“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, he has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

During the tenure of arguably the most corrupt president in our nation’s history, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, an avowed champion of oversight and “patron saint of whistleblowers” was curiously quiet and not particularly busy. He showed little interest in literally dozens of Trump administration scandals for which there was plenty of evidence.

But in his eighth term, at the age of 89, Senator Grassley has fashioned himself as not just an oversight advocate but an ethics crusader. His target? President Joe Biden. 

It’s somewhat embarrassing that Grassley, an old-school pol from a moderate state, is engaging in this type of raw politics. It’s also embarrassing that the oldest and most experienced Republican in all of Congress is acting as foolishly as hotheaded neophytes Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert.

As an ethics researcher myself, I find Grassley’s quest for Biden corruption to be disappointing and in a way, puzzling. This is a politician who hails from a time when the Senate was known for its collegiality and chumminess between both Republicans and Democrats. Grassley served in the Senate with Joe Biden for nearly thirty years; the two men must have some kind of personal relationship. Does Grassley really think Biden is capable of such base, corrupt behavior? I would love to ask the senator, “If you think Joe Biden is on the take, why were there never any similar scandals in his fifty year-long career in public service?”

That does not mean it’s not true, however. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t make it impossible. A fair-minded ethics investigation will go wherever the facts lead.

But Grassley is not on that path. Instead, he has thrown his lot in with the likes of U.S. Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, craven partisans who have debased themselves in pursuit of extremely thin allegations against the Bidens.

As House Oversight Committee chair, Comer has led the charge among House Republicans and has coordinated with Grassley on the Senate side. Comer claims these are blockbuster allegations detailing criminal bribery schemes by the “Biden Crime Family.” Despite his ironclad certainty the Bidens preside over a criminal enterprise, Comer admitted that 1) he had not been in contact with the original whistleblower who had been “missing” for years 2) he did not know if the allegations are even true and 3) it turns out his star witness had been indicted on an array of federal charges (I’ll come back to that).

All the while, these Republicans claimed to have more than enough to remove Biden from the presidency, but they provided vanishingly few specifics about the alleged scheme. For much of this year, it seemed like they didn’t know what they were accusing the Bidens of doing. When that picture became clearer in the last few months, it was still not a compelling one.

Like Comer, Grassley has shown a disregard for facts. He also said he does not know if the accusations are true. And in June, he made a series of bombastic statements on the Senate floor declaring confidently that the FBI had obtained audio recordings—seventeen of them to be exact—of the Bidens discussing bribery payments with a foreign business executive. Despite dropping this shocking piece of news, Grassley later acknowledged he does not know for sure whether the recordings even exist.    

Let’s be real: these are major accusations. Major. They involve allegations of bribery amounting to millions of dollars. And if true, Biden should be impeached, removed from office, and sentenced to prison. If there was any weight to these assertions, the federal authorities as well as the media would be swarming all over them. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And so far that extraordinary evidence has yet to materialize.

At the risk of getting too deep into the weeds, I’ll try to quickly break down the Republican take on these scandals and show why they don’t hold water. 

Burisma

According to Republicans, Hunter Biden used his father’s political clout to help his business. However, we will see the facts do not support that assertion. In 2014, the younger Biden had suspiciously been appointed to a Ukrainian natural gas firm called Burisma, despite having no industry experience. The company also paid him incredible amounts of money each month.

Those facts are true, and rather disturbing. But by itself, his relationship to the company is not illegal; the president’s son is free to pursue his own business interests. So for this to be a crime, Republicans need to connect the payment to then Vice President Biden and specifically to an official act. Also, during this time, the company was under investigation by Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s top prosecutor. 

As the GOP story goes, Joe Biden, in the final years of his vice presidency, worked the levers of foreign policy to get the prosecutor fired in exchange for $5 million. They claim this scheme is evidenced by a series of “suspicious activity reports” flagged in the international banking system that supposedly detail payments to Trump family members. They also claim that the FBI’s FD-1023, a document detailing the original—but unverified—account of an informant, shows Joe Biden was involved, and there were even audio recordings of phone calls detailing his role in the scheme. 

