The special advisor report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed far more than those of our president mental deficits and the width of its irresponsible management of top-secret and classified information. The report found a strong connection between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to information during the elder’s tenure as vice president.
Special Counsel Robert Hur on Thursday released the results of his investigation into the president following the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s Washington-based Penn Biden Center, his private home in Delaware and at the University of Delaware. Although the specific details of the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided a sufficiently comprehensive summary of the documents to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and “business” ventures. by Hunter Biden.
Overlapping Ukraine
Appendix A of the report presented a summary table of the documents retrieved. Many top-secret and classified documents related to Ukraine during the time Hunter Biden served as an intermediary between Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, said the House Oversight Committee that he met with Zlochevsky in early March 2014 while he was in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 a month.
The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer email dated April 13, 2014 – a week before Joe Biden visited Ukraine and met with then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys’ upcoming trips,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points on Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information on the upcoming elections and predicting an escalation of the Ukraine’s ‘destabilization campaign.’ Russia, which could lead to a large-scale takeover of eastern Ukraine. region, specifically Donetsk,” according to the New York Post.
Among the documents recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locations were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents dealing with Ukraine. An undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression against Ukraine. Another, dated September 17, 2014, consisted of a “memorandum to the Vice President from staff members, with the subject “U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.” » Also dated September 17, 2014, it was an “event memo” from a vice president. – A presidential national security staffer, titled “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the next day.
The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s profits in Burisma became more pronounced in 2015. On December 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged working with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that he “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Special Advisor to Vice President Biden on Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, National Security Advisor to the Vice President, presented the trip’s agenda and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma leaders Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi pushed Hunter Biden to call his father on December 4, 2015. Burisma executives, according to Archer, Express concerns about the pressure they were experiencing from Ukrainian investigators.
Shokin’s shot
During Biden’s visit to Ukraine the following week, the vice president threatened to suspend U.S. loan guarantees to the country unless Ukraine’s president fired the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. Shokin was subsequently fired and Biden to boast on his role in the dismissal.
Last week, the special prosecutor reported recovering classified “secret” documents, dated around December 12, 2015, “outlining the purpose and discussion points of a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.” A transcript of the call between Biden and Yatsenyuk was attached, with a handwritten post-it showing that the then-vice president asked his executive assistant: “Get a copy of the Sit Rm conversation for my files.” ‘please. »
This transcript, titled “CONFIDENTIAL” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY,” according to the special prosecutor, included “jokes” exchanged between the two, “and the Prime Minister praised Mr. Biden for his speech on the 9 December 2015. The Ukrainian parliament.
In this speech, Biden said Ukrainian lawmakers said: “It is not enough to create a new anti-corruption office and establish a special prosecutor to fight corruption. The Attorney General’s Office is in desperate need of reform.
A change in American politics
Biden continues to maintain that his demands for Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, represented American policy. But this policy appears to have changed dramatically from previous months. For exampleaccording to the House Oversight Committee, “on June 11, 2015, Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, wrote to Attorney General Shokin, praising her office’s progress in efforts to combat against corruption”.
Geoffrey Pyatt, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, would do the same. publicly » said in September 2015: “(We) want to work with Prosecutor General Shokin so that (the Prosecutor General’s Office) leads the fight against corruption. » The same month, “the Interinstitutional Political Committee asserted Attorney General Shokin has made enough progress in the fight against corruption to warrant a third guarantee of a billion-dollar loan,” according to House Oversight Chairman James Comer.
As part of its impeachment inquiry, the House Oversight Committee sought recordings to establish how American policy shifted from supporting Shokin to demanding that he be fired. And now that Special Counsel Hur’s investigation into Biden is complete, Comer is demanding “Unrestricted access to these documents to determine whether President Biden’s retention of sensitive documents was used to aid the Bidens’ influence peddling.” As Comer pointed out, in addition to documents related to Ukraine, top-secret and classified documents related to China – another key source of Hunter Biden’s millions – were recovered.
Comer had already request He questioned whether any of the classified documents “were related to the countries his family did business with,” but the special prosecutor’s office declined to provide details about the seized documents. Comer told the Federalist that “(although) the Justice Department has closed its investigation, the Oversight Committee’s investigation continues. »
More to probe
“Significant questions remain about the extent to which Joe Biden kept sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s influence-peddling schemes that netted the Bidens millions,” Comer told the Federalist. “We will continue to provide the transparency and accountability owed to the American people. »
The key here, however, is not whether Joe Biden kept the documents to further Hunter Biden’s sale of access, but whether he shared the details he had learned from his position as vice president with Hunter. Given the Thousands of Emails Sent to Vice President Biden exchange using pseudonyms, the fact that he had no problem sharing classified information with his ghostwriter and that he repeatedly lied about his involvement in Hunter Biden’s business affairs, it is not an exaggeration to believe he shared confidential information with his son to advance Hunter’s paid scheme.
But the special prosecutor’s report makes one more thing clear: Joe Biden will never face a jury — not because he is innocent, but because he lacks mental competence.
Attorney General Merrick Garland apparently agreed with this assessment, as he approved Hur’s report. It is therefore certain that Garland, as a member of the Cabinet, is discuss with his fellow cabinet members, the need to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment… Right?
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as the Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax. Cleveland is an attorney and graduate of Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive, the law school’s highest honor. She then served for nearly 25 years as a staff law clerk to a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time faculty member at the university and now teaches from time to time. Cleveland also serves as legal counsel to the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can learn more about her greatest accomplishments: her dear husband and her dear son. The opinions expressed herein are those of Cleveland in his private capacity.