If there were ever an argument for a “smoking gun,” this could be one — and it’s pointing at former Vice President Joe Biden.
New documents revealing details of a private conversation with the former Ukrainian prosecutor at the center of Democrat’s impeachment inquiry came to light on Wednesday.
The notes containing details of the call were given to Congress by the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick on Wednesday, Fox News reported.
Linick held an “urgent” briefing with aides of the Senate committees on Intelligence, Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Homeland Security. Aides for the House committees on Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Appropriation and Oversight were also included, Fox News reported.
The briefing discussed President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s private interview with Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor believed to have been threatened by Joe Biden to protect his son Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings.
Fox News also obtained a copy of notes from the interview Giuliani conducted from New York City in January 2019. The notes stated that the fired Ukrainian prosecutor claimed his “investigations stopped out of fear of the United States.”
“Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations, but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing,” notes from the interview stated, according to Fox.
Linick reportedly told aides that he received the files in spring but did not know the sender and forwarded the files to the FBI because the allegations were out of his jurisdiction, Fox reported. Linick was given permission by the FBI to share the information with Congress due to the current uproar surrounding President Trump’s call with Ukraine President Zelensky.
Fox News’s sources shared more information from the interview, claiming that prior to Shokin’s firing, multiple warrants were placed on people in Ukraine.
“There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which nothing was received,” Shokin said, according to the notes obtained by Fox. “It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission plus one million dollars. There were no documents or information on Hunter Biden, and Mr. Shokin stated he was warned to stop by Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt.”
In addition, the notes reportedly stated that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden.”
More from the files obtained by Fox:
Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko’s office and told that the investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine.”
Shokin then told Giuliani, according to the notes, that “in or around April of 2016” Poroshenko “told him he had to be fired as the aid to the Ukraine was being withheld by Joe Biden.”
For many Republicans and Trump supporters, the Obama admin and the Ukranian government, which has been widely accused of corruption make perfect bedfellows.
Biden is seen in video boasting about Shokin being fired and is being used in a brutal campaign ad for Trump’s reelection.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b****. He got fired,” Biden said.
Hunter Biden reportedly scored a very high-paying position with scandal-plagued Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, despite having no known expertise in that area.
Hunter’s new position was obtained shortly after the former Vice President visited Ukraine, supposedly to calm the waters after the country’s 2014 revolution.
Several years later, Joe Biden would return and is suspected of revoking $1 billion in potential foreign aid if Shokin didn’t cease his investigation into Burisma.
The release of Giuliani’s notes appears to back the allegation that Biden is guilty of the very thing Democrats are accusing Trump of doing — strongarming a foreign government for personal gain.
Biden’s camp has denied any wrongdoing, and the Wall St. Journal reported last week that the investigation into Burisma was inactive before Biden intervened.
But as Fox reports, citing the interview, “Shokin, at the time, was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky, the former minister of ecology and natural resources of Ukraine — also the founder of Burisma. Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of the firm, which Shokin claimed was an appointment made by Zlochevsky ‘in order to protect himself.’”
Giuliani told Fox the details of the January interview were gathered before Biden announced his presidential run.
The Trump administration’s vow to “drain the swamp” and uncover corruption and self-serving bad actors within the deep state has been turning up some nasty dust — Biden’s shady dealings with Ukraine are seemingly a big part of it.
“I explored them as part of my duty as an attorney to show that the crimes committed, were not by my client, but by Democrats. I was not seeking to investigate Joe Biden. I was not investigating Joe Biden,” Giuliani told Fox.
“Maybe they will now,” he said.
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Missy Halsey is the site administrator and a writer for BizPac Review. Originally from Indiana, she now calls sunny central Florida her home.
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