Europeans latest to provide evidence undercutting Joe Biden story about firing Ukrainian prosecutor

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

Europeans latest to provide evidence undercutting Joe Biden story about firing Ukrainian prosecutor

Biden's story has been that he threatened to withhold loan to Ukraine only because prosecutor Shokin was not meeting anti-corruption standards. His own State Dep't said otherwise, now evidence shows that the EU concluded Shokin had met ‘benchmarks’ on anti-corruption reforms.

By John Solomon

September 7, 2023 8:48pm

Updated: September 8, 2023 12:20am

 

A week after then-Vice President Joe Biden began pressuring Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor in late 2015 by withholding U.S. loan guarantees, the European Union reached internal consensus in a memo saying that Prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s office and the country at large had met its goals for fighting corruption, organized crime and human trafficking.

The newly revealed memo directly undercuts the narrative crafted by Democrats during Donald Trump’s first impeachment and sustained during the 2020 presidential election, namely, that Biden fired Shokin over U.S. and European concerns that he wasn’t fighting corruption aggressively enough.

At the time, Shokin was investigating the activities of energy company Burisma Holdings. And Hunter Biden -- who had no experience in the energy industry -- was being paid at least $83,333  a month by Burisma.

“Based on these commitments, the anti-corruption benchmark is deemed to have been achieved,” the European Commission, a key governing body of the EU Parliament, declared in a December 18, 2015 report that gave a generally rosy assessment of Ukraine’s pace of reforms and specifically the efforts of Shokin’s Prosecutor General Office.

The report, obtained by The New York Post and Just the News, noted that Shokin, just a few months on the job, had already established a special national anti-corruption prosecutor’s office to aid the newly formed FBI-approved investigative unit called the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. 

“On 30 November, the General Prosecutor appointed the head of the specialized anti-corruption prosecution,” the EU report noted, urging Shokin to continue to refine the appointment and safeguard it to ensure the office remained independent and free from influence.

The report approvingly noted numerous other commitments Shokin and other Ukrainian leaders made to fast-track and build on the progress they were making reforming anti-corruption tools and policies.

Calling Shokin's work "an important step forward" the report continued to say that “The progress noted in the fifth report on anti-corruption policies, particularly the legislative and institutional progress, has continued." The EU added that "civil society continued to play a key role in moving the anti-corruption agenda forward,” the report said, in one of the most glowing the Commission had given Ukraine since 2015.

Most notably, the report made no mention of firing Shokin or withholding any Western aid.

You can read the full report here.

File

EU-SixthReportUkraineVisaLiberalization.pdf

The report’s tone matches the recomendations of internal State Department documents made public by Just the News late last month that show a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department experts had recommended in October 2015 that Ukraine had indeed made adequate progress in fighting corruption and deserved to receive $1 billion in new U.S. loan guarantees when Biden traveled to Ukraine in December 2015. Biden disregarded that information.

File

UkraineTaskForceLoanGuaranteeMemo.pdf

The State memos also included a personal letter in which top U.S. official Victoria Nuland personally told Shokin her boss Secretary of State John Kerry and the department was “impressed” with Shokin’s progress.

File

NulandtoShokinJune2015.pdf

The emergence of the U.S. and European documents in 2023 directly conflict with the story Biden gave starting in 2019 about why he took the extraordinary action of withholding the U.S. loan guarantee until then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fired Shokin, who at the time was escalating a corruption probe against the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings that was paying his son Hunter millions of dollars.

Biden and his defenders claimed he was simply carrying out the U.S. policy recommendations of career officials and that European officials were in agreement that Shokin was corrupt and needed to be dismissed.

“It was a policy that was coordinated tightly with the Europeans, with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank.  But not only did we not see progress, we saw the PGO go backwards in this period,” Nuland, now Biden’s Undersecretary of State, told the Senate Homeland Security and Accountability Committee in 2020 testimony.

File

2020-09-03-Nuland Interview with Exhibits.pdf

Added former top U.S. envoy Kurt Volker: “When Vice President Biden made those representations to President Poroshenko he was representing U.S. policy at the time. And it was a general assumption I was not doing U.S. policy at the time but a general assumption among the European Union, France, Germany, American diplomats, U.K., that Shokin was not doing his job as a prosecutor general. He was not pursuing corruption cases.”

Joe Biden himself picked up the excuse. "I did nothing wrong,” the future president said during 2019 CNN-New York Times debate. “I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. And that’s what we should be focusing on.”

But the State Department records show Biden was urged to do the opposite: give the loan guarantee and Shokin and his team more time. The EU documents also show there wasn’t alarm in Europe, at least not in December 2015 when Biden told Poroshenko for the first time he wanted Shokin fired.

In fact, the EU issued a public statement on Dec. 18, 2015 with even more encouraging words than the report, praising Ukrainian officials who had made “enormous progress.”

“I congratulate the Ukrainian leadership on the progress made towards completing the reform process which will bring important benefits to the citizens of Ukraine in the future. The hard work towards achieving this significant goal has paid off. Now it is important to keep upholding all the standards,” EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos declared at the time.

File

Commission_Progress_Report__Ukraine_meets_criteria_for_visa_liberalisation.pdf

Sen. Ron Johnson, (R-Wis.), who chaired the 2020 Homeland Security probe of the Bidens told Just the News on Thursday night the body of evidence from State and the EU leaves him convinced that Joe Biden changed U.S. policy and forced the firing of Shokin because it would benefit his son Hunter, who was being pressured by Burisma to deal with Shokin.

"The European Commission was satisfied with this. The administration was satisfied with this, I believe Ambassador Pyatt was satisfied with this. But Hunter Biden wasn't," Johnson said. "You start seeing emails where he's getting pressure. ... They start scrambling, I mean, he's got to start, you know, making good on the millions of dollars he's getting paid by Burisma, to protect them. And that's exactly what ended up happening. Joe Biden then on a dime, changed US policy to the surprise of everyone."

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga.), a member of the House Oversight Committee currently probing the Biden family businesses, agreed.

"It's shocking, absolutely shocking," Greene told the "Just the News, No Noise" television on Thursday night. "It seems like every single day, more and more comes out. Now we have this information that the European Union completely approved of Viktor Shokin's job and the job he was doing fighting corruption and his investigation into Burisma. But yet it was Joe Biden as Vice President of the United States. He was the one that didn't approve of Victor Shokin. And we all know why." 

The European Commission report was the sixth in a series of reports the EU did starting in 2011 to monitor a key goal for the continent: to get Ukraine to liberalize its visa policies. The goal was not only to improve travel to Ukraine as a member of the EU but also to measure the larger fight against corruption and organized crime inside the former Soviet republic with a long history of grift and violence.

The December 2015 report concluded that Ukraine had not only met the benchmarks for anticorruption reform but also for document security, border control, human trafficking, organized crime and money laundering. Another goal met had a direct correlation to Shokin’s office. “The law enforcement cooperation benchmark is deemed to have been achieved,” it said.

The EU wasn’t the only important voice cheering on Ukraine progress with rosy assessments. The George Soros-funded and internationally influential Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also weighed in during August 2015 with assessments similar to those of EU body and the State Department. It even singled out Shokin’s office for being among the most active on reforms.

“Ukraine has adopted a package of anticorruption laws and established a set of institutions to fight corruption,” the endowment’s Ukraine Reform Monitor report dated Aug. 19, 2015 stated. “The general prosecutor’s office has been the agency most active in this agenda. Judicial processes have been improved to introduce greater transparency and opportunities for public oversight of corruption cases. There have been no high-profile convictions yet.

“A new law on the prosecutor’s office was approved in autumn 2014. It was amended in July 2015 to make prosecutors more active in anticorruption activities. Local prosecutors’ offices are being reformed. All local-level prosecutors and their deputies are being dismissed, and they will be replaced by some 700 new regional prosecutors, who will be appointed by the general prosecutor’s office in Kyiv,” it added.

Joe Biden’s role in pressuring then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in December 2015 to fire Shokin has been a searing controversy since April 2019, when the lead author on this story, as a columnist for The Hill, unearthed a 2018 videotape of the former vice president bragging about his role to a foreign policy think tank.

At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption, the company was paying Hunter Biden and Archer, $83,333 a month as board members.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

The disclosure prompted then-President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate.

Democrats howled and eventually impeached Trump in late 2019. The Senate acquitted the former president. Today, the original column that prompted the controversy is preserved in the official records of Congress.

Evidence would show during impeachment and afterward that Biden’s conversation with Poroshenko occurred during a trip to Kyiv in December 2015. Under withering pressure from U.S. and Western officials, the Ukrainian president eventually buckled and persuaded Shokin to resign a few months later in March 2016. Poroshenko would tell Biden there was no evidence Shokin had done anything wrong but he forced the resignation anyway to appease the president.

“Despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko told Biden in an audio tape call from March 2016 that was eventually released by a Ukrainian lawmaker in 2020.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/eu-memo-directly-undercuts-joe-bidens-narrative-about#article

[TexasTiger 13,130]

Republicans were for it before they we’re against it.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/03/politics/gop-senators-echoed-biden-on-ukraine-reforms-kfile/index.html

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/elections/presidential/2019/10/03/2016-letter-from-portman-brown/2622071007/

EU Hailed it.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190

IMF demanded it:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/ukraine-imf-demand-poroshenko-corruption/27545849.html
 

Complaints preceded Biden’s action:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/us-ambassador-upbraids-ukraine-over-corruption-efforts/27271294.html

https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/kyiv-post-plus/shokin-resists-change-jeopardizes-visa-free-travel-to-eu-and-12-billion-of-aid-400948.html

https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/reform-watch/transparency-international-says-shokin-to-blame-for-failed-anti-corruption-efforts-401218.html

https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/protesters-drive-to-poroshenkos-mansion-to-demand-dismissal-of-shokin-401106.html
 

Bush’s former Ambassador to Ukraine before Biden’s actions:

https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/reform-watch/herbst-keeping-shokin-as-ukraines-prosecutor-general-is-an-absolute-scandal-400586.html
 

Trump appointee refutes his claim  against Biden:

https://www.businessinsider.com/kurt-volker-testimony-shatters-premise-of-trump-attacks-on-bidens-2019-11?amp

 

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

New memos undercut Biden-Ukraine narrative Democrats sold during 2019 impeachment scandal

Newly disclosed State Department memos conflict with the narrative Democrats crafted since 2019 impeachment.

By John Solomon and Steven Richards

August 21, 2023 8:27pm

Updated: August 21, 2023 10:56pm

 

Just weeks before then-Vice President Joe Biden took the opposite action in late 2015, a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department officials declared that Ukraine had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, according to government memos that conflict with the narrative Democrats have sustained since the 2019 impeachment scandal.

“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” reads an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.

File

UkraineTaskForceLoanGuaranteeMemo.pdf

The recommendation is one of several U.S. government memos gathered by Just the News over the last 36 months from Freedom of Information Act litigation, congressional inquiries and government agency sources that directly conflict with the long-held narrative that Biden was conducting official U.S. policy when he threatened to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to force Ukraine to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the country’s equivalent of the American attorney general.

At the time the threat was made in December 2015, Shokin’s office was conducting an increasingly aggressive corruption investigation into Burisma Holdings, an energy firm the State Department deemed to have been engaged in bribery and that employed Hunter Biden and paid him millions while his father was vice president.

 

New details on the impact of that probe have emerged in recent days.

Shokin's pursuit was rattling Burisma, and the firm was putting pressure on Hunter Biden to deal with it, according to recent testimony and interviews with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner and fellow Burisma board member.

The memos obtained by Just the News show:

• Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office's work.
• U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled.
• A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma.

During Trump's first impeachment in late 2019, State officials testified that Hunter Biden's acceptance of a job at Burisma at a time when his father was vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest but did not materially impact U.S. policy in Ukraine.

But in a private, classified email shared with Just the News, one of the top U.S. officials in the Kyiv embassy told then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at the end of the Obama administration that Hunter Biden had, in fact, impacted the U.S. anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.

"The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules," embassy official George Kent wrote to Yovanovitch in the Nov. 22, 2016, email marked "confidential."

File

KentBurismaEmailNov222016.pdf

 

Joe Biden’s role in pressuring then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in December 2015 to fire Shokin has been a searing controversy since April 2019, when the lead author on this story, as a columnist for The Hill, unearthed a 2018 videotape of the former vice president bragging about his role to a foreign policy think tank.

At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption, the company was paying Hunter Biden and Archer, $83,333 a month as board members.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

The disclosure prompted then-President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate.

Democrats howled and eventually impeached Trump in late 2019. The Senate acquitted the former president. Today, the original column that prompted the controversy is preserved in the official records of Congress.

Evidence would show during impeachment and afterward that Biden’s conversation with Poroshenko occurred during a trip to Kyiv in December 2015. Under withering pressure from U.S. and Western officials, the Ukrainian president eventually buckled and persuaded Shokin to resign a few months later in March 2016. Poroshenko would tell Biden there was no evidence Shokin had done anything wrong but he forced the resignation anyway to appease the president.

“Despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko told Biden in an audio tape call from March 2016 that was eventually released by a Ukrainian lawmaker in 2020.

The narrative from Biden’s defenders and government officials who testified at Trump’s first impeachment was that Biden’s action in withholding the U.S. loan guarantees had nothing to do with his son’s role at Burisma and that officials across the West and inside the U.S. government were clamoring to fire Shokin because he was deemed corrupt.

Kent, for instance, answered "he did" when he was asked during his impeachment testimony whether Biden acted consistent with U.S. policy when he used the loan guarantee as leverage to force Shokin's firing.

"I did nothing wrong,” Biden said during 2019 CNN-New York Times debate. “I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. And that’s what we should be focusing on.”

Multiple lawyers who worked on Trump's impeachment defense as well as some of the GOP House impeachment members told Just the News they did not recall ever seeing the documents unearthed by Just the News and said they would have made a significant difference to the impeachment case.

"This new evidence being uncovered and reported by Just The News is incredibly significant," said former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin. "It directly undercuts multiple false narratives that were being pushed by Congressional Democrats, some of their key impeachment witnesses, and Democrat allies in the media."

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer who helped lead Trump's legal team during the impeachment, said he did not believe the defense had access to such memos.

"The fact of the matter is none of these documents were handed over to us," he said. "Our legal team never received documents from the House impeachment. So of course, they're not obligated to in the sense of like in a courtroom. But when you have exculpatory documents, you would think that under just a good faith standards of the House of Representatives would have said, 'You know, here's what we've got.'"

Sekulow continued: "But of course, they weren't going to do that. Because as soon as they did that, everyone knew their narrative was false."

