House Republicans request unredacted State documents regarding Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on Thursday asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for an extensive list of documents related to the ongoing controversy involving Hunter Biden and Burisma holdings. 

The request comes shortly after new information came to light raising questions about former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch's impeachment testimony to Congress last year when she said she knew little about the Ukrainian natural gas firm. 

On Wednesday new material obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by conservative group Citizens United and reported first by Just the News revealed that Yovanovitch may have misled Congress last year about the extent of her awareness of and contact with Burisma, which has been at the center of a possible corruption scandal for years.

Documents showed that Yovanovitch was directly informed in 2016 of Burisma's hiring of a strategy firm with deep Democratic connections, as well as the presence of then-Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter on the board of the company. At one point she also hosted a meeting with a Burisma representative less than two months before Trump took office; she had also received correspondence from a Burisma lawyer in September of that year and had met with a company official three months later, shortly before Christmas. 

Jordan on Thursday cited these revelations when petitioning Pompeo for more access to State Department documents associated with the foreign gas company. He asked Pompeo for "unredacted copies of all documents released pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act relating to Burisma Holdings, [Burisma founder] Mykola Zlochevsky, or Hunter Biden,” as well as documents and communications pertaining to Zlochevsky, Biden, Christopher Heinz, and Devon Archer over a three-year period from 2014-2017. 

Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, and Archer, an American businessman, were business partners with Hunter Biden in an American venture. Archer and Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma at the same time, but Heinz did not become involved with the Ukraine company.

In his letter to Pompeo, Jordan said he was requesting the documents “in order to better understand any previous barriers to our ability to cooperate with international law enforcement efforts related to Burisma.”

The representative requested the material be delivered no later than May 28.