Sen. Grassley alleges FBI intentionally downplayed negative information about Hunter Biden

There has long been criticism of the official response to allegations against Hunter Biden including the damning findings revealed via his "laptop from hell."

On Monday, Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, alleging that their agencies had deliberately underplayed negative information about Hunter Biden and his uncle, James.

Sen. Grassley had previously sent a letter to Garland and Wray on May 31 regarding what he perceived to be violations of federal laws and regulations, as well as FBI guidelines by then Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault of the Washington Field Office. Sen. Grassley accused Thibaut in the letter of expressing a "pattern of active public partisanship" on social media.

Sen. Grassley called on officials within the FBI and DOJ to contact him about the handling of Hunter Biden information.

In his July 25 letter, Sen. Grassley revealed that "highly credible whistleblowers" had come forth with "a significant number of protected communications" on the matter.

He claimed whistleblowers had shown that in August 2020, the FBI's Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten began an assessment that was used by a team at FBI headquarters to "improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease."

At the time, Sen. Grassley and Sen. Johnson had themselves begun an investigation into Hunter Biden, whose findings were smeared by high-ranking Democrats as amounting to a "foreign disinformation campaign."

Sen. Grassley went on to allege that the FBI had, at the behest of ASAC Thibault, ordered a separate avenue of investigation into Hunter Biden closed in the lead up to the 2020 election, citing a "risk of disinformation." The facts of the matter were, however, verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.

"If these allegations are true and accurate," Sen. Grassley wrote to Garland and Wray, "the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law."

He suggested the two had "systemic and existential problems" within their agencies, and urged them to remedy the situation by providing him with a number of documents, including the Auten assessment case file, all records regarding Hunter Biden and James Biden, all leads and cases ordered closed by ASAC Thibault, and more information regarding a briefing FBI given to him and Sen. Johnson about their investigation in August 2020.