochstein attended a meeting at Biden’s Naval Observatory residence, according to White House visitor logs. The next day, Eric Schwerin, the then-president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, sent Hunter a link, without comment, to Hochstein’s biography on the State Department’s website.

Eric Schwerin sent Hunter Biden a link to Amos Hochstein’s biography on the State Department’s website. (Fox News)

Three days later, on Nov. 17, 2014, Hochstein met with Kathy Chung, according to the White House visitor logs. Chung was Biden’s executive assistant at the time and now serves as the Pentagon’s deputy director of protocol. A few days later, Hunter asked Schwerin to send Hochstein’s contact information to Archer, Hunter’s fellow Burisma board member and a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Partners.

A couple of weeks later, on Dec. 11, 2014, Hochstein met with Biden and Chung in two separate meetings and later attended a holiday party at Biden’s residence that same day. Four days later, Hochstein attended a “meeting” at the vice president’s residence, according to White House visitor logs.

HOUSE GOP RELEASE BANK RECORDS ON HUNTER BIDEN PAYMENTS FROM RUSSIAN, KAZAKH OLIGARCHS, TOTAL CLEARS $20 MILLION

Four months later, on April 16, 2015, Hochstein met with Biden in the West Wing of the White House, the visitor logs show. That meeting took place the same day that Hunter introduced his father to Burisma executive Pozharskyi and other business associates from Kazakhstan and Russia during a dinner at Café Milano in Washington, D.C., Fox News Digital previously reported. It is unclear whether Burisma or Pozharskyi’s visit to Washington, D.C., was mentioned during that meeting.

Vice President Joseph Biden and Amos Hochstein — Then-Vice President Joe Biden and Amos J. Hochstein, special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, talk during the Caribbean Energy Security Summit at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 26, 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The day after the dinner, Hunter received an email from Pozharskyi that read, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”

BIDEN’S CLAIM TO HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF HUNTER’S BUSINESS DEALINGS IS BECOMING HARDER TO MAINTAIN

Two months later, on June 17, 2015, Hochstein met with Biden twice, according to the visitor logs. He met with Biden again the next month in the West Wing on July 13, 2015, and with Chung again months later on Nov. 2, 2015.

According to a Senate Republican report on Hunter’s business dealings released in December 2020, testimony and public records show that Hochstein in October 2015 raised concerns with both Biden and Hunter that Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.

Amos Hochstein and Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud — Senior adviser for energy security Amos Hochstein and Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud speak after signing bilateral agreements during an investment agreement signing ceremony in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on July 15, 2022. (Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images)

Victoria Nuland, who was serving as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2015, testified to Congress in 2020 that Hochstein had another conversation about Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board with Biden on the way to Ukraine in 2015, according to the Senate report, during the same plane ride shown in the photograph criticized by Stefanik.

During Hochstein’s testimony in the 2020 report, he recounted that he spoke with Biden about Burisma in the West Wing of the White House in October 2015. According to visitor logs, he visited the White House three times in October 2015, with two of the visits occurring in the West Wing and the other on the second floor of the West Wing.

‘MONEY GUY’: THIS HUNTER BIDEN BUSINESS PARTNER COULD BLOW THE LID OFF BIDEN FAMILY’S BUSINESS DEALINGS

“We were starting to think about a trip to Ukraine, and I wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message — to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma,” Hochstein told Congress, according to the report.

According to Hochstein, Biden told Hunter about the meeting, prompting Hunter to request a meeting with Hochstein, according to the 2020 Senate Republican report.

“You are all set to meet with Amos on Friday at 4pm for coffee,” Joan Mayer emailed Hunter on Nov. 3, 2015, referring to their Nov. 6 meeting. She later emailed Hunter to let him know the Nov. 6 meeting with Hochstein at a Starbucks in Georgetown had been moved to 3 p.m. Hochstein met with Biden in the White House Situation Room the day before on Nov. 5, 2015, the visitor logs say.

Hochstein meeting — Joan Mayer emailed Hunter Biden to let him know the Nov. 6 meeting with Amos Hochstein at a Starbucks in Georgetown had been moved to 3 p.m. (Fox News)

“Well, he [Hunter] asked me for a meeting,” Hochstein said in his testimony. “I think he wanted to know my views on Burisma and [Mykola] Zlochevsky. And so I shared with him that the Russians were using his name in order to sow disinformation — attempt to sow disinformation among Ukrainians.”

The report said Hochstein “did not go so far as to recommend that Hunter leave the board,” citing an earlier article by the New Yorker.

About a week later, on Nov. 12, 2016, Mayer let Hunter know that he missed a call from Hochstein, adding, “Please call back today if possible.” Hochstein met with Vice President Biden again in the White House Situation Room less than two weeks later, on Nov. 23, 2015.

Missed call — On Nov. 12, 2016, Joan Mayer let Hunter Biden know that he missed a call from Amos Hochstein, adding, “Please call back today if possible.” (Fox News)

On Dec. 11, 2015, two days after they returned from Ukraine, Hochstein met with Biden in the West Wing.

Biden visited Ukraine from Dec. 7-9, 2015. Three months after the visit, Shokin was fired, and Biden would later use it to boast about his foreign policy skills.

Shokin was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder and then-president of Burisma Holdings, where Hunter served as a board member from April 2014 to April 2019. Biden’s defenders have said that Shokin was fired not because he was pursuing corruption too aggressively, but rather because he was too lax.

On Dec. 17, 2015, less than a week after his meeting with Biden, Hochstein attended a holiday party at the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence, where Hunter was also in attendance.

Hochstein visited Biden at least another six times in 2016, including the day after Shokin was fired on March 29, 2016.

The Obama administration had pushed for Shokin’s firing, and Biden boasted on camera in 2018 that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden said in 2018, according to a transcript of his remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a b—-. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

The White House and the State Department did not respond to Fox News Digital requests for comment.

Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.

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House Oversight Plans to Subpoena President, Hunter Biden

By Charlie McCarthy | Thursday, 10 August 2023 11:00 AM EDT

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee plans to subpoena President Joe Biden and first son Hunter over allegations they peddled influence during foreign business dealings to secure millions of dollars in payoffs. Panel Chair James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday delivered a third round of bank records, bringing the official paper trail of payments to more than $20 million from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan during Joe Biden’s vice presidency in the Obama administration.

“It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings, lied to the American people, & allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Bidens while he was VP of the United States,” Comer tweeted Thursday morning.

“This is public corruption at the highest levels of our federal government.”

Comer on Thursday told Fox Business, “This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee. We are going to subpoena the family.”

The chair added that with all the opposition and obstruction from the Bidens’ attorneys, “we know this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens.”

The president’s legal counsel claims the latest allegations do not tie Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s foreign influence peddling.

Appearing Wednesday on Newsmax, Comer said the president’s team should be more transparent with requests for information.

“If the president has done nothing wrong, then they should allow us to see their personal bank records,” Comer told “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “If there’s nothing to hide, then they should be transparent with us, with their financial records, and stop obstructing and intimidating our witnesses and blocking us from more bank records.”

Joe Biden snapped at a reporter Wednesday after being asked about congressional testimony by Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden.

“I never talked business with anybody, and I knew you’d have a lousy question,” Biden told the reporter, who then asked why it was a lousy question.

“Because it’s not true,” the president said before walking away.

Archer last week told congressional investigators that then-Vice President Joe Biden joined Hunter Biden’s calls during business meetings and dinners, where foreign businessmen were present and heard his voice, which was the “prize” in luring foreign businesses to pay to send “signals” to the highest levels of the Obama White House.

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$20M and Counting: Tally on Foreign Money to Biden Family Rises with Release of New Bank Records

By: Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / August 09, 2023

Hunter Biden and Joe Biden smiling in suits — Foreign funds flowing to the Biden family have reached at least $20 million, according to records the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released Wednesday. Pictured: Hunter Biden and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on April 12, 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

The tally of foreign money to the Biden family has hit at least $20 million, based on the third round of bank records the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released Wednesday–pointing to millions from oligarchs from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

Foreign sources sent the money to Biden family members and business associates while Joe Biden was vice president during the Barack Obama administration.

In February 2014 Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina transferred $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a shell company owned by Hunter Biden and his partner Devon Archer. About $1 million was transferred to Archer, and the remainder was used to initially fund a new company account, Rosemont Seneca Bohai.

In July, Archer testified to the House committee that while Biden was vice president, he showed up for a dinner with Hunter Biden’s business associates that included Baturina.

“During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a public statement about the new bank records. “It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself.”

The Russian billionaire attended the dinner at Café Milano along with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

“Hunter Biden seems to have delivered,” Comer continued. “This is made clear by meals at Café Milano where then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with oligarchs from around the world who had sent money to his son. It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States.”

Comer said the committee will continue to investigate whether “President Biden is compromised or corrupt, and our national security is threatened.”

Archer referenced in his testimony that a Kazakhstani oligarch Kenes Rakishev provided money for Hunter Biden to buy a sports car. The newly-released records show that in February 2014, Hunter met Rakishev at a Washington hotel.

In April, Rakishev wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, according to the committee’s summary of the records. The next day, a payment was made from Rosemont Seneca Bohai for a sports car for Hunter Biden in the amount of $142,300.

Archer and Hunter Biden arranged for Burisma executives to visit Kazakhstan in June 2014 to evaluate a three-way deal between Burisma, a Chinese state-owned company, and the government of Kazakhstan.

