US

House Oversight Demands Records Of Joe Biden’s Push To Remove Ukrainian Prosecutor Going After Burisma

(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

James Lynch Contributor
Font Size:

The House Oversight Committee is demanding records from the time period when then-Vice President Joe Biden successfully pressured Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the Ukrainian energy firm that employed Hunter Biden.

House Oversight wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken Tuesday requesting information about how its perception of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin shifted in late 2015 as Joe Biden began threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan if Ukraine did not fire the prosecutor. At the time, Hunter Biden was making more than $80,000 per month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, according to bank records released in August by House Oversight. (RELATED: European Officials Praised Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Reforms Right Before Joe Biden Got Prosecutor Fired, Memo Shows)

READ THE LETTER:

“Specifically, the Committee seeks information regarding the State Department’s perception of the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General, at the time headed by Viktor Shokin. Prosecutor General Shokin assumed his position on February 10, 2015. Shokin was elevated to lead the Office of the Prosecutor General amid an ongoing, international investigation focused on corruption surrounding Burisma—a natural gas company in Ukraine—and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky,” the letter states.

“The Committee seeks to understand the State Department’s sudden change in disposition towards the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General in late 2015,” the letter continues.

“By late 2015, however, the removal of Prosecutor General Shokin became a condition of the loan guarantee by the United States. In March 2016, Shokin was dismissed from his position by the Ukrainian Rada after months of public pressure most adamantly applied by then-Vice President Biden,” the letter adds.

House Oversight cites a June 2015 letter written by State Department official Victoria Nuland to Shokin’s office praising his anti-corruption efforts and pledging to provide U.S. resources to assist Shokin. (RELATED: US Officials Were ‘Impressed’ By Prosecutor Joe Biden Got Fired, New Revelations Show)

The committee also references comments from then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in September 2015 who said Shokin was “leading the fight” against corruption in Ukraine. In addition, House Oversight describes a memo from the Interagency Policy Committee describing how Shokin made enough progress combating corruption for Ukraine to receive a $1 billion loan.

House Oversight’s letter specifically asks for phone calls Joe Biden made to Ukrainian officials from January 2014 to December 2016 and communications between the State Department and then-VP Biden’s office referencing Ukraine, Burisma, Shokin, Hunter Biden and his business associates.

The letter includes a demand for communications between State Department employees and Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm recommended to Burisma by Hunter Biden that met with State Department officials on Zlochevsky’s behalf multiple times, according to its May 2022 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) disclosure.

Blue Star also did lobbying work with the State Department for the Ukrainian prosecutor who replaced Shokin and let Burisma off the hook, internal State Department emails released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs indicate.

Furthermore, House Oversight is requesting communications between a list of State Department officials about Hunter Biden and his associates, and communications surrounding the $1 billion loan guarantee.

The State Department told the Daily Caller it has “received the request for documents and information from Chairman Comer, and as with all congressional inquiries, we aim to be as responsive as possible. Still, it is important to note this is a claim that has been debunked for years. It has no basis in fact. What is fact is that the United States, along with members of the international community and anti-corruption advocates, expressed concern about the Ukrainian prosecutor general and a failure to aggressively prosecute corruption.”

In December 2015, Joe Biden took a trip to Ukraine to deliver a speech urging the Ukrainian parliament to continue fighting corruption days after Hunter Biden “called D.C.” due to pressure from Zlochevsky and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi, former Burisma board member and Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer testified to House Oversight in July. (RELATED: Burisma Was Told To Remove Picture Of Joe Biden And Devon Archer From Its Website, Emails Show)

On the same day Hunter Biden appeared to call D.C., his business associate Eric Schwerin was working with then-VP Biden’s office to respond to media inquiries surrounding Hunter Biden and Burisma, according to archived emails and a Sept. 6. letter sent by the House Oversight Committee to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Days after Hunter’s phone call, then-VP Biden’s office sent talking points to the State Department urging them not to single out Zlochevsky by name, according to internal State Department emails. Archer could not confirm if Joe Biden was on the receiving end of his son’s phone call.

In early February 2016, Shokin orchestrated a raid on Zlochevsky’s property as part of his investigation into Burisma, according to a Ukrainian media report. Viktor Shokin filed his letter of resignation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Feb. 19, soon after Poroshenko had a phone call with Joe Biden, White House archives show. In late March 2016, Shokin was removed from his position by the Ukrainian parliament, the Kyiv Post reported.

“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 [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.'”

Archer recalled the raid on Zlochevsky when he was interviewed by Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in August. Archer told Carlson that Burisma viewed Shokin as a “threat” to its business after he told House Oversight about how the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny. (RELATED: Devon Archer Says It’s ‘Categorically False’ Joe Biden Didn’t Know About Hunter’s Business Dealings)

Archer testified to House Oversight that Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business partners on more than 20 occasions including a spring 2014 dinner with Russian oligarch Elena Baturina and a spring 2015 dinner with Pozharskyi. Joe Biden also met with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associate in Beijing and later wrote a letter of recommendation for his daughter’s college application, Archer testified.

“I do not want to deal in unproven facts, but my firm personal conviction is that, yes, this was the case,” Shokin said in an August interview with Fox News. “They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?”

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.

Henry Rodgers contributed to this report.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel