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.” ...
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. ...
Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid
out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s
Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.
I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I
got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over,
convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be
providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th
time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another
billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from
Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the
state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I
said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion
dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The
president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you,
you’re not getting the billion dollars. 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. Well, son of a
bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was
solid at the time.
