Republicans in the House and Senate are focusing squarely on the FBI, demanding that the agency make public key documents said to contain whistleblower allegations that President Biden received a $5 million bribe from a “foreign interest” during his time as vice president. This comes as GOP lawmakers accuse the FBI of having, and withholding, more information in its possession than was previously known. 

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with law enforcement representatives on Tuesday, Senator Cruz repeatedly accused the FBI’s deputy director, Paul Abbate, of “stonewalling” a lawful congressional investigation because of his agency’s “unlimited hubris.”

“Last month, a whistleblower brought to light the existence in the FBI of a report, an FD-1023,” which is an FBI memo detailing allegations of criminality, “in which the informant alleges that President Biden and his family members engaged in a $5 million bribery scheme during his time as vice president,” Mr. Cruz said at the hearing. When Mr. Cruz asked Mr. Abbate if those allegations have any merit, he told the senator that he was “not going to comment on that.” 

When asked if he had an “obligation to be candid” about allegations of corruption on the part of the president, Mr. Abbate said that “this is an area that I’m not going to get into with you, senator.”

On Monday, the longest-serving member of the upper chamber, Senator Grassley, took to the Senate floor to claim that the FBI had in its possession more than a dozen recordings of phone calls that had allegedly taken place between a “foreign national” and Hunter Biden, as well as his father, during the Obama administration. 

“According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden,” Mr. Grassley said, as well as “two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden.”

Mr. Grassley added that “these recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot.” 

Mr. Cruz said Mr. Abbate was “stonewalling and covering up serious allegations of evidence of corruption from the president” after the FBI official refused to confirm or deny the existence of these recordings. 

Mr. Abbate said that his agency has “worked with the House Oversight Committee,” before Mr. Cruz interrupted to point out that “this is the Senate.” Mr. Abbate continued to avoid answering the senator’s questions for several minutes. 

Senator Hawley also chimed in on the issue of the FBI’s noncompliance with congressional oversight. When Mr. Hawley asked the deputy director why the FBI was not being more forthcoming regarding these allegations of corruption, Mr. Abbate claimed that questions about the document, the phone records, and their existence were a “matter of life and death … with regard to the source for the information.”

The House majority leader, Congressman Steve Scalise, also said he would work to get more documents and the phone recordings about the so-called Biden bribery scheme out to the public. 

In an interview with the Daily Mail on the sidelines of a practice for the congressional baseball game on Tuesday, Mr. Scalise said, “Senator Grassley has done a great job through his career at getting whistleblowers to step forward,” adding that the House GOP would “keep digging … to get the facts out.”

This all follows the recent disclosure of new emails from the younger Mr. Biden’s infamous laptop. One April 2014 email from Hunter Biden to his close friend and business partner, Devon Archer, was sent at a time when the younger Mr. Biden was trying to break into the Ukrainian energy sector in order to lobby on its behalf at Washington while his father served as vice president. 

The email included a detailed memo analyzing the political and economic landscape of Ukraine, which the younger Mr. Biden called “thoughts after doing some research.” That same month, the younger Mr. Biden joined the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, which would pay him $80,000 a month despite his having no experience in the energy sector. 

In a subsequent email sent to Mr. Archer just one day after his Ukraine memo, the first son refers to “my guys [sic] upcoming travels.” That was sent one week before the vice president traveled to Ukraine on a foreign trip. 

The e-mail’s existence was first reported by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.

The Washington Examiner has also reported that the whistleblower is alleging that the $5 million bribe was paid to Vice President Biden by a Ukrainian with ties to Burisma, the younger Mr. Biden’s employer, in hopes of the Ukrainian energy sector getting favorable treatment from Washington.