The former Ukrainian prosecutor fired at Joe Biden’s urging, claiming the then-vice president wanted to stop him from investigating his son – and even planned to bring Hunter in for questioning.
Former Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin, 70, made shocking claims in a little-known video from 2019.
The video has recently resurfaced, along with new evidence supporting the theory that Joe fired him to stop an investigation into Burisma, the allegedly corrupt gas company that Hunter served on the board.
Shokin will reiterate his claims in an interview with Fox News on Saturday night.
“Joe Biden had reason to fear that all of this would eventually fall on his son,” the ex-prosecutor said in the 2019 video.
Former Ukraine Attorney General Viktor Shokin accuses Joe and Hunter Biden of “corruption”.
Republicans said Hunter’s involvement in Burisma and his possible influence on Shokin’s firing were evidence of influence by the Biden family
“When we began to actively move forward to solve this crime and find out who broke Ukrainian laws in Burisma, we eventually determined that the administrators hired in May and June 2014 were likely involved.” “That was Devon Archer, Hunter Biden and others.”
“We planned to interrogate Hunter Biden and Devon Archer.” [but] “We didn’t have time,” Shokin said in another interview with Ukrainian news site Strana on May 6 of the same year.
Burisma was accused of evading 1 billion Ukrainian hryvnia (up to $63 million) in taxes during Hunter’s tenure as a board member in 2014 and 2015, opening up potential liabilities for those who signed his accounts.
The heated controversy over Joe’s intervention in Ukraine, ostensibly on behalf of his son, has been called a “conspiracy theory debunked” by the left, but is now being cited by Republicans as the reason for the president’s impeachment.
Shokin’s claims that he investigated Hunter directly – and was therefore dismissed – are likely to fuel the flames further.
Hunter and his friend Devon Archer both joined the Burisma board in 2014 on salaries of $1 million a year. Devon assumed his role just days after meeting Joe at the White House.
Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky was then under investigation by Ukrainian, US and UK authorities for fraudulently obtaining gas licenses and alleged fraud.
Joe publicly boasted that in 2015 he threatened to withhold $1 billion in US aid to Ukraine until Shokin was fired, and was recorded in a phone call with then-President Petro Poroshenko referring to the dismissal of the chief prosecutor.
In March 2016, Shokin was finally released from the Attorney General’s Office.
Articles in the New York Times and Washington Post have dismissed the connection between the events, reporting that the investigation into Burisma “was dormant” during Shokin’s 13-month tenure as chief prosecutor and that his sacking was pushed by the European International Monetary Fund due to his lackluster handling in law enforcement, he has criticized the policies of the Union and the United States.
But documents obtained by show that Shokin opened and pursued cases against Zlochevsky, seized his assets and even prosecuted his own employees for providing the oligarch with $23 million frozen by a British court were stolen to Cyprus.
Documents released this month show that as late as January 2016, senior White House and State Department officials were “impressed” with his office’s work, while bureaucrats believed that as of October 2015, just before Biden, Ukraine’s government had “sufficiently progress” to justify a $1 billion loan threatened to withhold the money.
Shokin was promoted from his deputy position to chief prosecutor in February 2015.
His predecessor had screwed up an investigation into Burisma the year before by not providing enough evidence to a British court to uphold the freeze on Zlochevsky’s assets.
In June 2015, Shokin launched an investigation into gas licenses issued during Zlochevsky’s tenure as Environment Minister and another to track down suspected accomplices in the prosecutor’s office.
The next month, he met with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, and his office issued a press release on the progress of the Zlochevsky investigation…in particular, intensifying cooperation with the British in this direction.
Former Ukraine Attorney General Viktor Shokin accuses Joe and Hunter Biden of “corruption”.
In public statements, Pyatt criticized the widespread corruption in the prosecutor’s office, but did not name him.
Ukrainian news sites reported that “two cottages, two pieces of land, a 922-square-meter household, a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a caravan” were confiscated from Zlochevsky in February 2015 at Shokin’s behest.
According to a Kyiv Post report, in October of the same year, Shokin also publicly complained that the British court had declassified Zlochevsky’s assets and launched a joint investigation with British and European authorities.
“The portrayal as ‘dormant’ has nothing to do with the reality of the facts,” Shokin ranted in his 2019 video.
“We were making progress, myself and my colleagues, and we were close to reaching the exit of this case.”
In a 2020 affidavit filed with a European court, he even acknowledged his claims.
“I was forced out of office because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption investigation into Bursima … and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the board,” he wrote.
“In my conversations with Poroshenko at the time, he insisted that I should stop my investigation into Burisma.”
“I have refused to complete this investigation.” As such, I was forced to resign under direct and intense pressure from Joe Biden.”
On June 11, 2015, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland responded to a letter from Shokin on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry, saying the Department was “impressed by your government’s ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda.”
“The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement and judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair and transparent manner,” Nuland wrote.
President Joe Biden delivers a speech to the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2015
A working group of state, judiciary and Treasury officials examining the proposed US$1 billion loan to Ukraine concluded in October 2015 that “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to to justify a third guarantee,” according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Just the News website.
The review did not tie the loan to Shokin’s dismissal, although Joe later pushed for his dismissal.
And National Security Council staffer Eric Ciaramella wrote in a Jan. 21, 2016 email that his team was “super impressed” after a two-hour meeting with staff from Shokin’s office.
But while Shokin’s Burisma investigation was vigorously conducted, his other corruption investigations proved flawed.
Public support for the judiciary chief in Ukraine was poor for his failure to prosecute criminals from the corrupt previous government, and protesters at street demonstrations in the capital called for his and others’ resignation.
His image took a serious blow in July 2015 when his stubborn deputy, David Sakvarelidze, found out that two of Shokin’s allies and associates had stolen an apartment containing $400,000 in sacks of cash, 65 diamonds, copies of Shokin’s passports and a Kalashnikov rifle. owned a gun.
According to a 2019 report by the Independent, the investigation into Sakvarelidze was shelved and he was forced out of his job.
As of late 2015, Joe increased his own efforts to defeat Shokin. In the eight days leading up to his final release in March 2016, Biden called Poroshenko four times to make clear the threat that without his resignation there would be no help, his former advisers told the LA Times.
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018, Joe bragged about telling Poroshenko at the time, ‘We’re not going to give you the billion dollars… If the prosecutor isn’t fired, you won’t get the money.” and added added: ‘Well, damn son, he got fired.’
Despite the unclear modus operandi of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, statements from insiders make it clear that Zlochevsky was concerned about the investigation.
In a testimony before Congress earlier this month, Hunter’s Burisma board member Devon Archer said the Burisma owner and its CEO Vadym Pozharskyi had put “constant pressure” on Hunter to get help from “Washington DC” in dealing with Shokin’s investigation .
Archer claimed he saw Hunter and the Burisma owner “calling DC” in December 2015 to discuss the matter.
“Shokin was considered a threat to the company,” Archer said in a subsequent interview with Tucker Carlson.
“Shokin took a close look at Burisma,” he said. “He was a threat. He ended up confiscating assets from [Zlochevsky].’