President Trump’s impeachment ordeal stemmed from a 2019 telephone conversation during which he asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to look into former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Victor Shokin, who was investigating corruption charges against Burisma Holdings, a major energy company.
Although President Trump was acquitted of any impeachable wrongdoings, current presidential candidate Joe Biden is now facing congressional scrutiny regarding his own Ukraine — as well as Chinese — conflicts of interest.
A year-long GOP-led Senate Homeland and Government Affairs and Senate Finance Committee investigation which was concluded last month flagged foreign extortion risks regarding Hunter Biden’s $50,000 per month board seat with Burisma while the vice president served as President Obama’s top Ukraine and China representative.
Among the Senate committee’s 87-page report findings, it states:
In early 2015, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about perceived conflicts of interest. Receiving no response, Kent sent a Sept. 2016 email to colleagues stating: "Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine."
(Yet note that Joe Biden has repeatedly denied knowing anything about his son’s business enterprises.)
In October 2015, Senior State Department official Amos Hochstein also raised concerns with Vice President Biden that Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. Ukraine policy.
Hunter was serving on Burisma’s board when the company’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to "shut the case against Zlochevskiy."
George Kent testified that this bribe occurred in December 2014 (seven months after Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board). After learning about it, he reported the allegation to the FBI.
In addition to the over four million dollars paid by Burisma to Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer, for membership on the board, Hunter, his family, and Archer also received millions of dollars from other foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds.
The report asserts that Hunter received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the widow of a former Moscow mayor.
Hunter had business associations with Gongwen Dong and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army which resulted in millions of dollars in questionable transactions.
Hunter and Dong opened a joint bank account that financed a $100,000 global spending spree with James and Sara Biden. Hunter also moved millions of dollars from his law firm to James Biden’s and Sara Biden’s firm.
Hunter Biden reportedly paid nonresident women who appeared to be linked to an "Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring."
The Senate report indicated that it is unknown whether the FBI ever followed up on these assertions, nor is there any evidence that Hunter Biden or his attorney have denied them.
A bombshell exploded on the Oct. 14 front page issue of the New York Post that described a huge trove of information taken from the hard drive of an unclaimed laptop computer that Hunter seemingly left for repair in a Wilmington, Delaware shop in April 2019. Included are several thousand emails, about a thousand texts, and roughly 800 personal images.
One retrieved email dated April 17, 2015 was allegedly from Vadym Pozharskyi, a number 3 Burisma executive, stating: "Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to D.C. and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure."
Such a statement again flies in the face of Biden’s claim: "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."
To date, neither Joe Biden nor his presidential campaign representatives have disclaimed either the fact that such a meeting, perhaps unofficially occurred — nor that the hard drive source wasn’t authentic.
Pozharskyi had allegedly asked Hunter in an earlier May 2014 email for "advice on how you could use your influence on the company’s behalf."
Just such a possibility readily brings to memory a video clip of Joe Biden bragging during a January 2018 Council on Foreign Relations discussion about conditioning the release of a billion dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine to their firing of Victor Shokan who was prosecuting Burisma.
Recalling that meeting, Biden reiterated: "I looked at them and said, I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."
On Oct. 15, the Post published another article detailing alleged emails between Hunter Biden and his associates regarding a venture involving a since-defunct Shanghai-based China Energy Company (CEFC). One of those emails dated May 13, 2017 titled "Expectations" listed a prospective position for Hunter as "Chair/Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC."
It also proposed equity breakdowns between Hunter, his associates, and a share to be held by Hunter Biden for "the big guy."
If true, Biden family prospects crashed in 2018 after U.S. authorities accused CEFC and its associates of bribing high-level African officials.
The company declared bankruptcy earlier this year.
Nineteen House Republicans are now calling on the FBI to reveal whether it was in possession of the retrieved laptop information during President Trump’s impeachment.
As their letter to the agency states: "If the FBI was, in fact, in possession of this evidence and failed to alert the White House to its existence that would have given even more weight to the president’s legal defense, this was a gross error in judgement and a severe violation of trust."
And the entire nation suffered for it.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 700 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "How Everything Happened, Including Us" (2020), "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.