Biden Coverup: The strange story of the FBI's partnership with a little-known Ukrainian anti-corruption division

Hunter Biden was found guilty on all three felony counts in his gun possession case. Which is really just another way of acknowledging that the FBI and DOJ successfully ran out the statute of limitations on Hunter's most serious crimes - bribery & money laundering in China, Ukraine and potentially in Romania as well.

We know that Latvia provided credible allegations of money laundering by Hunter Biden, Devin Archer and two other unnamed Americans to Ukraine. These allegations were ignored by Ukraine and ultimately faded away uninvestigated. As we will see, these allegations were also conveniently ignored by the FBI.

A good starting point for all of this is probably September 2015 - when Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, suddenly targeted Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin, claiming “there is one glaring problem” that “threatens everything - the failure of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption.” Pyatt ominously told the assembled crowd that “the prosecutor general’s office… undermined prosecutors working on legitimate corruption cases.” Which was odd because, after all, it was Pyatt who had hand delivered a letter of commendation to Shokin just three months earlier.

Meanwhile, at this same time a new investigation into Burisma by Shokin was already well-underway. Indeed, according to Shokin, in July and into August 2015, he began preparing to question Hunter over money laundering activities tracing directly back to Burisma. Notably, these same concerns over money laundering would be raised by Latvian authorities a few months later - just as Shokin was being pushed out by Biden.

On December 9, 2015, Biden gave his famous speech in Ukraine. He was careful to avoid mentioning Burisma, Zlochevsky or Shokin by name but privately, Joe was using US taxpayer guarantees to force Poroshenko to fire Shokin, who was removed from the case in Mid-February - and formally fired on March 29, 2016.

At the same time, for reasons that have never been explained, the FBI was in the process of setting up shop in the offices of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau or NABU - which was in a political fight with Shokin’s office.

NABU was established in October 2014 with assistance from the US government - led by a big push from vice-president Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland. In January 2016, NABU director Artem Sytnyk announced that his bureau was close to signing a Memorandum of cooperation with the FBI and by February 9th, the FBI had had a permanent representative onsite at the NABU offices.

One week after the first FBI representative was installed at NABU, on February 18, 2016 - while Joe Biden was actively pushing for Shokin’s removal - authorities in Latvia flagged a series of ‘suspicious’ financial transactions linked to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and two other unknown individuals involved with Burisma.

It was later reported that “a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million that were routed from companies in Belize and the United Kingdom to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015.” Latvian officials claimed that a portion of these funds were transferred to Hunter, Devon and the two unnamed individuals - one of whom was a US citizen.

Despite requests for assistance, a Latvian official said his government received no criminal evidence from Ukraine and thus took no further action on the investigation. It seems implausible to us that the FBI, with its active presence within Ukraine’s anti-corruption offices, was not aware of these transactions - along with everything else the Bidens were doing.

On June 5, 2016, NABU’s Sytnyk met with none other than Ambassador Pyatt to finalize their relationship with the FBI - and on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI entered into a formal agreement that allowed for an FBI office onsite at NABU offices. The agreement was later extended for another two years.

But for reasons that remain unclear, NABU has repeatedly refused to make their agreement with the FBI public and even went to court in 2018 to prevent its release. There also appears to be some very real questions as to when the FBI actually became involved with NABU - one press release notes FBI involvement back to 2014. But there’s more.

Buried at the end of that initial January press release from NABU was a curious reference to a “working visit to Washington D.C.” This caught our attention as we knew from some earlier reporting that there was a series of meetings between top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama’s National Security Council, the FBI, the State Department, and the DOJ.

Present at these meetings was Andrii Telizhenko, then an employee at the Ukrainian embassy. According to Telizhenko, a recurring theme at these meetings was “how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united.” Additionally, Telizhenko was told that U.S. officials “had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions.”

The focus of the US officials was almost certainly Trump’s future Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. We know that “Agents interviewed Manafort in 2014 about whether he received undeclared payments and whether he engaged in improper foreign lobbying in Ukraine. We also know the FBI shut down the 2014 case without charging Manafort. According to Telizhenko “DOJ officials asked investigators from Ukraine’s NABU if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans.” 

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington later “confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016” - although they were excluded from the meetings with NABU officials. For his part, Telizhenko noted that “U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over” - although that matter quickly became moot after Shokin was fired.

At the same time that the meetings between Obama officials and NABU were taking place, Joe Biden met personally with Ukrainian President Poroshenko on January 21st in Washington. According to a readout of the meeting, the two men discussed “the need to continue to move forward on Ukraine’s anti-corruption agenda.”

It appears that these combined talks put in motion a series of events that aligned around Paul Manafort - who had yet to take the position of campaign manager for Trump.

A Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa had been investigating Manafort and his work in Ukraine since 2014. According to a 2018 report in the Kyiv Post, “Chalupa said she first came across Manafort after she organized a meeting with Obama’s National Security Council and leaders of Ukrainian-American organizations in January 2014, to brief the White House about the Euromaidan Revolution.”

