Actually, Hutch they were! Just weeks earlier people from the State Department were sending messages to Ukraine praising them for their work at cleaning up corruption.
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Joe Biden always has claimed Shokin was himself corrupt, and that he was just following an international consensus to get him removed.
But an Oct.1, 2015 missive from the Interagency Policy Committee, which advised Obama’s White House on anti-corruption reform efforts in Ukraine, makes no mention of this, and in fact praises that, “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee” of loans.
Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s top point person on Ukraine at the time, even sent Shokin a letter that summer praising the prosecutor for his work combating corruption in the former Soviet republic.
“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” Nuland writes in the June 2015 letter.
“The challenges you face are difficult, but not insurmountable. You have an historic opportunity to address the injustices of the past by vigorously investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and recovering assets stolen from the Ukrainian people. The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement, and the judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair, and transparent manner.”
“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” Nuland writes in the June 2015 letter.
nypost.com
