TESTIMONY: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ORCHESTRATED UKRAINE PROSECUTOR'S REMOVAL
BY R. CORT KIRKWOOD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s claims of innocence in the Biden-Burisma scandal just took another blow.This time, the truth came from a high-ranking official in the State Department. He told Congress on Tuesday that the Obama Administration arranged the sacking of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the energy company that employed Biden’s son.Vice President Joe Biden, then managing Ukraine affairs for Obama, was the button man.He famously told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin — or else.Yet Joe and Hunter Biden claim the younger Biden’s business interests in Ukraine were unrelated to Biden senior’s diplomatic wet work, and that the United States was just going along with other countries.Not quite right, says the man from State.Get Rid of Him The latest on the Biden-Burisma intrigue comes once again from The Federalist’s Sean Davis.On Tuesday, a source told Davis, George Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, offered testimony that “directly contradicts claims that the Obama administration was merely following the lead of the so-called international community in demanding the firing” of Shokin.Shokin, recall, was probing Burisma Holdings, an energy company that for some inexplicable reason put Hunter Biden, a known drug addict kicked out of the Navy for cocaine use, on its board. Young Biden had zero experience in the energy business.In March 2016, Joe Biden targeted Shokin. The weapon? $1 billion in loan guarantees. As Biden bragged during an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, “I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.”“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b**ch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”That story resurfaced thanks to Trump’s asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during their now-famous phone call, to probe Biden-Burisma. Supposedly, Trump sought “foreign interference” in urging Zelensky and Ukraine to take out Biden by revealing his role in the Shokin hit.Biden claims he and his son “did nothing wrong,” that Shokin was fired not just because of the United States but also because other countries wanted him out, too.But in the secret House Intelligence Committee hearings on impeachment on Tuesday, Kent said “the Obama administration spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine,” Davis reported. Continued Davis, “Kent said the international community — namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western nations within the European Union — were deferential to U.S. directives on the matter.”In other words, claims that the Obama administration was merely following the lead of others is nonsense.As well, Davis reported:Kent also testified that concerns about corruption within Burisma, where Hunter Biden inexplicably served as a highly paid board member for five years, were openly voiced long before Trump became president. According to Kent, he personally raised red flags about a 2016 initiative between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Burisma due to concerns the company was tied to government corruption in the country. Kent testified that USAID was gearing up for an event with Burisma that involved children, and that he felt uncomfortable seeing children used as photo op props for a company with a reputation for corruption and graft.The Facts on Biden-Burisma Kent’s revelation that the Obama administration orchestrated Shokin’s removal comports with other facts about Biden-Burisma:• Ukraine re-opened the Burisma case before Trump’s call.• Burisma’s legal and public relations team apologized for the claims that Shokin was corrupt.• The claim that Biden couldn’t have pushed Poroshenko to fire Shokin because the Burisma probe had ended is false.• Shokin testified in court documents that “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings ... Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors.”• The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee colluded with Ukrainians to sink Trump in 2016 by connecting Trump to Russia through Ukraine.• The Obama administration not only knee-capped Shokin, but also blocked a probe into the misuse of U.S. anti-corruption aid and an anti-corruption group backed by the administration and billionaire subversive George Soros, who backed Hillary Clinton.Despite those facts, Biden’s media protectorate insists “there is no evidence” of wrongdoing.