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As White House Pushed Facebook to Censor COVID-19 Vaccine Content, Facebook Employees Leaked to White House

By: Katrina Trinko / @KatrinaTrinko / August 09, 2023

white house 2018 — Facebook faced heavy pressure from the Biden White House to censor content on the COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo: Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: Facebook staffers were leaking to the White House as the tech company and the Biden administration battled over COVID-19 vaccine content and whether Facebook should be censoring it, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.

In an April 18, 2021, email that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, produced to the House Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government, executive Nick Clegg told Facebook colleagues that Andy Slavitt, then a White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response, said Facebook employees were leaking to the White House.

Clegg, who said that he had just had a long call with Slavitt, wrote that “Andy told me in confidence … that internal FB employees are leaking to his team (I assume via Rob F[laherty] accounts of disobliging remarks made about both Andy and Rob by FB decision makers.”

Flaherty was then the digital director at the Biden White House.

Clegg, who is the president of global affairs at Meta, also wrote that Slavitt said Facebook employees suggested that Facebook leadership was planning to manipulate the White House with the data it shared.

“Those remarks [by Facebook decision makers] are coupled with suggestions about how FB should ‘snow’ the White House with info/data about authoritative Covid info in order not to share the most telling/helpful data about content which contributes to vaccine hesitancy,” he added about what Facebook employees were allegedly leaking to the Biden administration.

The leaks occurred at a time when Facebook faced heavy pressure from the Biden White House to censor content on the COVID-19 vaccine. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the government weaponization subcommittee, has been revealing the extent of the pressure in the “Facebook files” posts he releases on Twitter, sourced from documents and emails Meta shared with the subcommittee.

“These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook,” writes Jordan.

These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook.

More evidence of the censorship-industrial complex.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 3, 2023

Brian Rice, vice president of public policy at Meta, responded to Clegg’s April 2021 email, saying, “Rob made an offhand comment about conversations with ‘other people from Facebook’ during a recent conversation, this is clearly what he was referencing.”

Rice added, “I haven’t been part of any conversation that includes disparaging remarks made about Andy, or about any strategy to snow the White House[.]”

Documents obtained by the subcommittee reveal that Facebook temporarily throttled the reach of a popular Tucker Carlson video on the COVID-19 vaccine, even while acknowledging that the video did not violate any of Facebook’s rules. The White House also complained to Facebook about the reach of a popular meme suggesting that those who received the COVID-19 vaccine may later sue for injuries.

Flaherty, the then-digital director at the White House, also asked a question suggesting that Facebook might want to curb the reach of Tomi Lahren, a commentator who had announced she would not get the vaccine, and The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet. “If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see [New York Times], [Wall Street Journal], any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?” Flaherty wrote in an email to Facebook employees.

According to Open Secrets, Meta employees heavily favor Democrat candidates over Republican candidates. In 2020, the year Joe Biden was elected president, Meta employees gave $6.3 million to Democrats and $578,000 to Republicans.

The emails provided to The Daily Signal also indicate the White House told Facebook YouTube was censoring vaccine content more aggressively.

“Andy [Slavitt] attended a meeting of misinfo researchers (didn’t provide names) organized by Rob F[laherty] on Friday in which the consenus was that FB is a ‘disinformation factory’, and that YT [YouTube] has made significant advances to remove content leading to vaccine hesitancy whilst we have lagged behind,” Clegg wrote in the April 18, 2021, email.

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Devon Archer says Hunter used Joe Biden as ‘defensive leverage’ for foreign biz partners, transcript shows

Fox News Digital obtained a transcript of Archer’s testimony before the House Oversight panel

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published August 3, 2023 9:00am EDT

FIRST ON FOX: Devon Archer told congressional investigators that Hunter Biden used then-Vice President Joe Biden as “defensive leverage” to send “the right signals” to his foreign business partners, while selling him as “the brand” that offered “capabilities and reach,” as well as a “unique understanding of D.C.”

Archer’s comments came during a transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Fox News Digital obtained the more than 140-page transcript of Archer’s interview, which took place behind closed doors.

DEVON ARCHER CONFIRMS JOE BIDEN ‘LIED’ ABOUT KNOWLEDGE OF HUNTER’S BUSINESS DEALINGS, COMER SAYS

Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, arrives at the O’Neill House Office Building before testifying to the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Archer told investigators that Hunter Biden used his “very powerful name” to “add value” in pitching and securing foreign business ventures.

Archer said Hunter Biden “would not be so overt,” or “overtly” say “we’re going to use my dad for this,” but instead, Archer said that he would use the name to “get leverage.”

“Defensive leverage that the value is there in his work,” Archer said.

“The value that Hunter Biden brought to it was having — you know, there was — the theoretical was corporate governance, but obviously, given the brand, that was a large part of the value,” he continued. “I don’t think it was the sole value, but I do think that was a key component of the value.”

Archer and the Bidens — Devon Archer golfing with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden in 2014. (Fox News)

Archer told investigators that Hunter put his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on speakerphone while meeting with business partners at least 20 times. Archer described how Joe Biden was put on the phone to sell “the brand.”

“You aren’t talking about Dr. Jill or anybody else. You’re talking about Joe Biden. Is that fair to say?” Archer was asked.

Archer replied: “Yeah, that’s fair to say… Obviously, that brought the most value to the brand… It was Hunter Biden and him,” Archer said. “We would discuss having, you know, an understanding of D.C. and that was a differentiating component of us being able to raise capital.”

Devon Archer, a former longtime business associate of Hunter Biden, is set to testify before Congress.

He added, “It wasn’t as specific as, you know… the vice president’s son, but obviously, the brand carried.”

When asked if Archer and Hunter Biden would tell business partners they had “unique access” because of Vice President Biden, Archer said: “Yes, we would say we had unique understanding of D.C. and how it operates and how that, you know, could positively reflect on the terms of our business.”

Archer served on the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings alongside Hunter Biden beginning in 2014 and received $83,000 a month for his work.

Referring to Burisma, Archer told investigators that Hunter Biden used the “brand” of Joe Biden for having “doors opened,” which “sent the right signals” for Burisma to “carry on its business and be successful.”

DEVON ARCHER: HUNTER BIDEN, BURISMA EXECS ‘CALLED DC’ TO GET UKRAINIAN PROSECUTOR FIRED

“My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it,” Archer said.

When pressed, Archer clarified that he believed Burisma was “able to survive” for as long as it did “just because of the brand.”

“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer explained.

“In what way?” Archer was asked.

“Legally.”

Joe, Hunter and Archer split image — From left: President Biden, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. (Fox News)

President Biden and the White House have repeatedly denied ever being in business with his son, and have repeatedly said Joe Biden never discussed the businesses and never had any knowledge about his son’s business dealings.

But Archer testified that then-Vice President Biden attended dinners with Hunter’s foreign business associates — including with an executive of Burisma Holdings.

One dinner, Archer recalled, took place in the spring of 2014 at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Archer, Eric Schwerin, the mayor of Moscow’s wife Yelena Baturina and other business partners attended.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/08/67b5b2e7-Devon-Archer-Transcript.pdf

That dinner took place just weeks after Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an LLC linked to Hunter Biden and his associates.

Archer also recalled a dinner in the spring of 2015, again at Cafe Milano. This time, Archer said Vadym Pozharskyi — an executive at Burisma — attended the dinner.

EXCLUSIVE: JOE BIDEN ALLEGEDLY PAID $5M BY BURISMA EXECUTIVE AS PART OF A BRIBERY SCHEME, ACCORDING TO FBI DOCUMENT

Meanwhile, as for Burisma, Archer testified that he and Hunter Biden attended a board of directors meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015.

On the sidelines of that meeting, Archer testified that Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter to make a phone call to “D.C” to address “pressure” the company was facing.”

Archer said Burisma had “several pressure issues,” saying that was “kind of a theme” of the company, noting the issues involved 23 million pounds of “capital tied up in London,” U.S. visa issues and the Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the firm.

“They requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said. “You know, government pressure from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola, et cetera.”

Biden and Zlochevski — Hunter Biden, left, and Mykola Zlochevsky. (Getty Images)

Fox News Digital previously reported that on Nov. 2, 2015, just weeks before the board meeting in Dubai, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, emphasizing that the “ultimate purpose” of the agreement to have Hunter on the board was to shut down “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” referring to Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.

“The request is like, can D.C. help?” Archer said, adding, however, that the request was not specific to “can the big guy help.”

“It was always this amorphous, can we get help in D.C.?”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pressed Archer, saying: “The request was help from the United States Government to deal with the pressure they were under from their prosecutor, and that entailed the freezing of assets at the London bank and other things that were going on in Ukraine?”

“Correct,” Archer said.

When asked why Burisma would ask Hunter for help, Archer said he was “a lobbyist and an expert and obviously he carried, you know, a very powerful name.”

HUNTER DEMANDED $10M FROM CHINESE ENERGY FIRM BECAUSE ‘BIDENS ARE THE BEST,’ HAVE ‘CONNECTIONS’

“That’s what they were asking for,” he said.

After the Burisma executives asked for help, Hunter “called his dad,” Archer said, adding that he “did not hear this phone call.”

When asked if Hunter Biden calling the vice president of the United States to “do something” about the pressure Burisma was facing would “cause off some serious alarm bells for influence peddling, conflicts of interest,” Archer testified: “Right.”

Archer testified that he was “left out” of “black box D.C. types of conversations.”

But just five days after Hunter Biden called then-Vice President Joe Biden from Dubai, Joe Biden took a trip to Ukraine.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

During that trip, the former vice president made a statement: “It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

Archer testified on other details related to joint ventures with Hunter Biden.

