FBI Had 3 Informants on Biden Ukraine Corruption

The FBI had three separate confidential sources who reported the Biden family was engaged in corruption in Ukraine. However, FBI Director Kash Patel says that there is no record that the bureau sought to thoroughly investigate those claims.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released two new FBI FD-1023s—records of reporting from the bureau’s confidential human sources—that focus on allegations of Biden family corruption.

These records match closely to a previous memo Grassley released in 2023 containing similar claims. The senator wants to get to the bottom of why the FBI apparently failed to fully investigate those claims.

"To date, the FBI has never answered Congress whether they investigated the text messages, audio files and financial records referenced in that 1023,” Grassley said in a hearing with Patel in September.

More Biden whistleblowers came forward about Ukraine/Biden

"Whistleblowers have provided my office with two additional FBI 1023 documents. These documents memorialize statements from FBI sources,” Grassley continued. "These two new 1023 documents are from separate FBI confidential human sources during different years.”

Grassley asked Patel directly at the hearing about how the FBI handled these three related allegations from human sources and whether the bureau made any effort to corroborate or obtain any of the records cited by those sources that could serve as proof of their claims.

“Regarding those records, did the Wray FBI make any effort to determine whether they existed? Did the Wray FBI make any effort to obtain those records?” Grassley asked.

“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Chairman,” Patel replied.

Both confidential human sources told the FBI about an alleged corruption scheme involving Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who were under investigation by the Ukrainian government, the memos show.

Allegation: Biden money laundered by Burisma through Latvia

They told the FBI that they believed Joe Biden and his son were involved in the scheme while Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board—a claim that House Republicans separately investigated in their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

“Burisma Holdings (Burisma) owns 13 companies, which are used to pay dividends through fake consulting contracts. The contracts are paid to US investors and funneled through Latvia and the energy sector of Ukraine,” one informant told the FBI, a February 2019 1032 shows.

“Zlochesky [sic] owns between 30% and 70% of all companies in Burisma. JBIDEN and his son, HBIDEN, have money invested into Burisma. Their investment money was passed through a shell company in Latvia,” the memo reads.

The second confidential informant said that Joe Biden used his position as vice president to advance the interests of his son and Burisma in a meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, echoing claims by the House Oversight Committee that Biden was engaged in an influence peddling scheme to win earnings for his family.

“The last time JOSEPH BIDEN visited Ukraine, BIDEN met with PETRO POROSHENKO to protect the interests of HUNTER BIDEN. JOSEPH BIDEN would “take care” of BURISMA HOLDING issues around the World and POROSHENKO would protect ZLOCHEVSKY,” a second informant said, according to an earlier June 2017.

You can read both memos released by Grassley here.

Previous informant pleaded guilty to lying about Bidens

Chairman Grassley had previously released a third FD-1023 two years ago that contained similar claims about Hunter Biden’s work for Zlochevsky’s Burisma. That source, Alexander Smirnov, told the FBI that the first son was hired by Zlochevsky to provide political protection for Burisma while it was under corruption investigation by the Ukrainian authorities. He also claimed that Zlochevsky paid Joe and Hunter Biden a collective $10 million dollars for the arrangement.

While FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office reportedly corroborated some of the details in the report, ultimately the Justice Department determined that the Smirnov invented most of the claims in the document, Just the News previously reported. Smirnov pleaded guilty to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income, the Associated Press reported.

Only a few months earlier, FBI Director Christopher Wray had refused to disclose Smirnov’s identity because he was a “trusted and credible” source. For his part, Joe Biden consistently denied any interaction with his son's partners in Burisma. "It's a bunch of lies," Biden told The New York Post.

It is unclear how far the FBI went into investigating Smirnov’s claims before Grassley publicly released the FD-1023 memo.

Unverified, but no record of ever having been examined

According to the FBI, 1023 documents contain raw, unverified intelligence from human sources and therefore do not necessarily represent fact. Grassley said that the Senate is not claiming that the information contained in the documents is true, but wants to know whether the reporting was fully investigated and what the FBI determined about the claims.

"We aren’t saying the allegations are true. We want to know what the FBI did to fully investigate their veracity or lack thereof, and what they concluded,” Grassley said. "Let’s put this matter to rest, one way or the other.”

The apparent failure by the FBI to sufficiently probe claims from confidential informants about allegations of corruption involving former Vice President Biden follows whistleblower complaints that, unlike Smirnov's, have withstood legal scrutiny.

IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler said that the Justice Department and FBI stymied the various probes into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax and other crimes.

In fact, even before the whistleblowers began their investigation, federal agencies as early as 2015 were alerted to suspicious activity and potential criminal activities by Hunter Biden.

The first warning came from two whistleblowers at Morgan Stanley, who flagged suspicious transactions involving Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer and company Rosemont Seneca, which resulted in consequences for Archer, but not for Biden.

The IRS whistleblowers said that the Justice Department repeatedly hampered their investigation over politics, including squashing search warrants and withholding key information, like the Smirnov FD-1023 that Grassley previously released.

Justice Department prosecutors also prevented Shapely and Ziegler from asking questions about apparent references to Joe Biden as “the big guy” in emails they had obtained from the first son’s laptop. That laptop was falsely dismissed as likely "Russian disinformation" by 51 intelligence officers at the behest of Antony Blinken, a foreign policy advisor for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential bid and later Secretary of State.

In October 2023, Senator Grassley revealed in a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI received information about possible criminal activity involving the Biden family from more than 40 informants over an extended period of time, but most avenues of investigation were thwarted, according to his years-long investigation that produced records and information from several department whistleblowers.