Some, but not all, of the memos were turned over in late 2020 to the Senate Homeland Security Committee during its probe of the Biden family finances, but they arrived too late to impact most of the interview the panel did or to make it into the panel's final report, Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's office said.

In 2020, current Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, then State’s top expert on Ukraine, gave Johnson’s investigators a more specific timetable on when her department determined Shokin had to go, saying the concerns dated to summer of 2015 and involved the failure of Shokin's office to prosecute former members of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

“The initial expectation, when we began talking about the third loan guarantee, which I believe was in the summer of 2015, was that Prosecutor General Shokin make more progress than we had seen to clean up corruption inside the Prosecutor General's Office itself – I'll now refer to that as the PGO – and that he make more progress in mounting big corruption cases, including against Yanukovych cronies, that he make more progress in investigating the hundred dead on the Maidan by snipers during 2013-2014,” she told Senate investigators in the deposition.

“So the first press was to see him make the Prosecutor General's Office, the PGO, clean and effective, so that's what we started pressing in August, September, October.

"You see that pressed in the speech that Ambassador Pyatt gives in Odessa. You see it in my testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October of 2015. ... It was a policy that was coordinated tightly with the Europeans, with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. But not only did we not see progress, we saw the PGO go backward in this period,” she also said.

Another element of the Democrat-fed, media-driven narrative was that Shokin wasn’t really investigating Burisma and there was no threat to the company.

But key elements of that narrative have now been challenged since Archer told Congress that Burisma hired Hunter Biden in 2014 to gain access to a family “brand,” including his father, that would scare away prosecutors trying to investigate the company for corruption.

“People would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer testified, describing the value Hunter brought to the company.

In a separate interview with TV host Tucker Carlson, Archer said that at the time Biden forced Shokin’s firing because he was posing a major threat to Burisma by going after the assets of the owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

“He was a threat," Archer said. "He ended up seizing assets of Mykola – a house, some cars, a couple properties. And Mykola actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets.”

Archer told Carlson that while pressure was being applied to Hunter Biden, the Burisma board was being told that Shokin was being dealt with and could stay in the job. But Archer added that he now doubts the story being told to the board.

The GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee said Archer’s testimony and other evidence it has gathered shows that by late 2015 Burisma was pressuring Hunter Biden to do something about Shokin, who had stepped up his probe of the energy company after then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in September 2015 in Odessa, Ukraine, urging more action against the firm.

"In December 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, an executive of Burisma, placed constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin," the committee stated in a memo in late July.

Government memos obtained by Just the News also directly conflict with the narrative, showing the State Department was actually sending a different message to Shokin, the Ukrainian government and to Joe Biden before a sudden pivot in late November 2015.

For instance, Nuland sent a letter to Shokin in June 2015 on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry congratulating Shokin and suggesting they were “impressed” about the job he was doing on corruption reforms. The letter was so important it was hand-delivered by Pyatt, according to the memos Just the News gathered.

 

“Secretary Kerry asked me to reply on his behalf to your letter of May 13, 2015, discussing Ukraine 's efforts to address corruption, including through implementation of the new anti-corruption strategy and reform of the Prosecutor General's Office,” Nuland wrote in the June 11, 2015, memo obtained through a FOIA lawsuit.

“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” Nuland continued. “The challenges you face are difficult, but not insurmountable. You have an historic opportunity to address the injustices of the past by vigorously investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and recovering assets stolen from the Ukrainian people. The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement, and the judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair, and transparent manner.”

File

NulandtoShokinJune2015.pdf

Those upbeat sentiments remained strong heading into fall 2015 inside the IPC task force charged with monitoring Shokin and determining whether Joe Biden should deliver new U.S. aid to Ukraine at the end of the year.

In its September 2015 meeting, the IPC affirmed that Shokin’s reform effort – including the creation of a new independent inspector general watchdog to police prosecutors’ behavior – was advancing enough to warrant the new loan guarantee

“All, thank you for a productive meeting yesterday. Please find a SOC below. It was agreed: The IPC concluded that (1) Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee and (2) Ukraine has an economic need for the guarantee and it is in our strategic interest to provide One,” Christina Segal-Knowles, the Obama White House director of International Economic Affairs, wrote to top officials from the NSC, DOJ, Treasury and State who advised the task force.

“As such, the IPC recommends moving forward with a third loan guarantee for Ukraine in the near‐term, noting State/F’s preference to issue the guarantee as late as possible to allow more clarity on the budget context and Embassy Kyiv and Treasury’s assessment that Ukraine needs the guarantee by end‐2015,” she also said.

File

UkraineTaskForceLoanGuaranteeMemo.pdf

The task force identified some deliverables to be ironed out in the weeks before the loan guarantee, including strengthening procurement and other policies inside Shokin’s office.

“State (including via consultation with State/INL) and DOJ will explore options to further strengthen the PGO CP and submit a revised proposal (State and DOJ by October 6),” Segal-Knowles wrote.

In addition to urging the billion dollar loan guarantee be approved, the task force memo made no suggestion to fire Shokin or list any failures to pursue corruption.

By early November 2015, the task force had crafted a draft agreement for the loan guarantee. In a document titled “Third U.S. Loan Guarantee: Proposed Conditions Precedent," officials laid out what Shokin’s office had agreed to do and made made no demand or even suggestion that the prosecutor be fired.

File

Nov2015LoanGuaranteeConditionsIPC.pdf

“Ukraine shall provide to USAID a copy of the comprehensive regulation, adopted by the Prosecutor General, which ensures the independent operations of the Office of Inspector General (IG) of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO),” the memo explained. “The regulation shall clearly define the PGO IG’s jurisdiction, powers, and authority, to enable it to perform its functions in a manner that is effective and credible, and that increases the accountability of the PGO to the public. The regulation shall be endorsed by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

A month later, Joe Biden appeared to be synced with the task force recommendations.

In a call to Poroshenko on Nov. 5, 2015, Obama’s vice president delivered the message that Ukraine was about to get the massive new loan guarantee, while cheering on more reforms in Shokin’s office and the country’s elections, according to a State Department memo summarizing the phone conversation.

“Vice President Joe Biden spoke today with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about implementation of the Minsk agreements, economic reforms, and anti-corruption initiatives,” the department’s “readout” of the call recounted. “The Vice President congratulated President Poroshenko on the conduct of Ukraine's local elections, which represent another milestone in the country's democratic development.

“Regarding economic reforms, the Vice President reiterated the U.S. willingness to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine contingent on continued Ukrainian progress to investigate and prosecute corruption and ensure that Ukraine's tax reform is consistent with its IMF program,” the memo stated.

File

BidenPorschenkoReadout11-5-15.pdf

In the weeks that ensued, State and Justice officials proceeded with their plan laid out in the October memo, even inviting the senior leadership of Shokin’s office to come to Washington in January 2016 for further collaboration.

When those prosecutors arrived in Washington, according to the State Department memos, word leaked out that Biden had in December 2015 changed the U.S. message. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv reported the leak in the Ukrainian press, prompting a new thread among the IPC task force members that once again affirmed that they were “super impressed” with Shokin’s team.

“According to Dzerkalo Tyzhnya news website, ‘the U.S. State Department has made it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that it links the provision of a one billion dollar loan guarantee to Ukraine to the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin,” the Kyiv embassy wrote members of the IPC task force.

“Buckle in,” Pyatt wrote in a cryptic response to the leak on Jan. 21, 2016.

Eric Ciarmella, a CIA official assigned to the Obama White House for Ukraine issues who would later emerge as the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Trump’s impeachment, seemed surprised by the leak.

