Joe Biden on Pressuring Ukraine to Fire Chief Prosecutor

This is the video you’ve been looking for. January 23, 2018: at the Council on Foreign Relations. Joe Biden talks about telling the leaders in Ukraine that because the United States deemed the Chief Prosecutor as “corrupt,“ as the U.S. representative he made the firing of this prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, a condition of providing a loan guarantee from the U.S. for $1 billion. This was in March of 2016. The firing of Shokin still required a vote from the Ukrainian parliament, which The New York Times reported at the time was “a comfortable margin.“ The prosecutor who replaced Shokin was Yuriy Lutsenko, who had been interior minister under Yulia Timoschenko. Both he and Timoschenko were key figures in the 2004 Orange Revolution. Lutsenko had been jailed and convicted in 2012 on corruption charges, including ordering surveillance on suspects while investigating the poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko during his presidential campaign in 2004. Lutsenko was pardoned by the government of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2013: Yanukovych was removed in the pro-EU revolution of 2014 (helped by right-wing paramilitary squads) and replaced by Petro Poroshenko, who brought Lutsenko back at Biden’s urging. It’s true that Shokin had a case open that was investigating energy company Burisma, which ended up paying Joe Biden’s son as much as $50,000 a month, according to The New York Times. Hunter Biden was named to the Burisma board in April 2014. He was chosen as an attorney who would give advice on “legal issues, corporate guidance and strategy,“ according to Reuters. He served a five-year term and never visited the country but was considered helpful, according to the same Reuters story which is purportedly based on interviews with a dozen current and former associates who are unnamed. Entertainer Volodymyr Zelenskyy, elected in 2019, rode a wave of voter sentiment to return to honesty and the rule of law. See: “Clinton Cash“ author Peter Schweizer’s op ed laying out his evidence on Hunter Biden, Ukraine and China: The New Yorker’s incredibly complementary and positively spun piece about Hunter Biden and Burisma gas company: