NBC news story on Hunter Biden

[honorentheos]

April 21, Vice President Biden landed in Kyiv for meetings with Ukrainian officials, bringing with him terms for a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program to assist the Ukrainian natural gas industry.

Here's an article from that date - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukra ... HK20140421

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will announce a package of technical assistance focused on energy and economic aid distribution during a two-day visit to Ukraine that began on Monday, a senior administration official said.

Biden is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the country since the crisis with Russia erupted months ago.

His trip is largely symbolic. But during talks with Ukrainian leaders on Tuesday he will announce U.S. assistance, primarily of technical know-how to boost energy efficiency as well as production in Ukrainian natural gas fields and extraction of “unconventional” gas resources, a senior administration official told reporters traveling on board the vice president’s plane.

A U.S. team was also in Ukraine to help deal with the issue of securing gas flows from EU countries such as Slovakia and Hungary in the event that Russia cuts off Ukraine’s supply, the official said.

Kiev gets about half of its gas from Moscow and a large proportion of Europe’s gas is pumped from Russia via Ukraine. The United States is pushing Ukraine and the European Union to diversify their energy supplies and become less reliant on Russia.

Biden arrived in Kiev as an agreement reached last week to avert wider conflict in Ukraine began to falter.

Keep in mind that the major issue at this time was the Obama administration's stance of supporting Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression just a month before when they annexed Crimea and began sponsoring violent uprising in Eastern Ukraine including Russian troops going on "vacation" to Ukraine to fight during their leave. Russia was the major source of Ukrainian as well as European oil at the time which was obviously of strategic as well as tactical concern.

See this article for more information on that so you can contextualize why all of NATO might be interested in helping the Ukraine exploit its own oil reserves: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/does-russi ... sanctions/

Dated March 4, 2014: A large portion of Russian oil bound for Western Europe passes through Ukraine. And twice in the past decade, in 2006 and 2009, Russia has turned off natural gas shipments to Ukraine during disputes over gas prices. That in turn created shortages in some EU member nations.

In response, the EU has attempted to come up with alternatives to its current dependency on Russian oil and gas. The so-called "Nabucco" pipeline, for example, was a plan to bypass Russia by having a pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Europe, from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. But that project was shelved last June, when gas producers in Azerbaijan opted for a different plan.

[honorentheos]

LOL....are you kidding me Honor...my first point to consider?

From the article

Shokin has been and still is closely associated with Dmytro Firtash who was a close ally of formerly corrupt and Russian-backed Ukrainian President Yanukovych.

Honor...Hunter was an attorney for a mobster boss tied to that same goverment who was a minister for Yanukovych. LOL...are you kidding me!!!

Hunter Biden wasn't hired as Zlochevsky attorney. He was a paid member of Burisma's Board of Directors.

[Markk]

Hunter Biden wasn't hired as Zlochevsky attorney. He was a paid member of Burisma's Board of Directors.

LOL Okay…splitting hairs a bit but Okay…He was an attorney, who was hired by the gangster to sit on the BoD, and according to folks that were defending the hire…he was hired to “give advice on legal issues abroad,” like recruiting an attorney from the Obama DoJ to help in defending MZ in his corruption case. And to help with the hiring of legal teams.

He couldn’t speak Ukrainian, he had zero experience in Ukrainian law, and absolutely no experience in the natural gas industry

I’ll give you that was just a Mustache, in my opinion he was there only because of his name and connection to his father/VP, who was point man for Ukrainian aid packages for their country.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hunt ... SKBN1WX1P7

[honorentheos]

Trump did ask then-AG Jeff Sessions why the DOJ wasn't investigating the conspiracy theory regarding Ukrainian attempts to help Clinton and hurt him in 2016. Of course, he did it via Twitter and Sessions seems to have known the whole Black Ledger incident wasn't a cooked up scheme to smear Manefort and Trump...so they didn't. So it was on to his personal lawyer Giuliani followed by partisans like Nunes who took it on themselves to agitate for dirt on the Bidens and shift focus onto the Ukraine instead of Russia for trying to interfere with the US election.

Anyway, here's a better version of the timeline, prepared by actual journalists. It's long but informative.

https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/time ... rainegate/

[honorentheos]

LOL Okay…splitting hairs a bit but Okay…He was an attorney, who was hired by the gangster to sit on the BoD, and according to folks that were defending the hire…he was hired to “give advice on legal issues abroad,” like recruiting an attorney from the Obama DoJ to help in defending MZ in his corruption case. And to help with the hiring of legal teams.