“Yikes. I don’t recall this coming up in our meeting with them on Tuesday, although we did discuss the fact that the PGO IG condition has not yet been met,” Ciarmella wrote the IPC task force members. “I’ve been meaning to write to you about our meeting – we were super impressed with the group, and we had a two-hour discussion of their priorities and the obstacles they face.”

File

CiarmellaJan2016EMailShokin.pdf

A few days earlier, the Obama White House circulated the latest conditions for the loan guarantee, again signaling the task force was prepared to provide the loan guarantee, though there were still some undelivered promises inside Shokin's office.

“Here’s nearly the latest CP document. We’ve made some very minor tweaks since this version, which I will dig up and send to you tomorrow but wanted to get something to you tonight,” Segal-Knowles wrote State Department official Rachel Goldbrenner on Jan. 15.

File

January2016ConditionsEmail.pdf

The attached document was identical to the conditions memo crafted in November for Biden’s call with Poroshenko. Remarkably, it made no demand for Shokin’s removal from office.

In fact, none of the documents provided to Just the News or to Sen. Johnson’s exhaustive investigation in 2020 show any recommendation by the IPC to withhold the billion dollar loan guarantee or to demand Shokin’s firing. If they exist, they have not been provided to date.

Now, the story of how Joe Biden pivoted in late November 2015 to withhold the loan guarantee and forced Shokin's firing is captured in two sets of emails that chronicle a tumultuous six weeks for the vice president’s office and for Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma.

They’ll be divulged in tomorrow’s second installment, including the Joe Biden talking points that provided the first documented mention of seeking Shokin's dismissal. Those talking points, however, were not even shared with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/hdfeds-urged-biden-give-ukraine-loan-guarantee-he#article

 

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

Ukraine prosecutor Shokin seized Bursima owner Zlochevsky's assets in February 2016.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/10691

US Ambassador Pyatt accused Shokin of obstructing investigating Zlochevsky.

It was the previous prosecutor Yarema that unfroze Zlochevsky's assets by the UK in December 2014.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Auburnfan91

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

“During the Committee’s transcribed interview with Devon Archer—a longtime Biden family associate—Archer explained that by late 2015, Vadym Pozharsky, Burisma’s corporate secretary, was increasingly pushing Hunter Biden to deliver help from the U.S. government regarding pressure Zlochevsky was facing from the Office of the Prosecutor General and abroad. Archer testified that on December 4, 2015, Hunter Biden ‘called D.C.’ in a private meeting with Zlochevsky and Pozharsky in Dubai following Pozharsky’s request.

https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-presses-state-department-for-information-on-then-vice-president-joe-bidens-sudden-shift-on-ukraine-policy/

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

Pozharsky emailed Hunter Biden in November 2015 asking for deliverables to close down any case/pursuits against Zlochevsky.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

On December 4, 2015  Hunter Biden called "D.C." in a private meeting with Zlochevsky and Pozharsky in Dubai.

Just 5 days later on December 9, 2015 VP Biden went to Ukraine and called for the removal of Shokin

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/09/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-ukrainian-rada

 

There was never a demand made by the IPC in Ukraine's $1 billion loan agreement to remove Shokin in October or November. It wasn't until VP Biden visited Ukraine in December 2015 that the $1 billion loan agreement suddenly changed and removing Shokin was demanded.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

42 minutes ago, Auburnfan91 said:

On December 4, 2015  Hunter Biden called "D.C." in a private meeting with Zlochevsky and Pozharsky in Dubai.

Just 5 days later on December 9, 2015 VP Biden went to Ukraine and called for the removal of Shokin

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/09/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-ukrainian-rada

 

There was never a demand made by the IPC in Ukraine's $1 billion loan agreement to remove Shokin in October or November. It wasn't until VP Biden visited Ukraine in December 2015 that the $1 billion loan agreement suddenly changed and removing Shokin was demanded.

Pyatt complained about him in September of 2015:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/us-ambassador-upbraids-ukraine-over-corruption-efforts/27271294.html

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

34 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Pyatt complained about him in September of 2015:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/us-ambassador-upbraids-ukraine-over-corruption-efforts/27271294.html

Pyatt complaining about him in September 2015 didn't make the IPC task force include removing Shokin as a condition in the $1 billion loan agreement they drafted in November 2015.

It wasn't until Biden's visit in December 2015 that removing Shokin became a condition with the agreement.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

30 minutes ago, Auburnfan91 said:

Pyatt complaining about him in September 2015 didn't make the IPC task force include removing Shokin as a condition in the $1 billion loan agreement they drafted in November 2015.

It wasn't until Biden's visit in December 2015 that removing Shokin became a condition with the agreement.

Biden was tasked with finally bringing the hammer when there was no movement. Pyatt was very blunt and it had nothing to do with Biden or Burisma:

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine has accused the country’s Prosecutor-General’s Office of obstructing efforts to combat corruption and shielding its own employees from graft investigations.

Western governments supporting Ukraine’s reform agenda have repeatedly stressed the need for Kyiv to tackle endemic corruption. But the comments by Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were unusually blunt for a U.S. official speaking before the public.

Pyatt told a group of business executives and investors in Odesa that the Prosecutor-General’s Office is an “obstacle” to anticorruption reforms by failing to “successfully fight internal corruption."

“Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor-General’s Office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform,” Pyatt said in the September 24 speech. 

“They intimidate and obstruct the efforts of those working honestly on reform initiatives within that same office,” Pyatt said. “The United States stands behind those who challenge these bad actors."

There was no immediate reaction to Pyatt's comments, either by the Prosecutor-General’s Office or by the government of President Petro Poroshenko.

He called for an investigation of officials within the Prosecutor-General’s Office who he says stymied efforts to pursue tens of millions of dollars in “illicit assets” that former Ukrainian official Mykola Zlochevskiy held in Britain.

Zlochevskiy served as environment and natural resources minister under former President Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally whose ouster amid mass street protests in 2014 triggered events that led to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and a bloody war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Zlochevskiy, who earned a reputation for lavishness, was placed on Ukraine's most-wanted list in December for a host of alleged economic crimes.

Pyatt said that “those responsible for subverting the case” against Zlochevskiy “should -- at a minimum -- be summarily terminated.”

Since his appointment by Poroshenko in February, Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin has faced accusations of stalling high-profile corruption cases against allies of Yanukovych.

Shokin signed a decree on September 22 establishing a special anticorruption department within the Prosecutor-General’s Office. 

Pyatt urged the audience to “speak up in support of these brave investigators and prosecutors” leading this department, who “have delivered important arrests and have sent the signal that those who abuse their official positions as prosecutors will be investigated and prosecuted.”

“Give them the resources and support to successfully prosecute these and future cases,” he said.

The Black Sea port of Odesa, where Pyatt spoke, is a notorious hub for crime and drug trafficking and has come under additional pressure with the arrival of Ukrainians displaced by war to the east.

It is the main city in the Odesa region, which is led by Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia who was named governor by Poroshenko in May.

Earlier this month, Saakashvili accused officials in Kyiv of sabotaging his attempts to enact the kind of sweeping reforms, including a harsh crackdown on corruption, that he is widely credited with conducting during his presidency in Georgia.

Pyatt said Odesa’s “vision for reform is transformative.” 

“If successful, Odesa can be a model of transparent, accountable government and business,” he said.