Meanwhile, Archer was pressed on an FBI FD-1023 form, which contained allegations that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting Shokin fired.

Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month.

BIDENS ALLEGEDLY ‘COERCED’ BURISMA CEO TO PAY THEM MILLIONS TO HELP GET UKRAINE PROSECUTOR FIRED: FBI FORM

The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption and say that his firing was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.

The FBI form said Pozharskyi said the reason Hunter Biden was hired was “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”

Archer was not familiar with that arrangement and suggested Zlochevsky could have been referring to payments he made to Archer and Hunter Biden.

Joe and Hunter Biden at Fort McNair — President Biden and his son, Hunter. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Archer said he was not aware of a $5 million payment to Joe Biden from Zlochevsky and said the Burisma CEO could have been boasting or exaggerating to give “the impression of access.”

Archer’s testimony comes as part of the House Oversight Committee’s months-long investigation, which Republicans say has yielded evidence related to the Biden family’s alleged foreign business schemes — including that the Biden family and its business associates created more than 20 companies and received more than $10 million from foreign nationals while Joe Biden served as vice president.

BIDEN WROTE COLLEGE RECOMMENDATION LETTER FOR SON OF HUNTER’S CHINESE BUSINESS PARTNER, EMAILS REVEAL

Meanwhile, the White House released a statement following Archer’s testimony Monday:

“It appears that the House Republicans’ own much-hyped witness today testified that he never heard of President Biden discussing business with his son or his son’s associates, or doing anything wrong,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams told Fox News Digital. “House Republicans keep promising bombshell evidence to support their ridiculous attacks against the President, but time after time, they keep failing to produce any.”

In February 2022, Archer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for defrauding a Native American tribal entity and various investment advisory clients of tens of millions of dollars in connection with the issuance of bonds by the tribal entity and the subsequent sale of those bonds through “fraudulent and deceptive means,” according to the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department, over the weekend, sought to set a date for Archer’s sentence to begin.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Evidence Of Biden Burisma Corruption Is Overwhelming

BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | AUGUST 01, 2023

Author Mollie Hemingway profile

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

VISIT ON TWITTER@MZHEMINGWAY

A key associate of Hunter Biden reluctantly admitted details about how the Biden family business was run — and those details are shocking.

Devon Archer, a longtime business partner and close friend of Hunter Biden’s, told congressional investigators Monday that at a meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015, top executives of Ukrainian energy concern Burisma asked Hunter Biden and himself for help from D.C. At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden’s dad, Joe Biden, was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president as well as his point person on Ukraine. Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, a Burisma executive, wanted to get Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired as he was investigating the company for corruption, Archer told members of Congress.

Hunter Biden put Zlochevsky and Pozharski on a call with “D.C.,” Archer said, noting he was not part of the phone call so couldn’t possibly know who exactly was on the other end of the line. Joe Biden did meet and speak more than 20 times with various business associates who were paying for access to the Biden family, Archer admitted.

In this case, Burisma was paying Archer and Hunter Biden as much as $83,000 a month to serve on the Ukrainian energy concern’s board, despite the fact that neither man had relevant experience or expertise for the job outside of their frequent meetings and contact with the then-vice president. The two were hired the same month that the U.K. had opened an investigation into company officials. The money was well spent.

A mere five days after the Dubai meeting and phone call, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada, its parliament in Kyiv, attempting to lay the groundwork for firing Shokin.

It took just a few short months before Shokin was fired. Joe Biden bragged in a public speech in January 2018 that he was personally responsible for getting that firing accomplished so quickly. In fact, he claimed he had bullied the Ukrainian government into firing the investigator by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee unless he got what he wanted. Seriously:

And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had — they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to — or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said — I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

What an amazing series of events that led to Joe Biden personally fulfilling what Burisma was paying Hunter Biden to accomplish. What are the odds?

Not the Weather

After Archer’s transcribed interview, Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who previously ran some of the Russia-collusion hoax as a congressional staffer, ran to the cameras to cushion the blow of the explosive new information.

For years, the corporate press and other Democrats had uncritically accepted Biden’s preposterous claim that he had never spoken with his son or his son’s business partners about the Biden family business. Even when Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski described — in detail, on the record, and with supporting evidence — how Joe Biden served as the “chairman” of the family business, the media largely ignored the explosive claims. With Archer echoing Bobulinski’s claims, and further noting that the business wouldn’t have worked without Joe Biden’s “brand,” Goldman and others like him had to concede that Biden did in fact speak with Hunter’s business associates. In fact, they had to admit he spoke with them frequently. However, Goldman claimed, they were only talking about the weather.

While no one actually thinks Joe Biden has a secret interest in meteorology that he only shares with corrupt foreign oligarchs who happen to be in business with his son, the claim is ridiculous for another reason.

As conservative broadcaster Larry O’Connor wrote, “Understand this: Hunter getting Joe on speakerphone WAS THE DELIVERABLE. It literally doesn’t matter what was discussed. Showing that he could get the Vice President of the United States on the phone was all Hunter had to show his clients to seal the deal. He was selling ACCESS not policy. Getting The Big Guy to pick up the phone demonstrated his ability to deliver that access. Case closed. Impeach.”

Otherwise, why would Joe Biden get on the phone with his business associates at all? Why would Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine be talking to Ukrainian officials under suspicion of massive corruption who were paying large sums of money to his son? What was the point, exactly, if not as chairman of the family business?

We know Burisma was paying Biden family members for help getting powerful people in D.C. to get investigators off its back. We know Biden was the top official in D.C. related to Ukraine. Five days after Burisma made the request, Biden was laying the groundwork for the firing. And he has publicly bragged about getting the prosecutor fired.

n 2019, President Donald Trump was impeached for raising the issue of a potential corruption scandal involving Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Burisma. At that time, scores of corporate media and other Democrat activists asserted without evidence that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and that it was a lie to suggest otherwise. For instance, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post wrote in 2019, “Trump has falsely claimed that Biden in 2015 pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor, because he was investigating Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, which had added Biden’s son, Hunter, to its board in 2014. There are two big problems with this claim: One, Shokin was not investigating Burisma or Hunter Biden, and two, Shokin’s ouster was considered a diplomatic victory.”

Since that false “fact” “check,” investigators in the House and Senate have shown that the Biden family business involves oligarchs and other powerful figures from Russia, Romania, China, and even France and other countries. Joe Biden reportedly met and spoke with his son’s employers from across the globe. The corporate press and other Democrats will fight disclosure about the Biden family business every step of the way, but Archer’s transcribed interview shows how important it is to reveal the truth of that business to the American people.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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Comer on Archer Testimony: Today Was a ‘Bombshell’

By Jeffrey Rodack | Tuesday, 01 August 2023 09:36 AM EDT

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Newsmax the congressional testimony of a former associate of Hunter Biden was a “bombshell” and said the “walls are closing in” on President Joe Biden and his family. Comer is chair of the House Oversight Committee, where Devon Archer testified on Monday. The congressman made his comments during an interview on “Greg Kelly Reports.“

Asked what he thought about Archer, Comer said: “I think that he was under a lot of pressure today. We know that the Biden attorneys have threatened him and intimidated him. We know the Department of Justice sent him two letters over the weekend, which is unheard of. But despite that, I think he answered a lot of questions that needed to be answered, specifically that Joe Biden did in fact talk to numerous people that his son was receiving wires from while Joe Biden was vice president.

“And that is something that Joe Biden has consistently lied about. That’s what the Democrats have consistently taken Joe Biden’s positions saying he never spoke with anyone Hunter Biden was doing business with. But yet we learned today that over 20 times, in fact, Joe Biden, while he was vice president, spoke with people who were sending the Biden family members these suspicious wires that the banks, or anyone else in America, knew what the purpose of the wires were for.

“Another thing that Devon Archer testified today was the Biden family, in fact, was influenced peddling. We know that Devon Archer has violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. That’s a very serious law.”

Comer said Archer’s testimony calls into question whether Joe Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act “because his family was receiving millions of millions of dollars from these foreign nationals.”

“None of these people that he [Hunter] put his dad on the phone with are reputable businesspeople,” Comer said. “They all are under some type of investigation or on the flee in the countries where they originate from. The people that Hunter Biden was putting on speakerphone with his sitting vice president father were some of the worst people on the planet, but yet they were paying the Biden family millions of millions of dollars.

“Every day, we get more and more evidence that points to Joe Biden directly. All roads lead to Joe Biden. And today, we’ve learned without a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden has been lying to the American people when he said he never spoke with anyone his son was receiving money from.

“Devon Archer testified that the owners of Burisma were pressuring Hunter to call Washington to get [Viktor] Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor, fired. And we know because we’ve seen on video — Joe Biden bragged, in fact — firing the prosecutor in Ukraine that was investigating his son’s corrupt energy company, and he wasn’t going to give them our tax dollars our foreign aid unless the Ukrainian president fired the prosecutor.

“And that’s what Devon Archer said that those guys were pressuring Hunter to do —call Washington, get this Shokin fired. I mean, this was a bombshell today. This is more evidence that points directly to Joe Biden. I mean the amount the number of crimes that the Biden family has committed continues to grow. And more and more evidence shows that Joe Biden knew exactly what was going on.”

Comer maintained “the walls are closing in on the Bidens.”

“We’re going to continue to bring more associates in. We’re going to continue to publish more bank records, and we’re going to continue to move forward. I think the evidence will continue to mount. This is a snowball. It’s rolling downhill. It’s not going to stop.”

Asked about a possible impeachment of Biden, he replied: “Well, I know how I would vote. But again, that’s a decision for Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy. But, I’ll tell you this, right before I came on the show, McCarthy called me, and I gave him a rundown of what was said today, and we talked about steps moving forward.

