NYT: Did Joe Biden strongarm Ukraine to protect his son’s job? And will Republicans pounce?
Ed MorrisseyPosted at 8:41 am on May 2, 2019
Did Joe Biden use his position as vice-president to shield his son Hunter from a corruption probe in Ukraine? The New York Times at least asks the question in describing a curious coincidence of American diplomatic demands for the removal of Kyiv’s equivalent of an attorney general, supposedly for ignoring corruption. However, one potential instance of corruption that had greatly interested Viktor Shokin involved Burisma Holdings — and guess who got $50,000 a month from Burisma?
It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.
The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. He would be paid about $50,000 per month for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.
more
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/05/02/nyt-joe-biden-strongarm-ukraine-protect-sons-job-will-republicans-pounce/
