FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate admitted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that the FBI redacted any mention of audio recordings of Joe and Hunter Biden in a document shown last week to Republican lawmakers in which an FBI informant alleged the Bidens were involved in a bribery scheme around 2015 and 2016.

Under grilling from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Abbate confirmed: “What I will tell you with respect to the document, the document was redacted to protect the source.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday revealed that the document, which was a transcript of an FBI interview with an informant, contained references to 17 alleged audio recordings — 15 with Hunter Biden and two with then-Vice President Joe Biden. However, Grassley said, when the document was made available to the House Oversight Committee last week under pressure from Republicans, the references to the audio recordings had been deleted.

Grassley pointed out that the document is an unclassified document and should not be redacted, let alone need to be viewed in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which the FBI made lawmakers do.

Abbate had at first tried to skirt the question, with Blackburn asking him several times to explain why the information was redacted.

After he finally responded, she told him.

I think it would be helpful when you came before us, if you were willing to answer the questions, it would help to remove the perception that the American people have — they see you do it everyday — and that is politicizing the FBI and using it against the American people who don’t happen to be named Biden, Clinton, or one of the elites.

Abbate also denied that the FBI was politicized, which Blackburn disagreed with.

“There are two very clear standards of justice in this country. We see it every single day. The American people see this every single day. They look at you and see a politicized entity that is weaponizing an agency of the federal government against the American people,” she told him.

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