FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate on Tuesday denied having any knowledge about the purported existence of audio recordings of President Biden and a Ukrainian businessman who allegedly bribed him while he was vice president.
“I have no idea if there are voice recordings or not,” Abbate told Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday during questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday accused the FBI of redacting information about the recordings from an informant file alleging a $5 million bribery scheme that the bureau allowed House Oversight Committee members to read last week.
Grassley alleges that there are 15 tapes of first son Hunter Biden and two of Joe Biden being bribed from 2015 and 2016 that the Ukrainian businessman said he kept as “insurance.”
“What I will tell you with respect to the document, the document was redacted to protect the source, as everyone knows, and this is a question of life and death, potentially,” Abbate said of the blacked-out information in the bureau’s FD-1023 report.
The informant file was created in June 2020 after the FBI discovered information provided in 2017 from a longtime paid bureau informant.
The document came to light after a whistleblower notified Grassley about its existence earlier this year, with the senator then telling House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).
Comer is leading the House probe into the Biden family’s various overseas business dealings.
Lawmakers who have viewed the informant file say it alleges that the Bidens were paid bribes to aid the interests of Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma — which hired Hunter Biden to serve on the board of directors beginning in April 2014.
The document reportedly describes how Joe Biden allegedly pushed for the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was fired in 2016, in return for $5 million.
At the White House on Tuesday, the 80-year-old president stopped dead in his tracks, turned and smiled when The Post asked him about the existence of the tapes.
Biden appeared to chuckle to himself and shook his head as he left the room without answering the question from The Post.