WASHINGTON — The Justice Department told Republicans last year that it would be a mistake to publicize raw paperwork reflecting an informant’s tip to the FBI.
Republicans had found out a confidential human source told his FBI handler in 2020 about a Ukrainian oligarch saying he bribed Joe Biden. They demanded the Justice Department hand over the so-called FD-1023 form documenting the tip.
In response to a subpoena, the Justice Department said such documents should never be made public, warning it could endanger their sources and that the forms generally contain unverified and incomplete information told to an FBI agent.
“Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI,” Christopher Dunham, from the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, said in a May letter to House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.).
“The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it,” Dunham said. “Indeed, the FBI regularly receives information from sources with significant potential biases, motivations, and knowledge, including drug traffickers, members of organized crime, or even terrorists.”
Republicans did not heed the warning.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) obtained the form from an unknown source and posted it on his Senate website. The document described the informant’s account of conversation with Mykola Zlochevsky, head of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and other Burisma officials. In one conversation, Zlochevsky said he’d paid both Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million in bribes.
The unverified bribery allegation soon became a core part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against the president. The supposed bribe fit a narrative that Joe Biden, when he was vice president in 2015, demanded Ukraine fire its prosecutor general in order to…
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