May 05, 2021 · Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said in an interview published on Wednesday that he believes he was fired from his position last year for refusing to investigate President ...
Oct 03, 2019 · “The fired prosecutor at the center of the Ukraine controversy said during a private interview with President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani earlier this year that he was told to back off an investigation into a natural gas firm that was linked to Joe Biden’s son, according to details of that interview that were handed over to ...
Fox News obtained a copy of Giuliani’s notes from his January 2019 interview with fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in which he claimed that his “investigations stopped out of fear of ...
Jan 24, 2018 · He was referring to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and former Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk. Biden added that the prosecutor was then fired. Read more. Biden told ex-Ukraine President Yanukovich to resign, former VP reveals in memoirs. “Well, son of a b***h. (Laughter.)
As part of the impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have subpoenaed Giuliani for key documents related to the Ukraine controversy. They also have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and are expected to receive depositions from nearly half a dozen State Department officials named in the whistleblower complaint.
Shokin was fired in April 2016, and his case was “closed by the current Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko,” according to the notes. Despite his claims, Shokin, on both sides of the Atlantic, had been widely accused of corruption. But Biden's role is back in the spotlight after Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry over Trump's efforts ...
However, Shokin, at the time, according to the interview, was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky, the former minister of ecology and natural resources of Ukraine — also the founder of Burisma. Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of the firm, which Shokin claimed was an appointment made by Zlochevsky “in order to protect himself.”.
The interview purportedly conducted by Giuliani took place on Jan. 23, 2019 at an office on Park Avenue in New York City. Shokin was interviewed over the phone, and interpreters were used — one in Ukraine and one in New York, according to the notes obtained by Fox News. In a statement to Fox News after this report was first published, ...
Trump reportedly even ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before the phone call with Zelensky, a detail that fueled impeachment calls. However, the call transcript did not show Trump explicitly mentioning the aid as a bargaining chip.
If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money ,’” Biden said during a meeting of the US Council on Foreign Relations. He was referring to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and former Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk. Biden added that the prosecutor was then fired. “Well, son of a b***h. (Laughter.)
In a book titled ‘Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,’ which was published in November, the former vice president said that he openly demanded that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich resign back in 2014.
Former US vice president Joe Biden boasted that he had a word to say in another state’s internal affairs, admitting to have pressured the Ukrainian government into sacking a prosecutor general in just a few hours.
I covered the Ukraine/Russia war at Breitbart from 2013 when Ukrainians spawned Euromaidan until I left in May 2016 to join Legal Insurrection.
Back in April, Solomon wrote that Biden supposedly bragged that he drove Poroshenko to fire Shokin. That pressure included a threat to withhold $1 billion in aid:
If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time," he said. Pifer, who also oversaw diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine under President George W. Bush, said it was appropriate for Biden to use U.S. aid as leverage.
Shokin's office had investigated Burisma, but the probe focused on a period before Hunter Biden joined the company, according to the anti-corruption bureau. The investigation dealt with the Ministry of Ecology, which allegedly granted special permits to Burisma between 2010 and 2012, the agency said.
At the heart of Congress' probe into the president's actions is his claim that former Vice President and 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden.
Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani claim Biden did this to quash Shokin's investigation into Ukraine's largest gas company, Burisma Holdings, and its owner, oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. They say this benefited Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who served on Burisma's board of directors – for which he was paid $50,000 a month.
In December 2015, Biden railed against the "cancer of corrupt ion" in a speech before the country's parliament and called out Shokin's office. Besides Biden's threat over the $1 billion in aid, the International Monetary Fund threatened to delay $40 billion in aid for similar reasons.
Biden took an interest in Ukraine, said Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry fellow at Stanford University and former ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton. "You saw the vice president begin to emerge as really sort of the senior policy lead on Ukraine," Pifer said. "It's good to have attention at that level.".
Without pressure from Joe Biden, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, Shokin would not have been fired , said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kiev.
Daria Kaleniuk, the co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kyiv, Ukraine, credited Biden, the International Monetary Fund — which threatened to delay $40 billion in aid for similar reasons — and others with the prosecutor's removal.
It's true that Joe Biden leveraged $1 billion in aid to persuade Ukraine to oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in March 2016. But it wasn't because Shokin was investigating Burisma. It was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians.
While former Vice President Joe Biden oversaw foreign policy in Ukraine, his son Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, the largest gas company in the fledgling democracy. Despite a recently concluded investigation by Senate Republicans that found no wrongdoing by the Bidens, claims to the contrary have continued to circulate on ...
The case was settled in court in 2017. The recent report by Senate Republicans also contained no evidence that Joe Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor as a way to protect his son, according to the Associated Press. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden, also said any suggestion of impropriety is false.