Sounds pretty serious, right? But, their argument is riddled with holes and inconsistencies. First of all, it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the decision to remove the prosecutor. Shokin was a corrupt official in a pro-Russian Ukrainian government. The goal of removing him from power was the official policy of the U.S., and much of the world, including the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Hunter Biden’s Burisma connection had nothing to do with it. Republicans refuse to acknowledge this, even today.  

Additionally, the FBI—under Attorney General Bill Barr and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice—had looked into the allegations but could not corroborate them. Also, the audio recordings Grassley touted on the Senate floor may not even exist (but I am curious about the SARs because they could lend credibility to the GOP’s claims).

Not only that, but this is the same bogus conspiracy Trump was chasing when he withheld hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid from Ukraine in 2019, prompting his first impeachment. So, it turns out that the Republicans’ earth-shattering charges of Biden corruption in 2023 were just Rudy Guiliani’s warmed over crackpot schemes from three years ago. 

China and CEFC

Grassley and the Republicans have also pointed to a supposed scandal involving Hunter Biden’s business deals with a Chinese energy firm, CEFC. 

However, the Republican case hinges on a series of vague text messages in which Hunter Biden writes to Chinese business contacts and pressures them to finalize deals. He used his father’s name in an intimidating, even threatening manner, to suggest that Hunter would get him involved. The tactic appears to have worked; CEFC wired payments to Hunter Biden’s businesses over the next several days. 

Although Republicans claim this is enough to impeach Biden, the texts themselves do not prove anything. The fact that Hunter Biden mentions his father does not necessarily mean he was involved. It’s not unusual for failed sons of powerful men to throw their father’s name around. Nor is it unusual for the father to know nothing about it. I don’t know for sure, but it seems possible that happened here. We have not seen proof Hunter coordinated this scheme with his father. Yet, that is enough for the Republicans to tar and feather Joe Biden.  

In fact, one of the messages appears to be a fake. And that text dates from 2017, when Joe Biden was not president or vice president. So, even if it were real, why would it be a crime or an impeachable offense?

In addition, Comer’s star witness/whistleblower was missing for years because he was a fugitive from the law. Gal Luft, an Israeli businessman who had inside information about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with CEFC, was lauded by Comer as a credible witness and FBI informant who would provide damaging testimony about the Bidens. However, last year he was indicted for illegal arms trafficking and scheming to violate sanctions to import Iranian oil to China, and more unseemly charges. 

The FBI FD-1023

Grassley and Comer have gone beyond mere conspiracy-peddling. They have even defied federal authorities to promote this narrative on the Bidens. In May, Comer and Grassley demanded that the FBI release the FD-1023 document. The bureau was reluctant to do so, for fear of compromising a confidential foreign intelligence source and issues of privacy. 

The FBI took an unusual step to accommodate the members of Congress, inviting Grassley and Comer to view the document in a private, secure location. They refused and threatened to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress unless he published the document. 

Then last week, Grassley publicly released the FD-1023 anyway, against the wishes of the FBI who expressly asked him not to do so. The document is unclear, and at times confusing and contradictory. The source admits to not knowing whether Burisma made the alleged $5 million payments to the Bidens, and mentions that Ukrainian businessmen are prone to “show off.” An honest reading of the document reveals it is not the damning evidence the Republicans claim. At best, it’s unreliable.

IRS Whistleblowers

At a July 19 House Oversight Committee hearing, Republicans tried to make the case that various shadowy government officials have been engaged in an extensive coverup of Hunter Biden’s misdeeds. IRS employees and whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler testified that Hunter Biden likely should have been charged with more tax crimes for illegally classifying income from Burisma as a loan and making other improper write-offs.

But because officials at the IRS and DOJ dragged their feet, the six-year statute of limitations ran out on many of the tax violations in question. Hunter Biden did ultimately plead guilty to failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes. But for Republicans, it’s a “sweetheart deal,” evidence that the government is “protecting” him because he’s the president’s son. 

