Sen. Ron Johnson on the Hunter Biden Emails, Bobulinski, ‘Russian Disinformation’ [Full transcript]

In this phone interview, we speak with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, to discuss the Hunter Biden scandal and the email evidence provided by Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of the Bidens.

Jan Jekielek: Senator Ron Johnson, so great to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Sen. Ron Johnson: So happy to be here.

Mr. Jekielek: Senator Johnson, you’ve been with Senator Grassley, leading a Senate investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and related potential conflicts of interest. What I want to ask is, what exactly are you looking for?

Sen. Johnson: I think it’s important to point out that we never set out to have the Bidens an object of an investigation. My own investigations began in terms of corruption. The Obama administration with the Hillary Clinton email scandal morphed into the corrupt investigation of the FBI’s crossfire hurricane investigations, but shifted in terms of Ukraine.

Senator Grassley really began based on an article in “Politico” written by Ken Vogel, where their allegations made that Alexandra Chalupa, working for the DNC, might have been working with certain Ukrainians and potentially interfering in our re-elections.

At some point in time, we combined our investigatory efforts along that whole front and during the impeachment process, it came to light that Hunter Biden was a board member of Burisma. Joe Biden, himself, bragged to the Council of Foreign Relations that he’s the one that forced Shokin to be fired.

Otherwise, he threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. That was such a glaring conflict of interest. As we were looking into a potential … not the government of Ukrainian interference in the election, but just what type of interference had there been by certain Ukrainians?

So we started looking into that. But my committee’s jurisdiction is first and foremost … We are the Senate oversight committee, but we are specifically charged—and oversight jurisdiction has to do with conflict of interest, among many other things—but we are specifically charged with investigating certain areas of conflict of interest.

Again, as a Buzzfeed reporter now in one of the more recently released interviews or email shows back in May, I think May 13th, 2014, I wrote a letter to the Executive Office of the President. One of his contacts there saying that the fact that Hunter Biden just was appointed to the board of Burisma is odd on its face.

Certainly if true is a glaring conflict of interest, the exact same words I used in our report. So, that is the history of how we started investigating that glaring conflict of interest. I think it’s pretty notable that the mainstream media represented by Buzzfeed back in May 2014, thought it was a glaring conflict of interest. Now they just looked the other way saying, “Oh, no wrongdoing here.”

Mr. Jekielek: Well, what about with the administration back in 2014? What happened subsequent to that?

Sen. Johnson: Define your question further. Nothing happened to it. I mean everybody knew it was a glaring conflict of interest. People like George Kent were highly concerned that Amos Hochstein was a special envoy to Ukraine. Those were the only two individuals that ever raised it with somebody in the executive … the Vice President’s office.

Now, George Kent never spoke directly to the Vice President, Amos Hochstein did. And that’s the only person we’ve been able to find that actually spoke directly to the Vice President about this glaring conflict of interest.

The reaction, by the way, is documented in testimony by Amos Hochstein—that, the Vice President then spoke to Hunter Biden about that and suggested that Hunter Biden set up a meeting with Amos Hochstein—which proves that Vice President Biden bold-faced lied when he said that he never spoke to Hunter Biden about his overseas businesses.

Amos Hochstein testified that he obviously had to speak to Hunter about that because he set up a meeting between Hunter and Amos Hochstein to talk about that conflict of interest.

With new emails now, new revelation, Tony Bobulinski is now talking about actually having a meeting with Hunter and Vice President Biden specifically talking about, you know, the Chinese investment business. So that’s another proof of the lie, but let’s face it. I never believed Vice President Biden, who traveled overseas with Hunter on Air Force Two, how many hours is that flight?

Hunter obviously has a separate agenda during that trip, does arrange by the way, for a handshake with Jonathan Lee. One of his future business partners was just right after that trip that their business license for the firm that they created during that trip was approved.

So you know, again, further proof that Vice President Biden lied to the American public when he said he never spoke to Hunter Biden about his overseas business dealings, which of course is trying to throw everybody off the trail that, “Uh, I had no idea this stuff was happening.”

I think every day that goes by, more emails are being revealed. It becomes more and more obvious that the Vice President lied and was probably more involved in these overseas businesses than anybody currently is aware.

Mr. Jekielek: So you published this report earlier, The Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on US Policies and Related Concerns. What was the media response to that, from your perspective?

Sen. Johnson: There was no response. It was basically completely ignored. Although the lead up to the report, there were all kinds of stories written about how Charles Grassley and I had engaged in accepting and then disseminating Russian disinformation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What happened, actually, is Democrats, senior Democrats created an intelligence product, which John Ratcliffe said they had no knowledge of. No involvement in is false allegation, a false intelligence product that then they leaked to the media a week before Senator Grassley and I even had the notice of it, falsely accusing us of accepting information from Andrii Derkach.

