GOP, Grassley dig for dirt on Biden amid Trump indictment furor

Published

2 years ago

June 16, 2023

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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.

Entertainment

Gregg Wallace speaks out after MasterChef sacking

Published

2 hours ago

July 26, 2025

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Gregg Wallace speaks out after MasterChef sacking

Gregg Wallace has spoken about his sacking from MasterChef after inappropriate behaviour while working for the BBC – but insisted he is “not a groper, a sex pest or a flasher”.

Wallace, 60, has apologised after a report, commissioned by the cooking show’s production company Banijay UK, found 45 out of 83 allegations were substantiated.

In an interview with The Sun, he said: “I know I have said things that offended people… I understand that now – and to anyone I have hurt, I am so sorry.

“I don’t expect anyone to have any sympathy with me but I don’t think I am a wrong ‘un.”

MasterChef co-host John Torode also had an allegation that he used an “extremely offensive racist term” upheld, as part of the same investigation.

Torode, who insisted he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged incident, has not had his contract for the show renewed.

Wallace has now defended Torode, saying: “I’ve known John for 30 years and he is not a racist.

“There is no way that man is a racist. No way. And my sympathies go out to John because I don’t want anybody to go through what I’ve been through.”

At one point, Wallace became tearful during the interview when describing the impact of the investigation on his family.

“I have seen myself written about in the same sentence as Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards, paedophiles and sex offenders. That is just so, so horrific.”

In respect to the specific allegation of unwanted touching, Wallace denied groping a woman and said that, while he was attempting to flirt with her, he did believe the contact it was consensual.

“She gave me her phone number. I considered that to be intimacy. It was 15 years ago. Me, drunk, at a party, with my hand on a girl’s bum,” he said.

He also accepted he had briefly appeared with a sock on his private parts in front of four colleagues in MasterChef studio. But he said his is not a flasher, and people were either “amused or bemused” but not distressed.

On the broader allegations about using inappropriate language, Wallace accepted the criticism and suggested that some of his conduct could be explained by his autism and his background.

“I know I am odd. I know I struggle to read people. I know people find me weird. Autism is a… registered disability. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

He also blamed his former career: “I’m a greengrocer from Peckham. I thrived in Covent Garden’s fruit and veg market. In that environment that is jovial and crude. It is learned behaviour.”

Wallace told the newspaper he is now scared to appear in public: “I go out now in a disguise – a baseball cap and sunglasses, I don’t want people to see me. I’m scared.”

On Wednesday, the BBC confirmed a series of MasterChef filmed last year, before allegations against presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were upheld, will still be broadcast.

Politics

25% of young children and pregnant women malnourished in Gaza, charity says, as PM vows to fly critical medical cases to UK

Published

2 hours ago

July 26, 2025

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25% of young children and pregnant women malnourished in Gaza, charity says, as PM vows to fly critical medical cases to UK

A charity has warned 25% of young children and pregnant women in Gaza are now malnourished, with Sir Keir Starmer vowing to evacuate children who need “critical medical assistance” to the UK.

MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said Israel’s “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon” has reached unprecedented levels – with patients and healthcare workers both fighting to survive.

It claimed that, at one of its clinics in Gaza City, rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have trebled over the past two weeks – and described the lack of food and water on the ground as “unconscionable”.

The charity also criticised the high number of fatalities seen at aid distribution sites, with one British surgeon accusing IDF soldiers of shooting civilians “almost like a game of target practice”.

MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza, Dr Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, said: “Those who go to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food distributions know that they have the same chance of receiving a sack of flour as they do of leaving with a bullet in their head.”

The UN also estimates that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 people seeking food – the majority near the militarised distribution sites of the US-backed aid distribution scheme run by the GHF.

In a statement on Friday, the IDF had said it “categorically rejects the claims of intentional harm to civilians”, and reports of incidents at aid distribution sites were “under examination”.

The GHF has also previously disputed that these deaths were connected with its organisation’s operations, with director Johnnie Moore telling Sky News: “We just want to feed Gazans. That’s the only thing that we want to do.”

