The White House released documents late Thursday raising new questions about the House Democrat-led impeachment of President Donald Trump in 2019.
Much of the narrative that supported the impeachment was that Vice President Joe Biden did not change any policy with regard to Ukraine because of his son Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma.
Records seem to show that Biden’s career staff supported the $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine and also supported Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma. Biden told Ukrainian officials to fire Shokin, or the country would not get the loan guarantee, a White House official said.
The whistleblower who first complained about Trump’s phone conversation had no firsthand knowledge of the call, an administration official told reporters in a briefing just before the release.
The whistleblower said the 2019 call from Trump to then-recently elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inappropriate because Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
Trump was impeached by the Democrat-led House in 2019 on articles of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted him in early 2020. Trump denied wrongdoing, and Zelensky denied being pressured. The official 2019 articles identify abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
George Kent, then-deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, wrote in a November 2016 email 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, b/c Ukrainians heard cne message from us and then saw another set of behavior, with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules in the oilfgas sector.”
The recipient of the email was redacted.
The documents also show an April 2017 letter from U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch to J. Cofer Black, a board member with Burisma. Yovanovitch, whom Trump had fired, testified in the House impeachment hearing.
Other emails to the ambassador also discussed the company.
An April 2018 email to Yovanovitch, with the sender redacted, said, “Burisma’s was co-owned by Hunter Biden, former U.S. VP Joe Biden’s [son]. Joe Biden also actively worked to undermine the reputation of former Prosecutor General Shokin, putting forward his resignation as a condition for receiving the fourth tranche of MFA funding. Therefore, Shokin was forced to resign.”
Hunter Biden was a board member, not a co-owner.
The White House official said the declassified documents “suggest Marie Yovanovitch knew more about Burisma than she publicly said.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
