House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Tuesday demanded Secretary of State Antony Blinken provide information on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s abrupt policy shift against a prosecutor who investigated Burisma Holdings, a company that paid Hunter Biden $83,000 a month.
During the Obama administration, Joe Biden was the designated foreign policy point person to Ukraine. The House Oversight Committee argues that Joe Biden threatened to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine in 2015 until then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had jurisdiction for an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
By his own admission, Joe Biden bragged in 2018 about successfully pushing for the removal of Shokin — a condition for Ukraine to receive a critical $1 billion loan guarantee.
U.S. policy in September 2015 — designed by the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), an Obama White House Ukraine task force — maintained that Shokin produced sufficient progress in combating nationwide corruption to win a U.S. taxpayer $1 billion loan, according to an IPC memo.
Comer’s request to Blinken seeks to ascertain what caused U.S. policy to suddenly change towards Ukraine when Joe Biden vowed to withhold the $1 billion loan until the president of Ukraine fired Shokin.
“The timing of these events is notable to the Committee,” Comer wrote to Blinken. “The Committee requests information from the State Department regarding then-Vice President’s actions and decisions relating to Ukraine”:
On November 5, 2015, then-Vice President participated in a call with then President of Ukraine Poroshenko and provided no indication that the United States’ policy regarding Ukraine required the dismissal of Prosecutor General Shokin.
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.
Letter to Secretary Blinken Re: Shokin by Breitbart News on Scribd
Comer’s letter comes after Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s best friend in business, confirmed Joe Biden’s involvement in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor.
“Joe Biden, of course, was the driving force behind his firing?” Tucker Carlson asked Archer during an interview released in August.
“Yeah, he was involved in that,” he replied.
“Joe Biden knew that his son was on the board of this company that was being hassled by the prosecutor whose firing he was calling for?” Carlson asked.
“Right,” Archer said.
Shokin appears to have a similar story as Archer. Shokin said in August that his firing by the then-Ukrainian president was done at the behest of Joe Biden.
“I have said repeatedly in my previous interviews that Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma,” Shokin told Fox News.
“There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job,” he said. “But because pressure was repeatedly put on Poroshenko, that is what ended up in him firing me.”
According to a recent CNN survey, 61 percent of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deals with China and Ukraine. Only 38 percent say he was not involved, and just one percent say he was involved and did nothing wrong.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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