Joe Biden’s bad luck, received a few days ago when Ukraine expanded its probe into Burisma Holdings, just got worse: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has opened an investigation into Biden forcing Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 as that top lawman looked into corruption at Burisma, which employed Biden’s son, Hunter.
Graham wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday to request the State Department to surrender documents relating to Biden’s role in firing the prosecutor, as well as Hunter Biden’s cozy relationship with a top department official at about the same time.
Meanwhile, investigative reporter John Solomon has published a handy timeline on Biden-Burisma that the Democrats want to hide.
Send Everything
Graham’s request should expose what the Democrats and the leftist media want kept secret, and might well help President Trump’s defense against impeachment if it goes to trial in the Senate.
That’s because the impeachment effort grew from Trump’s request of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, in a phone call on July 25, to reopen the country’s probe into Biden’s role in canning Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Shokin was hot on the trail of Mykola Zlochevksy, the founder of Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden and put him on its board. But Biden senior threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire Shokin for “corruption.” Shokin had intended to question Hunter Biden. But that was not to be, thanks to Hunter’s powerful father.
Trump’s request of Zelensky invited “foreign interference” in the 2020 election, the Democrat CIA whistleblower alleged, because the probe could damage Biden, Trump’s top contender for the presidency.
That led to the impeachment, which inadvertently refocused attention on Biden’s role in sacking Shokin and gave it the scrutiny it deserves.
Graham hopes to turn up the heat, and he put the shenanigans of the Biden boys front and center in his note to Pompeo.
On February 4, 2016, Graham wrote, Shokin’s people had seized property from Zlochevsky after a raid on the Burisma kingpin’s home on February 2.
Also on February 4, Hunter Biden followed long-time Biden retainer Tony Blinken, deputy secretary of state, on Twitter, “indicating that the two may have initiated conversations regarding Prosecutor General Shokin’s investigation into Burisma. At that time, Hunter Biden was serving as a board member for Burisma.”
Then, on “February 11, 18, and 19 of 2016, Vice President Biden held a series of phone calls with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko” and demanded that Shokin be fired for “corruption,” Graham wrote. “Another phone call between the two took place on March 22, 2016, just seven days before Prosecutor General Shokin was removed from office on March 29, 2016.”
Graham wants “all documents and communications, including call transcripts or summaries, related” to those Biden-Poroshenko calls, “especially with respect to whether Vice President Biden mentioned the Prosecutor General’s investigation into Burisma.” He also asked for all other “documents and communications” between the two after the raid on Zlochevsky’s home until Shokin was fired.
Last, Graham requested “all documents and communications related to a meeting between Devon Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry on March 2, 2016.”
Archer’s meeting with Kerry capped a lobbying campaign by Burisma’s legal torpedoes to stop the corruption probe, which ended just weeks after that Archer-Kerry pow-wow when Biden forced Ukraine to fire Shokin.
Shokin has said higher-ups confessed the truth: They showed him the door because of the Hunter Biden-Bursima connection.
Solomon Timeline
The obvious problem for Biden senior? His son landed a lucrative spot at Burisma despite his lack of experience and record as a dope fiend. Everyone knows why Burisma hired a man discharged from the U.S. Navy on drug charges, and it wasn’t because of his legal talents or business acumen.
And everyone knows why Joe Biden had to knee-cap Shokin: to protect his son from becoming ensnared in the Zlochevsky corruption probe, which in turn could splash back on the Obama administration. A top diplomat at State had warned the vice president’s staff that his son’s phony job at Burisma was a serious problem, if for appearances alone.
It smacked of self-dealing and influence peddling.
Solomon’s timeline lays it all out in excruciating detail with links to associated documents and a headline that summarizes Biden-Burisma and the Trump impeachment perfectly: “The Ukraine scandal timeline Democrats and their media allies don’t want America to see.”
America will see it, and it just might derail the Democrats’ impeachment charade.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
