Former Secretary of State John Kerry lied when he said he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s obscenely lucrative job with Burisma Holdings, the energy company at the center of the Biden-Burisma influence-peddling scandal.
The latest on the scandal, which blew up this week again with e-mails published in the New York Post, is found in the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s report about Biden-Burisma: Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.
The report includes testimony from Kerry’s chief of staff, who admitted briefing the former secretary of state. Another top advisor sent Kerry newspaper clips about Biden-Burisma.
Good thing is, we don’t need to ask what Kerry knew and when he knew it. The report answers both questions.
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Kent’s Concerns
Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board at $50,000 a month after his father met with Hunter Biden’s business partner, the report explains:
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. Six days later, on April 28, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Fourteen days later, 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.
As TNA reported last year, George Kent, a State Department official, was understandably concerned about Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma given that his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
As Kent told the committee, “I had learned that Hunter Biden had been appointed to a board of this company, that I had just raised U.S. concerns about the owner of the company, who we believed had been engaged in money-laundering.”
The problem was this, he continued:
I said I believe that this creates the perception of a potential conflict of interest, given Vice President Biden’s role and his very strong advocacy for anticorruption action, and that I thought that someone needed to talk to Hunter Biden, and he should [step] down from the board of Burisma.
Kent was right to be concerned, and he repeatedly stated his concerns to his superiors.
But Hunter Biden wasn’t the only problem.
In 2016, Vice President Biden forced the Ukrainian government to fire their top prosecutor, who, in probing Zlochevsky and Burisma, planned to question Hunter Biden.
Biden publicly bragged that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine if it did not pink-slip Viktor Shokin.
Earlier this week, the New York Post published an e-mail from a Ukrainian businessman who thanked Hunter Biden for setting up a meeting with his father. They also revealed the younger Biden’s tight-as-a-tick relationship with Red Chinese oligarchs.
Enter Kerry
Section V of the report targets Kerry.
Last year, the report says, NBC’s Amanda Golden asked Kerry what he knew about Hunter Biden joining Burisma’s board.
“I had no knowledge about any of that,” he replied. “None. No.”
But “the reporter pressed for more information,” the report says, and Kerry replied this way:
“What would I know about any — no. Why would I know about any company or any individual? No. The answer is no. No communication. No nothing.”
And that, the committee learned in testimony from Kerry’s top aides, was false:
On May 13, 2014, the day after Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, Secretary Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz — who was also Hunter Biden’s business partner — emailed to inform Kerry’s chief of staff, and to distance himself, from that decision. Moreover, in May 2014, Secretary Kerry’s chief of staff, David Wade, briefed him about press inquiries specifically relating to Heinz, Hunter Biden, and Burisma. Separately, State Department officials wrote that they sent the secretary articles with the headlines, “Biden’s son joins Ukrainian gas company’s board,” “Biden’s son joins Ukrainian gas producer board,” and “White House says no issue with Biden’s son, Ukraine gas company.”
The concern for Kerry, of course, was his stepson. Kerry’s chief of staff, David Wade, briefed Kerry to let him know Christopher Heinz wasn’t involved with Burisma. But Biden and Archer were, Wade told the committee:
Question: What was Secretary Kerry’s reaction to you informing him of these news inquiries about Mr. Heinz and the additional information regarding Mr. Archer’s [and] Mr. Hunter Biden’s connection and involvement with Burisma?
Wade: He knew nothing about it.
Question: So he learned about this information from you?
Wade: I believe so, yeah.
Senior advisor David Thorne sent the news articles about Burisma directly to “JK,” the report says. Thorne “informed Wade that he sent the … press clips and articles to the secretary on May 14, 2014.”
The significance of the revelation is this: The secretary of state knew his underlings were quite concerned about Hunter Biden’s employment with Burisma and the appearance of a conflict of interest because of his father.
Biden’s push to fire the prosecutor suggests the vice president was protecting his son.
Yet a text from Hunter Biden to his sister suggests something worse. Pulled from the same laptop that contained e-mails published in the Post, the text says Joe Biden required his relatives to give him 50 percent of their earnings.
That means firing the prosecutor protected a source of income for the head of what Trump aide Rudy Giuliani calls “The Biden Crime Family.”
H/T: The Federalist
