Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on Thursday demanded answers from FBI Director Christopher Wray on what investigative steps the bureau has taken related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the wake of a Senate GOP report released this week.
Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis.c, and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released an 87-page interim report on their months-long joint-investigation into the younger Biden’s role on the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, as well as his alleged “extensive and complex financial transactions.”
Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, penned a letter to Wray Thursday and described the report as “explosive.”
“We write to ask what investigative steps—if any—the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken in response to the information in this report,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan referred to the report’s findings, which stated alleged “potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukraine, Russian Kazakh, and Chinese nationals.”
“The report by Chairman Johnson and Chairman Grassley shows that the FBI Has been aware of some alleged misconduct for years,” Jordan wrote. “The report detailed widespread concern within the Obama-Biden Administration about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian company founded by oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.”
Hunter Biden joined Burisma in April 2014 and, at the time, reportedly connected the firm with consulting form Blue Star Strategies to help the natural gas company fight corruption charges in Ukraine. During the time Biden was on the board the company’s board, then-Vice President Joe Biden was running U.S.-Ukraine relations and policy for the Obama administration.
The report stated that State Department official George Kent, who testified during Trump’s impeachment hearings last year, and Amos Hochstein, the former U.S. special envoy and coordinator for International Energy Affairs, raised concerns with Biden and his staff in the vice president’s office.
Jordan went on to slam the FBI, saying that the bureau “suffered from a pattern of misconduct and politicization at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden Administration,” and detailed misconduct in the origins of the Russia probe.
Jordan penned a list of questions for Wray, asking for information “as soon as possible.”
Jordan questioned whether the FBI was investigation the younger Biden’s alleged receipt of $3.5 million from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, as stated in the interim report.
The Washington Post reported, though, that George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said the report "falsely alleges that Hunter Biden had a financial relationship with Russian businesswoman Yelena Baturina and that he received $3.5 million from Baturina."
Mesires, according to the Post, said Hunter Biden had no interest in and was “not a co-founder of” the company paid by Baturina, the wife of Moscow's late mayor.
The report also stated that the committees received records that Hunter Biden “sent thousands of dollars” to individuals who have “either been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; an association with the adult entertainment industry; or potential association with prostitution.”
GOP-LED COMMITTEES RELEASE INTERIM REPORT ON HUNTER BIDEN, BURISMA PROBE
“Some recipients of those funds are Ukrainian or Russian citizens,” the report states, adding that “the records note that it is a documented fact that Hunter Biden has sent funds to non-resident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine.”
“The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring,’” the report stated.
Jordan questioned whether the FBI was investigating Biden’s alleged payment to individuals involved in human trafficking and organized prostitution; as well as his alleged Chinese transactions.
The report goes further and alleges that not just Hunter Biden but other members of the Biden family “were involved in a vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates on Wednesday blasted the investigation, and Johnson directly, for pursuing a “conspiracy theory.”
"As the coronavirus death toll climbs and Wisconsinites struggle with joblessness, Ron Johnson has wasted months diverting the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee away from any oversight of the catastrophically botched federal response to the pandemic, a threat Sen. Johnson has dismissed by saying that 'death is an unavoidable part of life.’ Why? To subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars -- an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory that hinges on Sen. Johnson himself being corrupt and that the Senator has now explicitly stated he is attempting to exploit to bail out Donald Trump's re-election campaign,” Bates said in a statement Wednesday.
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