Trump's assertion contradicted
The actions at the center of Trump's allegation occurred in late 2015 and early 2016, when
U.S. aid was critical to Ukraine. Russia had seized control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula
and was supporting separatists who were fighting Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the
country.
Biden took an interest in Ukraine, said Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry fellow at Stanford
University and former ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton.
"You saw the vice president begin to emerge as really sort of the senior policy lead on
Ukraine," Pifer said. "It's good to have attention at that level."
At one point, Biden withheld $1 billion in aid to Ukraine to pressure the government to
remove Shokin from the Prosecutor General's Office.
Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani claim Biden did this to quash Shokin's
investigation into Ukraine's largest gas company, Burisma Holdings, and its owner, oligarch
Mykola Zlochevsky.
They say this benefited Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who served on Burisma's board of
directors – for which he was paid $50,000 a month.
Their assertion is contradicted by former diplomatic officials who were following the issue at
the time.
Burisma Holdings was not under scrutiny at the time Joe Biden called for Shokin's ouster,
according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, an independent agency set up
in 2014 that has worked closely with the FBI.
Shokin's office had investigated Burisma, but the probe focused on a period before Hunter
Biden joined the company, according to the anti-corruption bureau.
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