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Thread: Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived

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    Default Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived

    Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.

    In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

    “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 recalled telling Poroshenko.

    Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

    Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.

    But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

    U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

    The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

    Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

    He added: “I would like to emphasize the fact that presumption of innocence is a principle in Ukraine” and that he couldn’t describe the evidence further.

    William Russo, a spokesman for Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden did not respond to email messages Monday seeking comment. The phone number at Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC in Washington was no longer in service on Monday.

    The timing of Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s appointment to Burisma’s board has been highlighted in the past, by The New York Times in December 2015 and in a 2016 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer.

    Although Biden made no mention of his son in his 2018 speech, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities both told me Biden and his office clearly had to know about the general prosecutor's probe of Burisma and his son's role. They noted that:

    Hunter Biden's appointment to the board was widely reported in American media;

    The U.S. Embassy in Kiev that coordinated Biden's work in the country repeatedly and publicly discussed the general prosecutor's case against Burisma;

    Great Britain took very public action against Burisma while Joe Biden was working with that government on Ukraine issues;

    Biden's office was quoted, on the record, acknowledging Hunter Biden's role in Burisma in a New York Times article about the general prosecutor's Burisma case that appeared four months before Biden forced the firing of Shokin. The vice president's office suggested in that article that Hunter Biden was a lawyer free to pursue his own private business deals.


    President Obama named Biden the administration’s point man on Ukraine in February 2014, after a popular revolution ousted Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych and as Moscow sent military forces into Ukraine’s Crimea territory.

    According to Schweizer’s book, Vice President Biden met with Archer in April 2014 right as Archer was named to the board at Burisma. A month later, Hunter Biden was named to the board, to oversee Burisma’s legal team.

    But the Ukrainian investigation and Joe Biden’s effort to fire the prosecutor overseeing it has escaped without much public debate.

    Most of the general prosecutor’s investigative work on Burisma focused on three separate cases, and most stopped abruptly once Shokin was fired. The most prominent of the Burisma cases was transferred to a different Ukrainian agency, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, known as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), according to the case file and current General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.

    NABU closed that case, and a second case involving alleged improper money transfers in London was dropped when Ukrainian officials failed to file the necessary documents by the required deadline. The general prosecutor’s office successfully secured a multimillion-dollar judgment in a tax evasion case, Lutsenko said. He did not say who was the actual defendant in that case.

    As a result, the Biden family appeared to have escaped the potential for an embarrassing inquiry overseas in the final days of the Obama administration and during an election in which Democrat Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2016.

    But then, as Biden’s 2020 campaign ramped up over the past year, Lutsenko — the Ukrainian prosecutor that Biden once hailed as a “solid” replacement for Shokin — began looking into what happened with the Burisma case that had been shut down.

    Lutsenko told me that, while reviewing the Burisma investigative files, he discovered “members of the Board obtained funds as well as another U.S.-based legal entity, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, for consulting services.”

    Lutsenko said some of the evidence he knows about in the Burisma case may interest U.S. authorities and he’d like to present that information to new U.S. Attorney General William Barr, particularly the vice president’s intervention.

    “Unfortunately, Mr. Biden had correlated and connected this aid with some of the HR (p

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    Nazar Kholodnytskyi, the lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Lutsenko’s office, confirmed to me in an interview that part of the Burisma investigation was reopened in 2018, after Joe Biden made his remarks. “We were able to start this case again,” Kholodnytskyi said.

    But he said the separate Ukrainian police agency that investigates corruption has dragged its feet in gathering evidence. “We don’t see any result from this case one year after the reopening because of some external influence,” he said, declining to be more specific.


    some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020:
    Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy?
    What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...obe-is-revived

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    Hunter Biden had no previous experience in energy,or energy consultations -how did he get the job?

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    All been debunked, there isn't even proof that the company Biden's son was involved with was actively under investigation

    But thanks for buying onto Trump's latest deflection off his Ukraine problems, just shows you lemmings will swallow anything

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    All been debunked, there isn't even proof that the company Biden's son was involved with was actively under investigation

    But thanks for buying onto Trump's latest deflection off his Ukraine problems, just shows you lemmings will swallow anything
    no it hasn't been debunked you partisan shill - the only thing is Joe Biden claims he didn't know the conflict of interest (like his kid never mentioned it)..

    Also the firing of the prosecutor was 'going to happen anyway" -ignoring the direct threat from Joe Biden -
    (like it was all in the cards), because the prosecutor "was not pursuing corruption cases to the west's satisftion.

