by John Solomon
Six years after Democrats pursued the impeachment case, many of the allegations have crumbled in the face of two convictions, the pardons of Hunter Biden and others, as well as new evidence uncovered by Congress from the FBI, the Justice Dept and the CIA.
Two powerful committee chairmen in Congress tell Just the News it is time to declassify evidence submitted by an alleged intelligence community whistleblower that prompted the first impeachment trial against President Donald Trump for his efforts to investigate the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Six years after Democrats pursued the impeachment case over a call that Trump made to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, many of the allegations have crumbled in the face of two convictions and pardons of Hunter Biden and new evidence uncovered by Congress from the FBI, the Justice Department and the CIA.
The latest evidence was released this week by CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealing that Joe Biden‘s vice presidential staff suppressed an intelligence community report from being published that revealed that Ukrainian officials believed Hunter Biden‘s work for the corrupt Burisma Holdings energy company undercut U.S. efforts to fight corruption in that former Soviet republic.
“Declassify everything. Let's be transparent. Let's release all the documents,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told the Just the News, No Noise television show. “That's what needs to happen. The American people need to see the true reality of what was going on.
“The Democrats colluded with the liberal media, who were in cahoots with the deep state government agencies to try to create false narratives that Trump did something wrong, that he was trying to dig up something untrue about the Biden family, when it was very true and it was very serious,” he said.
So-called whistle-blowers capable of damage
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., chairman of the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, said he too believes the complaint that prompted the 2019 impeachment probe and eventual acquittal of Trump should be made public, including confirming the alleged whistleblower's identity and his possible connections to Biden.
"That's not a whistleblower," Johnson told the same TV show. "I've always said, you know, that not all whistleblowers are created equally. That's right, you know, some whistleblowers, corruptly and maybe even criminally, have an axe to grind and use that whistleblower status to do real damage, I mean, for really evil purposes."
"And I would say that describes this guy. So this isn't a whistleblower. This is somebody who is sabotaging the administration with duly elected president," he added. "The name should be exposed."
The Democrat-led impeachment efforts against Trump in 2019 were prompted by a complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general by an unnamed CIA officer who claimed that Trump used a call with Zelenskyy to pressure the Ukraine leader to investigate allegations the Biden family had a corrupt relationship with an energy company called Burisma Holdings and that Trump tried to tie U.S. foreign aid to the request.
Though the transcript of the call eventually was released showing Trump did not tie U.S. aid to his request, House Democrats proceeded to impeach Trump before the Senate acquitted him at trial.
During the case, Democrats presented evidence alleging there was no reason to investigate the Bidens' relationship with Burisma and Joe Biden's effort to withhold $1 billion in foreign aid to force the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden's energy company employer. Witnesses claimed Joe Biden as vice president was simply following U.S. policy, and Hunter Biden's relationship with Burisma did not affect U.S. policy.
The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine even testified she had no contact or dealings with Burisma except what she was briefed on before she took the job in 2016. Democrats claimed Trump's efforts were simply a political smear job orchestrated by one of his lawyers, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
But in the years after the acquittal, evidence emerged to contradict most of the Democrats' case. IRS agents showed Hunter Biden had failed to pay U.S. taxes on some of the money he earned from Burisma, and eventually the first son was convicted on related tax charges.
Biden's team hid crucial facts from law enforcement and public, CIA says
Memos were unearthed by Just the News showing State Department officials, including the ambassador who became the Democrats' star witness, had numerous conversations and meetings related to Burisma, were warned the company may have been engaged in bribery and believed Hunter Biden's role at Burisma undercut U.S. efforts to fight endemic corruption in Ukraine,
And Congress ultimately concluded that Joe and Hunter Biden engaged with other family members in a corrupt scheme to trade on the family's powerful name to collect millions from foreigners, including from Ukraine, a claim backed up by some of Hunter Biden's former business partners.