“So, you know, stay tuned.”

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Rasmussen Poll: Most Suspect Biden Covered for Son

By Peter Malbin | Tuesday, 01 August 2023 12:43 PM EDT

Devon Archer testified to Congress on Monday that he was on a speakerphone multiple times with Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden when the latter was vice president. But Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, said they only discussed pleasantries, not business dealings involving Ukraine and China. Archer testified that Joe Biden was put on the phone to help Hunter Biden sell what he called “the brand,” according to Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

According to reports, Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars as a consultant to Ukraine gas company Burisma and other entities overseas, allegedly to gain access to the vice president.

According to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll taken just before Archer’s closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committe, 60% of likely voters say Joe Biden has been part of an illegal cover-up to hide his involvement in his son’s foreign business deals; 45% think such a cover-up is very likely; 34% say it’s not likely Biden has illegally covered up his role in his son’s foreign business, including 18% who believe it is not at all likely.

Joe Biden has said he never discussed Hunter’s business affairs with him.

Archer’s testimony “confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved,” said Comer, the The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the Rasmussen poll, 61% of voters think this is a serious scandal, including 44% who say it’s very serious. But 29% don’t believe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s foreign business is a serious scandal, including 13% who believe it is not at all serious.

Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Biden had done “something we have not seen since Richard Nixon: Use the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight.”

Over half — 58% — of voters agree with McCarthy’s statement, including 43% who strongly agree; 35% disagree, including 26% who strongly disagree.

Democrats are far less likely than other voters to view the president’s purposted involvement in his son’s foreign business deals as scandalous. Just 20% of Democrats believe that this is a very serious scandal, compared to 66% of Republicans and 49% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

Similarly, only 18% of Democrats say they strongly agree with McCarthy comparing Biden to Nixon, whereas 69% of Republicans and 46% of unaffiliated voters strongly agree.

While 69% of Republicans and 48% of unaffiliated think it’s very likely that the president has been part of an illegal cover-up to hide his involvement in his son’s foreign business deals, just 20% of Democrats believe such a cover-up is very likely.

By race, 63% of white people, 56% of Black people, and 62% of other minorities think Biden’s reported involvement in his son’s foreign business deals is at least a somewhat serious scandal. Fewer black voters (27%) than white (49%) or other minorities (42%) believe it’s very likely that the president has been part of an illegal cover-up.

More men (67%) than women voters (57%) say Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s business deals is at least a somewhat serious scandal.

Older voters are much more likely than those under 40 to deem the Biden scandal very serious, and to strongly agree with McCarthy comparing Biden to Nixon.

Only 30% of self-identified liberal voters think Biden’s reported involvement in his son’s foreign business deal is at least a somewhat serious scandal, compared to 54% of moderates and 87% of conservatives.

In terms of income categories, voters earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year are most likely to say Biden is facing a very serious scandal.

The survey of 1,027 U.S. likely voters was conducted on July 26-27 and July 30 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is plus/minus percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

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Biden Family Scandals Are So Much Bigger Than Hunter’s Hookers And Burisma Bribery

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 26, 2023

Joe Biden at his desk talking on the phone in black and white

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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When the New York Post broke the news that documents recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, the corporate media — to the extent they didn’t frame the story as Russian disinformation — pretended the reporting solely concerned Hunter Biden’s personal life. The scandal, however, was never about Hunter’s sordid sex life and history of drug abuse. Rather, it concerned Joe Biden’s abuse of power as vice president for financial gain. But now it reaches much further — including 10 distinct scandals.

Saturated in Scandal

1. The Many (Uncharged) Crimes of Hunter Biden

While the current scandals swirling around the laptop are unrelated to Hunter Biden’s sex life or drug abuse, the president’s son features in the first scandal: Evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed numerous crimes, including felonies. Evidence suggests Hunter Biden acted as an unregistered foreign agent for, at a minimum, Ukraine and China in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting suggests Hunter also accepted bribes from Burisma or alternatively helped extort $10 million from the Ukrainian oil and gas company for himself and his father.

IRS whistleblowers and federal prosecutors also believed the evidence supported multiple felony tax counts. Lying on a federal firearm application is a serious felony as well.

The evidence that the president’s son likely engaged in extensive criminal conduct for over a decade is a huge scandal, but it also bred a separate scandal: the DOJ and FBI’s efforts to protect him, No. 7 below.

2. Joe Biden’s Business Lie

Hunter Biden’s laptop also exposed the reality that Joe Biden lied to the American public, dating back to September 2019. During a campaign stop, the then-Democrat presidential candidate snapped at Fox News’ Peter Doocy, claiming: “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1175486006348460032?s=20

More than two years later, after The Washington Post and New York Times belatedly confirmed the authenticity of the emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Doocy asked then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether “President Biden still maintains he never discussed overseas business deals with his son Hunter,” to which Psaki replied, “Yes.”

While Biden and his team stuck with that lie for two-plus years, his current press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is attempting to snuff out that scandal by reframing Biden’s denial. “I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same: The president was never in business with his son,” Jean-Pierre said on Monday.

Moving the goalposts won’t erase the lie.

3. Joe Biden’s Corruption

The much more serious scandal, however, concerns extensive evidence of Joe Biden’s widespread corruption. Bank and corporate records, suspicious activity reports, emails and text messages recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop, travel records, reporting from a “highly credible” CHS, and testimony and expected testimony from Hunter Biden’s business partners indicate that Joe Biden, while vice president, exchanged political favors for payments to his family members — with a cut of the cash coming to the “Big Guy.”

People and/or organizations from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and China, among others, all paid Biden-related business entities millions of dollars, with evidence indicating the now-president received a cut of the bribes. The evidence indicates that in exchange, the individuals received access to the then-vice president. In the case of Ukraine, Biden forced the firing of the prosecutor general who was investigating Burisma, the company where Hunter held a board seat and which allegedly paid Joe and Hunter Biden each $5 million in bribes.

The evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption is bad enough, but the scandal deepens when one considers the president has supplied Ukraine with cluster bombs and billions in American tax dollars.

Cover-Ups

While the first three scandals involve misconduct and likely criminality by Hunter and Joe Biden, there are at least twice as many distinct scandals that flow from cover-up efforts to protect the Bidens.

4. FBI’s Interference in the 2020 Election

By December 2019, the FBI had authenticated the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. Yet, knowing the laptop was real and contained spectacularly damaging details implicating Joe Biden in corruption, the FBI spent the months leading up to the November 2020 election grooming tech giants to believe a “hack-and-leak operation” was imminent. The FBI also pushed social media companies to change their terms of service to prohibit the posting of so-called hacked materials.

These combined efforts prompted social media companies to censor the New York Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 blockbuster article, “Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad.” After the story broke and after initially confirming its authenticity to Twitter, the FBI refused to comment on whether the material had been hacked or was Russian disinformation, leading to its continued widespread censorship. Not only did the FBI improperly protect Joe Biden and prompt the censorship of true political speech, it interfered in the 2020 election and likely handed Biden the White House.

5. Intelligence Agencies’ Interference in the 2020 Election

Former and current members of intelligence agencies soon joined the FBI in interfering in the 2020 election. The House Intelligence and Weaponization Committees previously detailed evidence of that interference in their report titled, “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.”

That report established that the infamous October 2020 letter, which was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and falsely framed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, was concocted by Biden-campaign officials, including now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. Then-candidate Joe Biden would cite that letter in his final debate with Donald Trump to lie to the American people (again), telling the country the laptop was Russian disinformation.

It is scandalous that scores of former intelligence officials would use their prior positions and reputations to deceive Americans in a way that likely affected the 2020 election. That any of those individuals retained security clearances adds to the scandal, as does the role of the Biden campaign and the involvement of at least one CIA employee in soliciting signatories for the statement.

6. Intel Agencies’ Failure to Protect America Against Foreign Influence

Not only did intelligence agencies interfere in the 2020 election, but in their efforts to protect Joe Biden, they likely also failed to provide necessary defensive briefings, putting Americans at risk.

To protect our country, intelligence officials must have frank discussions with leaders (and candidates) about the risks of foreign malign influence. Given how hard the FBI and intelligence agencies tried to bury the news of the laptop, it seems likely they omitted any reference to the laptop and details contained on it in briefings to then-President Trump, then-candidate Biden, and the Biden campaign.

To date, this scandal has been overlooked and merits further inquiry to determine whether the intelligence apparatus fulfilled its duty to the country or omitted inconvenient facts in briefings to protect Joe Biden. Of particular concern is whether intelligence agencies assessed and warned about the risk that the Russians had stolen a second Hunter Biden laptop that contain materials the Biden son believed rendered him susceptible to blackmail.

7. DOJ and FBI’s Handling of Biden Investigations

When it comes to how the DOJ and FBI handled investigations into Biden family corruption, the evidence of potential misconduct is overwhelming.

Broadly, this scandal includes conflicts of interest between Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys — including the Pennsylvania U.S. attorney handling an investigation into the Jim Biden-connected company Americorp, and the California and D.C. U.S. attorneys who reportedly refused to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden. Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s conflict of interest proves scandalous given the numerous efforts by the DOJ and FBI headquarters to interfere in the investigations.

Beyond conflicts of interest, the IRS whistleblowers and another whistleblower who’s provided information to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have revealed numerous instances of DOJ and FBI procedural violations, the burying of evidence such as the FD-1023, the false labeling of derogatory evidence as disinformation, and limits on the investigative steps agents could take. Consequently, the DOJ charged Hunter Biden only with misdemeanors and one firearm felony that could be dropped, and to date it appears no investigation has occurred into Joe Biden or his brother, Jim Biden, on allegations of bribery and money laundering.