Ukraine is near the bottom of global rankings of corrupt nations, according to Transparency International. The German-based advocacy group last December called Ukraine “still the most corrupt country in Europe.”

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

As Hunter Biden struggled with Burisma fallout, his father moved to fire prosecutor probing firm

Memos show parallel tracks between father, son on a corruption issue that would eventually ensnare Ukraine, the U.S. and two American presidents.

By John Solomon and Steven Richards

August 22, 2023 8:45pm

Updated: August 23, 2023 6:55am

 

While most Americans were preparing for the November 2015 Thanksgiving holiday, top policy advisers to Joe Biden were scurrying to put the finishing touches on the then-vice president’s upcoming trip to Kyiv where he planned to deliver a momentous shock to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Just a month earlier, a task force of top State, Treasury and Justice Department officials had decided that Ukraine and its new top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had made enough progress on anti-corruption reforms for the country to receive a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee.

They drafted a term sheet for the delivery of the new aid to then-President Poroshenko during Biden’s December 2015 trip to Ukraine, and were making plans to invite Shokin’s top staff to Washington in January for a high-level meeting. Shokin himself even got a letter from the State Department declaring it was “impressed” with his reform efforts.

But the vice president and his top advisers on Ukraine, including then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, had a very different plan that began unfolding that Thanksgiving holiday week. In fact, it was an about-face when it came to Shokin’s plight, according to two “goals and objectives” memos drafted four days before Thanksgiving on Nov. 22, 2015 and obtained by Just the News.

“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 memos stated.

File

VPBidenTPUkraineMeetingShokin

A U.S. intervention into the domestic affairs of an ally like Ukraine was rare and intrusive, and the meddling has had years of fallout.  And it turns out, according to documents obtained years later by Just the News, that Joe Biden and his son Hunter were both intensely focused on the same prosecutor at that same moment.

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, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

Former business partner Devon Archer recently testified to Congress that Burisma was pressuring Hunter Biden in fall 2015 to deal with the fallout of Shokin’s probe and to secure help from the Biden family's contacts in Washington.

The documents reviewed by Just the News show Hunter Biden and Burisma got word in late September 2015 that one and eventually two major U.S. news organizations – The Wall Street Journal and New York Times – were reporting possible stories on the Shokin probe and how Hunter’s association might be hurting his father’s efforts to root out corruption in Ukraine. The stories threatened to land just as his father was going to Kyiv to meet Poroshenko.

Hunter Biden and his associates, the memos show, would hire Blue Star Strategies to deal with the fallout. Eventually Joe Biden’s own vice president office would devise a statement to be released just before Biden traveled to Ukraine for that December 2015 trip. And Hunter Biden also reached out to a top energy adviser to his father, who would end up on Joe Biden's trip.

The following story chronicles the efforts of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden to deal with Viktor Shokin on parallel tracks that would eventually thrust both the United States and Ukraine into five years of scandal that have cast a pall over two consecutive American presidents.

Many of the documents it is based on were not public during Donald Trump's first impeachment and conflict with the Democrat narratives that have dominated since. Here's the story:

Joe Biden's team makes an abrupt change to U.S. policy

The decision by Joe Biden and his closest policymakers to try to force Shokin’s firing evolved over several days before he left for the December 2015 trip to Kyiv. For weeks beforehand, U.S. officials at State, Treasury and Justice recommended Ukraine get its $1 billion in loan guarantees because Shokin's office had made adequate progress in anticorruption reforms.

The two Nov. 22, 2015 memos – while demanding Shokin’s ouster – still urged the vice president to offer the $1 billion loan guarantee during his trip.

“Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk will be looking for tangible signs of U.S. support to assist the Ukrainian people during these difficult times, facilitate further reforms, and help with efforts to defend against Russian aggression,” the memos stated. “You will sign our third billion-dollar loan guarantee and publicly announce FY 15 U.S. assistance for the first time: $189,035,756 -- which does not include security assistance (previously announced separately).”

By the time Biden got to Kyiv on Dec. 8-9, 2015, he had further altered the plan, deciding to threaten withholding the loan guarantees until Poroshenko fired Shokin, something he would brag about doing in a 2018 video tape.

The abrupt shift came as a surprise to Poroshenko and, it turns out, the Nov. 22, 2015 memos were even a bit of a surprise to Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, according to testimony Pyatt later gave Senate investigators.

“I can’t help you on that,” Pyatt told investigators for the Senate Homeland Security Committee when he was shown copies of the Nov. 22, 2015 memos. “If you look on the clearance page you will see that I actually didn't see these documents until you guys sent them to me.”

File

Pyatt Interview

Pyatt told Sen. Ron Johnson's investigators in 2020 that he couldn’t remember many of the exact details of how Joe Biden came to force Shokin’s firing but he recollected a shift had occurred at some point.

“What I can tell you is that there was a gradual evolution in the thinking of the interagency community about these issues,” he testified.

Pyatt would later concede the decision to withhold the $1 billion loan guarantee and try to force Shokin’s firing may likely have been a matter of a political principal like Biden deciding to change policy.

"This is an imperfect art,” Pyatt would tell the Senate investigators. “And what it ultimately comes down to is the principal's decision, and, you know, in this case how the Vice President based--and there would typically, before a big trip like this, a day or two before he got on the airplane there would have been a deputies' or a principals' level discussion.“I would imagine, based on my conversations with him that the Vice President also would have a discussion with the President, and saying, "Hey, boss, this is what I'm doing," and, you know, take it from there,” he added.

There is nothing illegal about a president or vice president switching policies from the recommendations of career staff. And to date congtessional investigators have not uncovered any evidence that Hunter Biden asked his father to take such action.

But in this case, 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.

But as reported Monday by Just the News, the 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. Even Biden’s own talking points recommended he offer the loan guarantee.

He eventually did the opposite.

Adding to the heartburn, Biden’s decision was done with the full knowledge that his son Hunter Biden was serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings whose owner Mykola Zlochevsky was being investigated by Shokin’s office.

State Department officials testified during Trump’s impeachment that Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board while his father oversaw Ukrainian anticorruption policy for the United States posed at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest. Joe Biden's team crafted answers to deflect media attention from that issue, the memos show,.

One official, George Kent, went further in a classified email published Monday by Just the News, declaring that Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma directly “undercut’ U.S. anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

File

KentBurismaEmailNov222016.pdf

Hunter Biden’s efforts to thwart Shokin parallel father’s trip to Ukraine

Ironically, Hunter Biden’s efforts to deal with Shokin were triggered in part by the same man his father’s administration had sent to be the chief diplomat to Ukraine, the ambassador who was cut out of the November 2015 memos from the vice president’s office.

In mid-September 2015, Ambassador Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa criticizing Shokin’s office for failing to pursue alleged Burisma corruption in the period before Shokin took over the prosecutor general’s office.

The speech appeared to have two impacts. First, Shokin’s office launched an effort to re-seize the assets of Burisma Holdings founder and Hunter Biden’s boss, Mykola Zlochevsky. Secondly, American news media began inquiring about Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma and Zlochevsky in the midst of such a corruption inquiry.

The first inquiry came from Wall Street Journal journalist Paul Somme on Sept. 30, 2015. Coincidentally that was the exact same day that the Interagency Policy Committee comprised of top federal officials met and determined that Shokin’s office had made adequate reforms to justify Joe Biden giving a new $1 billion loan guarantee.

Somme’s initial inquiry forwarded a set of standard questions. But on Oct. 16, 2015, the Journal reporter escalated his inquiry by specifically asking whether Hunter Biden believed that working with Burisma and its CEO Mykola Zlochevsky undermined his father’s Ukraine anti-corruption message.

