FACT v.

FICTION:
FBI FORM FD-1023
FICTION
Fiction
An FBI Form FD-1023 alleges that Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Ukrainian energy
company Burisma, admitted that he paid then-Vice President Biden a bribe to “deal with”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin.

Oversight Committee Chairman Comer: “The FBI has been sitting on allegations
for years that Joe Biden solicited and received a bribe while he was Vice President of the
United States.”

Background Facts
The allegations in the Form FD-1023 were investigated by the Department of
Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the Trump
Administration. They have been repeatedly undermined and debunked.

In January 2020, then-Attorney General Barr established a process to review

allegations and documents provided by President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy
Giuliani. These included Mr. Giuliani’s claim that Mr. Zlochevsky paid a bribe to then-
Vice President Biden. Together with the FBI, Mr. Barr’s hand-picked U.S. Attorney,
Scott Brady, examined Mr. Giuliani’s allegations. As part of this effort, in June 2020, the
FBI interviewed a confidential human source (CHS), who recounted three conversations
he had with Mr. Zlochevsky between late 2015 and 2019. The Form FD-1023 simply
memorializes the CHS’s unvetted account.

The veracity of the allegations the CHS recounted to the FBI, years after the fact,
have been repeatedly called into question and outright refuted by independent fact
checkers and multiple sources, including by the CHS who relayed the information, Mr.
Zlochevsky himself, Mr. Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, and Republicans, including
Senator Ron Johnson, who, as Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, led Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation into the allegations
involving Burisma.
The 2020 FBI Form FD-1023 is based on a Confidential Human Source’s (CHS)
recollection of a years-old conversation with Mr. Zlochevsky, who, according to the CHS,
may have been lying

• The FBI Form FD-1023 memorializes a June 26, 2020, conversation between a CHS and
the FBI. In that conversation, the CHS recollected three conversations he had with
Mykola Zlochevsky sometime between late 2015 and 2019.

• The CHS explicitly noted he could not provide an “opinion as to the veracity of
Zlochevsky’s aforementioned statements.” He added that it is “very common for
businessmen in post-Soviet countries to brag or show-off.”

• In one of these conversations, which took place sometime in 2016, the CHS recalled Mr.
Zlochevsky told him: “It cost 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another
Biden.” The CHS added that he “understood” this to mean Mr. Zlochevsky was saying
he paid Hunter and Joe Biden “presumably to ‘deal with Shokin.’”

• Three days after his original interview, on June 29, 2020, the CHS provided additional
information and stated Mr. Zlochevsky had claimed to have “recordings [that] evidence
Zlochevsky was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor
General Viktor Shokin was fired.”

The 2020 FBI Form FD-1023 was generated as part of an assessment conducted by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady at the request of
then-Attorney General Barr to review information and allegations from Rudy Giuliani

• According to public reporting and a June 5, 2023, FBI briefing, in January 2020, then-
Attorney General William Barr selected Scott Brady, the U.S. Attorney for the Western
District of Pennsylvania, based in Pittsburgh, to review allegations made by Mr. Giuliani
that then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden were involved in a corruption scheme
involving Burisma and to examine information Mr. Giuliani collected in Ukraine.

• The information received from Mr. Giuliani triggered a broader investigative effort,
formally an “assessment,” led by U.S. Attorney Brady. As part of this effort, prosecutors
and FBI agents reviewed relevant suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks and
identified and interviewed the CHS, who had previously provided information regarding
Burisma that was unrelated to any allegations regarding President Biden or Hunter Biden.
The CHS’s June 2020 interview was memorialized in the Form FD-1023.

• At the June 5, 2023, briefing, the FBI read an excerpt from the August 2020
memorandum closing Mr. Brady’s assessment. Mr. Brady and high-level DOJ officials
concurred in the decision to close the assessment.

• According to both Mr. Giuliani and the FBI, much of the information that the CHS
provided, including the allegation of a bribe, had previously been provided to Mr. Brady
and his team by Mr. Giuliani.

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Mr. Zlochevsky himself has explicitly and flatly denied that President Biden was ever
involved in bribery of any kind or took any official action on behalf of Burisma

• During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Giuliani engaged in a campaign to gather
information damaging to the Biden family from Ukrainian sources in order to enhance
Donald Trump’s prospects for reelection in 2020. Mr. Giuliani passed on some of the
information from this campaign to Mr. Brady.

