Last week, the House Judiciary Committee called on a Trump-era former U.S. Attorney, Scott Brady, to testify on the ongoing criminal proceedings against Hunter Biden. House Republicans are using Scott Brady’s testimony so heavily to suggest bribery by President Biden and impropriety in the Hunter Biden investigation – despite nine other witnesses saying otherwise. Brady is a MAGA Republican Trump loyalist who is an election denier with no credibility.
Republicans Are Leaning On Scott Brady’s Testimony As Evidence – Even Though He Failed To Verify The Credibility of His Sources & Freely Admitted He Had No Reason To Doubt DOJ Investigators. For months, House Republicans have relied on long-debunked allegations in the form of an FBI tip outlined in a single From FD-1023. Brady spent eight months exhaustively assessing the allegations detailed in the Form FD-1023 only to close the case after finding insufficient evidence to warrant escalating the allegations to a preliminary or full investigation. During his testimony, Brady freely admitted that he had failed to assess the credibility of the tip: “The former US attorney, Scott Brady, also said in his House interview that even though he corroborated some material from the informant, he did not determine whether the underlying Biden bribery claims were true. And he acknowledged that his team never reviewed some key evidence that undercut the bribery claims.” Brady also failed to learn that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s team had already interviewed the oligarch at the center of the allegations: Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Despite not verifying the credibility of his sources or interviewing Zlochevsky, Brady declared that the FD-1023 was not sourced from Russian disinformation. Not only did Zlochevsky flatly deny the allegations reported in the Form FD-1023 during the interview, but Giuliani demanded the interview transcript be concealed, telling Parnas: “‘What is this shit? This is bullshit. Make sure nobody sees this. Bury this.’” Furthermore, Brady also debunked House Republicans’ long-running grievances about an ongoing criminal investigation against Hunter Biden. Brady said he has no reason to doubt that Mr. Weiss is “fairly and honestly prosecuting the case.”
Scott Brady Is A Trump Loyalist & Staunch Republican Who Said He Would “Never Serve A Democrat.” According to the New York Times, Brady “said he would never serve a Democrat,” and his colleagues saw him as “a deeply partisan leader” and “Trump loyalist” and “expressed concern that he was wielding the F.B.I. as a weapon to damage Mr. Biden’s candidacy.” Brady stepped down from his position at the DOJ just weeks after President Biden was inaugurated.
Scott Brady Attacked An Assistant U.S. Attorney In His Office For Objecting To The Trump Justice Department Indulging Trump’s Baseless Claims Of Election Fraud In 2020. After the 2020 election, Brady supported Trump’s MAGA claims of so-called election fraud and supported DOJ efforts to investigate. When a colleague of his objected to the Trump-era DOJ’s baseless investigation, Brady stepped in and publicly attacked his fellow U.S. attorney over his opposition to the probe: “The incident centers on a news conference Mr. Brady held at the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh on Nov. 18, 2020, to address environmental charges against the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. At the end of the press conference, a reporter asked Mr. Brady questions unrelated to the environmental case. The reporter first asked Mr. Brady if his office was investigating any election fraud. Mr. Brady said no comment. The reporter then asked if he could confirm if his office had signed off on the letter criticizing William Barr’s memo. In response, Mr. Brady said, ‘one of our two district election officers, who was married to the former chief of staff of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch [former attorneys general], did sign on to that, unbeknownst to anyone in leadership before he signed on to that; and did not talk about that with his fellow district election officer who’s also our ethics advisor.’ Mr. Olshan’s wife is Sharon Werner, who had worked for Mr. Holder and Ms. Lynch in the Obama administration. Mr. Olshan told the OIG that he was ‘shocked’ when he found out about Mr. Brady’s comment, saying he viewed the answer as ‘casting his decision to sign the letter as partisan.’ Mr. Olshan emailed Mr. Brady that evening, telling him that his comment was ‘inappropriate and retaliatory’ and constituted a ‘public, partisan attack against a colleague and his family member.’ Mr. Brady didn’t answer the email and later told OIG that he chose not to ‘engage’ Mr. Olshan.”
- “Unbecoming Of A U.S. Attorney”: Scott Brady’s Conduct Raised Concerns In The Department of Justice. In a December 2021 report released by the Justice Department’s inspector general on an investigation into alleged misconduct by Brady – conducted in response to him attacking an assistant U.S. Attorney over Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in 2020 – the inspector general cited Brady for “poor judgment” and concluded that his conduct was “unbecoming of a U.S. Attorney.”
- Scott Brady Himself Admitted His Conduct Was “Ill-Advised.” “The OIG, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, said in a report released Thursday that Mr. Brady engaged in conduct “unbecoming of a U.S. attorney” for personally attacking Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan, who had signed a letter objecting to then-Attorney General William Barr’s Nov. 9 memo to prosecutors to pursue allegations of voter fraud before the election results were certified. Mr. Brady, appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, initially made light of the situation, according to an internal report recounting the investigation. But he later admitted that his remarks were ‘ill-advised and that he should have taken a different approach to the reporter’s question.’” [The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/19/22]