Everything We Know About Joe Biden's $5 Million Bribe Allegations

Newly circulating allegations against the Biden family accuse the president and his son of "coercing" officials with Ukrainian gas giant Burisma into giving them each $5 million as part an elaborate influence-peddling scheme during Joe Biden's stint as vice president.

However, the latest claims of alleged wrongdoing—like other recent claims surrounding the Biden family's business deals abroad—lack concrete evidence to support them, relying on unverified claims previous administrations found to be not credible.

The latest published account, June 15 in the conservative news outlet The Federalist, said Joe and son Hunter "coerced" a Burisma official to pay them $10 million in bribes—a claim allegedly verified in a series of 17 audio recordings purporting to depict a series of meetings between the family and Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky.

Whether the alleged smoking gun backing the accusations actually exists, however, is another story.

The existence of the 17 audio recordings, which were previously reported to the FBI, was acknowledged only in an FD-1023 form filed with the agency, a sort of "tip sheet" that allows the agency to document unverified allegations of wrongdoing.

However, the government's unwillingness to release the document, regardless of the legitimacy of the information in it, has drawn suspicion from Republicans in the House and Senate who have publicly said that the agency was "covering" for the Biden family.

Under questioning by Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said under oath that the agency regularly redacted documents in its possession—in this case, the FD-1023 form at the center of the controversy—to "protect sources and methods."

But it remains unclear whether the recordings exist and, if they do, whether they show what the anonymous tipster claimed they did. While Iowa's Chuck Grassley first acknowledged the existence of the recordings on the floor of the Senate on Monday, Republicans leading the charge to force the FBI to release the FD-1023 stopped short of outright claims they were legitimate, only that they wanted their existence to be investigated.

"I can confirm they were listed in the 1023 that the FBI redacted," Kentucky Representative James Comer said in an interview with Newsmax this week. "We don't know if they're legit or not, but we know the foreign national claims he has them."

Others like former President Donald Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani—who has faced persistent questions about his credibility—claimed to have had access to an unnamed whistleblower within Burisma who had concrete proof of the Bidens' wrongdoing at the time the allegations were first made, only for the alleged whistleblower to have died under "suspicious circumstances."

While Republican members of Congress and conservative media repeatedly question whether the claims were investigated, outlets like The Washington Post and the New York Times reported this month that the allegations in the FD-1023 document were reviewed by Trump's FBI, under then-Attorney General William Barr, which dropped the investigation after concluding the allegations were not supported by facts.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment. However, in previous exchanges, White House officials have said that many of the allegations lodged against Biden have either been unsupported by hard evidence or overreliant on non-credible sources.

The latest allegations were met no differently.

"Every time a right-wing talking point about this absurd allegation falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny, the far right moves the goalposts," Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, tweeted in response to the Federalist story. "Informant? Disappeared! Audio tapes? Don't exist! It wasn't investigated? Actually Trump's DOJ/FBI did! Now coercion! Crazy."