Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) called for the FBI to answer questions about an alleged meeting between former Vice President Joe Biden and a senior official from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while Biden was in office.
Biden’s campaign has said no such meeting took place.
Johnson, the head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News on Oct. 18 that there were “all kinds of meetings that didn’t show up on [Biden’s] official calendar,” adding that it “wouldn’t surprise me if this one didn’t.” He was referring to a purported meeting that was detailed by The New York Post, which cited emails that were apparently sourced from the laptop of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and that appeared to show communication between the younger Biden and a Burisma adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to D.C. and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” reads the email allegedly sent by Burisma board adviser Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of the natural gas company, according to the NY Post.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided the NY Post with the emails and other information.
Biden’s campaign last week told news outlets that “Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” adding that “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
“They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani—whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported—claimed to have such materials,” the campaign said.
Johnson, however, told Fox News that he is trying to understand where the NY Post’s information came from, noting that the FBI also had possession of the laptop last year.
“The FBI has a duty to inform us if they believe this was maybe Russia disinformation, they should give us a defensive briefing, and tell us about that and if, for example, they also believe that what information this whistleblower gave us is fraudulent, that would also be a crime and FBI should tell us that,” he said.
“So we’re trying to assess out of the FBI what do they know and when did they know it, but the larger question really is, ‘If they had this information, and these are genuine emails, and it would probably reveal all kinds of things that would have been very relevant to the impeachment case, why did they sit on it?’”
Elaborating further, Johnson said it “isn’t a standard investigation” from the FBI, as it “relates to national security and if there’s criminal activity involved that could be tied to Hunter Biden or his business associates, or even possibly tie it back to other members of the Biden family.”
“As some of these emails indicate that Joe Biden was fully aware of he was taking his 10 percent cut or requiring 50 percent from his family member’s salary, this needs to be known before Americans go to the polls,” he said.
“Let me be clear: the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress.”
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