Just today we got a letter from our ranking members Peters and Widen, still claiming, still lying about the fact that Chuck Grassley and I accepted the information. I’d never heard of Andrii Derkach, I’d never met with him, we never accepted any information and we never did. And there’s certainly no proof because we never did.

The only Russian disinformation in our investigation was entered by Senator Peters and his staff when they took on Andrii Derkach’s chart that they entered into our record. In terms of other investigatory records, the only other Russian disinformation, for example in Crossfire Hurricane, was bought and paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. And that was the Steele dossier that the FBI knew full well.

Some sources were suspected Russian agents that the FBI had investigated in 2009. They knew there was Russian disinformation in that as early as January 2 … Actually in October 2016, they knew for sure by January 2017, yet the investigation continued—resulting in a special council, $48 million spent.

And you know, this nightmare, this political nightmare that this administration …  our country’s gone through as a result of the false allegations, the false claims. Democrats lying through their teeth like Adam Schiff, that he knew that he had evidence of Russian disinformation, where he had none.

And of course, the mainstream media’s carrying the Democrats’ water. And now, in hindsight, even though they knew that they were fed false information, they haven’t outed the sources that actually fed them false leads.

Mr. Jekielek: Senator Johnson, you have obviously a whole series of new sources of information. You’ve actually requested information from Hunter Biden himself. There’s this laptop that the New York Post has been reporting on. There’s the Bevan Cooney emails. And of course, Tom Bobulinski and his phones. Do you have access to those phones now? And is there any other sources of information that you’re looking at beyond what I just said?

Sen. Johnson: Well, we never got the server from the Delaware computer shop owner. He talked to us, he’s an anonymous whistleblower until he went public and turned that computer server over … computer drive over to, in the end, the New York Post, who started to verify this to their satisfaction, then started publishing stories. So now we obviously have access to what we see in the press there.

The Bevan Cooney Gmail account that has been given access to Peter Schweizer, and so, he’s downloading that and revealing emails. What we are doing … Now, we do have access to Tony Bobulinski’s information. He provided a thumb drive to our committee yesterday, and we’re going through and we’re validating it.

What I can say about all of those sources, we’re continuing to do our due diligence to verify and authenticate the genuineness of those emails. And to date, we have found nothing that disputes them. All we found is verification, validation of their authenticity.

Mr. Jekielek: You know, he was saying that he was passing these phones onto, presumably, the FBI. And is it also to your committee?

Sen. Johnson: The FBI will have the phones. We were actually scheduled to have our first informal interview with Mr. Bobulinski this morning at 10, but the FBI contacted him and his attorney and requested that they turn … you know, because they wanted to turn the phones over to the FBI, but the FBI also wanted to interview him.

So, his attorney thought it was probably best to go speak to the FBI first. But, we will schedule our interview with him as soon as possible. I don’t know Mr. Bobulinski’s schedule, I know he is in DC here today. So hopefully we can schedule that early next week.

Mr. Jekielek: What is your expectation on the timeline for this report on these new findings? Or, is this going to be an updated report of the previous one?

Sen. Johnson: Well, in the past when we get information verified, we just … For example, the Strzok-Page texts, there’s no reason to issue a report that not much you could really do other than to show the American public the information. My guess, just as you’re seeing the New York Post and Peter Schweizer and other news outlets that, by the way, also have gotten much, if not all the same information we got from Mr. Bobulinski, he’s gone quite public with this.

When we determine, when we see things that we think are relevant that the public needs to see, we’ll probably just make that public. But, not until we are assured that we verified and authenticated whatever it is that we release.

Mr. Jekielek: You and Senator Grassley have also been critical of how the big social media companies have been handling this whole new trove of information.

Sen. Johnson: Yes. I think that we’re really looking at three different scandals here. I think we’re looking at the scandal of the Biden family international business entanglements. And I think it’s much larger than what is certainly known right now and certainly deserves a further investigation. We just scratched the surface. I never claimed that our report answered all the questions, far from it. I think our report raised far more troubling issues and questions than we answered. But that’s the first scandal.

Of course, the Vice President has been caught in the lie repeatedly now. And I think as every day goes by, we’ll probably see that his assertion that he never spoke to Hunter Biden about his overseas businesses will be further proven that is a complete falsehood.

The other scandal, the second scandal is literally the suppression of information on the part of the mainstream media, as well as the social media companies. I’m a strong believer in the free press, but primarily in terms of its investigative abilities and its ability to provide the American people the truth and true information, and hopefully unbiased.

But it’s been years since we’ve actually had an unbiased press that doesn’t tilt in terms of its investigatory powers, investigate the you know what out of any Republican or conservative and just look the other way when it’s a Democrat or a liberal progressive. So that is the second scandal.

