Republicans acknowledge Biden bribe audio might not exist
Several Republicans said this week that they don’t know if there really are tapes of Joe Biden talking about taking a bribe.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed Monday that a tip the FBI received in 2020 said a foreign national who allegedly paid Biden $5 million has recordings of himself talking to Biden when he was vice president.
The audio purported to be a compelling new detail about the FBI tip, which Republicans have demanded be made public since learning of it last month.
At the same time, the uncertainty over whether the recordings actually exist is a reminder that while the tip came from a credible career informant, the informant’s source is someone else, and the underlying information, audio and all, remains unverified hearsay.
Speaking about the recordings on Newsmax Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said lawmakers “don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them.”
Comer pressured the FBI into showing his committee a redacted copy of the form during a private briefing last week. He said the June 2020 document, an FBI worksheet for recording tips from confidential human sources, indicates someone claimed to have paid Biden and his son Hunter $5 million in bribes several years prior.
The FBI has resisted handing over a copy of the form for public consumption, maintaining that such documents contain uncorroborated information and that releasing them can endanger sources.
The allegation that Biden was caught on tape has seemingly forced Republicans to remind an eager conservative media that the allegations might be untrue.
“We don’t know for sure if these tapes exist,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on “The Chris Salcedo Show” Wednesday when asked if Republicans would consider impeaching the president.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested on a program called “The Conservative Circus” that not only might the tapes not exist, but also that the foreign national who spoke to the FBI informant might lack credibility. (Some Republicans on the Oversight Committee have said the source is former Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevksy, a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch.) [Continue reading…]