Last Thursday, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley released the redacted copy of the FBI’s FD-1023 memo outlining the allegations about the bribery scheme between then-Vice President Joe Biden and the owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, The New York Post reported.
According to the memo, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky told an FBI confidential source in 2016 that he paid $5 million each to Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Zlochevsky admitted that he needed Hunter on the Burisma board, not because Hunter Biden was smart, but “so everything will be okay. The Burisma owner told the informant that his dog was smarter that the “stupid” Hunter Biden.
When the informant asked whether it was Joe Biden or Hunter who told Zlochevsky that he had to place Hunter on the board, the Burisma owner allegedly said, “They both did.”
According to Senator Grassley, the FBI informant, a Ukrainian-American, who was a highly credible and trusted FBI source for over a decade, details four conversations with Zlochevsky starting with a late 2015/early 2016 meeting near Kyiv and ending with a 2019 phone call.
The informant said each conversation with Zlochevsky occurred in the presence of Alexander Ostapenko, who initially introduced the informant to the Burisma owner.
Zlochevsky alleged that he had 17 recorded conversations with the Bidens, two of which were with then-Vice President Biden. He also said he had text messages as well as financial records of the payments Zlochevsky made to the Bidens.
Zlochevsky claimed that the evidence he had showed that he had been “coerced into paying the Bidens” in exchange for ensuring that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.
In a statement announcing the release of the document, Senator Grassley said that despite the FBI’s attempts to “obfuscate and redact,” the American public will now be able to read the FD-1023 for themselves “without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.”