Hunter Biden and his associates were reluctant to answer this question directly, according to an email contained on a laptop seized by the FBI in 2019 and also obtained by Just the News.

Re WSJ Followup

Somme also asked about Ambassador Pyatt’s comments linking Zlochevsky with corruption in Ukraine.

The concern of new unflattering media attention alarmed Burisma, which Archer testified had brought in Hunter Biden to ward off such inquiries.

Soon, Hunter Biden brought in a new player to help cope with the publicity crisis, connecting Burisma with Democrat-connected firm Blue Star Strategies to help change the U.S. government’s perception of Zlochevsky amidst ongoing issues with corruption.

In early November discussions about hiring Blue Star Strategies, top Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi wrote that the work should be conducted with the “ultimate purpose to close down for [sic] any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [Mykola Zlochevsky] in Ukraine.

Re Revised Burisma Proposal Contract and Invoice

In other words, Burisma’s goal for Hunter Biden’s handpicked consultant was to shut down Shokin’s investigations of the firm and improve the company’s image.

Around the same time, Hunter Biden reached out to one of his father's trusted advisers, Amos Hochstein, who would end up on the trip to Kyiv in December 2015. Emails show Hochstein had met with Burisma back in 2014 shortly after Hunter Biden joined the firm's board.

"I just wanted to send you a quick note to thank you for taking time out of your day to meet with Vadym Pozharskiy of Burisma," a lawyer for Burisma wrote Hochstein in summer 2014.

File

BurismaHochstein2014Email.pdf

By October of 2015 Hochstein, then-U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs at the State Department, raised the issue of Hunter Biden’s work on Burisma’s board directly with Joe Biden. 

Hochstein later testified that he “wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message—to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma.” 

File

2020-09-17-Hochstein Interview with Exhibits.pdf

According to Senate investigators and an email obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hunter Biden reached out to him to set up a meeting for coffee on November 4, 2015 after Hochstein met with the Vice President. According to Hochstein’s testimony to the investigators, Vice President Biden told his son that he had met with Hochstein and discussed his work for Burisma. 

File

Friday scheduling.pdf

“Amos Hochstein called,” Hunter Biden’s secretary emailed him days after his meeting with Hochstein. “Please call back today if possible,” she wrote.

File

Amos Hochstein called.pdf

On December 6, Hochstein was photographed briefing the Vice President on his way to Ukraine on. Victoria Nuland testified that Hochstein discussed the matter with the Vice President on this trip. When Senate investigators asked about this briefing, Hochstein declined to elaborate on the specifics of his conversations with the Vice President but said “In my conversation with Hunter Biden, I did not recommend that he leave the board.” 

Archer told Congress that Burisma Holdings continued pressuring Hunter Biden in December 2015 to deal with Shokin and that it resulted in an episode at the company’s board meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015 where Hunter Biden, Zlochevsky, and Pozharskyi “called D.C.” for help.

About the same time, the New York Times also submitted questions to Hunter Biden and the White House about Burisma, and it became apparent to both Hunter Biden’s and Joe Biden’s teams that negative publicity would greet the vice president when he arrived in Ukraine in a few days.

File

NYT Questions

This time Joe Biden’s top policy and press advisers took the lead in crafting the response after an alert came in from the State Department.

“New York Times has complicated question involving VPs son and S's stepson's friend, both of whom are allegedly on the board of an Ukrainian energy company owned by a former Min of Ecology who was being pursued by UK for money laundering,” State Department official Bridget Brink wrote top advisers to Biden.

DoSBurismaNYTBidenEmailsDec2015

“The question also references Pyatts Sept speech which allegedly criticizes the GOU PGO for not supporting the UK prosecution - funds in dispute allegedly ultimately unfrozen and transferred abroad. We're working PG below with VPs office,” she added.

Joe Biden’s team drafted answers designed to put a distance between his son’s client and his upcoming trip.

"Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer. The Vice President does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company,” the draft answer read. “Regarding anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, generally speaking, the Vice President has consistently said that Ukraine must make every effort to investigate and prosecute corruption in accordance with the rule of law."

A few days later, the story was published and Biden landed in Kyiv, where he delivered the stern message to Poroshenko that Ukraine would lose the $1 billion loan guarantee if Shokin wasn’t fired.

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.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/wedas-hunter-biden-struggled-burisma-fallout-his-father-moved-fire

Edited September 13, 2023 by Auburnfan91

[I_M4_AU 8,054]

To our left leaning friends on the board; I just read a quote by one of you that sums up your attitude on Hunter Biden and his connection with his father that is appropriate here.

And I quote: “it’s totally your right to choose to live in a bubble and deny every unpleasant thing you want to pretend isn’t happening, but it’s not really reasonable to expect others to play along.” end quote

[Mikey 16,777]

11 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

Republicans were for it before they we’re against it.

Whether Republicans were for or against it has nothing at all to do with the facts of the case.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

6 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Whether Republicans were for or against it has nothing at all to do with the facts of the case.

Yes it does. It shows Biden merely was tasked with what virtually all parties thought needed doing.

[Mikey 16,777]

8 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Yes it does. It shows Biden merely was tasked with what virtually all parties thought needed doing.

Oh, please. All parties wanted Hunter Biden's crooked activities to remain undiscovered? That's a real knee slapper.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

10 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Oh, please. All parties wanted Hunter Biden's crooked activities to remain undiscovered? That's a real knee slapper.

You can’t read and comprehend. Too blinded by hatred. I can’t help you with that. You need Jesus.

[AU9377 5,136]

11 hours ago, Auburnfan91 said:

New memos undercut Biden-Ukraine narrative Democrats sold during 2019 impeachment scandal

Newly disclosed State Department memos conflict with the narrative Democrats crafted since 2019 impeachment.

By John Solomon and Steven Richards

August 21, 2023 8:27pm

Updated: August 21, 2023 10:56pm

 

Just weeks before then-Vice President Joe Biden took the opposite action in late 2015, a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department officials declared that Ukraine had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, according to government memos that conflict with the narrative Democrats have sustained since the 2019 impeachment scandal.

“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” reads an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.

File

UkraineTaskForceLoanGuaranteeMemo.pdf

The recommendation is one of several U.S. government memos gathered by Just the News over the last 36 months from Freedom of Information Act litigation, congressional inquiries and government agency sources that directly conflict with the long-held narrative that Biden was conducting official U.S. policy when he threatened to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to force Ukraine to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the country’s equivalent of the American attorney general.

At the time the threat was made in December 2015, Shokin’s office was conducting an increasingly aggressive corruption investigation into Burisma Holdings, an energy firm the State Department deemed to have been engaged in bribery and that employed Hunter Biden and paid him millions while his father was vice president.

 

New details on the impact of that probe have emerged in recent days.

Shokin's pursuit was rattling Burisma, and the firm was putting pressure on Hunter Biden to deal with it, according to recent testimony and interviews with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner and fellow Burisma board member.

The memos obtained by Just the News show:

• Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office's work.
• U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled.
• A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma.

During Trump's first impeachment in late 2019, State officials testified that Hunter Biden's acceptance of a job at Burisma at a time when his father was vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest but did not materially impact U.S. policy in Ukraine.

But in a private, classified email shared with Just the News, one of the top U.S. officials in the Kyiv embassy told then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at the end of the Obama administration that Hunter Biden had, in fact, impacted the U.S. anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.

