An analysis by The Washington Post Fact Checker found that details of allegations of bribery between a Ukrainian business executive and President Joe Biden and his son don’t add up. Congressional Republicans recently released an FBI document from 2020 that makes the bribery allegations, and the document involves a “confidential human source” (CHS). That means the information would not be a tip from an unknown walk-in, but from someone who had been vetted and assessed by the FBI as potentially helpful for investigations. Still, such individuals can be unreliable and any statements by a CHS are basically unverified tips. The FBI has not publicly confirmed any tips the person supplied in the document.
The situation in question concerned the alleged desire of Mykola Zlochevsky, the chief executive of the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, to purchase a U.S.-based company. During the period described in the document as starting in late 2015 and extending two or three months into 2016, Burisma did make a deal with a company based in Texas. This agreement sparked the interest of conservative media, as there are similarities to the FBI source’s account of what Burisma sought. But upon examination, the facts don’t add up. To test whether any other business transaction might match with the FBI source’s account, The Fact Checker examined all available news reports in Ukrainian, English and Russian concerning Burisma from September 2015 to April 2016. It also scoured emails from that period in Hunter Biden’s apparently abandoned laptop. It found that no other deals match the one in question.