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The long-delayed and greatly anticipated report on Hunter Biden’s history of corruption in Ukraine was finally released on Wednesday. A majority of Americans knew he benefited from the Biden name, but few knew the real extent of the corruption and its cover-up by the Obama administration until now.
The chairs of the report, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), wrote:
On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and he soon after was described in the press as the “public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.”
The day after his visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma….
On May 12, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.
When that “oligarch,” Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, paid a bribe to release some $23 million that had been seized by the British government over charges of his corruption, Hunter Biden had been on the board for seven months.
When Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, George Kent, learned about the bribe, he “raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board.” His concerns were ignored.
From the report:
I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest.
The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time.… That was the end of that conversation.
“This,” said the report, “has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.”
The report said that Hunter Biden benefitted far beyond the $50,000 monthly salary he was being paid for being on the board. Hunter, said the report, “formed significant and consistent financial relationships” with Burisma’s corrupt founder, resulting in his making “millions of dollars from that association” while his father was Obama’s vice president.
It gets worse: “The committees also said they obtained records from the U.S. Treasury Department that ‘show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals.’”
And even worse: “The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.’”
And still worse: “In addition, the younger Biden had ‘business associations with … Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army.… Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow.’”
And Hunter Biden continued to profit long after he allegedly resigned from the board: “[Hunter] Biden’s … work with Chinese nationals connected to the Communist regime illustrate the deep financial connections that accelerated while Joe Biden was vice president and continued after he left office.”
Back in June, Scott Rasmussen conducted a poll for John Solomon’s Just The News website, asking 2,200 registered voters, “How likely is it that Joe Biden used his official position as Vice President to financially benefit his family and friends?” More than half said it was either “very likely” or “somewhat likely.”
Now they know for sure.
2010 photo of Joe and Hunter Biden: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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