Updated: September 26, 2020 7:54:41 am
The Bidens’ connection to Ukraine began in April 2014, when Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company. (Photo: Elizabeth Weinberg / The New York Times)
Six weeks before the US presidential election on November 3, the Republican party has launched a new attack on Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden. On Wednesday, two Republican-led committees in the United States Senate released a report saying Hunter Biden “capitalized on” his father’s position by joining the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukraine natural gas company, in 2014. .
The report, however, did not find any evidence of corruption by the Bidens and acknowledged that it was “unclear” to what extent Hunter Biden’s presence on Burisma’s board of directors affected US policy toward Ukraine.
President Donald Trump has long accused the Bidens of wrongdoing in Ukraine and was indicted last year for a controversial phone call he had with the president of Ukraine, in which he appeared to ask Kiev to open an investigation into the Bidens.
The Russian billionaire transferred Hunter Biden 3 1/2 million dollars. This is on top of all the money he got while Joe was Vice President Crooked, but Fake Mainstream Media wants him to go away!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2020
Trump tweeted Thursday: “Russian billionaire transferred $ 3 1/2 million to Hunter Biden. This in addition to the rest of the money he received while Joe was vice president of Crooked, but Fake Mainstream Media wants him to go away! “
The Bidens and Ukraine
The Bidens’ connection to Ukraine began in April 2014, when Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company owned by oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was a former minister in the government of Viktor Yanukovych, a leader with close ties to Russia who had just been removed as president by the Parliament of Ukraine.
In February 2015, a man named Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s attorney general and took over an ongoing investigation into money laundering, tax evasion and corruption against Zlochevsky and Burisma. The United States and the International Monetary Fund accused Shokin of being slow on corruption.
In March 2016, Vice President Biden, who was involved in Ukrainian politics under President Obama, went to Kiev and threatened President Petro Poroshenko with withholding a scheduled $ 1 billion loan if he did not fire Shokin. In 2018, Biden boasted that as a result of his threat, the “son of a bitch … was fired.”
Trump’s impeachment
Trump and Republicans, however, argued that the real reason the vice president tried to impeach Shokin was to prevent Burisma’s owner from being investigated and to protect Hunter Biden.
Since spring 2019, according to various US media reports, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani began to pressure Ukrainians to investigate Biden for the Burisma episode.
Then, in July, Trump had a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he appeared to pressure the latter to open a corruption investigation in his country against the Bidens, and was accused of withholding US aid to Ukraine, worth millions, as a lever. .
The controversy led to Trump being indicted in December last year by the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives. The president, however, survived removal from office after the Republican-majority Senate voted not to convict him.
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What the new report from Republican lawmakers says
The report from the United States Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees, titled “Hunter Biden, Burisma and Corruption,” refers primarily to Hunter Biden and makes limited mention of the former vice president.
He has called Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma “awkward” and “troublesome,” but found no evidence that the Obama administration’s foreign Ukraine was manipulated because of him.
“What the presidents discovered during the course of this investigation is that the Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden’s position on the Burisma junta was problematic and interfered with the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” the report said, but he acknowledged: It is not clear to what extent Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board of directors affected US policy toward Ukraine. “
The report was based primarily on concerns raised in 2015 and 2016 by George Kent, a State Department official, that Hunter Biden’s lucrative position in Burisma made him “very uncomfortable for all US officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, “according to a New York Times. report.
However, he also quoted Kent as saying that the US Embassy in Kiev never made a decision “in which we take into account the presence of a private citizen on the board.”
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Impact on the US elections
President Trump, who faces widespread criticism for his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, has consistently lagged behind Joe Biden in polls for the November race.
The report by Republican lawmakers just over a month before the presidential vote is seen as an attempt to keep the party’s conservative base active. For their part, Democrats have criticized the report as a last-minute attack on Trump’s electoral opponent, and Joe Biden’s campaign has said it has been based on “a long-refuted far-right conspiracy theory.”
According to the BBC, the report is not expected to cause significant damage to Democrats, given that Trump and the American right-wing media have already made much more serious allegations against the Bidens during the year.
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