The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Biden Investigation (Executive Session)” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S7457-S7458 on Dec. 14, 2020.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Biden Investigation
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, for over a year, Senator Johnson and I investigated the Biden family's financial dealings. For over a year, the liberal media and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle falsely said that we were peddling Russian disinformation. They ginned up any story they could to falsely portray our investigation in an effort to delegitimize the report's findings. Even my colleague Senator Wyden, with whom I have worked on many bipartisan investigations, said the following:
This disinformation also became the basis of the Johnson-Grassley investigation. The political nature of this investigation has been clear all along. Bottom line: The Johnson-Grassley investigation is baseless. It is laundering Russian propaganda for circulation in the United States.
It seems the liberal media and Democrats have a very nervous tick. Any time a Republican gets close to the truth and is about to serve justice, the other side yells: ``Russian disinformation.'' Of course, as we see now, that is a load of garbage.
As I have said on this floor several times before, our report was rooted in information from U.S. Government agencies and a left-aligned U.S. lobby shop that represented a corrupt Ukrainian gas company, and by now, the American people know that it is really the Democrats and liberal media that are connected to Russian disinformation. Just think of the Steele dossier. It was infected with Russian disinformation and paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The liberal media and those on the other side of the aisle were scared of the facts. They were scared that the American people would see the Biden family's deep and extensive link to foreign governments, including the Communist Chinese Government.
And once Senator Johnson and I released publically our findings, those same liberal outlets said the report repackaged old material and that there wasn't really anything new to it.
They went into full Joe Biden protection mode, and they didn't even try to hide it.
One Washington Post columnist said: ``Even after accepting disinformation from Russian agents, Johnson and Grassley couldn't come up with anything new or interesting on Hunter Biden.''
Well, we know today the Post should be ashamed that they said that.
POLITICO ran a story with this headline: ``GOP Senators' anti-Biden report repackages old claims.''
And National Public Radio said about the New York Post Hunter Biden stories: ``We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions,'' end of the NPR quote.
Now, look at what Twitter and Facebook did to Hunter Biden news. Simply said, they interfered in the election and gave the Biden campaign a multimillion-dollar in-kind donation, courtesy of their blatant and unforgiveable censorship.
So, my fellow Americans, let us never forget what Twitter and Facebook did during the 2020 elections.
Now, let's fast forward to this very day. Now it is confirmed that Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation, reportedly for his taxes and financial dealings--the very fact pattern that we described in the Johnson-Grassley report.
It shouldn't take Hunter Biden to confirm that he is under criminal investigation before the mainstream press gets permission--from whom, I don't know--to report the news. It is a complete outrage the way the liberal media used its power to cover up facts relating to Hunter Biden and the Biden family and, yet, ran story after story with false information about the Russian investigation into Trump and the credibility of the Steele dossier.
The recent news also shows that our report was not ``baseless''--that is the word that shows up all the time--and it didn't ``repackage old claims.'' That is another set of words that showed up quite regularly as people were trying to distract the Johnson and Grassley report.
So quite the opposite--our report was well-founded, ahead of the curve, and right on the money, in more ways than one.
Our report teed up the facts, but the mainstream press never stepped up to the plate.
Some of the Nation's supposedly leading press outlets, with teams of investigative reporters, were scooped by the Congress--the Johnson-
Grassley report. Now, of course, they are scrambling to chase the story that they for so long ignored.
Now, it didn't have to be this way. We already did much of the heavy lifting before issuing our report. The report made public information that hadn't ever been known before. For example, it showed the following: Hunter Biden and his associates and family members were connected to Chinese nationals and Chinese companies linked with the Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. This includes the CEFC China Energy Company Limited and that company's subsidiaries.
Records show that a company linked to the Communist regime sent Hunter Biden's law firm millions of dollars.
Other records show that Hunter Biden opened a line of credit with a Chinese national linked to the Communist regime and funded it with approximately $100,000. Then he, James Biden, and Sara Biden went on an extravagant global spending spree.
Still other records show that Hunter Biden, via his law firm, also sent a million dollars to James Biden's consulting firm, the Lion Hall Group. These transfers began less than 1 week after CEFC sent $5 million to a company called Hudson West III, a company linked to CEFC and Chinese nationals associated with the Communist regime, which then sent money to Hunter Biden's law firm.
When the bank contacted Sara Biden, who was associated with the firm's bank account, she refused to answer their questions and provide any additional documentation. According to the records that we have on file, the bank submitted the account for closure.
Senator Johnson and I recently issued a supplemental to our report that showed Hunter Biden's close business associate Rob Walker received
$6 million from a Chinese company linked to the Communist regime.
There is yet another link in the chain from the Biden family and their associates to the Chinese Government.
The report also showed that State Department officials believed that Hunter Biden's Burisma board membership created the perception of a conflict of interest and was ``very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine,'' end of quote from a State Department official.
Secretary of State Kerry publicly denied knowing of Hunter Biden's role on the Burisma board. We acquired evidence that shows that Kerry did, in fact, know about that role.
In December 2015, instead of following U.S. objectives of confronting oligarchs, Vice President Biden's staff advised him to avoid commenting on Burisma's oligarch and instead say: ``I am not going to get into naming names or accusing individuals.''
Joe Biden was running an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine, and he pulled his punches while his son was on the board of Burisma.
Based on witness testimony, Burisma's owner allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine's prosecutor general to shut the case against him. When he allegedly paid that bribe, Hunter Biden was on the Burisma board.
These examples are just a sampling from the report that Senator Johnson and I put out and just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the Biden family's troubled ties to governments adverse to U.S. interests.
These associations, and the millions of dollars that passed between and among Hunter Biden, James Biden, and others, create criminal financial, counterintelligence, and extortion concerns. That is why I have written to the Justice Department about the risk that Hunter and James Biden essentially served as agents of the Communist government for purposes of their registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
After Hunter Biden publicly confirmed he was under criminal investigation, liberal news outlets reported on concerns that his financial associations could create criminal financial and counterintelligence problems--something you heard from the Johnson-
Grassley report several weeks ago. That is what we said in September 2020, and we were roundly criticized for it.
And just over the weekend, a new email was made public that reportedly says that Joe Biden and his brother were ``office mates'' with the very same Chinese nationals whom we wrote about in our report. Those same individuals were the ones with links to the Communist regime and that regime's military.
Based on all the facts known to date, Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do. I have run many oversight operations and investigations during the course of my career. I am interested in the facts, in the evidence, and in the truth. I learned a lesson a long time ago when I first started my oversight focus; that is, no matter how difficult the media or the other side of the aisle makes it to find the facts, never give up. Keep working hard. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less.
That is the attitude and approach that I have had my entire career, and that is what I will take with me as I continue to look into the Biden family matters and as I move to a leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