The third scandal is really what we have faced in terms of the deep state. Our inability with our legitimate oversight to extract the information and document side of the agencies is a scandal in and of itself as well. For the fact, I mean, we haven’t got any information out of Gina Haspel, the CIA and the intelligence community.

The information we’ve requested from the FBI under subpoena has not been provided, not even close to complete compliance of that. These are documents which should be readily available. We’re requesting what the FBI, what the intelligence committee provided to the Inspector General. It’s not like we’re asking them for a whole new data dump and they’ve got to go search.

This is the same information that they provided Inspector General Horowitz for his investigation years ago. We should have had this information years ago and the American people should have been fully aware of exactly what happened. So, that’s the third scandal. Three scandals, all in one.

Mr. Jekielek: You know, now that you mention it, what do you make of the fact that the FBI has held on to this hard drive or laptop that came from the Delaware shop for so long without acting-

Sen. Johnson: I’m highly concerned about it. So, that’s why I wrote a letter to Inspector General Horowitz to open up an investigation in terms of—what did the FBI do? I am highly suspicious that we have, and I think there’s plenty of evidence for it, that we have two systems of justice, at least two.

There’s one system of justice when it comes to political wrongdoing that is applied to Democrats. Again, a look the other way approach, bury evidence, never reveal what you’re sitting on.

Then, of course, there’s the other system of justice on potential political wrongdoing to supply to conservatives and Republicans like President Trump—so that you’ll take any unbelievable claim and follow it down whatever rabbit hole as far as you can possibly follow it—ignore all exculpatory information to keep the investigation going.

So do we have those two systems of justice on political wrongdoing—Democrat versus Republican, conservative versus liberal? I would say that’s obviously yes. But also, the two systems of justice from the well connected versus ordinary Americans probably exist as well. That is very corrosive to our society, to our democracy and certainly to our system of justice. We need equal justice under the law. And right now, I don’t think we have it.

Mr. Jekielek: You’ve already spoken to this a bit, but ultimately there is this, let’s call it narrative, that all of this is Russian disinformation. I’m wondering if you could just comment directly on what you think about that.

Sen. Johnson: Well, certainly the recent revelations on Joe and Hunter Biden, these computers, that type of thing—certainly appears that is, not that these are authentic, they’re genuine. And I think it’s just really outrageous that former members of the deep state bipartisan basis issue a letter without any evidence whatsoever.

Not claiming it’s Russian, just information, but alluding to the fact that it might be to, again, smear the story—to smear authentic and genuine information. I don’t know what their motive is, I can only guess they’re obviously not supporters of President Trump.

But I think that is scandalous quite honestly. What I have been trying to point out, first of all, I do not condone any foreign interference in our election. I was well [inaudible, 00:17:05] in terms of Russian disinformation, holding hearings in my Senate foreign relations subcommittee on Europe, about Russian interference, the attempted coup in Montenegro.

I know what Russia is up to, I know their means. We certainly need to be on the lookout for it. But the point I’m trying to make is the effect of Russian disinformation, foreign interference on our elections, the absolute effect of that pales in comparison to what the Democrats have done using this canard—like this is the biggest threat to our democracy. It is not the effect on our elections in terms of Democrat disinformation, Democrat lies.

And then the mainstream media carrying Democrats’ water. Again, either the mainstream media was duped, but I think much more likely complicit in the whole false narrative of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They ought to come clean, and at a minimum, they ought to out their sources that leaked them false information.

Mr. Jekielek: So what about the actual Russian disinformation that DNI Ratcliffe has revealed recently that’s happening?

Sen. Johnson: Well again, the Russians have always done this, they always will do it. Our greatest line of defense, our first line of defense is exposure. Awareness of it, being [inaudible, 00:18:28] in consumers. We spent billions on campaigns, the damage being done to our democracy because of the … Again, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I’m not saying I can condone it, but I’ll call it the Russian disinformation canard.

It really began with Hillary Clinton’s, with the DNC server hacking. So, rather than have the American population take a look at the anti-Catholic emails flying back and forth between high level Democrats …

By the way, that server was never in possession of any US law enforcement. It was analyzed, the forensic analysis was done by CrowdStrike. I believe an employee of CrowdStrike testified that they never saw evidence of exfiltration of data. So, as much as everybody says that we know Russia hacked in, I personally, and I’m not saying they didn’t do it, but I personally have never seen evidence that Russia actually hacked into it.

But, that has always been the narrative. That narrative overwhelmed the information. It’s the wizard of Oz approach. Okay? It’s like, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Look at all the smoke coming out of the wizard up here.” They have used the Russian disinformation narrative time and time again, successfully.

So people didn’t pay attention to what was actually in those emails. They were hacked and made public by the DNC servers. All the attention was on Russian interference.

Then of course, when President Trump won legitimately, they wanted to delegitimize the election. So once again, Russian interference in our election. Trump didn’t really win, Russia intervened and he colluded with Russia. And that’s why he is President. They wanted to delegitimize the election.

