Burisma exec kept 17 recordings – Senator

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) declared yesterday that the presumed Burisma executive who allegedly paid $10 million in bribes to then-Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, made 17 separate recordings of his conversations with the two men as an insurance policy in case their relationship went sour.

The Burisma recordings

According to Headline USA, Senator Grassley made his explosive allegation on the floor of the Senate yesterday (June 12). “The foreign national, who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden, allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations” with the two, the Senator said. These break down as recordings of 15 conversations with Hunter Biden, and two more conversations with the Vice-President himself.

The alleged bribery scheme is the subject of an investigation by the House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee. An FBI whistleblower told the Committee that the FBI had a Form FD-1023 detailing revelations by a paid informant about the bribery scheme. (Form FD-1023 commonly contains informant information the agency has not yet vetted.) The Committee had to threaten contempt proceedings twice before the FBI at last yielded and surrendered the file.

Collin Rugg of Trending Politics covered the story and released this mini-thread:L

The Trending Politics piece has more excerpts from Grassley’s floor speech. The Senator contrasted the treatment of Trump and Biden, as regards recorded conversations. The Trump indictment has its basis on a recorded conversation (of somewhat dubious provenance) at a country club. With 17 recordings available in the Burisma matter, what, Grassley asked, is the relevant United States Attorney doing about it?

In closing, the Senator described the Biden administration as “drunk with political infection.”

Reaction

Reaction to the Collin Rugg mini-thread is mostly of the “I told you so” variety. But several users tweeted reactions of the “we’ll believe it when we see it” variety.