House impeachment probe hones in on Biden’s effort to oust Ukrainian prosecutor

The House impeachment inquiry into President Biden will focus on his effort to oust Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and whether he did so to thwart a corruption investigation into a natural gas company that gave Hunter Biden an annual $1 million salary.

Hunter Biden and then-business partner Devon Archer were each pocketing $1 million each year from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings beginning in the spring of 2014. Their hiring coincided with then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s new role as the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine.

Archer and Hunter Biden were elevated to the Burisma board shortly after Mr. Biden’s inaugural trip to Kyiv to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts.

According to Archer’s testimony to House investigators, his role and Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma was to help the company expand business operations, partly by establishing a buffer against a growing corruption investigation. Burisma wanted help from influential people in Washington, namely Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president.

The timeline of actions of Mr. Biden, the Obama administration and Hunter Biden raises questions about whether Mr. Biden ultimately sought to push out Mr. Shokin to help his son and Burisma.

The firing of Mr. Shokin is now a central part of an impeachment inquiry into whether Mr. Biden used the power of the vice presidency to help his son and associates secure lucrative deals, including with Burisma, which ultimately paid Hunter Biden and his associates $6.5 million, according to House investigators.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which will lead the inquiry, plans to hold the first hearing next week to outline the evidence gathered so far, including Hunter Biden’s suspected involvement in Mr. Shokin’s firing.

The panel is seeking presidential records and State Department records from the Obama administration to determine what role Hunter Biden may have played in the ouster of Mr. Shokin.

Mr. Shokin was hired in February 2015 amid political turmoil in Ukraine and international demands that the country eradicate widespread corruption.

Publicly, Mr. Biden had nothing negative to say about Mr. Shokin until he met privately with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv on Dec. 7, 2015.

Mr. Biden threatened Mr. Poroshenko at the meeting.

Mr. Shokin had to go, Mr. Biden later recounted, or Kyiv would not receive $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Ukraine desperately needed.

Before Mr. Biden’s visit, Mr. Shokin received praise from the State Department. He was not singled out in phone calls among the vice president, State Department officials and Ukraine, according to records.

Officials hand-delivered a note to Mr. Shokin in June 2015, written by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on behalf of Secretary of State John Kerry, telling him, “We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government.”

Five months later, in November 2015, the U.S. Interagency Policy Committee advised the Obama administration that Mr. Shokin had taken enough steps to eradicate corruption to qualify Ukraine for the $1 billion in loan guarantees.

The vice president spoke by phone with Mr. Poroshenko in November and, according to a readout of the call, he “reiterated the U.S. willingness to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee … contingent on … progress to investigate and prosecute corruption,” among other conditions.

A few weeks later, Mr. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion unless Mr. Poroshenko fired Mr. Shokin.

A readout of the meeting does not mention firing Mr. Shokin, but Mr. Biden recounted his threat at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations forum. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Mr. Biden said he told Mr. Poroshenko.

Mr. Biden didn’t mention a call he received three days before the Poroshenko meeting that was exposed by Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner who is facing prison time on an unrelated securities fraud conviction.

Archer told House investigators in a closed-door deposition in July that on Dec. 4, 2015, Burisma executives pressured Hunter Biden to call “D.C.” for help relieving “pressure” from Mr. Shokin’s escalating corruption probe.

“I did not hear the phone call, but he called his dad,” Archer said.

The call was made from Dubai, where Archer, Hunter Biden and the Burisma executives were attending a company board meeting.
When Hunter Biden rang “D.C.” from Dubai, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Burisma Chief Financial Officer Vadym Pozharsky were by his side, Archer said.

Mr. Biden was already familiar with Mr. Pozharsky. He had attended an April 16, 2015, dinner at Washington’s Cafe Milano with several of Hunter Biden’s business associates. Mr. Pozharsky had a seat at the table.

Investigators have no direct evidence that Mr. Biden acted to oust Mr. Shokin on behalf of Hunter Biden and Burisma. Democrats have denounced the Republican investigation of the president as a politically motivated exercise that, a White House spokesman said, has so far turned up “zero evidence.”

Before his firing, Mr. Shokin was the subject of international criticism for failing to investigate corruption with enough aggression and refusing to prosecute members of the previous administration who had fired on street protesters.

“All of us were really pushing Poroshenko that he needs to do something because the prosecutor was not following any of the corruption issues. He was really bad news,” an anonymous EU diplomat told the Financial Times in 2019. “It was Biden who finally came in [and triggered it]. Biden was the most vocal, as the U.S. usually is. But we were all literally complaining about the prosecutor.”

Mr. Shokin also received praise while in office. In addition to the complimentary letter from Ms. Nuland, the European Commission praised Ukraine and Mr. Shokin for instituting corruption reforms in a Dec. 18, 2015, memo that called the efforts “an important step forward.”

By the time the European Commission issued the memo, Mr. Biden had pressured Mr. Poroshenko to fire Mr. Shokin.

Mr. Shokin remained in office for a few more months. During that time, he ramped up his corruption probe into Burisma.

On Feb. 2, 2016, he seized some of Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets, including four large houses and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

The same day, congressional investigators noted, Hunter Biden began following then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Twitter.

Two weeks after Mr. Shokin seized Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets, Mr. Poroshenko issued a statement calling on Mr. Shokin to quit “in order to restore trust in the government.”

Mr. Poroshenko spoke with Mr. Biden by phone two days later, on Feb. 18, 2016, to report that he had upheld his end of the bargain, according to a leaked transcript of the call.

Mr. Poroshenko told the vice president he met with Mr. Shokin and asked him to resign “despite the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong … and despite the fact that he has support in the public.”

On the call, Mr. Biden promised to provide the $1 billion when a new prosecutor who met his approval was installed.

Mr. Shokin was officially forced out on March 29, 2016.