• As part of this effort, Mr. Giuliani received evidence from Mr. Zlochevsky himself that
directly contradicts the allegations in the Form FD-1023. Specifically, Mr. Zlochevsky
explained that “no one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people
working for him” and that neither “VP Biden or his staff” assisted Mr. Zlochevsky or
Burisma “in any way.” This evidence was turned over to Congress—and made available
to both Republicans and Democrats—by Mr. Giuliani’s former associate, Lev Parnas,
during former President Trump’s first impeachment inquiry.

• Mr. Giuliani plainly understood that Mr. Zlochevsky’s responses undermined the
false claim that Mr. Zlochevsky bribed then-Vice President Biden. According to
Lev Parnas, who transmitted the responses to Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Zlochevsky’s
“answers gave us nothing – because there was nothing.” Moreover, as Mr. Parnas
wrote to Chairman Comer: “On reading Zlochevsky’s reply, Giuliani turned red
and yelled, ‘What is this shit? This is bullshit. Make sure nobody sees this. Bury
this.’”

Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s former associate, admitted that no evidence has ever existed to
support the bribery allegations in the Form FD-1023

• In July 2023, Mr. Parnas sent a letter to Chairman Comer “to share the information that I
know to be true, so that we can lay to rest the conspiracy theories about Biden’s supposed
corruption in Ukraine once and for all.” Mr. Parnas’s letter completely contradicted the
statements in the Form FD-1023 and the Republican conspiracy theory, based on his
close firsthand knowledge of the relevant events.

• As Mr. Parnas acknowledged: “Throughout all these months of work, the extensive
campaigns and networking done by Trump allies and Giuliani associates, including the
enormously thorough interviews and assignments that I undertook, there has never been
any evidence that Hunter or Joe Biden committed any crimes related to Ukrainian
politics. Never, during any of my communications with Ukrainian officials or
connections to Burisma, did any of them confirm or provide concrete facts linking the
Bidens to illegal activities. … The truth is that everyone, from Giuliani and the BLT
Team to Devin Nunes and his colleagues, to the people at FOX News, knew that these
allegations against the Bidens were false. There has never been any factual evidence,
only conspiracy theories spread by people who knew exactly what they were doing.”

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Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner and fellow Burisma board member,
also specifically denied that President Biden was involved in wrongdoing of any kind with
respect to Burisma or took any action to benefit the company

• During his August 2023 transcribed interview before Oversight Committee Members and
staff, Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business associate and fellow Burisma board
member, directly refuted the allegations in the Form FD-1023 and unequivocally rejected
the notion that the form provides any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.

• Mr. Archer, who also served on the board of Burisma, explained that, as a member of
Burisma’s board, he was unaware of any $5 million payment to any Biden, much less any
payment to then-Vice President Biden (pp. 111-112). He also dismissed the allegations in
the Form FD-1023 as the kind of brag, exaggeration, and fib that are common among
Ukrainian businessmen, and explicitly rejected the notion that they constituted “evidence
that Joe Biden was bribed by Mykola Zlochevsky” (p. 112).

• Mr. Archer explained that the bipartisan and international effort to oust Mr. Shokin,
Ukraine’s corrupt Prosecutor General, which then-Vice President Biden led, was “bad for
Burisma” because the company had him “under control.” (pp. 106, 108).

Republicans, including former Attorney General Barr and Senator Johnson, who led
Senate Republicans’ Burisma probe, also expressed skepticism about these allegations

• Senator Johnson, who, as then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and

Governmental Affairs Committee, led Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation into the
allegations involving Burisma, cast doubt on the truthfulness of Mr. Zlochevsky’s
purported allegations: “That’s what this person says, but again, take that with a grain of
salt. This could be coming from a very corrupt oligarch who could be making this stuff
up.”

• Then-Attorney General Barr warned in early 2020 that “[t]here are a lot of agendas in the
Ukraine, there are a lot of cross-currents, and we can’t take anything we receive from the
Ukraine at face value.”

• Senator Grassley, who, as then-Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, led the
Senate’s 2020 investigation together with Senator Johnson, and who, together with
Chairman Comer, publicly released the FBI Form FD-1023, explicitly stated that he was
“not interested” in whether the accusations in the form “are accurate or not.”