Congressional investigators demand State turn over records on firing of Ukraine prosecutor

House investigators demanded Tuesday the State Department turn over all evidence detailing Joe Biden‘s role in forcing the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor during the Obama years after Just the News published new memos showing there was a “sudden change” in U.S. policy after the prosecutor began escalating an investigation of the Burisma Holdings firm that employed son Hunter Biden. 

The inquiry by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee revives an issue that first surfaced during the 2019 impeachment of former President Donald Trump, and which has remained in dispute ever since. 

“The Committee seeks information from the U.S. Department of State (State Department or Department) to provide context for certain sudden foreign policy changes that occurred while Joe Biden was Vice President, particularly regarding Ukraine while then-Vice President Biden’s son served on the board of directors of a company being investigated for corruption,” Chairman James Comer wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “The Committee requests information from the State Department regarding then-Vice President’s actions and decisions relating to Ukraine.”

You can read that letter here:

Joe Biden and his defenders have acknowledged he as vice president threatened in late 2015 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine until the country fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, but insisted it had nothing to do with Shokin’s probe of Burisma. They said that Biden was simply carrying out U.S. policy when he made the threat and believe that Shokin was corrupt. 

But the new memos published last week show career professionals in the State, Treasury, and Justice departments had recommended in fall 2015 that Biden give the $1 billion in guarantees to Ukraine because Shokin‘s office and Ukraine had made enough progress on anti-corruption reforms.

State had even sent a letter to Shokin suggesting he was doing a good job the summer before. 

Comer’s letter said the new information raise questions about the narrative and explanations that have been given by Biden is defenders over the years. 

“The Committee seeks to understand the State Department’s sudden change in disposition towards the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General in late 2015. On June 11, 2015, then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland wrote Prosecutor General Shokin, applauding his office’s progress in anti-corruption efforts,” Comer wrote in a letter that laid out a timetable showing the sudden change in US policy. 

“By late 2015, however, the removal of Prosecutor General Shokin became a condition of the loan guarantee by the United States.In March 2016, Shokin was dismissed from his position by the Ukrainian Rada after months of public pressure most adamantly applied by then-Vice President Biden,” the letter also reads.

“The timing of these events is notable to the Committee. During the Committee’s transcribed interview with Devon Archer – a longtime Biden family associate – Archer explained that by late 2015, Vadym Pozharsky, Burisma’s corporate secretary, was increasingly pushing Hunter Biden to deliver help from the U.S. government regarding pressure Zlochevsky was facing from the Office of the Prosecutor General and abroad,” he concluded. 

The letter gave Blinken until the end of the month to turn over the evidence.