"The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules," embassy official George Kent wrote to Yovanovitch in the Nov. 22, 2016, email marked "confidential."

File

KentBurismaEmailNov222016.pdf

 

Joe Biden’s role in pressuring then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in December 2015 to fire Shokin has been a searing controversy since April 2019, when the lead author on this story, as a columnist for The Hill, unearthed a 2018 videotape of the former vice president bragging about his role to a foreign policy think tank.

At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption, the company was paying Hunter Biden and Archer, $83,333 a month as board members.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

The disclosure prompted then-President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate.

Democrats howled and eventually impeached Trump in late 2019. The Senate acquitted the former president. Today, the original column that prompted the controversy is preserved in the official records of Congress.

Evidence would show during impeachment and afterward that Biden’s conversation with Poroshenko occurred during a trip to Kyiv in December 2015. Under withering pressure from U.S. and Western officials, the Ukrainian president eventually buckled and persuaded Shokin to resign a few months later in March 2016. Poroshenko would tell Biden there was no evidence Shokin had done anything wrong but he forced the resignation anyway to appease the president.

“Despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko told Biden in an audio tape call from March 2016 that was eventually released by a Ukrainian lawmaker in 2020.

The narrative from Biden’s defenders and government officials who testified at Trump’s first impeachment was that Biden’s action in withholding the U.S. loan guarantees had nothing to do with his son’s role at Burisma and that officials across the West and inside the U.S. government were clamoring to fire Shokin because he was deemed corrupt.

Kent, for instance, answered "he did" when he was asked during his impeachment testimony whether Biden acted consistent with U.S. policy when he used the loan guarantee as leverage to force Shokin's firing.

"I did nothing wrong,” Biden said during 2019 CNN-New York Times debate. “I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. And that’s what we should be focusing on.”

Multiple lawyers who worked on Trump's impeachment defense as well as some of the GOP House impeachment members told Just the News they did not recall ever seeing the documents unearthed by Just the News and said they would have made a significant difference to the impeachment case.

"This new evidence being uncovered and reported by Just The News is incredibly significant," said former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin. "It directly undercuts multiple false narratives that were being pushed by Congressional Democrats, some of their key impeachment witnesses, and Democrat allies in the media."

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer who helped lead Trump's legal team during the impeachment, said he did not believe the defense had access to such memos.

"The fact of the matter is none of these documents were handed over to us," he said. "Our legal team never received documents from the House impeachment. So of course, they're not obligated to in the sense of like in a courtroom. But when you have exculpatory documents, you would think that under just a good faith standards of the House of Representatives would have said, 'You know, here's what we've got.'"

Sekulow continued: "But of course, they weren't going to do that. Because as soon as they did that, everyone knew their narrative was false."

Some, but not all, of the memos were turned over in late 2020 to the Senate Homeland Security Committee during its probe of the Biden family finances, but they arrived too late to impact most of the interview the panel did or to make it into the panel's final report, Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's office said.

In 2020, current Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, then State’s top expert on Ukraine, gave Johnson’s investigators a more specific timetable on when her department determined Shokin had to go, saying the concerns dated to summer of 2015 and involved the failure of Shokin's office to prosecute former members of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

“The initial expectation, when we began talking about the third loan guarantee, which I believe was in the summer of 2015, was that Prosecutor General Shokin make more progress than we had seen to clean up corruption inside the Prosecutor General's Office itself – I'll now refer to that as the PGO – and that he make more progress in mounting big corruption cases, including against Yanukovych cronies, that he make more progress in investigating the hundred dead on the Maidan by snipers during 2013-2014,” she told Senate investigators in the deposition.

“So the first press was to see him make the Prosecutor General's Office, the PGO, clean and effective, so that's what we started pressing in August, September, October.

"You see that pressed in the speech that Ambassador Pyatt gives in Odessa. You see it in my testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October of 2015. ... It was a policy that was coordinated tightly with the Europeans, with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. But not only did we not see progress, we saw the PGO go backward in this period,” she also said.

Another element of the Democrat-fed, media-driven narrative was that Shokin wasn’t really investigating Burisma and there was no threat to the company.

But key elements of that narrative have now been challenged since Archer told Congress that Burisma hired Hunter Biden in 2014 to gain access to a family “brand,” including his father, that would scare away prosecutors trying to investigate the company for corruption.

“People would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer testified, describing the value Hunter brought to the company.

In a separate interview with TV host Tucker Carlson, Archer said that at the time Biden forced Shokin’s firing because he was posing a major threat to Burisma by going after the assets of the owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

“He was a threat," Archer said. "He ended up seizing assets of Mykola – a house, some cars, a couple properties. And Mykola actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets.”

Archer told Carlson that while pressure was being applied to Hunter Biden, the Burisma board was being told that Shokin was being dealt with and could stay in the job. But Archer added that he now doubts the story being told to the board.

The GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee said Archer’s testimony and other evidence it has gathered shows that by late 2015 Burisma was pressuring Hunter Biden to do something about Shokin, who had stepped up his probe of the energy company after then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in September 2015 in Odessa, Ukraine, urging more action against the firm.

"In December 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, an executive of Burisma, placed constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin," the committee stated in a memo in late July.

Government memos obtained by Just the News also directly conflict with the narrative, showing the State Department was actually sending a different message to Shokin, the Ukrainian government and to Joe Biden before a sudden pivot in late November 2015.

For instance, Nuland sent a letter to Shokin in June 2015 on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry congratulating Shokin and suggesting they were “impressed” about the job he was doing on corruption reforms. The letter was so important it was hand-delivered by Pyatt, according to the memos Just the News gathered.

 

“Secretary Kerry asked me to reply on his behalf to your letter of May 13, 2015, discussing Ukraine 's efforts to address corruption, including through implementation of the new anti-corruption strategy and reform of the Prosecutor General's Office,” Nuland wrote in the June 11, 2015, memo obtained through a FOIA lawsuit.

“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” Nuland continued. “The challenges you face are difficult, but not insurmountable. You have an historic opportunity to address the injustices of the past by vigorously investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and recovering assets stolen from the Ukrainian people. The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement, and the judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair, and transparent manner.”

File

NulandtoShokinJune2015.pdf

Those upbeat sentiments remained strong heading into fall 2015 inside the IPC task force charged with monitoring Shokin and determining whether Joe Biden should deliver new U.S. aid to Ukraine at the end of the year.

In its September 2015 meeting, the IPC affirmed that Shokin’s reform effort – including the creation of a new independent inspector general watchdog to police prosecutors’ behavior – was advancing enough to warrant the new loan guarantee

“All, thank you for a productive meeting yesterday. Please find a SOC below. It was agreed: The IPC concluded that (1) Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee and (2) Ukraine has an economic need for the guarantee and it is in our strategic interest to provide One,” Christina Segal-Knowles, the Obama White House director of International Economic Affairs, wrote to top officials from the NSC, DOJ, Treasury and State who advised the task force.

“As such, the IPC recommends moving forward with a third loan guarantee for Ukraine in the near‐term, noting State/F’s preference to issue the guarantee as late as possible to allow more clarity on the budget context and Embassy Kyiv and Treasury’s assessment that Ukraine needs the guarantee by end‐2015,” she also said.

File

UkraineTaskForceLoanGuaranteeMemo.pdf

The task force identified some deliverables to be ironed out in the weeks before the loan guarantee, including strengthening procurement and other policies inside Shokin’s office.

