Trump Attorney General William Barr revealed in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream on Sunday that he was intimately involved in the Biden Ukraine bribe FD-1023 investigation in the summer of 2020. Bream did not press Barr on why he failed to inform the American people in the months leading up to the presidential election that Joe Biden had been credibly accused of taking a $5 million bribe from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma when he was vice president to influence U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine and get a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma fired at the time Biden’s son Hunter was serving on the board of Burisma.
The apparent purpose of Bream’s interview was to have Barr attack President Trump over the classified documents prosecution. The questions about the FD-1023 were an afterthought at the tail end of the interview with Bream not mentioning that Joe Biden himself was accused of taking a $5 million bribe or that it involved Burisma.
However, Barr, without naming Joe Biden, revealed the information alleging Biden was bribed was so credible that after a vetting process by the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney’s office it was farmed out to several offices in addition to the Delaware U.S. Attorney.
Barr repeated his statement made last week that the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney’s office did not shut down the Biden bribery investigation. Barr also said it was the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney’s office that “developed” the FD-1023 form that FBI Director Christopher Wray has fought to keep out of the hands of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY).
Barr also said that the information in the FD-1023 did not come from Rudy Giuliani.
Barr’s statements detail a real-time intimate knowledge of the allegations and handling of the FD-1023 in the summer of 2020:
“…the Pittsburgh office vetted it. They did some great work. They actually went back and developed more, more information that apparently had been overlooked by the FBI and they developed this 1023 that, that has a lot of detail. And then they, they took it to the, uh, Delaware and to other offices and briefed them on it for, for their use and for follow-up.”
“…this did not come from Rudy Giuliani, it actually came from the FBI.”
Discussion about the FD-1023 starts at 6:56 in the video.
Shannon Bream: …”I want to make sure while we have you here though to ask you about this uh, FBI document that the House GOP has been warring with the FBI over, this 1023. Um, Jamie Raskin the top Democrat on House Oversight has said, ’cause he’s seen it too, that there was something there that under your uh, administration, that it was closed out. He said it’s linked to Rudy Giuliani. You guys have had some back and forth. This is what he says now: “I stand one hundred percent by my statements that we were told by the FBI team that visited us on Monday, June 5th that the Department of Justice team of prosecutors and FBI agents under U.S. Attorney Scott Brady determined that there were no grounds to escalate the probe from an initial assessment of the allegations surfaced by Rudy Giuliani to a preliminary or full-blown investigation and that was therefore closed down.” So, was it closed down? Was Rudy Giuliani connected to any…?”
William Barr: “The, the investigation of the allegations made in that document was not closed down. As I’ve repeatedly said, I set up a process at the beginning of 2020 to vet evidence before it went to the open pending investigations. Further example, there was one in Delaware–apparently there still is one in Delaware.”
Bream: “With Hunter Biden.”
Barr: “Yes, and, and the financial transactions and so forth. And we were worried because a lot of stuff was coming in, that we wanted to make sure what the source was, whether there was obvious disinformation, before it was disseminated to investigations, ’cause we wanted to protect the Integrity of those investigations. So the Pittsburgh office vetted it. They did some great work. They actually went back and developed more, more information that apparently had been overlooked by the FBI and they developed this 1023 that, that has a lot of detail. And then they, they took it to the, uh, Delaware and to other offices and briefed them on it for, for their use and for follow-up. The reason the Pittsburgh people didn’t escalate it is because they weren’t authorized to start a new investigation. They were simply performing a unique and limited task of vetting information that would then go to pending, already open investigations.”
Bream: “Um, and again this is about allegations that a source came to the FBI saying they had information about payments to the Biden family from foreign executives. Um, but quickly on the Rudy Giuliani point, true or false? I mean…”
Barr: “My recollection is false. I don’t think this came, this did not come from Rudy Giuliani, it actually came from the FBI.”
Bream: Okay, um, Mr. Attorney General, always great to have your expertise. Thank you for coming in today.”
Barr: “Thank you.”
Transcribed by TGP.
By the summer of 2020, Attorney General Barr had credible information from two sources: Rudy Giuliani’s Burisma informant and the FBI’s confidential human source that Joe Biden was involved in a foreign bribery/money laundering operation involving Burisma.
Barr also had Hunter Biden’s laptop detailing Joe Biden’s involvement with Hunter’s foreign business transactions: ‘Ten percent for the Big Guy.’
The information on Biden family corruption was backed-up by over a hundred Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports involving the Biden family generated by banks during the Trump administration who were concerned that the Biden family was laundering foreign money transactions.
Barr knew that the Democrats had impeached President Trump for trying to get the Ukraine government to investigate whether Joe Biden was involved in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.
There was publicly available video of Joe Biden bragging in 2018 about blackmailing Ukraine into firing the prosecutor when he was vice president.
Yet with all this evidence accumulated by the summer of 2020, Barr did not go before the American people and inform them that Joe Biden had been credibly accused of bribery involving Ukraine and Burisma. Instead, Barr remained silent.