Jerry Dunleavy, here:
Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the "foreign
national" involved in the alleged "criminal bribery scheme" aimed at
shaking an alleged investigation into Burisma by then-Ukrainian
prosecutor Viktor Shokin, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner.
The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to
unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the
number of bank accounts involved.
Amid the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray
allowed members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to review an
FD-1023 form this month that contained redacted versions of the
allegations from the paid FBI informant.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight
Committee, repeatedly claimed following a late May FBI briefing that
Barr and his “hand-picked prosecutor” — Scott Brady, then the
Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania —
ended the investigation into the bribery claims in 2020. But Barr
quickly said that is false.
“It’s not true,” Barr soon told multiple outlets in early June. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”...
Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-IA) also revealed this month that a less redacted version of the
form he has viewed says Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of his
conversations with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (two of the former and 15
of the latter) as an "insurance policy."
Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears
independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.
Shapley said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf instructed FBI and IRS investigators not to ask witnesses about “dad” (Joe Biden) or about “the big guy.”
Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, Weiss’s office revealed in a court filing on Tuesday.
The IRS whistleblower claims detailing the politicization and slow-walking
of the Justice Department investigation were made public on Thursday,
including allegations that Weiss had sought special counsel status from
the DOJ and sought to file charges in California and in the nation’s
capital but was repeatedly denied. The whistleblowers also pointed to new apparent links between Joe Biden and his son’s China deals and that the FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019.