Vice
President Joe Biden upon his arrival for a meeting with Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko Kyiv on Jan. 16, 2017. (GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images)
Biden,
Obama Officials Stood to Gain From Ukraine Influence
Newly released
evidence suggests Ukraine played key role in creating Trump–Russia collusion
narrative at behest of Obama officials
BY JEFF CARLSON
April
26, 2019 Updated: May 2, 2019
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As Ukraine underwent
dramatic changes in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played
a critical role in the Obama administration’s involvement in the revolution
that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Following the revolution, Biden would use
his influence to help force the creation of the troubled National
Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign,
information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that
helped to create the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the
election.
Biden also would use the threat of
withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to pressure Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general. At the time, the prosecutor
had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas giant that had
appointed Biden’s son, Hunter, as a board member.
President Donald Trump’s
personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said, “Keep your eye on Ukraine.” In
his comments to the Washington Examiner, Giuliani highlighted the “plot to create
an investigation of President Trump, based on a false charge of conspiracy with
the Russians to affect the 2016 elections.”
Obama Administration’s 2014 Involvement
On
or shortly before Feb. 4, 2014, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary for
European and Eurasian affairs in the Obama State Department, had a conversation
with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, which was intercepted
and leaked.
In the call, Nuland and Pyatt appeared to
be discussing the ouster of Yanukovych and the installation of opposition
leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister.
Nuland favored opposition leader Yatsenyuk
over his main rivals Vitali Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnybok, telling Pyatt: “I
think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing
experience. He’s the … what he needs is Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the
outside.”
Toward
the end of the conversation, then-Vice President Biden was discussed as being
willing to help cement the changeover in Ukraine:
Geoffrey
Pyatt: “We want to try to get somebody with
an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing.
The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych, but we probably regroup
on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.”
Victoria
Nuland: “So, on that piece Geoff, when I
wrote the note [Biden’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to
me VFR [direct to me], saying you need Biden, and I said probably tomorrow for
an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden’s willing.”
Nuland and Pyatt met with Ukrainian
opposition leaders Klitschko and Yatsenyuk, along with then-President
Yanukovych, just days later on Feb. 7, 2014.
Events
then moved swiftly. On Feb. 22, 2014, Yanukovych was removed as president of Ukraine and fled to Russia.
On Feb. 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk, the candidate favored by Nuland, was installed as
prime minister of Ukraine. Klitschko was left out. Notably, Yatsenyuk would
later resign in April 2016 amid corruption accusations.
Biden’s Involvement in Ukraine
In
April, Biden would get personally involved, as would his son, Hunter. On April
18, 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of directors for Burisma–one
of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine.
Four
days later, on April 22, 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine, offering his political support and
$50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government. Poroshenko, a
billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.
Biden
became close to both men and helped Ukraine obtain a four-year, $17.5 billion IMF package in March
2015.
In
October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, “What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe,” which described
Biden’s role in the removal of Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Victor Shokin.
Shokin, the choice of Poroshenko, was portrayed as fumbling a major corruption
case and “hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state prosecutors
arrested on corruption charges.”
The
United States pushed for Shokin’s removal, and Biden led the effort by
personally threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview with The Atlantic, Biden recalled telling
Poroshenko: “Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars. It’s OK, you can
keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.”
Shokin was removedby Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.
But
according to reporting by The Hill, at the time of his firing, Shokin had been
investigating Burisma. Shokin’s investigation into Burisma had previously
been disclosed in June 2017, by Front News International.
Burisma
is owned by Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola
Zlochevsky), the former minister of ecology for Ukraine. According to Front News, Zlochevsky issued a “special permit for the extraction of a third of
the gas produced in Ukraine” to his own company, Burisma.
According to the Ukrainian nonprofit Anti Corruption
Action Center, Zlochevsky owns 38 permits held by 14 different companies—with
Burisma accounting for the majority with 33 of the permits.
Zlochevsky left Ukraine after Yanukovych fled to Russia during the Ukrainian
Revolution known as Euromaidan.
Investigation Into Burisma
In
the spring of 2014, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office opened an
investigation at the behest of the UK prosecutors office, which was
investigating money laundering allegations against Zlochevsky and had just frozen $23.5 million in assets allegedly belonging
to him in early April 2014. Shokin, who wasn’t appointed as general prosecutor
until February 2015, wasn’t yet involved in the case.
Ukrainian
prosecutors refused to provide the UK with needed documents, and in
January 2015, a British court ordered the assets unfrozen. This action was
pointedly called out in a speech by Pyatt, who stated, “In the case of former
Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the UK authorities had seized $23 million
in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people.”
Instead of receiving cooperation from
Ukrainian prosecutors, they “sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting
that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the UK
court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
On Feb. 10, 2015, Shokin was appointed
prosecutor general of Ukraine, and he picked up the investigation into Burisma,
which reportedly continued until his formal resignation in February 2016.
