While he was vice president, Joe Biden stepped onto taxpayer-funded Air Force 2, traveled to Ukraine, and conducted personal business with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko. He was there “to protect the interests of Hunter Biden,” according to documents released Tuesday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the oversight of the FBI.
The new documents strengthen the information in previously released records. Last Congress, Grassley released FBI 1023 records — statements from confidential sources — alleging that when Biden was vice president, executives for Ukrainian gas company Burisma put his son Hunter Biden on the company’s board of directors to “protect us through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” according to that “confidential human source.”
Burisma wanted to do business in the United States, but was facing a corruption investigation in Ukraine, led by then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“Regarding that investigation’s impact on its ambitions in North America, Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky reportedly said, ‘Don’t worry Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.’ Zlochevsky reportedly stated that he had to pay $5 million to Hunter Biden and $5 million to Joe Biden, an arrangement he described as ‘poluchili,’ which is Russian crime slang for being “forced or coerced to pay,” according to the document declassified in 2023.
The confidential human source who provided that information, Alexander Smirnova, was later prosecuted for lying to his FBI handler and took a guilty plea, but the Trump DOJ is reexamining the case. Now, more evidence has come to light that tells a similar story to his.
The FBI 1023 documents Grassley released this week contain different confidential human sources that bolster Smirnova’s statements.
“Joseph Biden would ‘take care’ of Burisma Holding issues around the world and Poroshenko would protect Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden is an ‘independent director’ for Burisma Holding and the [confidential human source] believes Hunter Biden has a cocaine problem,” the newly public documents say.
Biden has bragged about threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee unless Shokin was fired. After that threat, Shokin was fired.
The newly released FBI documents also show CIA involvement with another Ukrainian prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko.
Zlochevsky was the subject of an Interpol investigation, and he allegedly bribed Poroshenko with $100 million worth of company shares and profits from gas sales in Ukraine to stop the investigation.
“Two CIA officers took Zlochevsky into the office of Yuriy Lutsenko,” the FBI document reads. “The CIA officers allegedly said Zlochevsky is protected by the US and urged Lutsenko to stop the investigation on Zlochevsky and let him back into Ukraine. A deal was made so Zlochevsky could pay $3 million in damages to get back into Ukraine.”
That same document adds that Burisma owns 13 companies that pay dividends on investments through fake consulting contracts. The contracts are paid to U.S. investors, funneled through Latvia and the energy sector of Ukraine. Both Joe and Hunter Biden had money invested in Burisma, with their investment passing through a shell company in Latvia, according to the FBI source.
While the Bidens were allegedly up to their elbows with fossil fuel investments in Ukraine, when Biden became president, he signed the $1.75 trillion climate bill aimed at crushing the U.S. fossil fuel market, claiming climate change is an existential threat to the world.
FBI Silent
The FBI has had all this information since at least 2017, but has never told Congress whether it investigated the text messages, audio files, and financial records referenced in the 1023 FBI reports, Grassley said Tuesday.
“Whistleblowers have provided my office with two additional FBI 1023 documents. These documents memorialize statements from FBI sources. These two new 1023 documents are from separate FBI confidential human sources during different years,” Grassley said. “So, in total, we now have three different FBI confidential human sources providing information about the Biden family and potential criminal conduct.”
The documents also draw complicated connections between an alleged money laundering scheme within the energy sector involving Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin’s emissary Victor Medvechuk, and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and how those connections relate to Burisma, and Joe and Hunter Biden.
The documents not only name the Biden family, but also offers details on how the Department of Justice handled $240 million worth of frozen assets connected to Pavlo Lazarenko who was arrested for racketeering and was serving time in U.S. prison at the time. Lazarenko was negotiating with the DOJ to release $40 million to settle his case, $40 million to keep, and sending the rest back to Ukraine, with the understanding that former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s name would be in the settlement. Tymoshenko was seeking election in a race facing political opponent Petro Poroshenko, according to the 1023 document.
“This [settlement] would allow Poroshenko and the Russia-controlled media in Ukraine to bad-mouth her politically,” the informant said in the 1023 document. “It is feared the political spin in the media as a result of Tymoshenko’s implication in Lazarenko’s settlement could affect the outcome of the Presidential election and result in Poroshenko winning as opposed to Tymoshenko. This is Tymoshenko’s concern, so she strongly prefers the US DOJ delay executing on its agreement with Lazarenko until after the election, which is just a couple of months away.”
This stinks of election meddling at the highest level, but it is unclear what DOJ’s role ultimately was.
Did the Biden DOJ sit on these lines of investigations to shield the Biden family, or to hide the DOJ’s own possible involvement in pulling the strings in another country’s election? Or did it investigate and fail to mention the outcome to Congress?
It is easy to imagine the conflicts of interest or even blackmail former President Joe “Autopen” Biden may have been navigating when he allowed the U.S. to fund so much of the Ukraine War. At the same time, high-level Ukrainian officials apparently had much personal knowledge and close financial ties to the Biden family. These outrageous connections scream to be fully explained to the American people.
“We aren’t saying the allegations are true,” Grassley stressed. “We want to know what the FBI did to fully investigate their veracity or lack thereof, and what they concluded. Let’s put this matter to rest, one way or the other.”
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