He couldn’t speak Ukrainian, he had zero experience in Ukrainian law, and absolutely no experience in the natural gas industry

I’ll give you that was just a Mustache, in my opinion he was there only because of his name and connection to his father/VP, who was point man for Ukrainian aid packages for their country.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hunt ... SKBN1WX1P7

You say this and then yadda, yadda, yadda in the "common sense" "obvious" corruption of Joe Biden.

Nothing's changed with your unassailable rejection of information that subtracts from you biases

[honorentheos]

Trump wanted help from a person that might be able to give information of where our taxpayer monies might be going and mishandled, it is not rocket science.

That's not accurate. Trump wanted the Ukraine to investigate two things. The first was to look into the conspiracy theory that Ukrainians had worked to undermine his presidential campaign. That was largely built on false claims sown by Russian operatives deflecting from their own actions by claiming the firm Democrats retained to investigate the hack into their emails - Crowdstrike - has a secret Clinton serve. This false story is that this secret non-existent server contains the missing Clinton emails and they are being kept hidden because they are damning. It's a cooked up fake story. It's also combined with the very real fact a member of his campaign (Manafort) was exposed as having received corrupt money from corrupt President Yanukovych which has been recast into theories journalists in Ukraine were framing Manafort to hurt Trump and help Clinton. It's all BS.

Link regarding Crowdstrike: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019 ... ring-his-/

The second was he had been fed information from Giuliani that Joe Biden was guilty of bribing Ukrainian leadership to benefit Biden's son's client so he was asking the Ukraine to publicly investigate Joe Biden.

In neither is Trump's concern about public funds being misused. They are both aimed at his own personal political interests. It takes projection to read into his statements that he was interested in protecting the American taxpayer. Mostly he talks like a child calling people bad, and what they did bad.

I am not sure what "public statement " you are talking about, and if you can give me a link, so I understand the context of what you are asking, I will certainly answer your question.

Trump wanted a public statement made that the Ukraine was investigating Joe Biden. It was actually scheduled to happen but when the whistleblower story broke, the aid was released and the CNN interview cancelled.

Trump asked Z. to give "us" information on the possibility that a sitting VP, who was in charge of rooting out corruption, was actually corrupt, based on many of the the evidences, and more that I have laid out here, that you duck and probably haven't even read. Like, why was the VP's son working for a known gangster/mobster, and corrupt goverment official that was funneling millions from his own goverment, which much of which was foreign aid, all the while the VP was in charge of giving out the much of that foreign aid.

Biden wasn't tasked with rooting out corruption. He was assigned managing US relations with Ukraine for the executive branch. It was a diplomatic and foreign relations assignment. You keep misrepresenting this by asking who the US assigned to investigate Ukraine where you think the answer is Joe Biden but that's an ignorant, poorly understood portrayal of Biden's responsibilities. You should stop putting it that way.

As to Hunter Biden, he clearly was hired onto the board of directors for Burisma because his last name and connections were viewed as providing Bursima and it's president with some protection or benefits. Hunter certainly benefited from it in what is an unfortunate but common shady aspect of how connections and influence are abused.

But that's not the same as saying Hunter Biden was successfully able to influence his dad and US policy to actually do things that were not in US interests but were in the interest of Burisma. And that's critical.

For the last time, Biden wasn't using US aid to benefit Hunter. He presented the US position that LOAN GUARANTEES were being withheld unless they removed the corrupt PG Shokin. Shokin was so corrupt there were active protests in the streets before this seeking his removal as well as an assassination attempt. He was corrupt as “F”. His claiming he was just about to start an investigation into Burisma before being sacked is BS. His deputy has verified this. His replacement has verified this. The anti-corruption organizations in Ukraine have verified this. Everyone who isn't tied up in his corruption or trying to seek to help Trump out have verified Shokin was corrupt, not investigating Burisma but instead holding up the investigation, and that his removal hurt the president of Burisma rather than helped him.

Jesus Christ, man. How many times does that need to be spelled out for you to have it sink in?

[Markk]

Honestly thanks…you pasted a baseline to go through that will take a while to get through…

Let we start with this, it is very important to my point…

Honor wrote….Markk, Zlochevsky was and is known to be corrupt. That's not news. The entire point of the timeline was to show that the investigations into him were being held up by the Office of the Prosecutor General and interfered with by corrupt Ukrainians kleptocrats whose history and ties go back into the early 2000s. Shokin, Yanukovych, Poroshenko, Lutsenko - they all were tied up in the same corruption issues as Zlochevsky.

Okay…of all these, Shokin had the best record of fighting corruption…if you watch the documentary the show his record as compared to the two IG’s before him.

