Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden's son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor's firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma's American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?"
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. "The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”
Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.
Read More...
Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden's Ukraine story
Current News
Three House Committees Escalate ActBlue Probe, Contempt Now on the Table
Three House committee chairmen threatened the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue with a contempt citation on Monday, escalating a yearlong congressional investigation into allegations that the organization failed to prevent fraudulent and potentially foreign political donations from flowing through its system. Read more
They’ve Wanted War With Iran for Twenty Years. Now That Trump Is Ending It, They’re Furious.
Here’s something the foreign policy establishment will never say out loud: they don’t actually want peace with Iran. Read more
They Called It Peace. Hezbollah Called It an Opportunity.
Wednesday, President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran. The entire foreign policy establishment exhaled. “Historic.” “Diplomatic breakthrough.” “A new era.” The words came pouring out of the same people who’ve been wrong about the Middle East for 30 straight years. Read more
The Monument and the Myth: What the Obama Center Tells Us About a Civilization in Decline
On the morning of June 19, 2026 — Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the final emancipation of enslaved Americans at the close of the Civil War — the Obama Presidential Center opened its doors on Chicago’s South Side. The ceremony featured land acknowledgments, celebrity guests, former heads of state, and at least one prominent governor who reportedly “literally teared up” during his private tour. The monument cost $850 million to complete. Read more
Five Suspects Wanted to Bomb Trump’s Backyard. The FBI Stopped Them. Here’s What That Actually Means.
Someone tried to blow up a fight at the White House. Five people. Explosive drones. Snipers. A coordinated plot to kill people attending a UFC event on the South Lawn of the President’s house. And if you’re just hearing about this now, ask yourself why. Read more
What Happened in Belfast Is What Happens to Nations That Lose the Will to Survive
There is a passage in Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War that describes the moment when Corcyra descended into civil strife: “Words had to change their ordinary meaning,” the historian wrote, “and to take that which was now given them.” Courage became foolhardiness. Prudent caution became cowardice. The inversion of language preceded — and perhaps caused — the inversion of the moral order. Read more