The Washington Times reported on Monday that a senior FBI employee suspected of obstructing an inquiry into Hunter Biden’s alleged wrongdoing had departed the organization. Republicans have charged Timothy Thibault, the agent, with concealing “confirmed and verifiable” material that could jeopardize the Biden family.
In command of the bureau’s Washington, DC field office as an associate special agent, Thibault abruptly left the organization last week. According to two former FBI agents who spoke to the Washington Times, Thibault was ejected from his position and led out of the office by two to three “headquarters-looking types.”
The Washington Times stated that “it was not apparent if Mr. Thibault resigned on his own accord or was driven out of the agency” in spite of the claims made by these former agents.
However, Thibault had already been on paid leave for at least a month when Republican legislators accused him of taking part in a shady plot to conceal negative information about President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in the lead-up to the 2020 race.
Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Thibault ordered an inquiry into “derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” closed in October 2020 in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray last month. Grassley claimed that Thibault closed the case without giving a good explanation and designated it in FBI systems “so that it could not be opened in the future,” citing anonymous whistleblowers.
Republicans criticized Thibault earlier this summer for posting disparaging comments on social media about former President Donald Trump while conducting an inquiry into Trump’s political rival’s son.
The New York Post ran articles based on the information found on the president’s son’s laptop during the same month that Hunter Biden was being investigated for possible tax crimes. The laptop contained documents that, after being independently validated, showed that Hunter Biden had engaged in drug use, dealings with prostitutes, and a number of international bribery schemes from which the Biden family stood to profit by tens of millions of dollars.
Another FBI agent, intelligence analyst Brian Auten, was charged in Grassley’s letter with misclassifying evidence about Hunter’s “criminal financial and related activities” as “disinformation.” Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said last week that the agency later used the same phrase to caution him against allowing the laptop story to circulate on his platform prior to the 2020 election.
In recent testimony before the Senate, Wray minimized Thibault’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop investigation, but he informed Republican Senator Joe Kennedy (Louisiana) that the letter’s contents were “very worrisome” before cutting his statement short. He did, however, offer his opinion on whether the claims made within were accurate or not.
Political prejudice has no place at the FBI, and efforts to restore the FBI’s reputation cannot end with his departure, according to Grassley, who spoke to the Washington Times. “We need accountability, so Congress must keep looking into this,”
