by Paul Dame
VTGOP Chairman Paul Dame issued the following statement today regarding FBI Whistleblowers reports on President Joe Biden’s bribery scandal.
“It is both a shocking and sad day for many Americans to learn of allegations that their President may have accepted bribery payments from a foreign national. The Congressional Oversight Committee has been working diligently to follow a complicated paper trail that indicated President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden may both be guilty of at least some form of money laundering. But recent documentation unveiled by an FBI whistle-blower demonstrated the bureau had intelligence from a long-time and reliable source that payments from the Ukrainian national links them not to any legitimate services rendered, but to bribery. While the FBI and several news outlets claim this information is “unverified” the bank records previously obtained by House Republicans, along with the complicated transactions across multiple LLCs seem to indicate a corroboration of this claim.
“This fact pattern could suggest multiple criminal violations and should be pursued in the criminal courts where President Biden will have a chance to make a defense and be tried by a jury of his peers.
“The fact that then Vice President Joe Biden would publicly brag that he personally pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son’s business partner, and that he did so by leveraging US taxpayer funds in the form of foreign aid betrays the most fundamental level of public trust we expect of our political leaders if it turns out to be true that President Biden benefited from a $5 Million bribery payment. House Oversight should review the discussions around the recommendation to fire that prosecutor to determine who else beside Vice President Biden was involved in that decision.
“Once a politician is found to have sold his integrity for a price, he cannot be further trusted to retain higher office.
“While this suspicious payment has been discovered thanks to the work of House Oversight Committee and the protections offered to whistleblowers who came forward with the information – it begs the question whether there are other policy decisions made by Biden that were improperly influenced by foreign actors, either during his time as Vice President, or may even be in force right now during his term as President of the United States.
“Many immigrants who have fled countries from around the world breathe a sigh of relief when they come to America and find that we have largely eradicated the system of bribery that plagues so many other counties. If these allegations are true, our President has betrayed that trust and called in to question his integrity and his ability to execute the appropriate use of taxpayer funds. Democrats would be wise to begin now to look for an alternative candidate if the recent evidence leads to a criminal case against President Biden.
“Biden’s actions aside, this issue brings in to focus further questions about the fairness and equity of our justice system at the highest levels. If President Biden has received bribes, it seems reasonable to ask whether he has made them as well to any members of our law enforcement agencies. The fact that this alarming evidence of corruption went completely ignored by the FBI until the recent House Republican Investigations is a major cause for concern. Why wasn’t this picked up sooner? Between President Biden’s own public admission of working to fire the prosecutor, the IRS investigation into Hunter, the laptop that was discovered prior to the 2020 election, the Suspicious Activities Reports that should have been filed by the banks and this latest FD-1023 from the FBI, all together they are difficult to explain away as innocent coincidences.
“Senate Democrats and House Republicans need to work together to identify the pieces of our law enforcement system that failed and make efforts to ensure something like this never happens again at our highest levels of government. Transparency, integrity and equality under the law are bipartisan values that bring us together as Americans. While this is difficult new for many Americans to hear, we must remember that our nation has a history of coming face to face with its problems and routing them out to improve the lives of our people under their government.”
The author is an Essex Junction resident and chair of the Vermont Republican Party.