FBI agents investigating Hunter Biden labeled verified evidence as “disinformation” and shut down a line of inquiry into Joe Biden's son in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time, Sen. Chuck Grassley said, citing bureau whistleblowers.
The agents "opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease," Grassley said. The Iowa Republican revealed the claim after his office received "a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers" regarding the investigation.
One of the whistleblowers said that Timothy Thibault, the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting," according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.”
The senator said Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required” and that FBI officials “subsequently attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to the disclosures.
The whistleblower disclosures “appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation," Grassley said.
The new allegations, summarized by Grassley in a July 25 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, were previously unknown.
The FBI inquiry into Hunter Biden reportedly began as a tax investigation, then expanded into a scrutiny of potential money-laundering and foreign lobbying. The DOJ has declined to hand over investigative details.
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