While Democrats counter the growing evidence of corruption by wrongly claiming it has not been corroborated, that fact does not vindicate the Bidens: It implicates the DOJ and FBI in a separate scandal.

Cover-Ups of the Cover-Ups

8. DOJ and FBI’s Cover-Up of Failure to Investigate Bidens

Once whistleblowers began exposing the Biden administration’s interference in the family’s pay-to-play investigation, the DOJ and FBI began to cover-up the cover-up. We saw this most clearly when Garland professed that there was no political interference in U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden. Garland stressed that, as a Trump holdover, Americans could trust Weiss’s independence.

Garland’s testimony cannot be squared with the extensive interference coming from FBI headquarters and the limitations the DOJ placed on investigative techniques. When Grassley pushed on the point, Garland maintained that Weiss had ultimate charging authority. According to an IRS whistleblower, however, Weiss said otherwise, claiming he wasn’t the ultimate decision-maker.

Here, the cover-up of the cover-up began in earnest, with Garland and Weiss writing a series of letters and making public statements that attempted to obscure the ultimate question of whether Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden and whether DOJ or FBI headquarters interfered in the investigation. This scandal has yet to be unraveled. But on Monday, the DOJ sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee offering up Weiss to testify — indicating Biden’s Justice Department might be preparing to throw Weiss under the bus.

9. Democrats Lying to Protect Joe Biden

Many Democrats are also wrapped up in lying to protect Joe Biden. Some of these lies predate the election when they spun the laptop as Russian disinformation. But more recently, we saw Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin lying to the American public about the FD-1023 form. Had former Attorney General William Barr not gone on the record to correct Raskin’s falsehood, the public would have been none the wiser.

Seeking to protect Joe Biden from damning bribery claims, Raskin falsely claimed that Trump appointees Barr and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had reviewed the CHS’s reporting contained in a June 2020 FD-1023 form and closed out the investigation. Raskin also portrayed the CHS’s reporting as connected to Rudy Giuliani.

But as The Federalist first reported, Barr unequivocally said that Raskin’s claim was “not true.” The investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.” “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.” Likewise, Barr explained the CHS’s reporting was unrelated to Giuliani.

10. Press Acting as Biden-Run Media

When the Post broke the laptop story, the legacy media either silenced it or framed it as Russian disinformation. Even two years later, after belatedly authenticating the material recovered from Hunter Biden’s computer, the corporate media refused to cover the implications — that the emails, documents, and texts indicated Joe Biden was involved in a massive corruption scandal. The corrupt press still refuses to cover the news fairly, opting instead to brand the evidence as a conspiracy theory.

The media’s refusal to seek and report the truth proves the most dire of all the scandals because without a free press checking government corruption, the corruption will only grow.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Hunter Biden pleads ‘not guilty’ as plea deal falls apart during Delaware court appearance

DOJ prosecutors said Hunter Biden is currently under investigation

By Brooke Singman , Jake Gibson | Fox News | Published July 26, 2023 1:25pm EDT

Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart during his first court appearance Wednesday morning as he pleaded “not guilty” and federal prosecutors confirmed the president’s son is still under federal investigation. The president’s son was expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax, as part of plea deal to avoid jail time on a felony gun charge.

Hunter Biden walks into Federal court dressed in a suit — Hunter Biden arrives to a Federal Courthouse at the Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware, Wednesday, July 26, 2023. President Joe Biden’s son is reportedly expected to plead guilty during the hearing to two federal crimes for not paying taxes on time. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)

But Judge Maryellen Noreika did not accept the plea agreement, questioning the constitutionality–specifically the diversion clause and the immunity Hunter Biden would receive. Hunter Biden had been expected to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement regarding a separate felony charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

The judge pressed federal prosecutors on the investigation and questioned whether there was the possibility for future charges, and asked prosecutors if Hunter Biden was currently under active investigation. Prosecutors said he was but would not answer specifically what the president’s son is under investigation for.

Prosecutors on Wednesday, though, said Hunter Biden pleading guilty to the two misdemeanor tax offenses would not immunize him from future charges. At one point, Noreika asked Justice Department prosecutor Leo Wise whether there is an “ongoing investigation here.”

“There is,” Wise said, adding that he could not tell the judge what the investigation was.

Noreika asked if the government could potentially bring a charge related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), to which Wise replied: “Yes.”

At that point, the original plea deal broke down. Defense attorney Chris Clark said he did not agree with that.

“Then there’s no deal,” Wise said.

Clark countered, “As far as I’m concerned the plea deal is null and void.”

After that, both sides asked the judge for time to negotiate. Noreika left the courtroom for 20 minutes or so and allowed both sides to continue negotiations. Ultimately, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty because Noreika could not accept the plea deal as it was constructed. She repeatedly expressed her concerns about the constitutionality of the diversion deal related to the felony gun charge, specifying that the main issue with the agreement was that if Hunter breached the deal, the judge would need to make a finding of fact on the matter before the government could bring charges.

Judge Noreika said she saw that as being “outside of my lane,” noting that if the diversion agreement might be unconstitutional, then the entire plea deal would be unconstitutional, meaning that Hunter Biden would not be getting the immunity he thought.

The judge apologized to Hunter Biden near the end of the hearing.

“Mr. Biden, I know you want to get this over with, and I’m sorry,” Noreika said. “But I need to get more information to do Justice as I’m required to do.”

The judge asked for briefings from both sides, but did not set a firm date.

Noreika questioned Hunter Biden on his sobriety and on his business dealings–specifically money that he received from foreign business partners, like Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings and his joint-venture with Chinese energy firm CEFC.

As Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre delivered a statement at the beginning of the daily briefing.

“Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter for him. As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life,” Jean-Pierre said. “This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the Justice Department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president, President Trump.”

She added: “So for anything further, as you know, and we’ve been very consistent from here, I’d refer you to the Department of Justice and to Hunter’s representatives who is his legal team, obviously, who can address any of your questions.”

The developments in the case Wednesday come after IRS whistleblower testimony revealed allegations of DOJ misconduct throughout the years-long investigation into the president’s son. IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler said politics influenced prosecutorial decisions throughout the investigation.

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith filed an amicus brief to the court, requesting that testimony be considered ahead of accepting the planned plea deal, saying Hunter Biden “appears to have benefited from political interference which calls into question the propriety of the investigation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

“In the interest of full transparency and fairness for all citizens, it is critical for the Court to have this relevant information when evaluating the Plea Agreement,” Smith wrote in the brief.

Meanwhile, on the eve of the court appearance, the judge threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s legal team after one of his attorneys allegedly lied about who she was while asking to remove IRS whistleblower testimony from the court docket.

The defense, though, denied the allegations and called the incident “an unfortunate and unintentional miscommunication.”

Fox News’ Griff Jenkins and Alexandra Rego contributed to this report.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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FBI Told Delaware U.S. Attorney It Had Already Partially Corroborated Biden Bribery Claims, Source Says

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 24, 2023

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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When the Pittsburgh FBI office briefed the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, the agents also told the Delaware team they had already corroborated several aspects of the confidential human source’s claims, an individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist.

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the FD-1023 summary of a confidential human source’s reporting that the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes so the then-Vice President would “protect” Burisma “from all kinds of problems.” Those bribes were in addition to the more than $4 million in total paid to Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer for sitting on Burisma’s board of directors.

The Federalist has now learned that the Pittsburgh FBI office had corroborated several details contained in the FD-1023 as part of the intake process that former Attorney General William Barr established before the election under the leadership of the Western District of Pennsylvania’s then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady. Significantly, in briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney on the results of their office’s screening of evidence related to Ukraine, the Pittsburgh FBI agents told the Delaware office they had corroborated multiple facts included in the FD-1023, an individual with knowledge of the briefing told The Federalist.

Following the late June 2020 interview with the CHS, the Pittsburgh FBI office obtained travel records for the CHS, and those records confirmed the CHS had traveled to the locales detailed in the FD-1023 during the relevant time period. The trips included a late 2015 or early 2016 visit to Kiev, Ukraine; a trip a couple of months later to Vienna, Austria; and travel to London in 2019.

As The Federalist previously reported, during their briefing of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, the Pittsburgh FBI agents said the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and that it merited further investigation. The person familiar with that briefing now confirms the agents also informed the Delaware office that the Pittsburgh FBI had corroborated the CHS’s presence in the various cities at the times claimed.

The Federalist has also learned that the CHS’s handler corroborated the CHS’s claim that he had met with Oleksandr Ostapenko. According to the source with knowledge of the matter, the CHS’s handler told Pittsburgh’s FBI agents that the CHS told his handler he had an upcoming meeting with Ostapenko. The CHS’s contemporaneous claim of the planned rendezvous with Ostapenko tracked the timing of one of the visits the CHS claimed in the FD-1023 to have had with Ostapenko. Significantly, the Pittsburgh office briefed the Delaware office on that piece of corroborating evidence that came from the CHS’s handler.

Open-source reporting of Burisma’s purchase of an interest in a North American oil and gas company likewise lined up with the discussions the CHS relayed to the FBI, as summarized in the FD-1023, the individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. That the Pittsburgh FBI office not only provided the Delaware office with a summary of the damning FD-1023 and its conclusion that it bore indicia of credibility but also identified several pieces of corroborating evidence is huge because, to date, it appears the Delaware office did nothing to investigate the allegations contained in the FD-1023.

