More Biden Ukraine Documents & Fresh Questions About Obama

The public release of new documents from journalist John Solomon has provided fresh insight into the scope and timing of Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine energy company Burisma - and their role in ending the investigation into its owner Mykola (Nikolai) Zlochevsky. These documents also raise very real questions regarding Obama’s knowledge of exactly what his Vice-President was up to in Ukraine.

All of this comes from Hunter’s longtime business partner, Devin Archer, who turned over 3.7 million documents to Congress sometime in 2024. House Oversight Chair James Comer claimed in May these documents would "answer pretty much every question we've had about the source of these shady transactions" and Biden's role in them.

Our last post discussed a crucial and previously unseen October 20, 2015 email that provided critical context for what was to come - efforts by Joe Biden to stop the investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky. That email contained specific demands from Burisma (likely their CFO Vadym Pozharskyi) that US officials convey their full support of Burisma and Zlochevsky to Ukrainian officials - and to Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin who was investigating Zlochevsky at the time.

The October 20th email was a prelude to the now infamous November 2, 2015 email from Pozharskyi where he demanded “deliverables” from Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. But this new email makes clear that there was already an ongoing effort by Hunter and Archer to drum up pushback and political pressure intended to shield Burisma from the ongoing investigation of Shokin - well before the “deliverables” email was sent by Pozharskyi. This new email also shows that the direction of that effort was always being dictated by Burisma and Zlochevsky.

We’ve long suspected that there was an effort by Hunter already underway by the time of Pozharskyi’s November 2, 2015 directive - and have said so publicly. But now, this new email proves that theory to be correct.

There’s also new details regarding the earlier involvement in mid-2014 of Hunter, Archer and Boies Schiller, the law firm that employed Hunter Biden. These events took place during the opening phase of the first investigation of Burisma - an investigation that was being conducted by Shokin’s corrupt predecessor, Vitaly Yarema.

(There were two separate investigations of Burisma: the first began in April 2014 and ended abruptly amidst bribery allegations in early 2015 and a second that began in late Spring 2015 and effectively ended in March 2016 with the formal firing of Viktor Shokin).

In a June 23, 2014 proposal from Boies Schiller, Hunter’s law firm provided Burisma with what they labeled a “Strategic Outline for Legal Defense Plan.” Their proposal stated that they wanted to “Insulate Burisma from politically motivated disruptions in operations, including legal challenges to licenses, now and in the future.” As part of this strategy, Boies wanted to “Meet with the U.S. officials in Washington, DC who are leading U.S. policy related to Ukraine to brief them on who Burisma is, its significance to the future of Ukraine, and the Investigation in order to seek their advice and assistance.”

The proposal noted that “we are starting the process of creating an echo-chamber of U.S. officials discussing Burisma between and amongst themselves and encouraging each other to meet with Burisma.” Boies disclosed in their proposal that they had already spoken to a number of congressional members and their staff, including Senator Chris Murphy and his chief of staff.

As they note in their proposal, “We also discussed the possibility of Senator Murphy facilitating an introduction for Burisma and its U.S. team to Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olexander Motsyk. In their outreach to the Ukrainian Embassy, Senator Murphy's staff will also probe to see if Ambassador Motsyk would be open to meeting with just Burisma's U.S. legal and lobbying teams or if the Ambassador would be more inclined to meet with a representative of Burisma. We recognize that the participants in this meeting could affect how the meeting is reported to the Ukrainian Government.”

Senator Murphy is mentioned nine different times in Boies’s 2014 proposal.

Amos Hochstein, Obama’s soon-to-be U.S. Special Envoy, was also mentioned in the Boies proposal - which focused on establishing a meeting between Hochstein and Burisma’s Pozharskyi in the coming month of July 2014. It appears that meeting never happened - although Hochstein did meet with Burisma lobbyist David Leiter and Boies law partner Heather King in late July 2014. Meanwhile, efforts by Hunter continued.

In a November 2014 email, Hunter told his long-time money-man Eric Schwerin to "Pls send D [Devin Archer] Amos' contact info… Amos is 'Acting Special Envoy, Bureau of energy Resources' at State." Although Hochstein later told Senate investigators that he did not recall having contact with Burisma in 2014, he also told them that he became aware of Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board in the spring of 2014 - precisely as Hunter joined the Ukrainian firm.