Israel says it has let enough food into Gaza and has accused the UN of failing to distribute it, in what the foreign ministry has labelled as “a deliberate ploy” to defame the country.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe must end’

In a video message posted on X late last night, Sir Keir Starmer condemned the scenes in Gaza as “appalling” and “unrelenting” – and said “the images of starvation and desperation are utterly horrifying”.

The prime minister added: “The denial of aid to children and babies is completely unjustifiable, just as the continued captivity of hostages is completely unjustifiable.

“Hundreds of civilians have been killed while seeking aid – children, killed, whilst collecting water. It is a humanitarian catastrophe, and it must end.”

Sir Keir confirmed that the British government is now “accelerating efforts” to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance, so they can be brought to the UK for specialist treatment.

Israel has now said that foreign countries will be able to airdrop aid into Gaza. While the PM says the UK will now “do everything we can” to get supplies in via this route, he said this decision has come “far too late”.

Last year, the RAF dropped aid into Gaza, but humanitarian organisations warned it wasn’t enough and was potentially dangerous. In March 2024, five people were killed when an aid parachute failed and supplies fell on them.

For now, Sir Keir has rejected calls to follow French President Emmanuel Macron and recognise a Palestinian state – despite more than 220 MPs signing a cross-party letter to demand he takes this step.

The prime minister is instead demanding a ceasefire and “lasting peace” – and says he will only consider an independent state as part of a negotiated peace deal.

UK

Trump issues warning to leaders as he arrives in Scotland

Published

2 hours ago

July 26, 2025

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'Immigration is killing Europe': Donald Trump issues warning to leaders as he arrives in Scotland

Donald Trump has landed in Scotland for a four-day trip including high-level meetings – praising Sir Keir Starmer as “a good man” but calling illegal migration a “horrible invasion” that is “killing Europe”.

Crowds gathered at Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire amid a major security operation for the US president’s visit.

Mr Trump told reporters: “I like your prime minister. He’s slightly more liberal than I am… but he’s a good man… he got a trade deal done. It’s a good deal for the UK.”

The pair are expected to discuss potential changes to the UK-US trade deal which came into force last month.

Trump left Air Force One to head to Turnberry, one of his Scottish golf courses. Part of the trip will include the opening of another course in Aberdeenshire, billed as “the greatest 36 holes in golf”.

“There’s no place like Turnberry. It’s the best, probably the best course in the world. And I would say Aberdeen is right up there,” the US president said.

“Sean Connery helped get me the [planning] permits. If it weren’t for Sean Connery, we wouldn’t have those great courses,” he added.

During the trip, President Trump will also hold discussions with Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is keen to secure a trade deal with the US.

Mr Trump told reporters there was “a good 50-50 chance” of an agreement with the EU but added there were “maybe 20 different” sticking points.

EU diplomats say a deal could result in a broad 15% tariff on EU goods and half of the 30% Trump is threatening to impose by 1 August.

The US president touched on illegal immigration and gave European leaders a stark warning.

“You better get your act together or you’re not going to have Europe anymore. You got to get your act together,” he said.

“But you’re allowing it to happen to your countries and you got to stop this horrible invasion that’s happening to Europe. Immigration is killing Europe.”

He was also scathing about the installation of wind turbines across the continent.

“Stop the windmills. You’re ruining your countries,” he said. “It’s so sad. You fly over and you see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds.”

Domestically, Mr Trump faces the biggest political crisis of his second term in office over his administration’s handling of files linked to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.

He faced another round of questions after stepping off Air Force One.

“You’re making a big thing over something that’s not a big thing. I’m focused on making deals, not on conspiracy theories that you are,” he said.

Mr Trump added that “now’s not the time” to discuss a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice.

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While the president’s visit did attract some enthusiastic flag-waving supporters at Prestwick Airport, he is also likely to trigger a number of protests, prompting Police Scotland to call in support from other forces in the UK.

The Stop Trump Scotland group has planned demonstrations on Saturday in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dumfries.

About 70% of Scots have an unfavourable opinion of Mr Trump, while 18% have a positive opinion, an Ipsos poll in March found.

Mr Trump is staying at his Turnberry property on Scotland’s west coast this weekend, before travelling to Aberdeenshire on Monday, where he will open a second 18-hole course.

He is due to return to the UK in September for a state visit hosted by the King – the first world leader in modern times to undertake two UK state visits.