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GOP allies of former President Trump are digging for dirt on President Biden and other Democrats amid the former president’s indictment, this week turning to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is pushing claims about an influence peddling operation, drawing fierce denials from the White House.   

The unverified claims involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden are murky, but are being aired by the 89-year-old Iowa Republican, who was invited to give a presentation Wednesday to the Senate Republican Steering Committee about the claims made by an unnamed foreign national. 

Grassley doesn’t have much to go on, other than an FD-1023 form from the FBI stating that the unnamed foreign national claimed to have two recorded phone conversations with then-Vice President Biden and 15 recorded phone conversations with Hunter Biden, revealing what the Iowa senator described as an “alleged bribery scheme.”   

Biden’s allies say Grassley is trying to recycle the unsubstantiated and debunked claims that former President Trump made before the 2020 election accusing Biden of doing political favors as vice president to help Hunter Biden’s business dealings connected to Ukraine.   

“Republicans are once again reminding Americans they are doing Donald Trump’s political dirty work, and that tells you everything you need to know about the seriousness of these political stunts,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.   

“Congressional Republicans are openly admitting they’re peddling debunked conspiracy theories in an embarrassing attempt to improve their political prospects heading into 2024,” the spokesperson said.   

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and his supporters spread the claim that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to halt an investigation of his son, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.    

The Associated Press at the time described the allegation as “a widely discredited theory.”   

Grassley doesn’t know if the phone recordings exist or if the FBI was able to track them down. But he says the FBI has been extremely reluctant to talk about the information contained in the document, despite it being unclassified.    

Grassley, a senior member of Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, are the only two Republicans on Capitol Hill who have read the unredacted version of the document.    

Other GOP lawmakers have read a redacted version that blotted out reference to the claim by the unnamed foreign national.   

“They asked me to make a presentation to the caucus,” Grassley said of his briefing. “I’ve read the unredacted version [of the FD-1023 form], so I know more than the members of the House Oversight Committee.   

“The only judgment we’re trying to make is if the FBI is doing its work,” he said. “They haven’t communicated with me.”   

Grassley also discussed the issue in detail during a speech on the Senate floor Monday.    

“As I’ve repeatedly asked since going public with the existence of the 1023: What, if anything, has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?” he said.   

The veteran lawmaker said he’s trying to get the FBI to share the FD-1023 form, a standard document that outlines a source’s allegations, more widely with the public and the media. According to the society of former special agents of the FBI, the FD-1023 is the form special agents use to record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources   

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, this month said that the FBI and Justice Department under the leadership of then-Attorney General Bill Barr reviewed the allegations made by the unnamed foreign national and found they did not merit further investigation.   

Raskin said the FD-1023 form that Grassley and Comer reviewed contained an allegation from the unnamed foreign national that relayed a conversation with another person and that the source could not corroborate the information.    

Raskin dismissed the claim as “secondhand hearsay” and argued the “confidential human source said that he had no way of knowing about the underlying veracity of the things that he was being told,” according to a New York Times report.   

NBC News, citing a senior law enforcement official, reported this month that the FBI and Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, reviewed the allegation in 2020 and found the bribery allegation wasn’t substantiated.   

Republican senators say if any evidence emerges that Biden was involved in improper activity benefiting Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden lavishly to sit on its board, it could shake up the political landscape ahead of the 2024 election.   

Some GOP senators are skeptical of the FBI’s and the Department of Justice’s handling of the allegations against the Bidens, even though it was the Trump Justice Department made the initial assessment that they did not warrant deeper investigation.   

“I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history, but some Americans — many Americans — have a lost a lot of confidence in them,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who cited the controversial decision of then FBI Director James Comey to investigate both Hillary Clinton and Trump during the 2016 presidential election.    

Republicans in the House and Senate who are aligned with Trump have dug into the argument that the FBI and Justice Department have been weaponized for political reasons.   

