Former Vice President Joe Biden, a frontrunner for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination, has claimed there was nothing wrong with his or his son’s actions in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian prosecutor who was fired thanks to Biden’s influence doesn’t agree.
Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin is demanding that Ukrainian authorities start a criminal investigation into Biden for exerting “illegal influence” and “interference” with law enforcement related to his firing, the Kyiv Post reported.
Biden bragged about getting Shokin fired
Recall that it was in 2018 when Biden, speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event, openly bragged about how he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire Shokin immediately during a visit Biden made to the country in March 2016.
FLASHBACK: Two years ago, Joe Biden bragged about holding up $1 BILLION in U.S. loans unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma, the corrupt company paying Hunter $80k+ per month.
Why don’t Democrats want to investigate that??pic.twitter.com/bDhaKjFNZN
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 24, 2020
The clear implication related to Biden’s admission is that he pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating alleged corruption in a company for which his son Hunter sat on the board of directors, and that he essentially used U.S. taxpayer funds as leverage to achieve Shokin’s termination.
Biden, his supporters, most Democrats, and the media have all dismissed the allegations as “debunked” or no big deal, and have asserted that all Western democracies wanted Shokin fired, that Shokin himself was corrupt and inept, and that he wasn’t even actually investigating Burisma at the time he was fired.
Shokin accused Biden of illegal “interference”
There is evidence to suggest that wasn’t exactly the case, however, both in terms of Shokin’s official complaint as well as documents and emails obtained in 2019 by reporter John Solomon for The Hill.
First, according to the Kyiv Post, Shokin claimed in his complaint: “During the last months of 2015 and the first of 2016, Joseph Biden, using his official position, personally paid official visits to Ukraine several times with the aim of holding negotiations with the state leaders on my removal from my post.”
“As a result, he curtailed an objective investigation criminal proceedings on the facts of unlawful activities of persons associated with the company Burisma Holdings Limited (Cyprus), including the son of the specified high-ranking official,” he added.
Shokin argued that what Biden had done constituted a violation of Ukrainian criminal law, specifically “interference with the activities of a law enforcement officer” who was investigating the business that employed Biden’s son.
Face the music or find a new excuse
Furthermore, Solomon had reported in Sept. 2019 on a slew of emails and legal documents from the time of Shokin’s firing which proved that the investigation into Burisma was ongoing at that time and wasn’t actually closed down until some time after Shokin’s replacement had assumed office.
Biden and his fellow Democrats like to dismiss inconvenient facts as “debunked conspiracy theories,” but that ploy doesn’t really work well against actual evidence like email chains, official legal documents, and sworn testimonies.
Biden is going to have to come up with a new excuse or face the music for what he did.
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