Burisma chief said ‘both’ Joe and Hunter involved
WASHINGTON — A bombshell FBI informant file containing a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and his son was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed he was “coerced” into making the payoff.
The owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, told the FBI informant in 2016 during a meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form.
“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on Burisma’s board) ‘so everything will be okay,’” the document says.
According to the report, the source then inquired whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should “retain” the younger Biden; Zlochevsky replied, “They both did.”
In an addendum to the report from June 2020, the source told investigators that Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of conversations with the Bidens — two of which involved Joe.
The source added that Zlochevsky was convinced the recordings and other evidence show he was “somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
It’s unclear when exactly the alleged payments would have been made by Burisma, which first added Hunter Biden to its board in April 2014 as his dad assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Although he has repeatedly claimed he never discussed business with his son, then-Vice President Joe Biden met with his son’s partner Devon Archer in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board, according to Obama White House visitor logs.
Joe Biden also met with Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi at an April 16, 2015, dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano, as revealed in The Post’s first bombshell report in October 2020 on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.
Grassley (R-Iowa), who released a redacted version of the four-page document, asked in a statement, “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?”
The allegation has been the subject of intense political focus since it was first described publicly on May 3.
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