Joe Biden: His Son And The Ukraine Oligarch

Democrats accused President Trump of a quid-pro-quid deal with Ukraine in a veiled move to distract media attention from a controversy engulfing Joe Biden and his son Hunter.  Details continue to emerge about the son's involvement with a Ukrainian oligarch's corruption-plagued gas company.

The former vice president and Democratic Party presidential candidate initially shooed away reporters asking questions about his son's questionable activities and the apparent conflict of interest.  The stonewalling ended when Biden was finally prodded into publicly proclaiming to the media:

"I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."  However, Biden is on shaky ground based on credible information in the public domain.

To set the stage, President Obama appointed the vice president his "point person" on Ukraine in February of 2014.  From 2014-2017, he made five trips to the Ukraine in his official capacity as vice president as Russian aggression escalated tensions in the Eastern European country.

During the diplomatic shuttling, Biden's son with two business partners were deep in discussions about a deal with the scandal ridden natural gas firm Burisma Holdings.  One of Hunter's partners, Devon Archer, arranged for a meeting with the elder Biden on April 16, 2015 at the White House.

Official White House records show the meeting lasted until 11:59 p.m.  There are no details on the subject of the discussion.  However, less than a week after their chitchat Archer was invited to join the Burisma board  Three weeks later Hunter Biden became a board member, too.

It is not credible to think the vice president knew nothing about his son's Ukraine dealings after the meeting with Hunter's business partner, especially given the timing of the appointments to the Burisma board.  Unless of course, they just talked about grandchildren.  (Sarcasm intended.)

After the board appointments, Burisma touted its newest member, Hunter Biden.  It prominently mentioned he was the vice president's son.  His official role, as vaguely described by Burisma, was to provide "consulting" for the company on "various matters" and to offer "strategic guidance."

Even while the younger Biden had been negotiating with Burisma, the natural gas company was the subject of an investigation into suspected fraud. Great Britain's Serious Fraud Office froze assets of Burisma as part of a money laundering probe.  The assets were later unfrozen when Ukraine sued.

This wasn't the only brush with controversy for Burisma.  It had been suspected of corruption both inside Ukraine and by the United States.  The secretive company's founder Mykola Zlochevsky was also the subject of official Ukrainian inquiries, including for tax evasion.

None of this appeared to matter to Hunter Biden.  Bank records from 2014 and 2015 show Hunter Biden was personally paid more than $850,000.  Burisma does not release compensation details for board members, but the records were uncovered in U.S. litigation into an unrelated case.

Seneca Partners LLC, which included Biden and his two associates, received regular transfers of usually more than $166,000 per month during the 2014-2015 period, according to the same banking records cited above.  These payments came under scrutiny by the Ukraine's general prosecutor.

It was reported that the prosecutor had made plans to "include interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden." Both Hunter Biden and the former vice president have declined to comment on this allegation.

This is where the story about the vice president's unawareness of his son's business dealings begins to crumble.   In March of 2016, Biden addressed a public meeting of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, bragging how he had bullied Ukrainian officials into firing the general prosecutor.

Biden described in detail as news cameras rolled how he threatened to pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn't immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.  In Biden's own words, here is what he remembered telling Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016:

"I am going to be leaving here in I think about six hours....If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money," he recalled telling Poroshenko.  "Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.  And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."

There was one tiny fact Biden omitted.  The prosecutor who was summarily fired was leading a far ranging corruption probe into the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which employed his son as a board member.  And there is more proof that the elder Biden had to know what was happening.

A New York Times article on December 8, 2015, appeared four months before the firing of the general prosecutor and included information about Hunter Biden's role in Burisma.  Biden's office was quoted as acknowledging that the younger Biden was indeed a Burisma board member.

Bloomberg News recently reported the following: "Joe Biden has said that he's never spoken with his son about his foreign business dealings.  Hunter told the New Yorker earlier this year that he once touched on Ukraine obliquely.  "Dad said, 'I hope you know what you are doing' and I said, "I do."

There is no better example of a possible quid-pro-quid arrangement between a top U.S. official and a foreign government than this case.  The former vice president has publicly admitted he threatened to withhold U.S. foreign aid if a Ukrainian prosecutor was not dismissed.

Joe Biden has skated around this issue by repeatedly claiming he was clueless about his son's business dealings.  Now it is time for the Department of Justice to open an official inquiry to determine if the former veep used his office and American aid to spare his son from prosecution.

There is far more evidence in the public record about influence peddling by Joe Biden than the thin accusations against Mr. Trump for his discussion with the Ukraine president about Hunter Biden. The media and Democrats can no longer cover up for the Democratic Party presidential candidate.

It would  be ironic if the Democrats pursuit of the Ukraine connection with Mr. Trump would instead force the party of impeachment to reconsider the candidacy of Joe Biden, whose interference in a foreign country's justice system weakens his chances in the presidential race.