The latest blow to the Democrats' discredited narrative was delivered this month when Ratcliffe, the current CIA director, released a long-hidden memo revealing that then-Vice President Joe Biden’s team intervened in February 2016 to prevent the CIA from disseminating an intelligence report to policymakers about the perceptions senior Ukrainian officials held about his son’s business dealings.
“I just spoke with VP/NSA and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated,” the vice president’s Presidential Daily Brief briefer told the CIA. “Thanks for understanding.”
The report, reviewed by Just the News, compiled the reactions of senior Ukrainian government officials to the December 2015 visit of Vice President Biden to Kyiv.
In the aftermath of the country’s Maidan Revolution and the Russian seizure of Crimea, Biden had been appointed President Barack Obama’s point man to manage U.S. policy towards the fledgling, pro-Western government.
Evidence of a double-standard
The document shows that the Ukrainian officials in the government of then-President Petro Poroshenko, were disappointed with the vice president’s visit to their country for his lack of substantive discussions with their leader. Those same officials “privately mused” about the U.S. media’s scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, the report shows.
“These officials viewed the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double-standard within the United States Government towards matters of corruption and political power,” the CIA relayed.
The intelligence report also shows that the Ukrainian officials “expressed bewilderment and disappointment” about the vice president’s visit because he did not engage in any of the expected discussions about substantive matters with Poroshenko or other senior officials.
You can read that report here.
Comer: "Weaponized" intelligence community under Biden
Comer said the report was a bombshell that was kept wrongly from the public and likely would have changed the outcome of Trump's impeachment case had it been turned over in 2019. He accused top Obama-Biden administration officials of a coverup and said the new document exposed "the despicable behavior and the weaponized past of the intelligence community.
"The deep state was covering up for what the Biden family did. Of course, they were concerned about the relationship that the President, the then Vice President's son, had with this corrupt energy company. Of course, they knew that Joe Biden leveraged the foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for firing that prosecutor. Everyone knew it. But yet no one had the decency to come forward in the intelligence community and blow the whistle," he said.
"I'm glad that we finally know the truth there was a coverup," he added. "And I hope that this isn't the end. I hope there's some accountability, and I'm going to do everything in my power to see that we can help hold these people accountable for the wrongdoing."
Comer played a leading role in dismantling the 2019 impeachment narrative the Democrats built.
His final investigative report in 2024 showed that, in fact, Biden changed official U.S. policy in a way that benefited Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where his son Hunter served on the board. Biden and his surrogates have repeatedly denied those allegations.
After more than a year of investigation, the evidence showed then-Vice President Biden changed official policy by calling an “audible” on a flight to Kyiv, linking a $1 billion loan guarantee for the struggling country to its firing of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. This finding confirmed several Just the News reports.
You can read the final impeachment report here and below:
Joe Biden calls an "audible," shifts from official policy
During the 2019 impeachment of President Trump, government witnesses and Congressional Democrats widely repeated the same claim: that Joe Biden did not change U.S. policy and that the Ukrainian prosecutors were not investigating Burisma.
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified that calling for Shokin’s firing was “official U.S. policy,” former Trump envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volkert said the firing "was widely understood internationally to be the right policy,” and another former diplomat, David Holmes, testified that Shokin "was not at that time pursuing investigations of Burisma or the Bidens.”
Last year, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member, Jamie Raskin, D-Md., also said the theories that Joe Biden changed official U.S. policy or that Burisma was under investigation by Shokin were “debunked.”
USA Today, FactCheck.org, and CNN, among dozens of other media outlets called the allegations "debunked" and The Washington Post opined that "This is smoke without a fire."
Just a month before Thanksgiving in 2015, a task force of top State, Treasury and Justice Department officials had decided that Ukraine and its new top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had made enough progress on anti-corruption reforms for the country to receive a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, Just the News previously reported.
They drafted a term sheet for the delivery of the new aid to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko during Biden’s December 2015 trip to Ukraine, and were making plans to invite Shokin’s top staff to Washington in January for a high-level meeting. Shokin himself even got a letter from the State Department declaring it was “impressed” with his reform efforts.
