U.S. President Joe Biden complained to reporters that Republicans were preparing to impeach him after the congressional elections. Indeed, during the campaign, Republicans repeatedly threatened to “make life difficult” for him and initiate impeachment proceedings at least once a week.
And there is a reason for it. To be more precise, the “adventures” of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
American Hero Hunter Biden
During the campaign, Republicans were seriously preparing for a potential “nightmare scenario” after winning the House of Representatives. Then Republicans declared their intention to announce the beginning of impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden every week and thus spoil the nerve of the Democratic incumbent and the whole White House. But closer to the beginning of November, The New York Times wrote that the Republican Party had decided to abandon the “impeachment for Biden” plan. It should be said that The New York Times is practically the official mouthpiece of the Democratic Party so it is obvious that they will write what the home tells them to write.
The most high-profile cause for impeachment is the affairs of Hunter Biden, the son of a sitting U.S. president. According to The Washington Post, the FBI looked at such charges against Hunter Biden as tax crimes and perjury under oath as the most promising avenues. The Washington Post recalled that U.S. law enforcement began investigating Hunter Biden back in 2018, with a focus on his business activities and providing advice abroad (i.e., in Ukraine – ed. note by wek.ru). Yet, the investigation of the “Ukrainian epic” concerns both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden himself.
Has This Really Happened?
So, why did the Republicans pin “sleepy Joe” down? The most promising claims are Hunter Biden's earnings in the Ukrainian company Burisma and Joe Biden's own involvement in foreign corruption when he was a curator of Ukraine. To be clear, the U.S. has such a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to which corruption in another country is also a crime. All that remains is to prove Biden's involvement, if one wanted to.
What is it about? Ukraine has a large gas production company, Burisma, which is owned by Ukrainian businessman Nikolai Zlochevsky. But there is a problem. Zlochevsky was an MP of the Party of Regions and even Minister of Ecology in the Cabinet of Ministers of Mykola Azarov during Yanukovych's presidency. That is, according to the Euromaidan, which won in 2014, a typical “collaborator of the criminal regime.”
But this is not the case. Immediately after Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Oleksandr Turchynov and their accomplices seized power on the wave of Euromaidan, Zlochevsky invited two ordinary US citizens – Hunter Biden and Devon Archer – to the Burisma supervisory board. Moreover, Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month in Burisma. According to the official information, for consulting services. The investigation will show whether they it was true or not.
An ordinary American, Hunter Biden, happened to be the son of the vice president of the United States. Another ordinary American citizen, Devon Archer, was (and still is) a close friend of the family of John Kerry, the Secretary of State in charge of foreign policy in the administration of President Barack Obama (Democratic Party). All of these, of course, are mere coincidences. In fact, the White House press office said back in 2014 that the appointment of Hunter Biden “has nothing to do with the support of the administration, the vice president or the president of the United States.”
It must be said that Zlochevsky's decision to invite the supervisory board and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to two American “rich boys” paid off in spades. Because when the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine brought several criminal cases against Burisma, US Vice President Joe Biden personally called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and demanded that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin be fired. He was echoed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who called Poroshenko and demanded that the issue be “resolved” with the Prosecutor General. In the end, Poroshenko tipped off about Shokin by having his crony Yuriy Lutsenko, who did not even have a law degree, appointed instead.
Not our ‘son of a Bitch’
Moreover, Joe Biden himself spoke publicly about this case several times. He not only told about it, but took credit for it. However, according to Biden's own version, he did a good deed, because the Attorney General of independent Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, was a “son of a bitch.”
In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, Joe Biden told how he threatened Poroshenko that the IMF would not give Ukraine a $1 billion loan if the Ukrainian president did not fire Prosecutor General Shokin.
“It's OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand – we're not paying if you do,” said Biden.
“I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ … I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b----. He got fired,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington in January 2018.
As time went on, both former Attorney General Viktor Shokin himself, who was fired on a call from Washington, and Yuri Lutsenko, a Poroshenko Bloc MP who succeeded him as Ukraine's attorney general, added some important details to the story.
Here is where the dilemma arose. If Biden demanded to fire the Prosecutor General of independent Ukraine because U.S. interests demanded it, that's one story. But if Biden fired the Attorney General of Ukraine, in order to close the criminal case against Burisma, so that his son can continue getting $600 000 a year for doing nothing – that is foreign corruption for which there is a corresponding criminal article in U.S. law.
This story took another twist after Poroshenko lost the election. It was after Poroshenko lost that the Ukrainian and American media got the information that made Joe Biden suspected of corruption.
