The video of Joe Biden, as Barack Obama’s vice president, stunningly relating how he used a billion dollars of American tax money to threaten Ukrainian officials and coerce them into firing a prosecutor looking into Burisma, which was paying his son Hunter $1 million a year, continues to stun.
In fact, on a trip to Ukraine, he told officials to can prosecutor Viktor Shokin, or lose out on the American aid. He gave them only a few hours to comply, and Shokin was fired.
Biden said, “I said we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said ‘you can’t do that, you have no authority, you’re not the president.’ I said call [President Obama], I told you you’re not getting a billion dollars.” He said he was leaving in six hours, and “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well son of a b—-, he got fired.”
Now a new investigative report by John Solomon at Just the News traces how just a few weeks before State, Treasury and Justice Department officials had Shokin was making good progress on anti-corruption reforms so the $1 billion loan guarantee could be made available. Shokin even got a letter to that effect.
And the report describes how, on the word of the Joe Biden, that changed.
Memos drafted in the Biden camp at that time abruptly turned America’s direction, stating, to Ukraine, “There is wide agreement that anti-corruption must be at the top of this list, and that reforms must include an overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s Office, including removal of Prosecutor General Shokin, who is widely regarded as an obstacle to fighting corruption, if not a source of the problem.”
The report reveals that as Joe Biden was focusing on getting rid of Shokin, so was Hunter.
“A few blocks away from the White House, Hunter Biden and his associates were trying to hire a crisis communications firm to deal with Shokin’s decision to revive a corruption investigation of the Burisma Holdings company where Hunter Biden served as a board member and received $1 million a year in compensation,” the report explained.
That was when, according to Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer in testimony to Congress, Burisma was pressuring Hunter Biden to secure help, in Washington, for the company.
The scheming happened just as questions were being raised about whether Hunter Biden’s presence on the Burisma board would damage American efforts to deal with corruption in Ukraine.
Hunter Biden and others soon hired Blue Star Strategies to address the complications that developed, and Joe Biden’s own office assembled a statement on the controversy.
The report said most of the documents that are evidence of the manipulations were not available when President Donald Trump was tried over his phone call with Ukrainian officials questioning the Bidens’ involvement there.
The report said Joe Biden’s decision to force Shokin’s firing came apparently on Biden’s own initiative, when he decided to issue a threat to Ukraine regarding the aide.
The turnabout surprised both Ukrainian and American officials.
Changing policies is not illegal, and so far there’s no evidence Hunter Biden lobbied for the firing, but Joe Biden “has maintained since the 2019 impeachment case against Trump that his leveraging of the $1 billion loan guarantee to force the firing of Shokin was simply a matter of carrying out U.S. policy crafted by career officials,” the report said.
Even though that’s not true, as career officials at State, Justice, and Treasury actually recommended Ukraine receive the $1 billion because Shokin’s office was making adequate progress in reforming the fight against endemic corruption in Ukraine.
The complications did, however, make it into the impeachment attempt. There, State officials confirmed Hunter Biden’s presence on the Burisma board was “at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest” with Joe Biden looking into corruption.
The publicity about the possible conflicts, and questions directed to Burisma, also stirred the pot.
“The concern of new unflattering media attention alarmed Burisma, which Archer testified had brought in Hunter Biden to ward off such inquiries,” the report said.
The documentation uncovered by Just the News even confirmed that Burisma continued to pressure Hunter Biden to take care of Shokin, and at one point, Hunter Biden and Ukrainian officials telephone Washington for help.
Just the News confirmed: “The memos from Joe Biden’s office and Hunter Biden’s laptop make two things clear. As Shokin’s efforts to investigate Burisma ramped up negative publicity, Hunter Biden was forced into action by the company paying him large sums of money in Ukraine as his father oversaw U.S.-Ukraine policy. And Joe Biden’s team began altering a plan for Ukraine that began in September 2015 with a recommendation of providing Ukraine $1 billion in loan guarantee and ended with that aid being withheld unless Shokin was fired.”
Separately, the FBI, under pressure from Congress, has released a document in which a confidential source describes how Burisma paid $5 million bribes to both Joe and Hunter Biden.
