In May 2023, Senator Charles E. Grassley, a chief antagonist of President Biden, strode to the Senate floor with some shocking news: He had learned, he said, of a document in the F.B.I.’s possession that could reveal “a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden.”
Mr. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, suggested to any Americans listening that there was a single document that could confirm the most sensational corruption allegations against Mr. Biden — and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was engaging in a coverup.
“Did they sweep it under the rug to protect the candidate Biden?” he asked conspiratorially.
Over the next few months, Mr. Grassley’s quest to make public the allegation — laid out in an obscure document known as an F.B.I. Form 1023 — became a fixation, and a foundation of the growing Republican push to impeach Mr. Biden as payback for Democrats’ treatment of former President Donald J. Trump.
At the center of it all was the unsubstantiated accusation that Mr. Biden had taken a $5 million bribe from the executive of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
But what neither Mr. Grassley nor any of the other Republicans who amplified the claims said in their breathless statements was that F.B.I. officials had warned them repeatedly to be cautious about the accusation, because it was uncorroborated and its credibility unknown.
All that the form proved, federal law enforcement officials explained, was that a confidential source had said something, and they had written it down. And now federal prosecutors say the claim was made up.
But the cautions Republicans received from the start about the materials did not stop them from repeating the unverified allegation hundreds of times over many months, in official settings and interviews on right-wing media outlets.
Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the Oversight Committee, called the source of the allegation “highly credible,” while Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the Judiciary Committee chairman, called the form the “most corroborating evidence we have.”
Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican who is one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal allies in that chamber, declared it “the biggest political corruption scandal, not only in my lifetime, but I would say the past 100 years.”
Republicans read it into the Congressional Record, included it as a “key” document on the House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry website and even threatened to hold the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, in contempt when he resisted their calls to send them an unredacted copy of the form.
Last week, a federal grand jury in California indicted the former F.B.I. informant who had made the accusation, Alexander Smirnov, on charges that he had fabricated the story in 2020 to help defeat Mr. Biden in the presidential campaign. Prosecutors also asserted in a court filing that Mr. Smirnov, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel who operated as a businessman and fixer in the former Soviet states, had told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in passing an unspecified story about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who had been a board member of Burisma.
Current and former law enforcement officials said confidential informants dissemble all the time — often to impress their handlers or settle grudges — which is why the release of a raw, unverified report from a single source is strictly prohibited.
In a series of pointed letters to congressional Republicans last spring and summer, senior F.B.I. officials explained why they were unwilling to show the lawmakers the form containing the allegation, even in private.
“The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the F.B.I. recorded it,” wrote Christopher Dunham, acting assistant…
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