In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her research into Manafort to include the Trump campaign and possible ties to Russia. In January 2016, right at the time of the NABU’s meeting with Obama’s officials, Chalupa informed an unknown senior DNC official that she believed there was a Russian connection with the Trump campaign.

Notably, this theme would be picked up by the Clinton campaign, and then the Intelligence Community in the summer of 2016. Chalupa also told the official to expect Manafort’s involvement in the Trump campaign. How Chalupa knew this in advance has never been fully explained.

Chalupa’s forecast proved prescient, as Manafort reached out to the Trump campaign on February 29, 2016, through a mutual acquaintance, Thomas Barrack Jr. According to Manafort, he and Trump hadn’t been in communication for years until the Trump campaign responded to Manafort’s offer.

On March 28, 2016, Manafort was hired by the Trump campaign. He was initially hired to lead the Trump campaign’s delegate effort, but on May 19, 2016, Manafort became Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist.

Just days prior to Manafort’s hiring, on March 24, 2016, Chalupa spoke with the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly, and told him of concerns she had regarding Manafort. Chalay would later write an op ed in which he severely criticized Trump. Chalupa was also working with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff.

On April 26, 2016, Isikoff published a story about Paul Manafort’s business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Isikoff referenced a defunct investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets, which was started by Manafort and several partners in 2007. Deripaska was the financial backer of the fund and was now suing Manafort in a Cayman Islands court, seeking to recover his investment.

This same transaction would later be referenced in an August 2016, New York Times article that reported alleged payments to Manafort from the Party of Regents’ infamous Black Ledger. Derispaska would later be approached by the FBI in regards to Manafort but he laughed off the FBI’s assertions on Manafort.

On April 28, 2016, Chalupa and Isikoff appeared on a panel to discuss their research on Manafort with a group of 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center. 

Isikoff, of course, is the same reporter who published an article about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page on Sept. 23, 2016. The article, titled “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin,” was based on an interview with Christopher Steele. Isikoff’s article would later be used as corroborating information by the FBI in the FISA warrant application on Page.

Meanwhile, Chalupa stayed busy. In an email to Luis Miranda, the communications director of the DNC, Chalupa hinted at something larger that would become public in the coming weeks: “More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.”

That “big something” was the pending disclosure - fabrication might be a better word - of the Ukrainian Black Ledger - or Black Box that reportedly detailed payments or bribes to a number of officials.

On May 30, 2016, Nellie Ohr, who at the time was working for Fusion GPS, the firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to investigate Trump and his family, sent an email to her husband, Bruce Ohr, a former high-ranking DOJ official, along with three other DOJ employees. The email held a subject line that read “Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’”

Within the email was the text from an article penned the day before by Nikolai Holmov, that claimed NABU director Artem Sytnyc was now in possession of the Black Ledger documents. Questions were also raised as to how Sytnyk came by this information, if it was actually authentic and whom, exactly, it was intended to be used by. 

What we know with certainty is that Nellie Ohr’s email alerted officials within the Justice Department to a discovery that would have far-reaching implications for Manafort - and the Trump campaign - months before the news reached a national level. To our knowledge, Nellie’s email was, by far, the earliest US-based knowledge of NABU’s possession of the Black Ledger documents.

Manafort’s work in Ukraine was highlighted in late July, and then - on Aug. 14, 2016 - The New York Times reported that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents’ black box: Manafort’s name was reportedly listed in the 400-page ledger 22 times, although his actual signature wasn’t authenticated and any payments made to him remain unverified to this day. Manafort’s implication in the Black Box ledger scandal would quickly lead to his resignation from the Trump campaign and tar Trump with claims of Russian Collusion. 

The documents implicating Manafort were published by NABU on Aug. 18, 2016, and were then publicized during a press conference held by Member of the Ukrainian Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko the following day. Leshchenko was later cited as a source for several individuals, including journalist Isikoff and DNC operative Chalupa. In addition, Nellie Ohr testified before Congress on Oct. 19, 2018, that Leshchenko served as a source of information for Fusion GPS.

For his part, Leshchenko told us that he doesn’t remember ever meeting with either Nellie Ohr or members of Fusion GPS. He also stated that he had only met Chalupa one time and his contact with Isikoff likely occurred immediately following his Aug. 19, 2016, press conference.

It’s worth noting that Nellie Ohr was officially hired by Fusion GPS in October 2015 - after being initially approached by Fusion’s owner Glenn Simpson in September 2015. We note this timing because it’s a timeline that matches quite well with how we started this episode - Ambassador Pyatt’s sudden position change regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin.

We also find it notable that prior to her work for Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr worked for an internal open-source division of the CIA from 2008 to at least June 2010; although it appears likely that she remained in that role at the CIA until 2014. Additionally, both Nellie and her husband, former DOJ Official Bruce Ohr have known Simpson since at least 2010.

There’s one final postscript to this story. On November 16th, 2016, a week after Trump’s unexpected victory, Biden called Ukrainian president Poroshenko and told him that he had to immediately shut down Privatbank. The same bank that was at the center of the money laundering allegations raised by Latvian authorities with respect to payments to Hunter Biden.