A Republican senator testifying on Feb. 9 before a new House panel described in gritty detail how his investigations of influence peddling and business deals of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James, with controversial foreign entities were repeatedly mislead, subverted and manipulated by Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials.
But contrary testimony from a Democratic representative who gained national prominence leading the second impeachment of Donald Trump in 2021 made clear minority members of the panel view allegations of DOJ and FBI abuses as nothing more than cover for efforts to put the former president back in the White House.
In his opening statement to the first hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said DOJ and FBI officials told the news media and Congress that claims of corrupt business dealings with foreign interests by Biden family members were “disinformation.”
But in fact, Grassley said, bank records “financially linked Hunter Biden and James Biden to entities and individuals connected with the communist Chinese regime. We also acquired business records with Hunter and James Biden’s signatures alongside those same Chinese nationals.
“How were they supposed to be paid? According to bank records, there were wires from companies linked to the communist regime. In three floor speeches, we made those bank records public and asked this question to our partisan detractors: Are these official bank records Russian disinformation?
“We also shared hundreds of pages of bank records with U.S. Attorney [for the District of Columbia David] Weiss. He’s failed to respond. Now, as our investigation continued, whistleblowers approached my office with allegations that the FBI created an assessment in August 2020 … According to these whistleblowers, that assessment was used by FBI Headquarters to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation. This scheme allegedly caused investigative activity then to entirely cease.”
