'Taken with a grain of salt': GOP conspiracy theorist douses Republicans' Biden bribery claims

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has spent years promoting countless conspiracy theories on topics ranging from COVID-19 to climate change, apparently isn’t sold on House Republicans’ claim that when President Joe Biden was a vice president, he took a $5 million bribe and there are taxes to prove it.

The claims, apparently based on a single FBI document used to record unverified statements made by third-parties, have been gobbled up and spewed across far-right media and social media by some of the most extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives, and even a few GOP Senators.

How far out there is Sen. Johnson?

“All told, when it comes to spewing dangerous drivel, Mr. Johnson has displayed a commitment and creativity rarely seen outside of QAnon gatherings or Trump family dinners,” The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle wrote in an opinion piece last year.

So it’s stunning that Sen. Johnson is now apparently walking back the unsubstantiated claims exploding on the right that President Biden took a $5 million bribe when he was President Barack Obama’s Vice President.

The latest twist of “evidence,” according to Republicans, is that there are now “tapes” allegedly proving the Biden bribe conspiracy theory.

But, in a Tuesday interview with a local Wisconsin right-wing talk radio show host, Johnson – whose outrageously wild claims in the past have crowned him the “Senate’s leading conspiracy theorist” a “bagman for Qanon,” and “Putin’s favorite Senator” – said the allegations he and other Republicans have been spreading now must be taken with a grain of salt.

“We don’t even know” if the tapes “exist,” Johnson said. “It’s a claim, it’s an allegation. We don’t know whether they really exist or not.”

Another GOP Senator who has been spreading the bribery conspiracy theory is Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the president pro tempore emeritus of the United States Senate who began serving in public elected office in 1959.

Grassley has been a consistent partner with House Republican Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer on the Biden bribery conspiracy theory, despite having no official Senate function or role that would allow him to pursue an investigation.

Chairman Comer, who has admitted his purpose as that powerful committee’s chief is to attack Biden and help Trump get elected, has repeatedly suggested or implied the FBI document, officially called an FD-1023, is proof (it is not).

“The FBI’s 6/30/20 FD-1023 record stands on its own and contains information from a trusted confidential human source who had conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed Biden,” Comer’s Oversight Committee tweeted over the weekend.

Last month Comer’s Oversight Committee posted a nearly ten-minute video of a press conference with him making various wild allegations about Biden and the Biden family.

Newsweek on Tuesday notes that “The Washington Post reported last week that the allegations contained in the FD-1023 document being sought by Republican lawmakers was reviewed by the FBI under former Attorney General William Barr, only for the agency to conclude the allegations were found not to be supported by facts. The investigation was later dropped, a fact confirmed by several outlets.”

Stunningly, it’s not only Senator Johnson, but Chairman Comer himself on Tuesday, under pressure by a Newsmax host pressing him to either say the tapes are legitimate or say when he will be able to confirm their legitimacy, confessed on live TV: “We don’t know if they’re legit or not.”