“Ukrainian Card” Against Biden
With the beginning of the presidential elections in the United States in 2019, a number of American media accused Biden of corruption and interference in the internal affairs of independent Ukraine. In short, Biden was accused of blackmailing Poroshenko, the essence of which was that the IMF would not allocate a billion dollars in loans if the Prosecutor General's Office of independent Ukraine does not close criminal cases against Burisma, where Hunter Biden earned $ 600,000 a year. Rudolph Giuliani, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, came to Kiev several times to gather evidence of Biden's involvement in foreign corruption. In the Ukrainian capital, Giuliani had several meetings with both former Prosecutor General Shokin and his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko.
Moreover, Poroshenko's associates added fuel to the fire of this high-profile political scandal as much as they could. Former Attorney General Viktor Shokin gave a series of interviews to Ukrainian media in April 2019 in which he explicitly stated that Biden had personally demanded that Poroshenko fire him for investigating cases against Burisma, where Hunter Biden was listed.
“The president told me repeatedly that Biden demanded that I be removed. A report was prepared on the work I had done, and it was sent to the deputies. It was posted on the website of the State Political Directorate. If you look at these reports, they differ many times from what my predecessors used to do. There were no objective reasons for firing me,” said Shokin.
Moreover, the former prosecutor directly called Biden's actions a criminal offense, referring to the legal opinion of people's deputy Andrei Merezhko (from Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.)
“In addition, I have another interesting opinion from one of Zelensky's team members, Andrei Merezhko. He wrote that in my situation there was a real interference of Biden in the internal affairs of Ukraine. This is considered a criminal offense,” Shokin said.
Yuriy Lutsenko, who replaced Shokin as Prosecutor General of Ukraine, went down in history as the only Prosecutor General without a law degree. After the beginning of the U.S. presidential elections, Lutsenko, as the Prosecutor General, revived the investigation of cases against Burisma, which he himself had previously closed at Biden's request. After he left his post as head of the State Political Directorate, Lutsenko gave a series of interviews in which he spoke about a number of important points. First of all, Lutsenko advised to pay attention to the existence of documents showing that Hunter Biden “received a lot of money from Burisma.” Secondly, the former Prosecutor General advised to find a specific answer to a specific question: did Biden Jr. get “a lot of money” for his work or was it just a bribe for political “patronage” by Joe Biden? Lutsenko also explicitly stated that he has Hunter Biden's payments and is ready to provide them to U.S. law enforcement officials, who “must check whether the consulting was real. If it was real consulting, it's okay. If not, it looks like payment for political protection.”
In addition, Lutsenko also directly told the British BBC that “Joe Biden was blackmailing the President.”
Dishonest Rules
Could it be that Joe Biden, who oversaw Ukraine's democratic path, was involved in corruption? Some Ukrainian politicians directly accused Biden of involvement in international corruption during the election campaign. And he looked like a respectable gentleman and real democrat!
MP Andriy Derkach (unaffiliated) gave a series of press conferences in May 2020, at which he made public the audio recordings of talks between Biden and Poroshenko. According to the official version, these recordings were allegedly made by Poroshenko, and his staff “lost them” when they were removing things from the Office of the President of Ukraine. Okay, we almost believed it. Or rather, we didn't. Of course, we didn't. Who would believe such nonsense!
It turns out that Poroshenko and Biden discussed the Burisma case, the firing of the old prosecutor general, the appointment of a new one, and raising utility rates for Ukrainians at the request of the IMF.
“In case you have a new government and a new attorney general, I will be prepared to publicly sign off on the $1 billion commitment,” Joe Biden's voice sounds on the recording.
There is another question where Derkach got such audio recordings. According to him, the recordings were given to him by “anonymous sources.” Yes, we almost believed it. Derkach himself said that he handed over to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine “all the hours of recordings available to us today together with a statement about state treason, as well as facts of international corruption ... to register criminal proceedings.”
So, Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine can provide a lot of material that Republicans can use in the political struggle against the current U.S. President and the White House. If the Republicans are serious, they will try to prove that Joe Biden meddled in Ukraine's internal affairs and “sheltered” the Burisma company so that his son would receive $50,000 every month in “gratitude” for his political “cover.” But to do this, one must also prove that Hunter Biden did not in fact provide any “consulting services” and the appointment of him personally and Devon Archer to the supervisory board of Burisma was a payment for this political “protection” by Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. If it can be proven, then there are crimes under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
All the more so because Joe Biden himself said in June 2021 that the fight against corruption is one of the key interests of national security of the United States...