Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio is demanding that a former senior FBI agent sit for a transcribed interview with the House Judiciary Committee as part of its review of the bureau’s conduct and interactions with political figures.
Bradley Benavides, who served as both Section Chief and Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI’s counterintelligence division, briefed Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin in August 2020 as the two investigated Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. Details of the briefing, initially requested by Democratic senators, were later published by The Washington Post. Jordan is demanding that Benavides, now in the private sector, sit for a transcribed interview with the committee about the briefing and the leak.
“There was no real purpose for another briefing, let alone a member-level one, other than to further undermine our investigation. Some of our Democratic colleagues weren’t interested in anything but using the briefing to try and destroy our investigation," Grassley testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in February.
Congressional Democrats accused Grassley and Johnson of being conduits for Russian disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election. The two senators issued a report in September 2020 highlighting Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese energy firms through the Homeland Security and Finance committees, which they chaired at the time.
“The allegations that the FBI arranged a briefing for two United States senators as a pretext to impede their investigation-and then leaked that briefing to the media-are deeply troubling," Jordan wrote Wednesday in a letter to Benavides, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller.
Grassley and Johnson issued a similar request to Benavides and intelligence analyst Nikki Floris in August 2022.
Republicans have repeatedly expressed concern that top law enforcement officials have slow-walked or interfered with investigations targeting Hunter Biden. Assistant Special Agent In Charge Timothy Thibault resigned from the FBI in August 2022 after being placed on leave amid allegations of partisan misconduct. Thibault allegedly quashed an investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings ahead of the 2020 election, and repeatedly attacked Republicans from a barely-disguised Twitter account.
The Department of Justice is reportedly considering charging Hunter Biden with two misdemeanor counts of failing to file taxes, one felony count of tax evasion, and a felony gun charge.
Source: House Committee On The Judiciary