Report: Former Ukraine Prosecutor Files Complaint Charging Biden - Not Trump - Abused Power

The former Ukrainian prosecutor whose firing played centrally in the Democratic House’s impeachment of President Donald Trump reportedly filed a complaint with Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigation this week demanding an investigation be opened against Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The French news site Les Crises posted a copy of the complaint in English in which Viktor Shokin charges that Biden wrongfully orchestrated his ouster as Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

“Throughout the last months of 2015 and the first months of 2016 Joseph Biden, taking advantage of his position, came several times on official visits to Ukraine in order to negotiate with the leaders of the country my eviction and, consequently, the closing of the objective investigation into the offenses committed by persons associated with the company ‘Burisma Holding Limited’ (Cyprus), including the son of the aforementioned US official,” Shokin’s complaint reads.

The former vice president’s son, Hunter Biden, was reportedly paid at least $50,000 a month and possibly upward of $83,000 a month to serve on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma at the same time his father was the Obama administration’s point man for U.S. foreign policy regarding Ukraine.

“Due to continued pressure from the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden to oust me from the job by blackmailing the allocation of financial assistance, I, as the man who places the State interests above my personal interests, I agreed to abandon the post of Prosecutor General of Ukraine,” Shokin wrote in his complaint.

He went on to say, “After my resignation caused by illegal pressure, no active investigation into the offenses concerning the company ‘Burisma Holding Limited’ (Cyprus) was carried out and, therefore, the persons implicated in these offenses were not identified, nor arrested or charged.”

Shokin concluded that Biden “abused his power as the Vice-President of the United States in order to prevent me from carrying out my duties as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.”

At a Council on Foreign Relations event in January 2018, Biden bragged about an official visit he took to Ukraine in March 2016 during which he demanded then-President Petro Poroshenko fire Shokin or not receive $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

Ronna McDaniel

✔@GOPChairwoman

FLASHBACK: Two years ago, Joe Biden bragged about holding up $1 BILLION in U.S. loans unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma, the corrupt company paying Hunter $80k+ per month.

Why don't Democrats want to investigate that??

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11:58 PM - Jan 24, 2020

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“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,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a b—-, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” the former vice president recounted.

President Donald Trump’s mention of Biden’s comments on his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his request to look into the matter is what the “whistleblower” pointed to as an abuse of power by Trump.

The original media reports were that Trump made a quid pro quo demand of Zelensky: investigate Joe and Hunter Biden or forgo $391 million in U.S. military aid.

Then Trump released the transcript undercutting this narrative.

The president said during his call with Zelensky, “[T]here’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

No quid pro quo demand was made. The proof is in the pudding that Ukraine never launched or announced it would launch an investigation into the Bidens and the aid was released in mid-September.

Both Zelensky and Ukraine’s foreign minister confirmed to media outlets on multiple occasions they felt no pressure by the request to open an investigation.

Investigative journalist John Solomon of The Hill said on Fox News in October that some media outlets wrongly reported that Shokin had closed his investigation into Burisma when Biden called for his ouster.

“Not true,” Solomon told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I have the prosecutorial file. It was active.”

“I have the emails of the Burisma [legal] team negotiating with the prosecutor the very day that Shokin was fired,” he added.

The reporter added that Shokin offered sworn testimony that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was not happy the prosecutor had not dropped the Burisma case.

In a piece for The Hill, Solomon wrote, “In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation.”

“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.

The more we learn about the Bidens’ dealings in the Ukraine, the more it becomes clear that it’s not Trump who should have been investigated for wrongdoing, it is Joe Biden.