FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate was questioned before the Senate Judiciary Committee on a variety of subjects on Tuesday including the extension of Section 702 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Biden bribery form.

We reported how Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) took him apart over the abuses of Section 702. But they also took him apart for the bias shown by the FBI when it came to going after former President Donald Trump versus pursuing Joe Biden for his own classified documents scandal or the alleged foreign influence peddling schemes involving his family.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Abbate over the Biden bribery form and accused the FBI of covering things up. But Abbate tried to avoid answering questions about it falling back on the excuse that he can’t comment on an investigation.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asked about the 17 recordings that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed in a bombshell on the floor of the Senate that were noted in the bribery form. 15 of the recordings were with the Burisma executive and Hunter Biden, 2 were with the Burisma executive and Joe Biden.

But Grassley also revealed that the FBI had redacted the information about the recordings involving the Bidens when they allowed the House Oversight Committee to see the form, although Grassley found out about the recordings anyway. The highly reliable confidential source said Burisma executive had a ledger and was keeping the recordings as an “insurance policy.”

But what Abbate revealed when being questioned by Blackburn should concern us all, because, in my opinion, it says everything about the bias.

The Deputy FBI Director just admitted to me that the bureau intentionally attempted to cover up the Biden-Burisma bribery scandal by hiding 17 audio recordings with Joe and Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/IFBoXRfOZM

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) June 13, 2023

Abbate admitted they redacted the information, effectively hiding it from the Committee. He claimed that the information about the recordings was “redacted to protect the source.” It just also conveniently protected the Bidens, so no one is buying that it’s all about the source.

But then he said, “I have no idea if there are voice recordings or not.”

Wait a second. Aren’t you the FBI? How long have you had this form and this information from a highly reliable confidential human source? Years? And you never tried to figure out if these recordings existed? Isn’t that supposed to be your job?

Wow.

He doesn’t seem to understand that he just admitted the incredible bias too. If he had investigated, he could have said ‘we looked into it and found out it didn’t pan out.” Or even, “We’re still looking into it.” Instead, he says, “I have no idea,” and acts peeved that people dared to even ask him about it. Yikes.

If the “I have no idea” was supposed to protect Joe, I think it did the opposite because it shows what a farce the FBI “investigation” truly is. Once again, that speaks to the two systems of justice that the Republican senators were hammering away about. If we can’t rectify that and vote out the people who are undermining our system, we don’t have a rule of law anymore that Americans can rely upon.

And that’s the core element of our system that separates us from being a banana republic. But Democrats seem intent on taking us to banana republic land.