Americans weren’t generally aware of Joe and Hunter Biden’s shenanigans in Ukraine, but Obama’s State Department certainly was, as was Ukraine, its pro-Russian newspaper sardonically referring to the soon to be then-Vice President Joe Biden showing up to protect his son’s business in Ukraine.
We learned this from three pages of State Department records. They include a January 17, 2017, email from George Kent, the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine policy, which was copied to then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, highlighting Russia-linked media “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s business.”
We obtained the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:20-cv-00229)). (The records had been separately released to Citizens United.)
An email was sent four days prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump to a redacted recipient and CCd to Yovanovitch with the subject line “medvedchuk-linked vesti trolls Biden.” Kent writes: “Burisma – gift that keeps on giving. (With medvedchuk affiliated Vesti pushing the troll like storyline on visit day)”
Medvedchuk refers to Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician, lawyer, business oligarch, and People’s Deputy of Ukraine. He’s considered a Putin ally. Vesti is the pro-Russian newspaper in Ukraine.
Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, served on the board of directors for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings despite having no previous experience in the energy industry.
Kent includes a “Review of Ukrainian Printed Press” that includes the Ukrainian newspaper Vesti, which described Biden’s visit to Ukraine, saying: “Will J. Biden arrive to secure his son’s business? According to experts, J. Biden, as the unofficial curator of ‘the Ukrainian question’, will give P. Poroshenko recommendations about working with the new US administration. Another aspect is the protection of his own business interests.”
By Tom Fitton
