19 June, 2023 – Brianna Herlihy | Fox News
Former attorney general says a key FBI document should be released as long as steps are taken to protect the confidential human source
EXCLUSIVE – Former Attorney General William Barr suggests that Attorney General Merrick Garland should release the FBI-produced FD-1023 document – alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden – to Republican lawmakers, provided necessary steps are taken to protect the life and safety of the confidential human source in the document.
Barr’s suggestion comes amid an outcry that the Justice Department is not evenhanded with respect to investigations of former president Donald Trump and the Biden family.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Barr said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s unprecedented indictment of Trump for his mishandling of classified documents “understandably sparked ire over a double standard.”
“I think AG Garland should move quickly with concrete steps to address it,” Barr said.
“The public needs to be assured that the two pending investigations about the Bidens – the one about mishandling of classified material and the broader one in Delaware – are being pursued with the same rigor as the case against Trump,” Barr told Fox News Digital.
Former Attorney General William P. Barr (Michael Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)
Barr said this assurance is “especially needed now because of recent reports that an FBI whistleblower is suggesting some shenanigans possibly directed at undermining the Delaware investigation,” he said.
Already a 4-year investigation into Biden connection with Burisma:
U.S. Attorney David Weiss has been leading an investigation into potentially criminal business dealings by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, for the better part of four-years.
“In light of the slow pace of that investigation, these reports are, frankly, very concerning. Chairman Comer and key senators are trying to get to the bottom of this,” he said.
Fox News Digital reported earlier this month that the contents of the FD-1023 allege that Joe Biden was paid $5 million by an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where his son Hunter Biden sat on the board, in a bribery scheme that involved influence over U.S. policy decisions, according to sources familiar with the document.
Attorney General William Barr speaks with federal, state and local officials on Sept. 21, 2020. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While Joe Biden was Vice President:
The document, dated June 30, 2020, is the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential human source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, starting in 2015.
Earlier this month the FBI allowed the House Oversight Committee to review the document with redactions after Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for initially defying a subpoena for the document.
House Republicans are still demanding the FBI release the document. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Congress “still lacks a full and complete picture with respect to what that document really says.”
Attorney General William Barr during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, Dec. 21, 2020. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“Under these circumstances, I think the AG should consider providing Chairman Comer, and his Senate supporters, the 1023 report they’ve been seeking, subject to terms necessary to protect the life and safety of a confidential source,” Barr said.
FBI coverup?:
Barr previously told Fox News that during his tenure the FD-1023 document was reviewed by U.S. Attorney Scott Brady and his team in Pittsburgh as part of a screening process to determine the veracity or relevance of information.
Barr said there was “no sign” of the FD-1023 to be disinformation and was therefore routed to Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Weiss in Delaware – who was and is still working a probe focusing on Hunter Biden.
“It’s murky,” Barr told Fox News Digital, “but it seems the whistleblower is suggesting someone at FBI headquarters tried to shunt aside the same or similar allegations covered in the 1023.”
“I know DOJ has a strong policy against sharing these raw reports, and for good reason. Any FBI director would have had Wray’s reticence about turning it over, and I think he did his best to accommodate Chairman Comer,” Barr said.
“But the AG is ultimately in charge and should make the call how far to go here because of the unique situation and the need to weigh and balance the public interests involved. There might be specific factors here that call for restrictions, but otherwise the overall situation warrants leaning forward,” he said.
Barr added that, “Some of the same folks on the Hill did the country a great service in 2017 and beyond by probing and exposing the false Russian collusion claims.”
“They got it right before anybody else – including the DOJ. Letting them take a look at this could be a good thing, as long as we protect the safety of our sources,” he said.
Just imagine for a second what would happen to Trump and/or one of his sons if they took $5 million bribe from a Yanukovych minister and pro-russian oligarch (Mykola Zlochevsky) and made a deal to fire the prosecutor looking into the whole corrupt thing!? He would go to prison for life and I would support it gladly.
Bloomberg News sent reporters to Ukraine, interviewed officials, checked with Giuliani’s supposed sources, and looked back at the very well documented, very public events. They immediately showed that everything Giuliani was claiming was nonsense.