What’s clear from these documents is that Hunter and Archer were working to bring in high-level political support for Burisma from members of Congress and officials in the Obama administration at a time when it was very clear to these same officials that Burisma was run by a corrupt Ukrainian Oligarch.

The level of involvement from Obama officials would only accelerate in 2015, raising a very real question: How much did Obama know about Biden's involvement in Ukraine? We’ll return to this question in a bit.

As it turns out, Burisma may not have initially needed the Bidens to find a way out of their 2014 legal mess. According to a State Department email sent by George Kent, Obama’s deputy chief of mission in Kyiv at the time, Burisma simply bribed their way out of the original 2014 investigation. Kent stated that he had been told by Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general that Burisma had paid a $7 million bribe to Ukraine’s chief prosecutors’ office to end the investigation into Zlochevsky.

At the time of the alleged bribe payment, Hunter was – according to Burisma itself – in charge of the company's legal affairs. The bribe apparently worked. The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office subsequently sent a letter to its UK counterparts on Christmas Day 2014, stating there was no longer an active case against Zlochevsky. The UK prosecutors were then forced to release Zlochevsky’s previously seized funds.

Vitaly Yarema resigned on February 9, 2015, but his replacement, Victor Shokin, a former prosecutor brought out of retirement by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was appointed the following day. Shokin began to restart the investigation into Burisma, although it would take a few months to get up to speed. Shokin has stated that he prepared to question Hunter Biden over money laundering activities tracing directly back to Burisma sometime in July or August 2015, but also stated that as he did so pressure to stop his Burisma investigation increased.

In September 2015, the US Ambassador to Ukraine (and longtime Victoria Nuland confidant) Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech about corruption in Ukraine in which he targeted Burisma’s Zlochevsky by name. Pyatt also blamed Ukrainian prosecutors - appearing to intentionally conflate Shokin with the fired and disgraced Vitaly Yarema.

Pyatt’s speech seemed to be an impetus for the new set of aggressive demands by Burisma’s Pozharskyi that are contained in the newly disclosed October 20, 2015 email sent by Archer. These demands were followed shortly by Pozharskyi’s November 2, 2015 email - which made clear his dissatisfaction with the efforts by Hunter and Archer to date - and his explicit concern over the lack of involvement from high-level US officials.

Hours after receiving Pozharskyi’s November 2nd email, Hunter reached out to the previously-mentioned Hochstein. Hunter would meet in-person with Hochstein four days later, on Nov. 6, 2015. Hochstein later reluctantly (and evasively) told congressional investigators that Hunter “wanted to know my views on Burisma and Zlochevsky.”

Burisma also formally hired Blue Star Strategies at Hunter’s urging in November 2015 - just as Hunter was receiving his instructions from Pozharskyi. Blue Star would later come under federal investigation for its undisclosed lobbying on behalf of Burisma and would ultimately be forced to file a retroactive FARA declaration - although no penalties of any kind were imposed on the firm.

Victoria Nuland, the Former Assistant Secretary of State who helped bring Biden into Ukraine’s politics, later told congressional investigators that Hochstein, who was still Obama’s U.S. Special Envoy, privately conveyed his concerns about Hunter’s role at Burisma directly to Joe Biden in October 2015 and then again during a flight to Ukraine on Dec. 7, 2015. Of course, nothing was done and Hunter remained on Burisma’s board.

Less than three weeks after Pozharskyi’s second email, Joe Biden suddenly demanded the removal of Shokin. Proof of this comes from a November 22, 2015 itinerary of an abruptly-scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko which was held in Ukraine on December 7, 2015.

It’s worth noting that Shokin’s appointment as prosecutor was initially welcomed by U.S. officials, including Victoria Nuland - who personally wrote Shokin just five months earlier in June 2015, telling him that “we have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government.”

After Poroshenko initially resisted Biden’s demand to fire Shokin, Biden famously leveraged $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer loan guarantees to force Shokin’s removal. And so it was that on March 29, 2016, less than seven weeks after Shokin’s seizure of Zlochevsky’s assets, Shokin was officially fired. The investigation into Burisma was effectively over.

The timeline and sequence of events is damning in of itself, but again a larger question is raised. A question that we’ve asked for quite some time now. What did Obama know - and when did he know it? It seems utterly implausible that all of Obama’s top officials - Hochstein, Kent, Nuland and others - knew exactly what Biden was up to but Obama did not.

As we’ve stated repeatedly, it’s our belief that RussiaGate was about protecting Obama from the crimes that Joe Biden committed. Obama knew.