Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch Republicans claim may have handed Biden a $5 million bribe, said he never had contact with Biden while he was vice president.
The evidence is stacking up against Republicans’ (thus far unfounded) claims that President Joe Biden was the recipient of a foreign bribery scheme while serving as vice president.
House Oversight Committee Democrats on Thursday unveiled a document filled out by Mykola Zlochevsky—who their colleagues across the aisle allege may have handed Biden a $5 million kickback—in which the Ukrainian oligarch says he never interacted with Biden when he was vice president.
While Hunter Biden did once serve on the board of Burisma, an energy company Zlochevsky co-founded, he doesn’t seem to have gotten any help from his dad—at least according to Zlochevsky.
“WE NEVER HAD CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN DURING HIS VISITS TO UKRAINE,” the questionnaire read. “NO ONE FROM BURISMA EVER HAD ANY CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN OR PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM DURING HUNTER BIDEN’S ENGAGEMENT.”
In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote that Rudy Giuliani received the evidence during the 2019 impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.
Giuliani passed along the evidence to associate Lev Parnas, and it was turned over to Congress after the FBI seized Parnas’ phone upon his arrest for running an illegal campaign donation operation—which ironically included foreign money payments from a Russian donor to U.S. politicians. At the time, the document had not been made public.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), to whom the letter is addressed, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have boasted that a whistleblower informed them of an FBI document, classified as a FD-1023, in which a confidential source detailed the bribery scheme. Right-wingers have also run wild with claims of incriminating “audio tapes” the source boasts of holding—but Comer has said he won’t rule out that it’s “just a bluff.”
Raskin’s letter affirms the questionnaire’s statements “directly contradict and refute” the FD-1023 document, describing the document as full of “unsubstantiated, second-hand hearsay allegations.”
“Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department,” he wrote.
Comer did not comment on Zlochevsky’s answers on the document Thursday, but he reiterated his call for the public release of the FD-1023 document, according to NBC News.
