Email confirms diplomat feared Hunter Biden 'undercut' U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine

Hunter Biden on CBS' 'Sunday Morning' on April 4, 2021. (Video screenshot)

An email long concealed from both the American public and Republicans, apparently including President Trump, charges that Hunter Biden's lucrative deal to be on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma for tens of thousands of dollars a month did, in fact, "undercut" U.S. foreign policy goals of fighting corruption there, Just the News is reporting.

Hunter Biden's deal came while Joe Biden was vice president for Barack Obama and raised eyebrows as he had no experience in the gas industry. It was viewed by some as an attempt to buy influence through Joe Biden's position in the U.S. government.

That's because it came just as Joe Biden was handling America's Ukraine policy for Obama, and its results included Joe Biden's demand that Ukraine fire the prosecutor looking into alleged misbehavior in Burisma's operations.

The results were detailed by Joe Biden himself, who, on a trip to Ukraine for Obama, told officials there he would withhold $1 billion in American aid if they didn't fire the prosecutor, Victor Shokin.

He was fired.

And Joe Biden bragged about it.

Now John Solomon at Just the News has revealed the existence of an email that was "kept from public view for more than five years." It was from a top U.S. State Department in Kiev, George Kent, and confirmed Hunter Biden's business schemes in Ukraine "undercut" U.S. efforts to fight corruption.

Just the News obtained the email, written on Nov. 22, 2016, by Kent, who later was one of the Democrats' star witnesses in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's first of two failed impeach-and-remove campaigns against President Trump.

That impeachment claimed it was improper for President Trump to discuss with Ukrainian officials whether they investigated allegations about inappropriate Biden family business operations there.

The email was classified "confidential" by Marie Yovanovitch, who then was U.S. Ambassador to Kiev and later was another key witness in the Democrats' failed scheme against President Trump.

It was not "produced as evidence to House lawmakers during impeachment. Contrary to federal law, the State Department failed to acknowledge the existence of the document to the court or to Just the News in its multiple Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the State Department seeking records on Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine," Solomon wrote.

But it "directly conflicts" with the story maintained by Democrats and State Department bureaucrats who claimed Hunter Biden's multi-million dollar paychecks from Burisma actually didn't create problems for the U.S.

Just the News reported Kent wrote, to several officials in Washington, "The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine."

Solomon reported among the recipients was Jorgan K. Andrews, a State Department official involved in "law enforcement" affairs.

"Kent's email described an intense pressure campaign by advocates for Burisma — including a former U.S. ambassador — to rehabilitate the Ukrainian company's corrupt reputation and to get Ukraine prosecutors to drop their criminal investigations of the company," the report said.

"Kent even relayed to higher-ups that he had confirmed with Ukrainian prosecutors that Burisma officials had paid a $7 million 'bribe' to make one of the cases against the company disappear," the report said, an event that apparently happened while Hunter Biden was on the Burisma board.

Kent wrote, "Ukrainians heard one message from us, and then saw another set of behavior, with the [Biden] family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules in the oil/gas sector."

The report added, "The email chain also showed that State officials were acutely aware that Hunter Biden had an affiliation with an American business partner also accused — and eventually convicted of — corruption."

Rep. Jim Jordan, D-Ohio, who helped defend President Trump in that first of two failed schemes to get rid of him, told Just the News, "This is frightening. And the fact that we didn't have this information during the impeachment, I think is maybe the biggest concern. I mean, the president of the United States is defending himself from a ridiculous impeachment process that the Democrats bring on him, where he wasn't allowed to be in the depositions, wasn't allowed to have his counsel there. And now we find out wasn't allowed to have information that he's entitled to have to put on his defense. I mean, frankly, we Republicans who were in the rooms in that bunker in the basement of the Capitol, we'd have liked to have this information that you just described, and other information that wasn't available to us as well, that you've written about."

The State Department declined to respond to Just the News questions.

But Alan Dershowitz, the noted Harvard law professor who was on President Trump's defense team, said the concealment of the information was a "very serious constitutional violation" of the requirement that defendants be given evidence that helps them.

"The United States Supreme Court in the Brady decision ruled that when a defendant is on trial, the prosecutors cannot withhold evidence that could be exculpatory, or in any way helpful to the defendant," Dershowitz told Just the News. "And obviously, that has to apply to impeachment proceedings even more so, because in impeachment proceedings, the American public has the right to know all the evidence. And if the people who impeached President Trump — obviously I was one of the lawyers on the other side — were aware of exculpatory evidence or evidence that would in some way mitigate the charges, they had an obligation to turn it over to us so that we could use this information in defending our client."

Kimberly Hermann, of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, said the email should have been produced or at least identified during Just the News' own Freedom of Information Act procedures.

She said those "bad actors" in the government who hid the information "must now be held accountable."

Kent did later testify about how Hunter Biden's actions created the perception of a conflict of interest.

Just the News reported only a day earlier that officials in the Obama administration had told Shokin that he was doing a good job – shortly before Joe Biden demanded his firing.

Those memos, obtained by Just the News and the Southeastern Legal Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request, show senior State Department officials — including then-Secretary of State John Kerry — were praising Shokin the summer just before his firing, the report said.

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