Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Joe Biden bribery claim ‘needs to be investigated’

Democratic primary rival Robert Kennedy Jr. says he backs a probe of the $10 million bribery claim leveled against President Biden and his son by an Ukrainian oligarch who headed the “notoriously corrupt” Burisma energy company.

“The issues that are now coming up are worrying enough that we really need a real investigation of what happened,” Kennedy told Fox News Sunday Morning Futures show host Maria Bartiromo.

“I mean, these revelations …where you have Burisma, which is this notoriously corrupt company, that paid out apparently $10 million to Hunter and his dad, if that’s true, then it is really troubling.

“So I think … it needs to be investigated,” he said.

Kennedy tried to dodge having to weigh in on the controversy, insisting he wanted to “bring people together and some of the vitriol, the poison that’s made politics so poisonous, so personal.”

He changed his tune after Bartiromo said the issue dealt with corruption.

Hunter Biden served on the natural gas company Burisma’s board.

An FBI informant file that described the $10 million bribery allegation against Biden and son Hunter was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In it, Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma Holdings, claimed to the informant that he was “coerced” into making the payoff.

Kennedy also agreed with an assertion that federal law enforcement authorities have been politicized following Bartiromo’s declaration the Justice Department went after Trump officials with Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.

“Yes,” said Kennedy. ” I mean, I think that that’s something that every American needs to worry about, that our federal agencies, which used to be above politics, have now become weaponized as political instruments. And that, again, is another really damaging trend for our democracy.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray allowed members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to read the document last month after the bureau initially refused — sparking a brief push by panel chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to hold Wray in contempt.The FBI then agreed to let legislators read the file in a secure room at the Capitol.

Last week, the White House sought to dismiss the bribery claim as a GOP smear campaign.

“Congressional Republicans, in their eagerness to go after President Biden regardless of the truth, continue to push claims that have been debunked for years and that they themselves have cautioned to take ‘with a grain of salt’ because they could be ‘made up,’” presidential spokesman Ian Sams said.

“These claims have reportedly been scrutinized by the Trump Justice Department, a Trump-appointed US Attorney, and a full impeachment trial of the former President that centered on these very issues, and over and over again, they have been found to lack credibility,” Sams said.

“It’s clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way. It is well past time for news organizations to hold them to basic levels of factual accountability for their repeated and increasingly desperate efforts to mislead both the public and the press.”