Kennedy called on Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee “and tell us what’s going on.”    

“If they say, ‘We’ve got the 1023, we’re investigating,’ I think you’ll see most people back off,” he said.    

Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), another Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said GOP lawmakers want to know more about why Brady, the U.S. attorney, decided not to investigate the allegation.

“Why on earth, if you really think there’s no ‘there’ there, wouldn’t you answer the simple question about, how do you arrive at that decision?” Tillis said, summarizing a discussion among fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning.    

“If there’s an active investigation, we stand back, let the investigation go,” he said. “It’s not unprecedented to say, ‘Let’s just get the facts that allowed a U.S. attorney to not pursue it.”   

Tillis said Republicans are “suspicious.”   

“Maybe there is an active investigation [and] they don’t want that known,” he said. “Why don’t they resolve the issue by telling us the facts that led them to not move on.”   

Still, even some Republican senators are skeptical of an anonymous claim that Biden was involved in a bribery scheme.    

“I have known President Biden probably for 25 years. I like him, I respect him, I disagree with him more times than not, but if you ask me, ‘Is Joe Biden the type of guy who would take a $5 million bribe,’ my answer is, based on my experience, no,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at a Judiciary Committee business meeting Thursday.    

Graham is the ranking member of the committee and has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.    

Up until now, GOP senators have largely been content to leave the Biden investigation to Comer and other Republican members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.    Biden selects Mandy Cohen as next CDC director DC-area rain levels 7 to 9 inches below normal as drought gets worse across region

But the slow progress, combined with mounting concerns over Trump’s legal problems, have spurred GOP senators look for ways to get more involved in pressing for the FBI to scrutinize Biden’s business dealings before winning the 2020 election.   

One Republican senator familiar with internal conversations said Republican senators have barely talked among themselves about the 37-count indictment that Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith unveiled against Trump last week.   

Instead, they’re focusing on trying to level the political playing field by finding a “game changer” they hope will put scrutiny on Biden instead, the senator said.   

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Elon Musk steps up attacks on Trump once again – as the president fights back

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Elon Musk steps up attacks on Trump once again - as the president fights back

Elon Musk has stepped up his attacks on Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill – weeks after a spectacular fallout between the world’s richest man and the US president.

Following weeks of relative silence after clashing with Mr Trump over his “big beautiful bill”, the billionaire vowed to unseat politicians who support it.

In a post on X, Musk said those who had campaigned on cutting spending but then backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame”.

He added: “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk also threatened to put their faces on a poster which said “liar” and “voted to increase America’s debt” by $5trn (£3.6trn).

The posts attracted a swift reply from Mr Trump, who claimed the billionaire “may get more subsidy than any human being in history” for his electric car business.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

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Elon’s dad on the Musk-Trump bust-up

Musk spent at least $250m (£182m) supporting Mr Trump in his presidential campaign and then led the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sacked about 120,000 federal employees.

He has argued the legislation would greatly increase the US national debt and wipe out the savings he claimed he achieved through DOGE.

As the Senate discussed the package, Musk called it “utterly insane and destructive”.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the bill’s massive spending indicated “we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote.

Read more from Sky News:
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Musk previously said some of his social media posts during his dramatic fallout with Mr Trump “went too far”.

He had shared a series of posts on X, including one that described Mr Trump’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

He also claimed, in a since-deleted post, that the president appeared in files relating to the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But Musk later wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”

In response, the president told the New York Post: “I thought it was very nice that he did that.”

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What’s in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’?

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What's in Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'?

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Martha Kelner and Mark Stone break down what’s in Donald Trump’s huge tax and spending bill. He’s trying to sign it into law by the end of the week.

They also discuss the State Department’s decision to revoke US visas for British band Bob Vylan after their Glastonbury performance.

If you’ve got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

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Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

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Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe execs once ruled out adopting crypto over concerns of volatility and risk, and the banking giant also blocked customer crypto transactions back in 2015.

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