As Barr previously made clear, the role of the Pittsburgh office was limited to providing a “clearing-house function” for information related to Ukraine to weed out “any potential disinformation.” The purpose of the intake process, Barr stressed, was to “check[] out the source and credibility of evidence before assigning it to one of the ongoing investigations already pending in the Department,” such as the Delaware investigation into Hunter Biden. As such, the Pittsburgh office lacked the authority to subpoena witnesses or records or to use grand jury proceedings to further corroborate the FD-1023. That responsibility fell with the Delaware office.

But not only did the Delaware office apparently ignore the allegations contained in the FD-1023, as well as the corroborating evidence already allegedly accumulated by the Pittsburgh FBI office, but U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s office allegedly secreted the very existence of the FD-1023 from the whistleblowers. Both IRS whistleblowers testified last week that they did not even learn of the existence of the FD-1023 until Barr publicly confirmed he had sent the information to Delaware for further investigation.

Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf also excluded the IRS agents working the Hunter Biden investigation from the meeting at which the Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the office on the FD-1023 and the corroborating evidence they had already uncovered. The IRS whistleblowers further testified that portions of Hunter Biden’s laptop were withheld from them and they were explicitly prohibited from taking any investigative steps connected to Joe Biden — or questioning anyone by using Joe Biden’s name, “Dad,” or “the Big Guy.”

Under these circumstances, even if the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office comes forward now to say it did investigate the FD-1023, its belated claim would be meaningless because the individuals with the knowledge and skill necessary to investigate a complex, international money laundering, bribery, and tax fraud scheme were cut out of the process and barred from interviewing the necessary witnesses.

The Delaware office remains mum, however, not even pretending to have investigated the FD-1023’s allegations. That failure is even more scandalous now that we know Pittsburgh had already corroborated several aspects of the CHS’s reporting and briefed Weiss’s office on the corroborating evidence.

Yet the Biden White House continues to falsely claim the FD-1023 charges “have been debunked for years.” On the contrary, the only thing debunked to date has been the lies of Biden’s Democrat apologists, such as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Jamie Raskin, who doubled down on his claim that Barr had found the FD-1023 not credible and not meriting further investigation.

Americans now know not only that Raskin and his Democrat colleagues lied, but that President Joe Biden lied — both when he said he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures and in claiming now that the FD-1023 has been debunked.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Andrew McCarthy Op-ed: IRS whistleblowers reveal who’s really to blame for shocking Biden corruption

Biden corruption case relies on veteran IRS agents whose testimony holds up against Hill Democrats

Andrew McCarthy | Fox News | Published July 21, 2023 4:00am EDT

In Wednesday’s marathon House hearing, Oversight Committee Democrats ran into a buzzsaw: two IRS whistleblower agents — Gary Shapley, the supervisor on the investigation who went public a few weeks ago, and Joseph Ziegler, the lead investigator on the case, who was publicly identified for the first time at the hearing.

In gory detail, the agents outlined how President Biden’s Justice Department quashed the Biden corruption investigation from within while publicly pretending that it was being conducted with independence and integrity.

When committee Democrats tried to poke holes in the testimony, they ended up on the receiving end of what they hadn’t bargained for: fusillades of fact — damning data about the millions raked in by the president’s son and family members from apparatchiks of corrupt and anti-American regimes.

WHITE HOUSE MOCKS HUNTER BIDEN HEARINGS AS ‘WASTE OF TIME,’ SPARS WITH HOUSE GOP ON TWITTER

The agents’ stellar performance did not surprise anyone who has ever participated in a criminal tax investigation. In nearly 20 years as a prosecutor, I was — as the lawyer on my cases — better versed in the criminal law applicable to, say, racketeering, international terrorism, money-laundering, admissibility of evidence, and standards of proof, than the agents from the FBI and other agencies with whom I worked, a sizable majority of whom were non-lawyers. Tax enforcement was an exception.

IRS whistleblowers Congress — Supervisory IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley, left, and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler are sworn in as they testify during a House Oversight Committee hearing related to the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The tax code is an esoteric area of the law. Experienced investigators know a lot more about it than most prosecutors — I learned a lot more from my IRS agents than they learned from me. In fact, tax enforcement is sufficiently abstruse that prosecutors from around the country need approval from the Justice Department’s Tax Division in Washington to file charges. In almost all other cases, they may indict without main Justice’s supervision.

In this very specialized area, it turns out that the very best tax-enforcement agents were assigned to the Biden case. Shapley and Ziegler have combined decades of education and experience in tax law and financial bookkeeping practices. They have been involved in some of the most significant tax investigations, including international schemes, ever conducted in the U.S. They held critical positions and were trusted to run big cases because they knew their stuff. And because they’ve been investigators for such a long time, they know how to testify — how not to get intimidated (especially when you know much more than the people asking the questions do) and how not to accept the premise of questions loaded with inaccuracies and misimpressions.

Video

It showed. The ranking Democrat on the panel, and thus the first in the minority to ask questions was Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, a tireless progressive partisan and former law professor who never tires of posing as a legal titan. But his questions were rife with disinformation and the witnesses called him on it.

He began, for example, trying to make the point that prosecutors and agents often disagree on whether felony charges ought to be brought. Rather than simply accept that proposition, which is true, Shapley explained why it is irrelevant — in this instance, the case agents and line prosecutors agreed that felony charges were appropriate; it was higher-ups in the Justice Department who slammed the brakes on the case.

On this point, it is vital that committee Republicans keep their eye on the ball.

Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, who besides being on yesterday’s panel is chairman of the Judiciary Committee with oversight over DOJ, took pains at the hearing to point out that, while the whistleblowers have been completely consistent, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss has repeatedly changed his story.

Joe Ziegler, Internal Revenue Service Whistleblower X, testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The agents stress that they were being ordered by prosecutors not to follow leads that could have garnered evidence against Joe Biden. Despite all the obstacles, they managed to make a strong case against Hunter Biden, but they couldn’t get it charged because Weiss told them he was not the ultimate decisionmaker — he was being stymied by the Biden Justice Department. But Attorney General Merrick Garland has publicly claimed that Weiss was in charge and was assured that he would have all the authority he needed to bring any charges in any jurisdiction — all he needed to do was ask.

Initially, Weiss backed that story. But then, when Shapley became the first of the whistleblowers to go public, Weiss changed his tune, struggling to back Garland while not contradicting Shapley, whose account is richly corroborated.

First Weiss said he had the authority. Then he conceded that he lacked authority to file charges outside his district of Delaware (i.e., in districts where Hunter had allegedy committed tax crimes), but vaporously added that he had consulted with the Justice Department about that problem. Then he claimed that he had not asked to be designated a special counsel, which would have given him authority to file charges anywhere.

Meantime, Shapley’s account was never shaken: Weiss had told a room full of agents that the Justice Department had refused to grant him special counsel authority, and that he was being blocked from filing felony tax charges against Hunter by Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and California.

Jordan is right that Weiss is a weasel. But Weiss is the wrong target here. He is just the fall-guy for Garland. Contrary to what the attorney general would have the country to believe, it was not Weiss’s job to ask for special counsel authority. It was Garland’s duty to appoint a special counsel the moment he realized there was a conflict of interest that prevented DOJ from investigating in the normal course. There could be no more profound conflict than the Biden Justice Department’s being in the position of investigating President Biden’s son and other family members in an international corruption probe in which the president himself is deeply implicated.

Biden’s attorney general did not appoint a special counsel because he made protecting his boss, the president, his highest priority. That is why the case the whistleblowers so compellingly described at the hearing was sabotaged. The culprit here is not Weiss. It’s Garland.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. Follow him on Twitter @andrewcmccarthy

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Explosive FD-1023 Exposes More Biden Bribery Dirt — And Teases Damning Evidence to Come

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, just released a minimally redacted copy of the FBI’s FD-1023 detailing a confidential human source’s reporting of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian business Burisma. According to the FD-1023 summary, Burisma’s owner specifically referenced the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin — the same man Biden bragged about Ukraine firing after his threat to withhold aid from the country while he was vice president.

After months of pushing the Justice Department and FBI to explain what investigative procedures they had undertaken in response to evidence implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme, Grassley released the unclassified copy of the FD-1023, which documented claims made by the “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS). Grassley had acquired the FD-1023 via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.

While some of the information included in the FD-1023 has already been revealed by members of the House who previously reviewed the summary of the CHS’s reporting, the public release provides new explosive details related to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin.

Among the CHS’s conversations with Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky, one took place shortly after Joe Biden made his first public statement about Shokin “being corrupt.” At the time, according to the CHS, Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”

Then, following Trump’s election in 2016, the CHS spoke again with Zlochevsky, who expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory but noted that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on…” Zlochevsky’s statement proves significant because Joe Biden had long claimed he pushed for Shokin’s firing because Shokin was not investigating Burisma — which is the exact opposite of the details summarized in the FD-1023.

Beyond putting the already known details in black-and-white for the public to read, such as Zlochevsky’s representation that he had 17 recordings of the Bidens and had never paid the “Big Guy” directly, the release of the FD-1023 is significant for another reason: The American public now knows the many details the FBI could have and should have investigated.

For instance, did Burisma or any other related entity purchase a Texas-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million during the relevant time period? Were the CHS and his business partner in Kiev in the 2015 and 2016 time period? Did the CHS’s U.S. business partner confirm the details of the meeting? Was the CHS in London during the relevant time in 2019? And did the FBI ever ask the CHS to record his conversations with Zlochevsky or attempt to turn Zlochevsky into an asset?

