Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he only learned about a claim made by a confidential human source that the Biden family received bribes from Ukraine’s Burisma “much, much, much more recently than anything around 2020.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) led the questioning of Wray on Tuesday, the agency’s leader about how the bureau handled the June 2020 report from a CHS who’s considered “highly credible.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh at the time was scouring through evidence it had received related to corruption in Ukraine. Former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had requested then that agents at the FBI re-interview a CHS who reportedly made a previous passing reference to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and how he served on the board of directors of Burisma, an energy giant in Ukraine.
The further questioning they conducted ultimately led to a July report that Grassley released, which revealed that Burisma paid both Bidens $5 million. In exchange for those bribes, the report says, Joe Biden — who was serving as the vice president in the Obama administration at the time — would “protect” the Ukrainian energy company “from all kinds of problems.”
When pressed during Tuesday’s testimony, Wray wasn’t exactly committal about when he was told that the CHS report — known as an FD-1023 — was filed. He would only say that it wasn’t anywhere near when it was filed in June 2020.
That claim has been brought into question in the past, though, by Brady himself during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
“It was my understanding that [the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh] could not take any steps absent the approval, the review and approval of FBI headquarters, not just the leadership of FBI Pittsburgh.”
If Brady’s words are true, then there would be no way that Wray didn’t know of the existence of the bombshell report in 2020, meaning he chose to keep that information close to the vest in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.
Ted Cruz confronts FBI director Christopher Wray about the FBI tipping off Hunter Biden ahead of his property search.
No surprise, Wray attempts to defend the FBI's biased actions. pic.twitter.com/y0lM5NX9mK
— Eddie (@ICU1010) December 5, 2023
Wray’s response to Grassley’s further questions was that the Pittsburgh office had the responsibility of looking into the CHS report and that Brady’s office was the one that closed that assessment.
