It wasn’t that long ago, so you do not need a time machine to review the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. The House found that then President Trump temporarily blocked Congressionally mandated $400 million in military aid in an effort to force the Ukraine government to investigate possible corruption involving the former vice-president’s son, Hunter Biden. It was an alleged attempt to hurt the political standing of Joseph Biden, who at the time was campaigning to become the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. As everybody knows, President Trump was acquitted by a Senate vote on February 5, 2020: 48 for conviction and 52 for acquittal.
I have always thought that this impeachment proceeding was bogus. The Ukraine government was notoriously corrupt, and its large corporations were controlled by corrupt oligarchs, worth billions of dollars. One of those oligarchs, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was the president of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, hired Hunter (ranging from $50,000 to $83,000 per month) in February 2014 to sit on the Board of Directors of Burisma. On the face of it, this was a surprising hire, for Hunter had no energy expertise. In addition, Hunter’s reputation was less than stellar; he was a known drug addict with questionable morals, and he had just been discharged by the U.S. Navy for cocaine use. What do you know, and what a surprise! In the same very month of Hunter’s lucrative new job, President Obama appointed his vice-President, Joseph Biden, to become his point man on the Ukraine. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think the timing was suspect and wonder whether there could be a little corruption involved.
The plot thickens! Within a few years, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption, so much so that on November 2, 2015 Burisma executive Pozharskyi emailed Burisma directors Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and explicitly demanded that they use their influence to “close down” the criminal investigation against Burisma. Nothing happened right away, and the pressure against Burisma continued: on February 2, 2016, Shokin seized four houses in Kyiv, two plots of land and a Rolls-Royce belonging to Mr. Zlochevsky. Then in March 2016, Mr. Pozharskyi got his wish, when then Vice-President Biden threatened to cut off $1 billion in guaranteed loans unless Ukraine fired Shokin. That, indeed, happened, and Mr. Shokin was fired soon afterward. He was charged with corruption, and he was accused of using his office to block major cases against his allies and other influential figures.
So, did Hunter earn his outlandish salary by asking or pressuring his father in any way to get rid of Shokin? President Biden has repeatedly and robustly denied this, and he has always steadfastly claimed that he has never spoken to his son about any of Hunter’s business ventures. However, unfortunately for President Biden, his denial is unraveling at breakneck speed!
On July 20,2023, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley released an unclassified, minimally redacted copy of the FBI’s FD-1023 detailing a confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian business Burisma. In this case, the confidential human source was considered highly credible in that he had been a regular, reliable source of information in multiple investigations dating back to the Obama Presidency, and that he had been paid approximately $200,000 by the FBI. Among the shocking disclosures, we note the following:
The form, dated June 30, 2020, details multiple meetings and conversations the source had with top Burisma executives over the course of several years, beginning in 2015. It all started when a Burisma executive had sought the advice of the confidential source, a business professional, on buying an American company to merge with, in the hope that it could go public in the United States. After an investigation of Burisma by Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was disclosed, the source told Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, that the disclosure would have a negative impact on the prospective initial public offering. Mr. Zlochevsky replied that Mr. Hunter Biden “will take care of all of those issues through his dad.” Vadim Pojarskii, chief financial officer of Burisma, repeated this claim, telling the source that the company hired Hunter Biden “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
The story gets worse – we’re talking bribery here. According to the Burisma executive, the company had to "pay the Bidens" because Ukraine's lead prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was investigating Burisma. According to the CHS, he suggested that the Burisma executive "pay the Bidens $50,000 each," to which the Burisma executive replied "not $50,000," it is "$5 million." "$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden." According to the Burisma executive, they "didn't pay the Big Guy directly." Instead he "paid" the Bidens "through so many different bank accounts" that investigators would not be able to "unravel this for at least 10 years."
Zlochevsky stated that he didn’t want to pay the Bidens and that he was pushed to pay them. He claimed to have 17 recordings of conversations with the Bidens — two of which involved Joe — as well as “many text messages” and two documents that the informant “understood to be” financial records of “payment(s) to the Bidens.” According to Zlochevsky, the recordings and other evidence showed he was “somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
The CHS thought that the stories of the Burisma officials were credible. “Given the pervasive necessity to bribe government officials in Ukraine and Russia, the source did not perceive Pozharsky or Zlochevesky’s statements to be unusual, self-serving, or pretextual.”
We should not here that FD-1023 is the form FBI agents use to record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources. FD-1023s merely document that information; they do not reflect the conclusions of investigators based on a fuller context or understanding. We also note that President Biden has denied and even laughed off these serious charges.
The key question, however, is: what has the FBI done to investigate this serious charge of bribery, which was documented three years ago? We do know that Pittsburgh FBI office briefed the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office and stated that they had already corroborated several aspects of the confidential human source’s claims. We know that the FBI has informed members of Congress that the bribery tip was referred to the office of Delaware US Attorney David Weiss for further investigation, though it’s unclear what has been done since to determine its accuracy. We also know that IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley testified to the House Oversight Committee that federal tax agents weren’t told of the large alleged bribe amounts during their five-year investigation of Hunter for tax fraud. You might think that information would have been helpful in their federal tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden.
What do we think? It should be obvious that the only reason Burisma hired Hunter was to influence his powerful father; and it is true that the timing surrounding the firing of Mr. Shokin does dovetail perfectly with the conversations detailed by the FBI’s confidential human source. Also, as we documented in our article King Richard, Hunter was not shy about using his father to demand the same amount of $5 million from another energy company, CEFC Energy, which is linked to Chinese military intelligence. So yes, we do believe that Hunter was bribed by Burisma in one way or another.
What about President Biden? We’d like to think that our President could not be bribed – even by the large sum of $5 million. We would like to believe the President’s denial; but he has also repeatedly denied ever talking to Hunter about his son’s business, and he clearly lied about that. Could he also be lying about his involvement in the bribery scheme as described in FBI FD-1023?
It has been reported that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss will soon be appearing in a Congressional hearing in the House of Representatives, and he will be talking under oath. We hope to hear what steps he has taken to investigate and verify this very serious charge. Meanwhile, Representative James Comer, as the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has asked for and received some Treasury records of Suspicious Activity Reports related to Burisma, its executives and Biden family members and their business associates. Federal law requires financial institutions to file private reports (SARs) when they detect unusual transactions that could be signs of illegal activity. Representative Comer has pledged to follow the money, so let’s see where that leads to.
תגובות