According to the FD-1023 report, in 2019, the CHS had offered to assist Zlochevsky if he wanted to speak to the U.S. government about the Bidens and what Zlochevsky claimed was their coercion of Burisma to pay the bribes. Did anyone ever ask the CHS to contact Zlochevsky? If not, why not?

The public release of the FD-1023 is significant now for a third reason: It comes on the heels of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee that suggested the CHS’s reporting corroborates other evidence.

During Wednesday’s hours-long hearing, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler both told lawmakers they had never seen the FD-1023. Significantly, Ziegler then stated: “There’s things that are contained on that document that could further corroborate other information that we might be having an issue corroborating because it could be regarding a foreign official. So, if we have information regarding that in a document or a witness, we can further corroborate later evidence.”

But because federal law prohibits the discussion of confidential taxpayers’ information, other than through specific procedures, Ziegler did not detail what, if any, information they may have discovered during their investigation into Hunter Biden. Instead, Ziegler said, “if that’s something that we have, we can turn that over to the House Ways and Means Committee.”

This testimony suggests that the IRS’s investigation likely uncovered evidence the FD-1023 corroborated. With that form now public, both Ziegler and Shapley can study it and assess what documentary material, such as wire transfer reports, they uncovered that is now corroborated. However, that evidence will have to go to the House Ways and Means Committee before it is made public.

So much for Democrats’ claim that there is no evidence of Joe Biden’s complicity and corruption.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Bidens allegedly ‘coerced’ Burisma CEO to pay them millions to help get Ukraine prosecutor fired: FBI form

The FD-1023 form was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published July 20, 2023 12:30pm EDT

Joe Biden and Hunter Biden allegedly “coerced” Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky to pay them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired, according to allegations contained in an unclassified FBI document released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley said he released the document, which describes an alleged criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian business executive, so that the American people can “read this document for themselves without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.”

Hunter Biden gets off plane with president

President Biden has snapped at reporters who have asked him about alleged corruption involving him and his son, Hunter Biden. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The document in question is an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, which Grassley acquired via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers, according to the senator’s office.

EXCLUSIVE: JOE BIDEN ALLEGEDLY PAID $5M BY BURISMA EXECUTIVE AS PART OF A BRIBERY SCHEME, ACCORDING TO FBI DOCUMENT

That FD-1023 — a confidential human source (CHS) reporting document — reflects the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings over the course of several years starting in 2015. Hunter Biden, at the time, sat on the board of Burisma.

Sen. Chuck Grassley speaks into mircrophone during hearing

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wants Americans to “read this document for themselves without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.” (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Fox News Digital has reviewed the document, which includes new information, including the identity of the business executive — Burisma CEO Zlochevsky — and the allegations that he was “coerced” into paying Joe Biden and Hunter Biden millions of dollars to get a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his firm fired.

In the form, Zlochevsky tells the source he has “many text messages and ‘recordings’ that show he was coerced to make such payments” to the Bidens.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/07/FD-1023_Senator-Grassley_FINAL.pdf

Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption, and say that his firing, at the time, was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.

The unclassified document is dated June 30, 2020, and says the contact with the source was “telephonic.”

The source reported to the FBI that “in late 2015 or 2016, during the Obama/Biden Administration, CHS was first introduced to officials at Ukraine natural gas business Burisma Holdings through [redacted] Oleksandr Ostapenko.” The form reflects that there is an additional FD-1023 detailing information brought by the source dated Jan. 2, 2018.

HOUSE GOP DEMAND TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS FROM HUNTER BIDEN PROSECUTOR, DOJ, IRS, SECRET SERVICE OFFICIALS

“CHS and Ostapenko traveled to Ukraine and went to Burisma’s office…the purpose of the meeting was to discuss Burisma’s interest in purchasing a US-based oil and gas business, for purposes of merging it with Burisma for purposes of conducting an IPO in the US,” the form states. “Burisma was willing to purchase a US-based entity for $20-$30 million.”

The form states that the CHS attended that meeting, as well as Burisma’s CFO Vadim Pojarski and Karina Zlochevsky, the daughter of CEO and founder Mykola Zlochevsky.

Hunter Biden, left, and Mykola Zlochevsky (Getty Images)

Fox News Digital has previously reported that Hunter Biden and his business associates had much contact with Pojarskii [Pozharsky] about his role on the board of the company.

“During the meeting Pojarskii asked CHS whether CHS was aware of Burisma’s Board of Directors. CHS replied ‘no,’ and Pojarski advised the board members included: 1) the former president or prime minister of Poland; and 2) Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

“Pojarskii said Burisma hired the former president or prime minister of Poland to leverage his contacts in Europe for prospective oil and gas deals,” the form states.

Burisma said they “hired Hunter Biden ‘to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.’”

The source asked why Burisma needed his assistance regarding the merger of the U.S.-based company when Biden was on their board, to which Pojarskii replied: “Hunter Biden was not smart, and they wanted to get additional counsel.”

EXCLUSIVE: PERSON ALLEGING BIDEN CRIMINAL BRIBERY SCHEME IS ‘HIGHLY CREDIBLE’ FBI SOURCE USED SINCE OBAMA ADMIN: SOURCE

The form jumps to a meeting the source detailed that took place two months later. The source met with Mykola Zlochevsky in Vienna, Austria, outside a coffee shop, along with Ostapenko.

“CHS recalled this meeting took place around the time Joe Biden made a public statement about (former) Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin being corrupt, and that he should be fired/removed from office,” the form states. “CHS told Zlochevsky that due to Shokin’s investigation into Burisma, which was made public at this time, it would have a substantial negative impact on Burisma’s prospective IPO in the United States.”

“Zlochevsky replied something to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry Hunter will take care of those issues through his dad,” the form states, adding that the source “did not ask any further questions about what that specifically meant.”

Hunter Biden arrives at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Zlochevsky went on to say, “Hunter Biden advised Burisma it could raise much more capital if Burisma purchased a larger US-based business that already had a history in the US oil and gas sector.” The source said Zlochevsky mentioned a business in Texas.

“CHS advised Zlochevsky it would be problematic to raise capital in the US given Shokin’s investigation into Burisma as nobody in the US would invest in a company that was the subject of a criminal investigation,” the form states.

DOJ KNEW HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP WAS ‘NOT MANIPULATED,’ CONTAINED ‘RELIABLE EVIDENCE’ IN 2019: WHISTLEBLOWER

“CHS suggested it would be best if Burisma simply litigate the matter in Ukraine, and pay some attorney $50,000,” the form states, but Zlochevsky said Burisma “would likely lose the trial because he could not show that Burisma was innocent.”

“Zlochevsky also laughed at CHS’s number of $50,000 (not because of the small amounts but because the number contained a ‘5’) and said that ‘it costs 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden.”

“CHS noted that at this time, it was unclear to CHS whether these alleged payments were already made,” the form states.

Joe Biden's son Hunter's laptop was authenticated by NBC News on May 19

World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden and Vice President Joe Biden. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

But the form states that the source told Zlochevsky that “any such payments to the Bidens would complicate matters, and Burisma should hire ‘some normal US oil and gas advisors’ because the Bidens have no experience with the business sector.”

“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden [on the board] ‘so everything will be okay,’” the form states.

The source went on to ask “whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should retain Hunter.”

“Zlochevsky replied: ‘They both did.’”

The source retired that this was a “mistake,” and that Zlochevsky “should fire Hunter Biden and deal with Shokin’s investigation directly so that the matter” stayed an issue in Ukraine and so that it did not “turn into some international matter,” to which Zlochevsky stressed not to worry and “this thing will go away anyway.”

“CHS replied that, notwithstanding Shokin’s investigation, it was still a bad decision for Burisma to spend $20-30 million to buy a US business, and that CHS didn’t want to be involved with the Biden matter,” the form states.

President Biden and his son Hunter Biden. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

“Zlochevsky responded that he appreciated CHS’s advice, but that ‘it’s too late to change his decision.’”

“CHS understood this to mean that Zlochevsky had already paid the Bidens, presumably to ‘deal with Shokin,’” the form states.

“It is remarkable that congressional Republicans, in their eagerness to go after President Biden regardless of the truth, continue to push claims that have been debunked for years and that they themselves have cautioned to take ‘with a grain of salt’ because they could be ‘made up,’” said White House spokesman Ian Sams. “These claims have reportedly been scrutinized by the Trump Justice Department, a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, and a full impeachment trial of the former President that centered on these very issues, and over and over again, they have been found to lack credibility. It’s clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way. It is well past time for news organizations to hold them to basic levels of factual accountability for their repeated and increasingly desperate efforts to mislead both the public and the press.”

The FBI said in a statement that the release of the 1023 risked the safety of a confidential source:

“Throughout the FBI’s engagements with Congress, we have been guided by our obligation to protect the physical safety of confidential human sources and the integrity of sensitive investigations. We have repeatedly explained to Congress, in correspondence and in briefings, how critical it is to keep this source information confidential. In the face of these significant concerns, the FBI negotiated a resolution with Chairman Comer to provide the information requested in a manner that protects the safety of confidential sources and integrity of investigations.”

Meanwhile, the form jumps to a “2016/2017 telephone call” the source had with Zlochevsky after the 2016 presidential election. Zlochevsky said he was “not happy Trump won the election.”

“CHS asked Zlochevsky whether he was concerned about Burisma’s involvement with the Bidens,” the form states. “Zlochevsky stated he didn’t want to pay the Bidens and he was ‘pushed to pay’ them.”

