State Department officials and other U.S. government officials supported the anti-corruption efforts of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin before then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine into getting Shokin fired, newly released documents show.
U.S. officials believed Shokin was working to combat corruption in late 2015 and early 2016, despite assertions from Joe Biden that he pressured Ukraine into removing Shokin because of concerns about corruption, according to internal memos obtained by Just the News.
New 🚨 from @jsolomonReports Feds urged Biden to give aid to Ukraine before he forced Burismsa prosecutor’s firing https://t.co/IrbEP6WkB1
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) August 22, 2023
“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” concluded an October 2015 memo from the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), an Obama administration task force designed to evaluate Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts. (RELATED: These Are The Biggest Lies Joe Biden Told About Hunter’s Foreign Influence Peddling)
“Ukraine has an economic need for the guarantee and it is in our strategic interest to provide one. As such, the IPC recommends moving forward with a third loan guarantee for Ukraine in the near‐term,” the memo adds.
In June 2015, then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland wrote a letter to Shokin praising his work on anti-corruption and pledging to provide American resources to support Shokin’s effort. Nuland now serves as acting deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration.
“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government. 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,” Nuland wrote.
“The United States fully supports your government’s efforts to fight corruption. We have dedicated personnel and resources from the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and Department of Justice (DoJ) to work with your office on its organizational changes and to build its capacity through training and modernization,” Nuland added.
Joe Biden later threatened to use the $1 billion loan guarantee to have Shokin removed as Shokin was investigating Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden was being paid more than $80,000 per month to sit on its board. (RELATED: Here’s The Fake Name Joe Biden Used To Schedule A Meeting With Ukraine’s Former President)
With all the buzz about Joe Biden’s fake name “Robert L. Peters” its worth remembering that he used the alias to schedule a meeting with Ukraine’s president soon after then-VP Biden got Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired, emails from Hunter’s laptop show @DailyCaller
— James Lynch (@jameslynch32) August 17, 2023
“You remember last year I was authorized to say we’d do the second tranche of a billion dollars,” then-VP Joe Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2016. “And [then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko] didn’t fire his chief prosecutor. And because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said: I’m not signing it. Until you fire him, we’re not signing, man. Get it straight. We’re not doing it.”
Shokin’s office announced a raid on Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky’s property on Feb. 4, 2016, as part of his investigation into Burisma, Ukrainian outlet Interfax reported in April 2016. Joe Biden called Poroshenko on Feb. 11, 2016, White House archives show. Poroshenko’s office confirmed Shokin’s letter of resignation Feb. 19, 2016, and a month later Shokin was removed by the Ukrainian parliament, the Kyiv Post reported.
“Viktor Shokin has managed to implement those reforms that the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) has been opposing for decades: the prosecutors have been stripped of general supervision, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the State Investigation Bureau, and others have been established,” Poroshenko said about Shokin on Feb. 16, 2016, according to Ukrainian media reports. “This is on the one hand. On the other hand, the PGO has unfortunately failed to gain society’s trust. And that is why the resignation of the Prosecutor General is on the agenda.”
Shokin was considered a “threat” to Burisma’s business, former Burisma board member and Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in August. Archer also recalled Shokin’s raid on Zlochevsky’s property, and told Carlson it was “categorically false” to claim Joe Biden was not aware of his son’s foreign business dealings.
Devon Archer to Tucker Carlson: “Shokin was considered a threat to the business…. I think anyone in government is always a threat and always trying to shake down these businesses that were highly successful…And so at the end of the day, Shokin was taking a look” @DailyCaller https://t.co/LNhZnzMwAO
— James Lynch (@jameslynch32) August 4, 2023
Archer’s interview with Carlson took place after Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee in late July about how the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma and kept the business afloat.
Archer recalled how Hunter Biden “called D.C.” on Burisma’s behalf in December 2015, without confirming whether Joe Biden was on the receiving end of the phone call. A few days later, then-VP Biden’s office devised talking points for State Department officials who anticipated press inquiries regarding Burisma and Zlochevsky ahead of Joe Biden’s December 2015 trip to Ukraine. Then-VP Biden delivered a speech to Ukraine’s parliament Dec. 9, 2015, in which Biden urged the country to pursue anti-corruption measures.
“[T]he 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,” U.S. official George Kent wrote to then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in a November 2016 email.
Joe Biden repeatedly insisted during the 2020 presidential campaign that he was carrying out U.S. policy by pressuring Ukraine into removing Shokin. (RELATED: Trump Was Right Again And Again About The Biden Family’s Foreign Business Dealings)
“I did nothing wrong,” Biden said at a 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.”
“With regard to Ukraine, we had this whole question about whether or not, because he was on the board, I later learned, of Burisma, a company, that somehow I had done something wrong,” Joe Biden said at an October 2020 debate against then-President Trump, according to an official transcript. “Yet every single solitary person, when he was going through his impeachment, testifying under oath who worked for him, said I did my job impeccably. I carried out US policy.”
Archer told the House Oversight Committee that Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business partners over 20 times and specifically recalled a spring 2014 dinner with Joe Biden and Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, who wired Hunter Biden and Archer $3.5 million, according to a 2020 Senate report. Archer also testified about a spring 2015 dinner attended by Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.
House Oversight has released bank records showing the Biden family and its associates made more than $20 million from Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese, Kazakh and Romanian business partners.
Joe Biden said Archer’s testimony was “not true” during a confrontation with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy on Aug. 9. The White House has said the president was “not in business” with his son.