I found Shapley and Ziegler to be credible, and I think they raised legitimate concerns. They should be protected from any retaliation, even if their claims are not as explosive as advertised. That said, they provided few specifics about how their investigation was interfered with and which agency was responsible. And Democrats pointed out repeatedly that this all occurred during a time when Joe Biden was still a private citizen and not a public official, and therefore had no power to make a federal agency do anything. Trump was president at the time. 

I believe it’s likely Hunter Biden misreported foreign income as a loan and therefore illegally decreased his tax burden as the whistleblowers allege. But I don’t believe they adequately made the case that Biden got special treatment or was protected by corrupt officials. 

While I found Ziegler’s testimony to be legitimate, I have reservations because he is represented by Dean Zerbe, a crony of Senator Grassley’s. Zerbe is a tax attorney and former Grassley staffer who has benefited handsomely from the senator’s efforts to promote and protect whistleblowers. He is also a major donor to Grassley’s campaigns and typically represents whistleblowers in big money corporate tax evasion cases. 

In addition, Zerbe is a senior advisor in a nonprofit firm called Empower Oversight, which is “dedicated to enhancing independent oversight of government and corporate wrongdoing.” Empower Oversight is stocked with other former Grassley staffers and connections. While they are veteran whistleblower advocates, a number of them cite their oversight work on Operation Fast and Furious. Many Democrats and independents considered the investigations of Fast and Furious to be an exploitation of a tragic event and a partisan attempt to politically harm the Obama administration. 

Empower Oversight played a key role in helping Shapley and Ziegler navigate around the IRS rules prohibiting the disclosure of private taxpayer information in order for them to bring their allegations to the public. It raises questions about whether Zerbe is working for Ziegler, or for Grassley and Trump. 

Due diligence

During my time working for a public interest group, I approached every tip, case, and story with an open mind and scrutinizing eye. I did my best to verify the facts and analyze the conclusions. Though much of my work covered Republicans, I also never shied away from investigating Democrats. I never wanted to be accused of being a blindly partisan hack. I knew that if I put something out there that was factually incorrect and relied on weak conclusions, my organization and I would lose all credibility. That would detract from the incidents of real corruption we were finding in our government all too frequently.

Democratic corruption is just as harmful as Republican corruption. Unless you address it fairly, from all sides, you will be the partisan boy who cried “corruption.” And soon, no one will believe you. 

Simply put: I could never publish a report with as many unfounded allegations and suspiciously sourced material as Grassley has used to promote these conspiracy theories. And Bleeding Heartland and any reputable media organization would never print them. If they did something that reckless, they would do irreparable harm to their reputation. But that hasn’t stopped Grassley & Co. 

It is possible that everything Republicans now allege about the Bidens could be proven. All the evidence may ultimately come out. But until the Republicans can substantiate the claims, they should be more careful. 

It’s discouraging to see Grassley go on a wild goose chase with some of the most extreme Republicans in the House. These people are rabid Trump supporters who have no shame in doing whatever dirty work the disgraced former president needs done in Congress. They are trying to will this scandal into existence despite the absence of evidence. 

Of course, this is naked politics, all intended to harm Joe Biden’s candidacy for re-election. In fact, during an interview with conservative talk radio host Simon Conway last month, Grassley said he hopes Trump “thinks I’m doing good work,” adding, “I’d like to have him think that of my oversight work.”

The nature of the senator’s work has been so skewed and political that his former staffer Kris Kolesnik (who led investigations in Grassley’s office for nineteen years) called him out for it—not once, but twice. 

When I was in DC, I had a certain respect for Grassley for his service to Iowa and his commitment to oversight and whistleblower issues. I’ve been sorely disappointed that in his old age, he is not bringing much-needed levelheaded wisdom in a time when America and the Republican Party badly needs it. In an era of GOP extremism, Grassley decided to get more political, not less. 

Like Taylor Swift’s biggest fear, Grassley has gotten older but just never wiser. 

Top image: Senator Chuck Grassley reads from prepared remarks on the Senate floor about an FBI document the senator recently made public. Screenshot from a video posted to the senator’s YouTube channel on July 25.