The source explained to the FBI agent taking notes of his conversation that the Russian term Zlochevsky used to explain the payments was “poluchili.” The form states that “literally translates to; ‘got it’ or ‘received it’ but is also used in “Russian criminal slang for being ‘forced or coerced to pay.’”

HUNTER DEMANDED $10M FROM CHINESE ENERGY FIRM BECAUSE ‘BIDENS ARE THE BEST,’ HAVE ‘CONNECTIONS’

At this point, Shokin had already been fired. Zlochevsky said “nobody would find out about his financial dealings with the Bidens.”

“CHS then stated, ‘I hope you have some back-up (proof) for your words (namely, that Zlochevsky was ‘forced’ to pay the Bidens).”

“Zlochevsky replied he has many text messages and ‘recordings’ that show that he was coerced to make such payments,” the form states. “CHS told Zlochevsky he should make certain that he should retain those recordings.”

The form then jumps to a 2019 telephone call between the source and Ostapenko, in which they discussed “various business matters” unrelated to Burisma.

“During the call, Zlochevsky asked CHS and/or Ostapenko if they read the recent news reports about the investigations into the Bidens and Burisma, and Zlochevsky jokingly asked if the CHS was an ‘oracle’ (due to CHS’s prior advice that Zlochevsky should not pay the Bidens and instead to hire an attorney to litigate the allegations concerning Shokin’s investigation),” the form states.

“CHS mentioned Zlochevsky might have difficulty explaining suspicious wire transfers that may evidence any (illicit) payments to the Bidens,” the form states. “Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the ‘Big Guy’ (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden).”

President Biden and Hunter Biden. (Getty Images)

The form says CHS asked Zlochevsky how many companies and bank accounts he controlled, to which he responded it would “take them (investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).”

While the source detailed the conversations with Zlochevsky, he also told the FBI that “it is very common for business men in post-Soviet countries to brag or show-off” and said it is “extremely common for businesses in Russia and Ukraine to make ‘bribe’ payments to various government officials.”

As for recordings and text messages of conversations with the Bidens, the source said that Zlochevsky said he had “a total of 17 recordings” involving the Bidens; “two of the recordings included Joe Biden, and the remaining 15 recordings only included Hunter Biden.”

The source said those recordings “evidence Zlochevsky was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure” Shokin was fired.

The source said Zlochevsky also had “two documents (which CHS understood to be wire transfer statements, bank records, etc.), that evidence some payment(s) to the Bidens were made, presumably in exchange for Shokin’s firing.”

“For the better part of a year, I’ve been pushing the Justice Department and FBI to provide details on its handling of very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme,” Grassley said. “While the FBI sought to obfuscate and redact, the American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats, thanks to brave and heroic whistleblowers. What did the Justice Department and FBI do with the detailed information in the document? And why have they tried to conceal it from Congress and the American people for so long?”

Grassley added: “The Justice Department and FBI have failed to come clean, but Chairman Comer and I intend to find out.”

Comer subpoenaed the FBI to turn over the unredacted document to Congress. The FBI did not comply, but instead, made accommodations to allow lawmakers to review the document in a secure setting last month.

“The FBI’s Biden Bribery Record tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee’s Biden family influence peddling investigation,” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said. “In the FBI’s record, the Burisma executive claims that he didn’t pay the ‘big guy’ directly but that he used several bank accounts to conceal the money. That sounds an awful lot like how the Bidens conduct business: using multiple bank accounts to hide the source and total amount of the money.”

Comer in front of billboard of New York Post Hunter Biden frontpage

Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 8, 2023. (Anna Rose Layden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Comer added: “At our hearing with IRS whistleblowers, they testified that they had never seen or heard of this record during the Biden criminal investigation, despite having potentially corroborating evidence. Given the misconduct and politicization at the Department of Justice, the American people must be able to read this record for themselves. I thank Senator Grassley for providing much needed transparency to the American people.”

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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corruption, Political

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DOJ Rot Goes So Much Deeper Than Merrick Garland

BY: ELLE PURNELL | JUNE 28, 2023

Author Elle Purnell profile

ELLE PURNELL

VISIT ON TWITTER@_ETREYNOLDS

Following the sensational whistleblower testimony that dropped Thursday, revealing how the Department of Justice systematically blocked an IRS investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter and diverted agents from examining the incriminating evidence against his presidential father, House Republicans are threatening the overdue impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland — except most of the pro-Biden interference in the DOJ happened before Garland was installed, while President Donald Trump was still in office.

Does Garland still deserve impeachment for his assortment of abuses, such as sitting on his hands to avoid real accountability for the younger Biden (and his pop), while weaponizing the country’s top law enforcement agency to try to send Biden’s top presidential challenger to federal prison? Absolutely. Is it smart politically for Kevin McCarthy to use the current momentum to hold Garland to account? Probably. Is the alleged involvement in a foreign bribery scheme enough to merit Biden’s own impeachment? Most definitely.

But if the blame — and punishment — for the DOJ corruption revealed by whistleblowers stops with Merrick Garland or even Joe Biden, it will happen again. That’s because the Justice Department’s pattern of shielding the Biden family from the law wasn’t masterminded by either man. It happened because of career officials and bureaucrats, whose names most Americans don’t know, and whom Americans will never have the chance to vote out. They didn’t have to be told what to do.

According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, it was in late 2019, a year before Joe Biden was elected, that the FBI acquired and authenticated the infamous laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer repair shop. The IRS began an investigation into likely tax crimes almost immediately.

Between April and June 2020, when IRS agents were preparing to execute interviews and search warrants, it was “career DOJ officials,” Shapley said, who “purposely slow-walk[ed] investigative actions.” After IRS agents discovered a WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden purportedly threatened a Chinese business associate that “I am sitting here with my father” and that the Bidens could “hold a grudge” if a “commitment made” to them was not “fulfilled,” federal prosecutors rejected IRS efforts to look into the messages. That was around August 2020, when Trump had nearly half a year left in the White House.

In October 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf acknowledged “probable cause had been achieved” for executing a search warrant on Hunter Biden but still refused to allow a search. In the meantime, the DOJ continued to block IRS investigators from accessing the laptop and openly cited the investigation’s potential to hurt Biden’s electoral chances as their reason for slow-walking it.

Wolf would also order IRS investigators not to ask about “dad” or about an email stating there would be “Ten held by H for the big guy.” That happened in December, more than a month before Biden’s inauguration. That same month, IRS and FBI investigators planned to seek a consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence and interviews with Hunter and his associates, since the search warrant had been rejected. “FBI headquarters,” Shapley said, apparently notified the transition team of the plan, a move which “tipped off” the Bidens’ inner circle. Of the 12 interviews investigators sought, they got one.

All of that happened under Trump and his attorney general, William Barr. That’s not to make the absurd suggestion that it happened at Trump or Barr’s direction. Rather, it shows how monstrous the triple-letter leviathan and its grip on our political process are. The regime, the deep state, the bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it: Shapley’s testimony shows their ability to manipulate political outcomes is so entrenched that their own elected overseers are powerless to stop it.

Unsurprisingly, as Shapley noted, “This same sort of unprecedented behavior continued through” Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. When IRS agents finally sent their recommended charges against Hunter Biden to the DOJ, the agency — by then under Attorney General Merrick Garland — opposed the recommendation. Based on the deal offered to Hunter Biden last week, we know the DOJ dropped most of the charges. Shapley also testified that he has been subject to retaliation from the DOJ since speaking out.

Before the investigation into Hunter Biden was even opened, the Russia-collusion hoax orchestrated against then-candidate Trump in 2016 offered more evidence of rank-and-file DOJ corruption, such as Peter Strzok and Lisa Page‘s conversation about their plan to “stop” Trump from becoming president. While that op occurred under a Democrat president, it relied on individual hacks in Justice Department cubicles, not just on Obama-appointed political operatives like then-FBI Director James Comey.

The problem of a bureaucracy so bloated that the people’s elected servants in Congress and the White House can’t keep track of, let alone shut down, its mischief is not unique to the DOJ. But the Justice Department’s role as arbiter of how — or to whom — the law applies makes its rule-by-pencil-pusher especially dangerous.

Electing the right president or appointing the right attorney general will only help with that insofar as he can root out the career rot in the 115,000-employee DOJ. As the Gary Shapleys get pushed out, the integrity they bring to agencies like the DOJ and IRS will go with them.

And while corruption in the vastly left-leaning bureaucracy almost always benefits Democrats, the problem goes beyond partisan politics. If government agencies are so powerful that their work to protect political allies and topple their challengers continues unabated by the electoral process, then elections are no real transfer of power and we are not a functioning republic.

That’s not just having a bad apple for an attorney general. That is a crisis of governance.

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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corruption, Political

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Archive for the ‘corruption’ Category

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COMMENTARY BY

Rachel Greszler is a research fellow in economics, budget, and entitlements in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research.

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BY: SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT | SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

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Fox News Digital obtained a transcript of Archer’s testimony before the House Oversight panel

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Not the Weather

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BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 26, 2023

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8. DOJ and FBI’s Cover-Up of Failure to Investigate Bidens

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10. Press Acting as Biden-Run Media

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DOJ prosecutors said Hunter Biden is currently under investigation

By Brooke Singman , Jake Gibson | Fox News | Published July 26, 2023 1:25pm EDT

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 24, 2023

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Biden corruption case relies on veteran IRS agents whose testimony holds up against Hill Democrats

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BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

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The FD-1023 form was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published July 20, 2023 12:30pm EDT

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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BY: ELLE PURNELL | JUNE 28, 2023

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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In His Service