Former Vice President
Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden's son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
Thereās just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents ā many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles ā conflict with Bidenās narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burismaās legal troubles and stop prosecutorsā plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burismaās American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the countryās chief prosecutor and offered āan apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figuresā about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the
Ukrainian governmentās official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor's firing was announced.
In addition, Burismaās American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to
that memo and the American legal teamās internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutorās firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma's American legal team refer to those allegations as āfalse information?"
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burismaās American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trumpās personal lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraineās new president, Volodymyr Zelensky,
told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma's owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General's office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma
announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
After I first
reported it in a column, the New York Times and
ABC News published similar stories confirming my reporting.
More at link below.
Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden's Ukraine story
