Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) alleged on July 25 that there were “systemic and existential problems” within the Justice Department and the FBI, after “highly credible” whistleblowers informed his office that officials from the bureau labeled evidence against Hunter Biden as disinformation.
Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the “volume and consistency” of the whistleblowers’ allegations “substantiate their credibility.”
Whistleblowers
According to whistleblowers, the FBI came into possession of information about Hunter Biden’s “criminal financial and related activity” in 2020, which prompted FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten to open an assessment in August 2020, according to the letter. An FBI headquarters team subsequently used the assessment to “improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation” and caused the bureau’s investigation on Hunter Biden “to cease.”A month later, the FBI team placed findings by FBI agents involved in Auten’s assessment in “a restricted access sub-file.” Grassley said the decision was “problematic.”
“[I]t does not allow for proper oversight and opens the door to improper influence,” Grassley explained.
In October 2020, “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” surfaced, and the reporting was “verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants,” whistleblowers told Grassley. However, the FBI did not pursue the reporting after Timothy Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, shut it down.
“Thibault allegedly ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required by FBI,” the letter said. FBI officials, including Thibault, then tried to “improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”
Request
Grassley said Garland and Wray must take the whistleblower allegations seriously.“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Grassley wrote in his letter.
Grassley ended his letter by asking Garland and Wray to turn over records and information relating to the Biden family, Austen, and Thibault before Aug. 8.
The senator requested “all leads” that were either “ordered closed” or denied further review by Thibault.
“All records related to derogatory information on Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their foreign business relationships,” Grassley wrote as one of his requests.
The FBI said it has received the letter but declined to comment further.