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Republican Senator Chuck Grassley released an internal FBI document that alleges Mykola Zlochevsky, chief executive of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each in exchange for putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma.
Hunter Biden was a member of the company's board at the time.
Grassley said the lightly-redacted document was obtained "via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers."
The document cites an unnamed source who details several interactions in 2015 and 2016 with Zlochevsky. The source claimed that Zlochevsky said he was "forced" to pay the Bidens $5 million each in exchange for getting Shokin fired. The source, who was previously known to the FBI, claimed to have over a dozen recordings, though no evidence of those recordings has surfaced.
"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. 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? The Justice Department and FBI have failed to come clean, but Chairman Comer and I intend to find out," Grassley said in a statement.
The White House criticized Grassley for releasing the document, claiming the details have since been "debunked."
"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," White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement. "It's clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way."
You can read the document here.