What they did to Chuck Grassley and I, they lied. They created a lie. They created a false intelligence product saying that we were accepting Russian disinformation. Just today, a ranking member criticized our report as Russian disinformation.

There’s no Russian disinformation report, it’s all based on US sources. They’re still saying it’s Russian disinformation because they don’t like the truth. They’re afraid of the truth, the truth is ugly, the truth hurts them politically, so they throw up Russian disinformation. Now they’re doing the exact same thing with this server.

You know that again, all I can say is our due diligence is just doing nothing but confirming that these emails are authentic. I can’t say that’s really Hunter Biden’s computer. It seems like an odd story, which was one of the reasons we were doing due diligence and we didn’t accept it because we’re not sure whether this is a product that this shop owner really had legal possession of. So we weren’t going to take basically stolen property. [We] did find out the FBI has that.

But again, what did Joe Biden do in the debate last night? He didn’t refute, he didn’t deny that the emails were not genuine and say, “No. Fifty intelligence, people from the intelligence agencies say that this is Russian disinformation.”

First of all, they didn’t, that’s a lie just in and of itself. They did say that this has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation, but they have no proof. And again, the proof, every indication right now is that this is not Russian disinformation. Ratcliffe has no information that’s Russian disinformation.

And yet, they’re throwing up that Russian disinformation canard to be just like the wizard with all the smoke and fire coming out of his nostrils, when what we ought to be looking at is the man behind the curtain.

The curtains are pulled back. We see the man, we see the emails, we see the truth. But the mainstream media won’t reveal the truth. Instead, what they want to do is they want to talk about Russian disinformation. So, yes. No, I think this is a serious problem and it just further shows the grotesque bias in the media, which is in and of itself a threat to our democracy.

Mr. Jekielek: Senator Johnson, one more quick question before we finish up. This was a story that we’ve covered quite a bit. Ivan Pentchoukov, our reporter talking about these wiped Mueller probe phones. I understand that you reached out to the Inspector General to look into this question. I’m wondering if there’s any updates on that.

Sen. Johnson: Well, from staff, I was supposed to get an update on that yesterday and I don’t believe we’ve got anything. So again, we’ve been kind of busy with Tony Bobulinski so maybe something came in. But no, I have not heard anything that also I think is pretty troubling.

Again, it just shows you the arrogance of the special council. I’ve got to point this out, because it’s not being covered either. Devon Archer is now a reconvicted criminal, right? I mean, he was convicted by a jury of his peers, but then a judge either overturned or vacated, [whatever] the legal term is, I’m not a lawyer. So the judge said, “Now we’re going to let you go scot-free.” Well, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals obviously found that pretty outrageous and reinstated the conviction.

It’s interesting to note that that judge happens to be married to a member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, who also happened to be the lead prosecutor against Paul Manafort. Pretty interesting relationship. First of all, pretty odd thing that she would’ve vacated or overturned a jury conviction of somebody, right?

But this is a question I asked the press to ask the Vice President with all this in mind now. I’m putting together time there right now. It’s just amazing how much was happening in 2014. There’s a series of emails from Devon Archer.

Well, this is actually part of the Bevan Cooney emails back in October 13 where they’re talking about, well, let’s run this transaction through Rosemont Seneca rather than Rosemont Capital because Chris Hines just is not as flexible as Hunter. And it’s probably pretty good to put a little honey in Hunter’s pocket.

So that’s why they use Rosemont Seneca for this fraud on the Sioux tribe, on Oglala Tribe in South Dakota. They used that, but this was all being set up in 2013, perpetrating that in 2014—which is the same year as the Revolution of Dignity, 60 days later—within a span of about 28 days, they set up this glaring conflict of interest.

But here’s the question for Vice President Biden. Now that we know that Devon Archer is a criminal, why were you meeting with Devon Archer on April 16th—five days before he traveled to Ukraine, gave a speech before the Rada, and was named the face of the Obama administration’s policy toward Ukraine? Why were you meeting with Devon Archer?

You’re claiming you know nothing about Hunter Biden’s overseas business connection, yet you’re meeting with Devon Archer in the White House? What was that meeting about? What did you talk about? Who else was in that meeting?

I mean, is it anywhere close to plausible that Vice President Biden didn’t know anything about Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings when he’s talking to Devon Archer six, by the way, six days before Devon Archer joined the board? And a couple of weeks before Hunter Biden joined the board.

Again, this is so obvious. And yet, the mainstream media is just looking the other way. It’s kind of like you’ve got a kid who says, “I didn’t steal that cookie.” Well, what’s that in your hand? I mean, this is just so obvious and yet the mainstream media is complicit, once again, in covering it up. It’s really outrageous.

Mr. Jekielek: It’s such a pleasure to have you on.

Sen. Johnson: Okay. Take care.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.