The reason that Biden put pressure on Ukraine over Shokin was because he was refusing to investigate Burisma. And not just Burisma. Shokin was such a corrupt prosecutor that he was allowing oligarchs to do as they pleased, so long as they shared a little of their profits. It was actually a probe by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office that opened the door on how corrupt Shokin was, and how his failure to investigate was turning Ukraine into a hotspot for international criminals. Getting rid of Shokin was a critical step in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.
Shokin himself has even confirmed that he was never investigating Burisma, which is all the testimony that’s needed to show that the whole thing is a farce. The truth is that Biden completely ignored how his actions might damage his son’s income in order to do the right thing in stopping corruption. And, no matter what Giuliani, Trump, or innumerable Republicans have said since then, there is not, was not, has not been, any evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/ukraine-prosecutor-says-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-bidens
People in Ukraine know Shokin and If other people want to know about Shokin they certainly won’t ask a liberal US newspaper they will ask Ukrainians… lmao…
> ask Ukrainians
Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko said it was never about Biden or his son’s business with Burisma.
Something that should interest you, RedSquareMaidan – Ukraine’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, was the epicenter of mass protests that toppled the pro-Russian regime of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and led to Poroshenko’s election. It was also the site of mass killings of protesters by security forces.
The former prosecutor Shokin’s shadow is felt here acutely. In the eyes of many Ukrainians, his biggest failure was that nobody from the former regime was prosecuted for the killing of protesters here on Independence Square.
Parliamentarian Yehor Soboliev was the first official to demand the prosecutor’s dismissal.
Yehor Soboliev:
“It was time when people strongly hoped that murders here on Maidan will be investigated. It was time when people strongly hoped that great corruption in Yanukovych’s presidency will be punished.
In 2015, I personally initiated the resignation of general prosecutor Shokin.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-talking-to-ukrainian-officials-disproves-the-trump-narrative-on-biden
“ask Ukrainians” – Like Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), who said that “Ironically, Joe Biden asked Shokin to leave because the prosecutor failed [to pursue] the Burisma investigation, not because Shokin was tough and active with this case.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/why-was-ukraine-top-prosecutor-fired-viktor-shokin/30181445.html
Lol. What is next? Using RT or Sputnik as a source?
Barr is absolutely insane, if the truly had something on Biden he would have released that info during his own term.
Good point. This took place during the Trump administration, and the Trump administration Department of Justice didn’t prosecute anyone.
Wrong. Read the article, it was from 2020 while Mr. Magoo was VP.
Sorry, I’m a bit confused here. The FD-1023 was filed on June 30, 2020. Trumpkov was elected by the Electoral College in 2016, and held the office from 2017 – 2021. So are you referring to Mike Pence as “Mr. Magoo”?
And what exactly do you think I’m wrong about?
lol, I confused myself with all this Bidenov corruption.
“The document, dated June 30, 2020, is the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential human source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, starting in 2015. “
Right – so it’s recollections that the CHS had of conversations they had up to 5 years before they talked to the FBI. But the first knowledge the FBI had of the allegations was on June 30, 2020 – when Barr was still the United States Attorney General. Barr served until December 23, 2020.
“all this Bidenov corruption” – *Allegations* of corruption, thrown out by Republicans desperately trying to distract people from Trumpkov’s second arrest. (Trumpkov has now been arrested more times than he has been elected. 🙂 )
Says the guy who gets his news from Sesame Street, lol…
Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr – the same William Barr who said, “I think the counts under the Espionage Act, that he willfully retained those documents, are solid counts… I do think we have to wait and see what the defense says, and what proves to be true, but I do think that…if even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.” ???
An FD-1023 simply documents an interview with a source, and does not in itself indicate any suspicions of wrongdoing.
> with a “highly credible” confidential human source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive
Just because the CHS is considered “highly credible” doesn’t mean that the Burisma executive is credible.
> the contents of the FD-1023 allege that Joe Biden was paid $5 million by an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings,
That’s not true at all. The Burisma executive reportedly told the CHS that he did not pay Joe Biden directly. He’d therefore have no way of knowing if Joe Biden got the money. So, the CHS could be lying; the Burisma executive could be lying; Hunter Biden — who was in the trough of addiction at the time — could have been lying. The document doesn’t answer the question of whether Hunter Biden told the company the truth about splitting the money with his father, or whether it was a way to shakedown additional money and appear more influential than he was. In that scenario, the Burisma executive would have believed he was bribing the vice president, yet his son would have pocketed the money.
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