A second federal probe was launched into Hunter Biden in Pittsburgh after Rudy Giuliani handed material over to ‘Trump loyalist’ Scott Brady, sparking concerns among the FBI, it has been revealed.
Five current and former law enforcement officials, and others familiar with the matter, told the New York Times an investigation into Joe Biden’s son was going on in Philadelphia in the lead-up to the election.
Sources said Brady, Pittsburgh’s top federal prosecutor and a staunch Republican, headed up the investigation at the request of Attorney General Bill Barr after Giuliani reached out with information he had gathered on the Biden family.
This investigation was separate to the one going on in Delaware.
The sources told the Times that people within the Department of Justice and the FBI were concerned about the probe, given both Brady’s and Giuliani’s ties to Donald Trump.
No charges have ever been brought from the investigation.
News of the probe comes the same week Hunter revealed he is under federal investigation in Delaware for his taxes.
A second federal probe was launched into Hunter Biden in Pittsburgh after Rudy Giuliani handed material over to ‘Trump loyalist’ Scott Brady, sparking concerns among the FBI, it has been revealed. Pictured HUnter andd
Sources told the Times Giuliani and his lawyer Robert Costello contacted the DOJ in January saying they had gathered information on Hunter and other members of the Biden family, including from people in Ukraine.
Barr asked Brady to look through the information Giuliani had collected on Hunter.
On January 29, Brady, Giuliani and Costello had a four-hour meeting at the FBI office in Pittsburgh where Giuliani presented the documents, the Times reported.
Also present were Stephen Kaufman and Ira Karoll, Brady’s top deputies on the inquiry.
Costello and Giuliani also put forward witnesses in the investigation.
Both the FBI and the DOJ were concerned that the investigation showed a political agenda for organizations that should be neutral and could damage their reputations, the sources told the Times.
Giuliani is Trump’s personal lawyer and at the time was reportedly under investigation himself over his ties to Ukraine.
He also obtained the contents of Hunter’s laptop and shared it with the New York Post in the run-up to the election.
He is also currently spearheading Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the election result.
Five current and former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the matter told the New York Times an investigation into Joe Biden’s son was going on in Philadelphia in the lead-up to the election after Giuliani (pictured) contacted the DOJ with information on the Biden family
Sources said Brady (pictured), Pittsburgh’s top federal prosecutor and a staunch Republican, headed up the investigation. They said people within the Department of Justice and the FBI were concerned about the probe, given both Brady’s and Giuliani’s ties to Donald Trump
Meanwhile Brady, a staunch Republican, was nominated to the role of Pittsburgh’s top prosecutor by Trump in 2017 and has vowed to never serve a Democrat president.
Sources told the Times insiders felt both men were trying to damage Biden’s race for the White House.
One former law enforcement official told the Times Brady’s actions were outside ‘normal investigative procedures’.
They said he pushed the FBI to question witnesses put forward by Giuliani and that the investigation was somewhat unprecedented to carry out in the run-up to an election.
According to the Times, the FBI later pushed back against Brady in a ‘tense confrontation’, deciding that his probe was unwarranted and casting doubt on Giuliani’s materials after a look into Hunter’s laptop had already turned up no incriminating evidence.
The DOJ and the FBI did not immediately return DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
The revelation of the Pittsburgh probe comes days after Hunter revealed he is under investigation in Delaware for his taxes.
‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,’ Hunter said in a statement Wednesday put out by the Biden-Harris transition office.
Attorney General Bill Barr (above) asked Brady to look into what Giuliani had found
The Associated Press reported that the DOJ is scrutinizing some of Hunter’s Chinese business deals and not the contents of his laptop, shared in the weeks before the election by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
While the investigation started in 2018, a new round of subpoenas went out on Tuesday, including to Hunter, the Associated Press said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter’s business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation that two people familiar with the matter told the WSJ was an international financial investigation that had been going on for at least a year.
Hunter is implicated in that investigation but was never a specific target for criminal prosecution, the people said.
Fox News reported that Hunter is a ‘subject/target’ of the grand jury investigation. A target means there’s a ‘high probability that person committed a crime’ and a subject is someone you ‘don’t know for sure’ has committed a crime.
Fox’s sources said transactions from ‘China and other foreign nations’ triggered Suspicious Activity Reports, prompting the probe.
Fox said the probe began in 2018, meaning it predated Barr taking over the top post at the Justice Department.
Barr has said publicly that the the president-elect isn’t under investigation and two sources told CNN that the probe doesn’t allege any wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part.
Neither the tax investigation nor the Manhattan financial inquiry implicate the president-elect, the paper reported.
The Biden transition team has declined to say when Joe Biden learned of the investigation.
A statement circulated by that team on Wednesday said President-elect Mr. Biden is ‘proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.’
Hunter, pictured with his father celebrating his win on November 7, is under investigation over his taxes in Delaware
Barr was under intense pressure to formally declare that he was investigating Hunter and his father.
Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman representing Ohio who is the ranking member of the House Judiciary panel, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray asking what steps the FBI had taken to investigate the information in the ‘explosive report.’
An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau responded to the letter and declined to comment further.
On October 19, Republicans in Congress urged Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and his father, and demanded that Barr respond within five days.
A day later, asked on Fox News whether he supported tapping a special prosecutor, Trump said: ‘We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.’
The Biden-Harris transition team put out a statement Wednesday from Hunter Biden and President-elect Joe Biden
The tax investigation into Hunter Biden was sparked in part by reports of suspicious activity filed by a bank that handled foreign transactions related to him, a source said.
Hunter, a lawyer, has worked for numerous international companies.
For around five years, until April 2019, he sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, where he was paid roughly $50,000 a month for his work.
Hunter also did advisory work for China CEFC Energy Co., as the company pursued deals in Europe and the Middle East.
Around the time CEFC was trying to break into the U.S., its activity became a focus of a corruption case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which resulted in the 2018 conviction of a former Hong Kong official on charges that he bribed African officials to secure business benefits for CEFC.
The company, which is now effectively defunct, wasn’t charged in the US corruption case.
One item of interest to investigators could be a 2.8-carat diamond gifted to Hunter Biden in 2017 from the founder and former chairman of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming, after a Miami business meeting, CNN said.
The diamond was part of the original inquiry, but it’s unclear if it’s still a focus, the network reported.
Hunter Biden described receiving the diamond during his July 2019 interview with The New Yorker, saying that after meeting Ye and offering to use his contacts to help the Chinese businessman identify liquified natural gas projects in the U.S., the diamond was sent to his hotel room.
Hunter Biden said he didn’t interpret as a bribe. ‘What would they be bribing me for?’ he asked. ‘My dad wasn’t in office.’
But he decided not to keep the gem anyway.
‘I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird,’ he said.
Hunter Biden said he gave the diamond to one of his associates and he didn’t know what happened to it.