Around
the same time that Zlochevsky’s assets were being frozen in the UK, Burisma
appointed Hunter Biden to its board on April 18, 2014. Hunter’s compensation
had never been disclosed by Burisma, which is a private company, but Ryan
Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, told The New York Times that Biden’s
compensation was “not out of the ordinary” for similar board positions.
However,
according to The Hill’s reporting, Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was
receiving regular payments—“usually more than $166,000 a month”—from
Burisma. The payments ran from the spring of 2014 through the fall of 2015 and
reportedly totaled more than $3 million.
The Hill article included a written answer
from Shokin, who told Solomon that his investigation into Burisma had included
plans for “interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all
members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko,
following Shokin’s forced dismissal, the Burisma investigation was transferred
to Sytnyk’s NABU, which then reportedly closed the investigation sometime in 2016.
The
Kyiv Post on March 27 published an editorial written by three members of the Anti-Corruption
Action Center in Kyiv that disputed Lutsenko’s interview with The Hill. They
claim that two cases relating to Burisma are still being investigated by NABU:
“Two cases regarding the extraction of
licenses by Zlochevsky’s companies and embezzlement of public funds at the
ministry’s procurements during Zlochevsky’s Ministerial tenure remain active
and are investigated by NABU.”
They also claim that “none of the criminal
proceedings against Burisma were closed by NABU.” They acknowledged that the
case concerning illegal issuance of licenses to extract natural resources were
transferred to NABU in December 2015, but claim that SAP missed procedural
deadlines for a lawsuit on canceling those licenses.
The
politics within Ukraine are extremely complicated, and corruption is endemic,
often leading to conflicting accounts of events.
US Pressure to Investigate Manafort
In
January 2016, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama’s
National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of
Justice (DOJ) met in Washington, according to an April 26 article by The Hill.
The meeting, which was reportedly billed as
“training,” apparently also touched on two other matters—the revival of a
closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed
Party of Regions and the closure of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into
Burisma.
According to The Hill’s reporting, the
Ukrainian Embassy confirmed that meetings were held, but said it “had no record
that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings.”
A
Jan. 22, 2016, NABU press release confirmed that NABU Director Artem Sytnyk
was in Washington from Jan. 19 to 21.
At
the same time as the NABU meeting with Obama officials, Vice President
Biden also met with senior Ukrainian officials. On Jan. 21,
2016, Biden met with Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. According
to the White House release, the two leaders agreed “to continue to
move forward on Ukraine’s anti-corruption agenda.”
Just six days earlier, on Jan 15, 2016,
Biden had met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, promising to
commit $220 million in new assistance to Ukraine that year.
Notably,
several months later, Sytnyk and Ukrainian Member of Parliament Serhiy
Leshchenko would publicly disclose the contents of the Ukrainian “black
ledger” to the media, which implicated Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
The revelation would force Manafort from the campaign.
Leshchenko also served as a source for
various individuals, including journalist Michael Isikoff and Democratic
National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa. In addition, Leshchenko
served as a direct source of information for Fusion GPS—and its researcher,
former CIA contractor Nellie Ohr.
Another
Ukrainian-related meeting also took place in January 2016 when Chalupa,
a Ukrainian-American, informed an unknown senior DNC official that she believed
there was a Russian connection with the Trump campaign. Notably, this theme
would be picked up by the Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016. Chalupa also
told the official to expect Manafort’s involvement in the Trump campaign.
How
Chalupa knew to expect Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign in
January remains unknown, but her forecast proved prescient, as Manafort reached out to the Trump campaign shortly after, on Feb.
29, 2016, through a mutual acquaintance, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. According to
Manafort, he and Trump hadn’t been in communication for years until the Trump campaign responded to
Manafort’s offer.
As
The Epoch Times previously reported, on May 30, 2016, Fusion GPS contractor
Nellie Ohr sent an email to her husband, high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr,
and three other DOJ officials to alert them of the discovery of the “Reported
Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’” It was this
discovery that led to Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign in August
2016.
On
Aug. 14, 2016, The New York Times published an article alleging that payments to Manafort had been
uncovered from the Party of Regents’ “black box”—the 400-page handwritten ledger
released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow for Manafort, who
resigned from the Trump campaign just days later.
NABU Ties to FBI
Following
the successful overthrow of Yanukovych, Joe Biden had a direct hand in the
formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), as he personally
“pushed for the creation of an independent anti-corruption bureau to combat
graft,” according to an Oct. 30, 2016, article by Foreign Policy.
NABU
was formally established in
October 2014 in response to pressure from not only the U.S. State Department
and Biden, but also by the International Monetary Fund and the European
Commission.
Despite
the international push, the fledgling anti-corruption unit took more than a
year to actually become a functioning unit. During this time, NABU officials
began establishing a relationship with the FBI. In early 2016, NABU Director
Sytnyk announced that his bureau was very close to signing a
memorandum of cooperation with the FBI and by February 2016, the FBI had had a permanent representative
onsite at the NABU offices.
On
June 5, 2016, Sytnyk met with U.S. Ambassador Pyatt to discuss a more formalized relationship with the FBI and,
on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI entered into a memorandum of understanding that allowed
for an FBI office onsite at NABU offices to focus on international money
laundering cases. The relationship was renewed for an additional two years in June 2017.
