President Joe Biden responded angrily Thursday when asked by a reporter about allegations that he was personally involved in an overseas bribery scheme.
“Why did the Ukraine, the FBI informant file refer to you as the ‘big guy?'” Biden was asked by a New York Post reporter at the end of a press conference.
“Why’d you ask such a dumb question?” Biden shot back.
Earlier this week, Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, alleged in a floor speech that 17 audio recordings were created by an executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company. The executive claims that a payment of $5 million was made to Hunter Biden from the energy company, along with another for the same amount to the president. Grassley said the recordings had been kept as an “insurance policy.”
House Oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) has led the investigation into these allegations in the lower chamber. Comer threatened to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt if committee members were not allowed to view an FBI informant report, known as an FD-1023 form, detailing the alleged bribery scheme. Last week, the FBI relented and allowed Oversight committee members to view the document. Republicans and Democrats on the committee disagree on whether the document is a smoking gun, with ranking member Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) saying it is “secondhand hearsay” and that investigators have assessed it but not found it worth escalating to a full to a full investigation.
However, former attorney general Bill Barr contradicted Raskin in a statement to Politico, explaining that investigators in Pittsburgh found the document credible enough to transfer to investigators in Delaware scrutinizing Hunter Biden.
Both sides have accused the other of obfuscation. Biden has consistently denied wrongdoing and dismissed the allegations as a stunt, saying last week: “Where’s the money?… It’s a bunch of malarkey.”
The London Times explained that emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which became an issue during the 2020 election, purportedly show that when Biden was vice president, he was introduced to an executive at Burisma after his son joined the firm’s board. Joe Biden has denied that this meeting took place.
He was also reportedly referred to as “big guy” in one of the emails.
Republicans have long argued that Hunter Biden lacked the necessary qualifications to sit on the energy company’s board and that the appointment was linked to his father’s position within the Obama administration.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump made reference to the bribery allegations during his post-arraignment speech, in which he slammed special prosecutor Jack Smith, who has indicted him in a classified-documents probe.
Trump vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden. And the entire Biden crime family.”