    Which is the same fucking thing Trump told the Ukraine president on the phone call -Ukraine is corrupt.

    this is from POLITICO -also a bunch of hack apologists,- but you can clearly see the conflict of interest, if not an outright bribe

    https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...n-and-ukraine/

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    This could help Sanders/Warren/Kamala/Yang.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dukkha View Post
    no it hasn't been debunked you partisan shill - the only thing is Joe Biden claims he didn't know the conflict of interest (like his kid never mentioned it)..

    Also the firing of the prosecutor was 'going to happen anyway" -ignoring the direct threat from Joe Biden -
    (like it was all in the cards), because the prosecutor "was not pursuing corruption cases to the west's satisftion.

    Which is the same fucking thing Trump told the Ukraine president on the phone call -Ukraine is corrupt.

    this is from POLITICO -also a bunch of hack apologists,- but you can clearly see the conflict of interest, if not an outright bribe

    https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...n-and-ukraine/
    From your own source;

    "it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with. In reality, there was widespread agreement in the West that the existing prosecutor had to go, and it’s not clear that the company would have benefited from his ouster anyway, given evidence that its cases had long been dormant."

    And how does now "Joe Biden claims he didn't know the conflict of interest" become the issue?"

    Comparing that to Trump attempting to pressure the Ukraine leader to investigate a potential political opponent for an upcoming election ( https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...on-eight-times) isn't even close to being in the same ballpark

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    From your own source;

    "it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with. In reality, there was widespread agreement in the West that the existing prosecutor had to go, and it’s not clear that the company would have benefited from his ouster anyway, given evidence that its cases had long been dormant."

    And how does now "Joe Biden claims he didn't know the conflict of interest" become the issue?"

    Comparing that to Trump attempting to pressure the Ukraine leader to investigate a potential political opponent for an upcoming election ( https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...on-eight-times) isn't even close to being in the same ballpark
    goddamned you. all you EVER talk about is cherry picking! I even mentioned that in my reply -but I gave it in context.
    and what do you do but cherry pick !

    Once again you prove to be a dishonest hack.

    Trump wants Ukraine cleaned up -it's one of the most corrupt governments in the world,
    and we are sending them NATO type military aid ( NATO expansion by default)
    Asking them to clean up amist the Biden influenced firing of the prosecutors under Poroshenko was a grievous move
    well in line with giving foreign military aid.

    Biden abused his office - it was a quid pro quo -it is deflected by saying others in the west wanted the same -
    but Biden used a threat of withholding loan guarantees.

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    WSJournal said there was NO MENTION OF FOREIGN AID on the phone call= no quid pro quo

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    In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.

    If it sounds shocking that a vice president would shape US-China policy as his son — who has scant experience in private equity — clinched a coveted billion-dollar deal with an arm of the Chinese government, that’s because it is.
    https://nypost.com/2019/05/11/the-tr...soft-on-china/

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    This could help Sanders/Warren/Kamala/Yang.
    Yep. Bye Bye Biden.

    Pocohantas will be the next to fall.
    "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
    — Joe Biden on Obama.

    Socialism is just the modern word for monarchy.

    D.C. has become a Guild System with an hierarchy and line of accession much like the Royal Court or priestly classes.

    Private citizens are perfectly able of doing a better job without "apprenticing".

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    Quote Originally Posted by dukkha View Post
    Hunter Biden had no previous experience in energy,or energy consultations -how did he get the job?
    You do not know? He was Bidens son. They like to get inside the American establishment. From what I read, the guy Joe Biden went after was a serious crook.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gonzomin View Post
    You do not know? He was Bidens son. They like to get inside the American establishment. From what I read, the guy Joe Biden went after was a serious crook.
    Silly. Hunter had no experience in energy.
    He was hired for "regulatory consultation in the energy field" -of which he had neither

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    Quote Originally Posted by dukkha View Post
    Silly. Hunter had no experience in energy.
    He was hired for "regulatory consultation in the energy field" -of which he had neither
    You did not understand the post? Here are the facts. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...n-and-ukraine/ Shokin was a crook and many others wanted him gone. The US was making a billion in loan guarantess. He said they wioould not do it if Shokin was involved. They had to can him. They did. That had nothing to do with Hunter Biden. His job sure did appear to be a conflict of interest. But it was just appearances. There is nothing that was corrupt about it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dukkha View Post
    Silly. Hunter had no experience in energy.
    He was hired for "regulatory consultation in the energy field" -of which he had neither
    He was certainly no Papadopoulos lol.

    Inquiring minds are curious about how an inexperienced Hunter Biden could score a lucrative energy sector job in a foreign country. Would they hire him just because he was a Biden? What good would that do the company?

    Unless, there was something else going on.

    But, because his name is Hunter Biden and not Donald Trump Jr—there’s nothing to see there.

    Just move along.
    Coup has started. First of many steps. Impeachment will follow ultimately~WB attorney Mark Zaid, January 2017

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