“State (including via consultation with State/INL) and DOJ will explore options to further strengthen the PGO CP and submit a revised proposal (State and DOJ by October 6),” Segal-Knowles wrote.

In addition to urging the billion dollar loan guarantee be approved, the task force memo made no suggestion to fire Shokin or list any failures to pursue corruption.

By early November 2015, the task force had crafted a draft agreement for the loan guarantee. In a document titled “Third U.S. Loan Guarantee: Proposed Conditions Precedent," officials laid out what Shokin’s office had agreed to do and made made no demand or even suggestion that the prosecutor be fired.

File

Nov2015LoanGuaranteeConditionsIPC.pdf

“Ukraine shall provide to USAID a copy of the comprehensive regulation, adopted by the Prosecutor General, which ensures the independent operations of the Office of Inspector General (IG) of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO),” the memo explained. “The regulation shall clearly define the PGO IG’s jurisdiction, powers, and authority, to enable it to perform its functions in a manner that is effective and credible, and that increases the accountability of the PGO to the public. The regulation shall be endorsed by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

A month later, Joe Biden appeared to be synced with the task force recommendations.

In a call to Poroshenko on Nov. 5, 2015, Obama’s vice president delivered the message that Ukraine was about to get the massive new loan guarantee, while cheering on more reforms in Shokin’s office and the country’s elections, according to a State Department memo summarizing the phone conversation.

“Vice President Joe Biden spoke today with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about implementation of the Minsk agreements, economic reforms, and anti-corruption initiatives,” the department’s “readout” of the call recounted. “The Vice President congratulated President Poroshenko on the conduct of Ukraine's local elections, which represent another milestone in the country's democratic development.

“Regarding economic reforms, the Vice President reiterated the U.S. willingness to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine contingent on continued Ukrainian progress to investigate and prosecute corruption and ensure that Ukraine's tax reform is consistent with its IMF program,” the memo stated.

File

BidenPorschenkoReadout11-5-15.pdf

In the weeks that ensued, State and Justice officials proceeded with their plan laid out in the October memo, even inviting the senior leadership of Shokin’s office to come to Washington in January 2016 for further collaboration.

When those prosecutors arrived in Washington, according to the State Department memos, word leaked out that Biden had in December 2015 changed the U.S. message. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv reported the leak in the Ukrainian press, prompting a new thread among the IPC task force members that once again affirmed that they were “super impressed” with Shokin’s team.

“According to Dzerkalo Tyzhnya news website, ‘the U.S. State Department has made it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that it links the provision of a one billion dollar loan guarantee to Ukraine to the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin,” the Kyiv embassy wrote members of the IPC task force.

“Buckle in,” Pyatt wrote in a cryptic response to the leak on Jan. 21, 2016.

Eric Ciarmella, a CIA official assigned to the Obama White House for Ukraine issues who would later emerge as the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Trump’s impeachment, seemed surprised by the leak.

“Yikes. I don’t recall this coming up in our meeting with them on Tuesday, although we did discuss the fact that the PGO IG condition has not yet been met,” Ciarmella wrote the IPC task force members. “I’ve been meaning to write to you about our meeting – we were super impressed with the group, and we had a two-hour discussion of their priorities and the obstacles they face.”

File

CiarmellaJan2016EMailShokin.pdf

A few days earlier, the Obama White House circulated the latest conditions for the loan guarantee, again signaling the task force was prepared to provide the loan guarantee, though there were still some undelivered promises inside Shokin's office.

“Here’s nearly the latest CP document. We’ve made some very minor tweaks since this version, which I will dig up and send to you tomorrow but wanted to get something to you tonight,” Segal-Knowles wrote State Department official Rachel Goldbrenner on Jan. 15.

File

January2016ConditionsEmail.pdf

The attached document was identical to the conditions memo crafted in November for Biden’s call with Poroshenko. Remarkably, it made no demand for Shokin’s removal from office.

In fact, none of the documents provided to Just the News or to Sen. Johnson’s exhaustive investigation in 2020 show any recommendation by the IPC to withhold the billion dollar loan guarantee or to demand Shokin’s firing. If they exist, they have not been provided to date.

Now, the story of how Joe Biden pivoted in late November 2015 to withhold the loan guarantee and forced Shokin's firing is captured in two sets of emails that chronicle a tumultuous six weeks for the vice president’s office and for Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma.

They’ll be divulged in tomorrow’s second installment, including the Joe Biden talking points that provided the first documented mention of seeking Shokin's dismissal. Those talking points, however, were not even shared with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/hdfeds-urged-biden-give-ukraine-loan-guarantee-he#article

 

The synopsis of all of that is this....

During Trump's first impeachment in late 2019, State officials testified that Hunter Biden's acceptance of a job at Burisma at a time when his father was vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest but did not materially impact U.S. policy in Ukraine.

The optics were still not helpful and the State Dept would have preferred that Hunter Biden not been involved with Bursima.  Him doing so was, while not criminal, generated bad optics for an campaign of anti-corruption.

[AU9377 5,136]

34 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Whether Republicans were for or against it has nothing at all to do with the facts of the case.

The bi partisan Senate committee on Ukraine issued a statement independent of the Executive branch of government demanding that Shokin be removed.  Period.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

[homersapien 11,511]

I find it hard to believe people are still misrepresenting the facts regarding Shokin in an attempt to impugn Biden. 

It's pathetically ignorant.

 

[AU9377 5,136]

24 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I find it hard to believe people are still misrepresenting the facts regarding Shokin in an attempt to impugn Biden. 

It's pathetically ignorant.

 

It shows how much of nothing they have in the form of evidence of wrongdoing.  That is literally all they have.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

Hunter Biden's laptop wasn't known about in 2019 and the government documents in the articles weren't known about in 2019.

All the info that's been gathered paints an entirely different picture that what was known in 2019.

Pyatt complained about Zlochevsky being corrupt in September 2015 yet Hunter Biden had a private meeting with him on December 4, 2015. It wasn't known in 2019 that Hunter had a meeting with Zlochevsky in Dubai and that he 'called D.C.' during the meeting.

[TexasTiger 13,130]

16 minutes ago, Auburnfan91 said:

Hunter Biden's laptop wasn't known about in 2019 and the government documents in the articles weren't known about in 2019.

All the info that's been gathered paints an entirely different picture that what was known in 2019.

Pyatt complained about Zlochevsky being corrupt in September 2015 yet Hunter Biden had a private meeting with him on December 4, 2015. It wasn't known in 2019 that Hunter had a meeting with Zlochevsky in Dubai and that he 'called D.C.' during the meeting.

None of that changes the fact, proven over and over, that the idea Shokin needed to go was widely held and didn’t begin with Biden.

[homersapien 11,511]

1 hour ago, AU9377 said:

It shows how much of nothing they have in the form of evidence of wrongdoing.  That is literally all they have.

What's hard to understand is they seem to believe it.  Apparently, they know nothing about the actual history.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

9 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

None of that changes the fact, proven over and over, that the idea Shokin needed to go was widely held and didn’t begin with Biden.

Pyatt claimed in September 2015 that Shokin wasn't investigating Zlochevsky yet Burisma’s corporate secretary, Vadym Pozharsky, emailed Hunter Biden on November 2, 2015 asking for deliverables to close down any cases/pursuits against Zlochevsky. If Shokin wasn't going after Burisma or Zlochevsky there was no reason for Pozharsky to ask Hunter Biden to shut down anything.