WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation Wednesday into the US intelligence community’s interactions with Congress in 2020 over corruption allegations involving President Biden and his family – saying national intelligence may have obstructed Congress’ work by portraying the allegations as Russian disinformation.
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines demanding details of an August 6, 2020 “defense briefing” given to two Republican senators who were completing a report on the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling in such countries . such as China and Ukraine.
Jordan, one of the leaders of the House GOP impeachment inquiry into Biden’s role in his family affairs, also demanded details of interactions that summer with Democrats, including then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who cast doubt on the reliability of the evidence. about the affairs of the Biden family.
“The Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on Federal Government Armaments are investigating allegations that the US Intelligence Community obstructed a congressional investigation in 2020 by falsely claiming that the work of two US Senators advanced Russian ‘disinformation,'” Jordan wrote to Haines.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan launched a new investigation into the intelligence community Wednesday.REUTERS
Two FBI officials provided a defense briefing — the term for a briefing that warns of potential targets of foreign intelligence operations — to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) although the senators later said it was “unnecessary” and “consists primarily of information that [the senators] already know.”
The defense briefing, Johnson and Grassley fumed in a later statement, “provides Democrats and the liberal media a vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work is advancing Russian disinformation.”
FBI official Nikki Floris, who now heads the Washington Field Office’s Intelligence Division, said she and another FBI official provided the briefing in 2020 at the behest of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) questions accuracy of claims against Joe Biden.AP
“ODNI owns this entire process,” Floris told the Judiciary Committee in a July deposition, Jordan relayed to Haines. “ODNI took the lead … in drafting the script.”
The director of national intelligence at the time, John Ratcliffe, was a close ally of then-President Donald Trump, but Trump and his allies have long accused career federal agency employees of being part of a politically biased “inner state.”
Jordan’s letter to Haines aimed “[t]the script, including all draft scripts, that ODNI prepared for the FBI to brief Senators Grassley and Johnson on August 6, 2020.”
Jordan demands records from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines (above). Rod Lamkey – CNP / MEGA
It also searches for “[a]ll documents and communications referring to or relating to 13 July 2020, letters from that time-[Senate] Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Mark Warner, then-[House] Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Adam Schiff to the FBI that included classified attachments with unclassified elements attempting to link the investigation of Senators Grassley and Johnson to foreign disinformation.”
The letter was used to portray the Johnson-Grassley investigation as receiving information from pro-Russian figures in Ukraine, although senators said that was not true.
Haines’ office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The report from Grassley and Johnson, who respectively headed the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees at the time, contained major revelations — including revelations that Moscow’s former first lady Yelena Baturina transferred $3.5 million to a bank account linked to Biden’s son Hunter on 2014.
Later reports revealed that while vice president, Biden dined at least once in Washington with Baturina and with his son’s friends from Kazakhstan and Ukraine, despite publicly denying ever discussing business with his relatives.
The Grassley-Johnson report in September 2020 set in motion the publication of The Post’s scoops the following month about documents from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that linked Joe Biden to his family’s business dealings.
House Republicans are conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s role in his family’s foreign affairs.AP
The revelations include evidence Joe Biden met with an executive from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million a year when his father held the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio, as well as communications showing Joe Biden, referred to as “the big guy,” had been given a 10% cut. from Chinese government-related businesses.
Biden has denied the accuracy of the laptop report – brandishing a letter signed by 51 former spy agency heads raising the prospect of Russian disinformation – but the details have been confirmed by other news outlets.
A previous House Judiciary Committee investigation into the intelligence community letter revealed that it was inspired by a call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then working for the Biden campaign, to former CIA acting director and drafter Michael Morell.
President Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden attend the University of Pennsylvania’s 267th commencement ceremony. Shutterstock
The Senate report at the center of the latest Judiciary Committee investigation is still highly cited, including passages that refer to a $5.1 million transfer to a Biden-related account from CEFC China Energy in the summer of 2017 — after a roughly $1 million tranche earlier that year.
Recently released text messages show that Hunter Biden threatened a Chinese businessman with his father’s wrath less than two weeks before the funds flowed.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
