Allegations that biased FBI agents shielded first son Hunter Biden from criminal investigations are “deeply troubling,” FBI Director Christopher Wray was forced to admit Thursday under fire from Republican senators — before cutting the Q&A short by saying, that he has to catch a flight.
The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), noted that Wray had not flown with a commercial and pleaded in vain with the FBI chief to delay the departure of his government plane.
But before he left, Wray was pressed by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about whistleblower allegations against Tim Thibault, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s D.C. field office, and FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Otten .
Kennedy confronted Ray with accusations against the two FBI officials that Grassley exposed last month.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, August 4, 2022. Getty Images
“Isn’t it true that M. Thibault—Agent Thibault, excuse me—and [Auten] withheld derogatory information about Mr. Hunter Biden while working for the FBI?” Kennedy asked Wray pointedly on Thursday.
“I want to be very careful not to interfere with ongoing personnel matters,” Ray replied. “I have to say that when I read the letter that describes the kinds of things you’re talking about, I found it deeply disturbing.”
Ray was questioned about alleged bias in the Hunter Biden investigation by agents.
Kennedy also cited to Ray a variety of Thibault’s harsh social media rants against Republicans that resembled the attacks on the Republican Party by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page during the bureau’s investigation into possible Russian collusion with the presidential campaign. Donald Trump in 2016
Grassley’s July letter to Wray said Auten and Thibault were involved in a “scheme” to “undermine disparaging information related to Hunter Biden, falsely implying that it was disinformation.”
Auten “discovered an assessment that was used by an FBI HQ team to discredit Hunter Biden’s negative information as disinformation and cause the investigation to be terminated,” Grassley wrote.
“[V]verified and verifiable disparaging information about Hunter Biden was mislabeled as misinformation,” Grassley wrote, citing unnamed whistleblowers.
Meanwhile, Thibault has tried to cut off a valid avenue of investigation into Hunter Biden’s possible criminality.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy questioned Wray during a hearing at the Capitol Thursday.AP
“In October 2020, at the behest of ASAC Thibault, a channel was ordered shut down for further derogatory coverage of Hunter Biden… [when] all reporting was either verified or subject to verification through criminal search warrants,” Grassley wrote.
“It is alleged that Thibault ordered the matter closed without providing good cause as required by FBI guidelines. . . .” [and] subsequently tried to mis-flag the matter in the FBI’s systems so that it could not be opened in the future.
Kennedy on Thursday cited some of Thibault’s social media posts and asked the FBI director, “Do you know what this looks like to the American people?”
“I will tell you that what you describe is not representative of the FBI … where I see patriots working their tails off with tremendous integrity and objectivity,” Ray said.
Kennedy asked Wray to confirm whether or not Thibault is involved in the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden into possible tax fraud, unregistered foreign lobbying and money laundering — but Wray did not directly respond.
“Did he work or is he working on the FBI investigation of Mr. Hunter Biden?” Kennedy asked.
“The investigation that you’re talking about will — and I have to be a little careful because we’re talking about an ongoing investigation — will be conducted by our office in Baltimore, working with the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, who is a holdover from the previous administration,” he tried to deflect. Ray.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s letter to Wray last month regarding the conduct of FBI agents was discussed during Thursday’s hearing. AP
Kennedy continued, “So I’m confused, Chris, with your answer. Did he work or is he working on the Hunter Biden investigation?’
Ray again avoided a direct answer, saying, “As I said, the Hunter Biden investigation is being handled by the Baltimore field office.”
Thibault’s alleged social media activity included retweeting a Lincoln Project message calling Donald Trump a “psychologically broken, bitter and deeply unhappy man” and a tweet saying he wanted to “give Kentucky to the Russian Federation.”
Hunter Biden recently cut an IRS check for about $2 million in confirmation that he didn’t pay taxes on windfall foreign earnings. The funds were reportedly provided by Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris, but it is unclear what the terms were and the payment does not prevent prosecution.
The first son’s foreign dealings drew considerable attention this year when the Washington Post and New York Times in March belatedly reviewed documents from a former Hunter Biden laptop that were first reported by The Post in October 2020.
Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, was discussed during the Senate impeachment hearing on Thursday. AP
Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings is generally murky, and they continue to pose a conflict of interest for the president.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show that his father, then the vice president, attended a 2015 dinner in DC with a group of his son’s aides from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. A photo shows Joe Biden posing with the Kazakh group, and one day after the dinner, Vadim Pozharsky, CEO of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed the then-stepson to thank him for the opportunity to meet his father. Hunter Biden earned about $1 million a year to serve on Burisma’s board while his father ran the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Russian billionaire Elena Baturina, an alleged 2015 dinner attendee and widow of a former Moscow mayor, has not faced U.S. sanctions this year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, although Biden has sanctioned many other members of the the Russian elite.
In China, Joe Biden was allegedly involved in his son’s dealings with CEFC China Energy, which the Washington Post reported paid Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018. The former business Hunter Biden partner Tony Bobulinski says he spoke to Joe Biden in May 2017 about the deal, and a May 13, 2017 email says the “big guy” will get a 10 percent equity stake in a corporate entity set up with CEFC . Bobulinsky claimed the president was “the big guy.”
Also in China, Hunter Biden co-founded an investment firm called BHR Partners in 2013 less than two weeks after flying with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two. Hunter introduced Joe Biden to BHR CEO Jonathan Li in a hotel lobby in the Chinese capital. The fund is partly controlled by state-owned enterprises. Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said less than a week after President Biden’s November summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that the first son had divested his 10 percent stake in BHR Partners, but Hunter Biden and the White House did not provide more details and online business records show Hunter Biden still owns a 10% stake.
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