Two Nov. 22, 2015, memos—while demanding Shokin’s ouster—urged the vice president to offer the $1 billion loan guarantee during his trip, according to the documents reviewed by Just the News.
Diplomacy or extortion?
By the time Biden got to Kyiv on Dec. 8-9, 2015, he had altered the plan, deciding to threaten to withhold the loan guarantees until Poroshenko fired Shokin, something he would brag about in a 2018 broadcast on C-SPAN.
The reporting on these memos by Just the News spurred Washington Post fact-checkers to revise the central narrative around Biden’s December 2015 visit to Kyiv, now reporting through interviews with former Obama administration officials that then-Vice President Biden “called an audible”—or changed the plan—to link Viktor Shokin’s firing with the $1 billion loan guarantee.
Before this change in policy, the report notes, there was no indication that Joe Biden would link Shokin’s firing with the loan guarantee. Instead, the committees argue that a December 2015 phone call Hunter Biden made to his father on behalf of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, may have “sparked” the change.
In his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Devon Archer—the longtime business associate of Hunter Biden and fellow Burisma board member—told Congress that Burisma Holdings was pressuring Biden to deal with the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Biden showed no indication of this policy change before his son’s phone call
During a Dec. 2015 Burisma board meeting in Dubai and just days before then-Vice President Biden’s trip to Kyiv, Zlochevsky and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi asked Hunter Biden to “call D.C.,” according to Archer’s testimony about the event. “The request was I think they were getting pressure, and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said.
“What did Hunter Biden do after he was given that request?” the committee asked Archer. “Listen, I did not hear this phone call, but he—he called his dad,” Archer responded. He said Pozharskyi told him that’s what the call had been about afterward.
The committees believe this series of events makes it likely that Biden was influenced by his son’s call, since he “unilaterally” decided to impose a new condition on the loan guarantee with little warning.
“Evidence demonstrates that Hunter Biden called his father, then-Vice President Biden, to help alleviate the pressure that Burisma and its owner Mykola Zlochevsky faced from Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation into the company,” the committees wrote in the report.
“This phone call appears to have sparked Vice President Biden to condition a third $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee on Prosecutor General Shokin’s firing,” they add.
Burisma was under active investigation
The House Oversight Committee attempted to refute the narrative by saying that Biden could not have improperly changed U.S. policy towards Ukraine to benefit his son because Shokin was not actually threatening Burisma. For example, one former diplomat, David Holmes, testified during Trump’s 2019 impeachment that Shokin "was not at that time pursuing investigations of Burisma or the Bidens.”
However, testimony and documents gathered by the impeachment inquiry show that Burisma at least believed that Shokin’s probe was active and that they expressed feeling threatened by the investigation.
In September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa criticizing the prosecutor general’s office for failing to pursue corruption allegations against Burisma in the period before Shokin became the head of the office. The speech galvanized the prosecutor general’s office to launch an effort to seize assets of Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, which was carried out in February 2016.
In addition, the speech later prompted U.S. news media to inquire about Hunter Biden’s role with the company.
After the media scrutiny ramped up, Hunter Biden recommended that Burisma hire Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat-connected firm. On Nov. 2, 2015, Vadim Pozharskyi—the Burisma executive and associate of Hunter Biden—emailed the team questioning the scope of the work that Blue Star would perform.
He made abundantly clear the real purpose for hiring the firm. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay's issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” Pozharskyi wrote the team.
This email was released to the impeachment inquiry committees by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who led a tax investigation into Hunter Biden but came to Congress after what they claimed was favorable treatment of the first son by the Justice Department.
In a media interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on X, Devon Archer expanded on his prior testimony, making clear that Burisma viewed Shokin as a threat.
“And so, at the end of the day, Shokin was taking a look and again, I wasn’t involved in Shokin or any of this, but he was a threat,” Archer told Carlson. “He ended up seizing the assets of, of, Nikolai (Mykola Zlochevsky)… house and cars, a couple of properties and, and Nikolai actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets,” he continued.
John Solomon
Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/satkey-chairmen-congress-want-declassify-evidence
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