NABU
has repeatedly refused to make the memorandum of understanding with the FBI
public and went to court in 2018 to prevent its release. After
receiving an unfavorable opinion from the Kyiv District Administrative Court,
NABU appealed the ruling, which was overturned in its favor by the Sixth
Administrative Court of Appeal.
Sytnyk,
along with parliamentarian Leshchenko, became the subject of an investigation
in Ukraine and in December 2018, a Kyiv court ruled that both men “acted illegally when they revealed
that Manafort’s surname and signature were found in the so-called black ledger
of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions,” the Kyiv Post reported on Dec. 12, 2018.
The court noted the material was part of a
pre-trial investigation and its release “led to interference in the electoral
processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a
state.”
Leshchenko
had publicly adopted a strong anti-Trump stance, telling the Financial Times in August 2016 that “a Trump
presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy”
and that it was “important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he
is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the
world.” Leschenko noted that the majority of Ukrainian politicians were “on
Hillary Clinton’s side.”
In
December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko accused Sytnyk of allowing the FBI to conduct illegal
operations in Ukraine, claiming that the “U.S. law enforcers were allegedly
invited without the permission required and in breach of the necessary procedures.”
Lutsenko continued by asking, “Who actually let the foreign
special service act in Ukraine?”
Taras
Chornovil, a Ukrainian political analyst, also questioned the FBI’s
activities, writing that “some kind of undercover operations are
being conducted in Ukraine with direct participation (or even under control) of
the FBI. This means the FBI operatives could have access to classified data or
confidential information.”
Lutsenko
called for an audit of NABU, claiming to “possess information of interest to the
auditors” and was pushing for Sytnyk’s resignation, along with that of Nazar
Kholodnitskiy, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP).
According to reporting by Euromaidan Press, Lutsenko’s efforts failed
“thanks to the reaction from Ukraine’s American partners.”
Michael
Carpenter, an adviser to Joe Biden, personally issued a public warning to Lutsenko and others pushing for
Sytnyk’s removal, stating, “If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the
Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all
U.S. government assistance to #Ukraine,
including security assistance.”
Sytnyk remains in his position as NABU’s
director.
Pinchuk’s Ties to Leshchenko, Clintons
On
April 11, 2019, Greg Craig, Obama’s former White House counsel
and a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP,
was indictedfor lying about and concealing his work in Ukraine.
Craig, who reportedly worked closely with Manafort, was paid more than $4 million to produce an “independent”
report justifying Ukraine’s trial and conviction of the former prime minister,
Yulia Tymoshenko. Notably, Craig’s name was not included in the
“Black Ledger” leak from Leshchenko and Sytnyk.
The
indictment notes that “a wealthy private Ukrainian” was fully funding the
report. In a recent YouTube video, Craig publicly stated that “it was Doug Schoen
who brought this project to me, and he told me he was acting on behalf of
Victor Pinchuk, who was a pro-western, Ukrainian businessman who helped to fund
the project.”
“The
Firm understood that its work was to be largely funded by Victor Pinchuk,”
Skadden wrote in recent FARA filings.
Pinchuk put out a statement on Jan. 21,
denying any financial involvement:
“Mr. Pinchuk was not the source of any
funds used to pay fees of Skadden in producing their report into the trial and
conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko. He was in no way responsible for those costs.
Neither Mr. Pinchuk nor companies affiliated with him have ever been a client
of Skadden. Mr. Pinchuk and his team had no role in the work done by Skadden,
including in the preparation or dissemination of the Skadden report.”
Pinchuk is the founder of Interpipe, a
steel pipe manufacturer. He owns Credit Dnipro Bank, several ferroalloy plants
and a media empire. He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
Pinchuk has been accused of profiting
immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at severely below-market
prices through political favoritism.
Between
April 4 and April 12, 2016, Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova had four meetings, with Samuel Charap (International
Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz Zentos (National Security Council),
Michael Kimmage (State Department), and David Kramer (McCain Institute).
FARA documents filed by Schoen showed that he was paid
$40,000 a month by Pinchuk (page 5)—in part to arrange these meetings.
Schoen attempted to arrange another 72
meetings with congressmen and media (page 10). It’s unknown how many of these
meetings, if any, took place.
Schoen
also helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street
Journal reported on March 19, 2015, how Schoen connected
Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to pressure
former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko–a political rival
of Yanukovych–from jail. And the relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons
continued. According to the Kyiv Post:
“Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd
U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the annual YES and other Pinchuk
events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is known
internationally as a businessman and philanthropist.”
Although
exact numbers aren’t clear, reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate
that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk’s donations went to the Clinton
organization.
Pinchuk
also has ties to Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked the information on
Manafort. Leshchenko had been a frequent speaker at the Ukrainian Breakfast,
a traditional private event held at Davos, Switzerland, and hosted by the
Victor Pinchuk Foundation and has also been pictured with Pinchuk at multiple
other events.