What is really important here and a key fact…JB was dealing with all these corrupt officials…

Listen to this carefully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP5Cjpah7Js

Biden was dealing directly with these corrupt folks and promising another billion dollar aid package for them to control…and Biden force then to fire Shokin, the least dirty of them all, by far, and had them put in Lutsenko, who Biden claimed was solid.

As I outlined Lutsenko…took over an investigation of Burisma and found they owed 40 million in back taxes…he/they(?) brokered a deal with Burisma/MZ to pay only 7 million in a settlement and that at least at the time… let them off the hook.

You conceded above that all these men were tied to this corruption together…and by this time Shokin was out of the picture, so given these men were all kleptocrats and in bed together…and add the son of a sitting VP, who was on video admitting that he was going to approve a billion dollar aid package to them, and Joe stating in the same video the new IG was “solid?”

Come on Honor…at best Joe Biden is a complete moron and should be “fired” for being completely clueless…or he was well aware of what he was doing in getting Shokin fired, protecting Burisma/MZ and by default his son.

I will read all th e times lines you pasted and comment later

[honorentheos]

Come on Honor…at best Joe Biden is a complete moron and should be “fired” for being completely clueless…or he was well aware of what he was doing in getting Shokin fired, protecting Burisma/MZ and by default his son.

Neither is accurate. Shokin's corruption was not something Biden talked the world into believing. Your position on that is untenable and only supported by scoundrels or Russian propoganda. If there is a difference.

Biden didn't pick Lutsenko as Shokin's replacement, the administration accepted it when decided on by the government of Ukraine (you know, sovereign nations being what they are and all...) with the view his past behavior indicated he was a "solid guy at the time" to use the full phrase and not cherry pick.

You are still making arguments you made at the very beginning of the discussion the last time we went through this. That's telling given what more is now known which should have caused movement.

[Markk]

Come on Honor…at best Joe Biden is a complete moron and should be “fired” for being completely clueless…or he was well aware of what he was doing in getting Shokin fired, protecting Burisma/MZ and by default his son.

Neither is accurate. Shokin's corruption was not something Biden talked the world into believing. Your position on that is untenable and only supported by scoundrels or Russian propoganda. If there is a difference.

Biden didn't pick Lutsenko as Shokin's replacement, the administration accepted it when decided on by the government of Ukraine (you know, sovereign nations being what they are and all...) with the view his past behavior indicated he was a "solid guy at the time" to use the full phrase and not cherry pick.

You are still making arguments you made at the very beginning of the discussion the last time we went through this. That's telling given what more is now known which should have caused movement.

Honor, Biden said that Lutsenko was a”soild” choice, it is on the video, this is just a undeniable fact. Are you saying Joe forced Shokin out, without knowing and approving his replacement…and then give his approval to the administration, for the aid to the Ukraine to be released, not knowing who he was?

If that is indeed the case, it is another reason he is not fit to be VP let alone President.

I’m doing okay with my arguments. Folks here are conceding more and more…and we will get to China and the inconsistency’s in the Biden family. And keep in mind the OP is about the new information and admissions coming to surface, so I am perfectly in context with My OP. It is huge that NBC, the NYT and other liberal outlets are now confirming the Post story. The left wing media is turning on Hunter, and even calling it just a “private citizen scandal.” And rallying around Joe as not knowing nothing about it.

[honorentheos]

Neither is accurate. Shokin's corruption was not something Biden talked the world into believing. Your position on that is untenable and only supported by scoundrels or Russian propoganda. If there is a difference.

Biden didn't pick Lutsenko as Shokin's replacement, the administration accepted it when decided on by the government of Ukraine (you know, sovereign nations being what they are and all...) with the view his past behavior indicated he was a "solid guy at the time" to use the full phrase and not cherry pick.

You are still making arguments you made at the very beginning of the discussion the last time we went through this. That's telling given what more is now known which should have caused movement.

Honor, Biden said that Lutsenko was a”soild” choice, it is on the video, this is just a undeniable fact.

What he said was the person they (meaning Ukraine) put in place of Shokin, speaking of Lutsenko, was, "solid at the time". Full context of the quote:

https://www.cfr.org/event/foreign-affai ... -joe-biden

HAASS: Before I call—I just want to put one other issue on the floor before I get another question or two, which is Ukraine. This administration, unlike the administration you worked in, decided to provide limited defense articles to Ukraine. Do you think that was a wise decision? And more broadly, do you see any scope for any sort of a deal on eastern Ukraine?

BIDEN: The answer is yes, I think it was a wise decision. But then again, I was pushing that for two years before we left, so. And the reason is I think the more you up the ante, the cost to Russia for their aggression—I mean, as you all know, and you know this better than anybody, you know, the one big lie going on about Ukraine back in—and the rest of Russia is that no Russian soldiers are engaged. They’re not dying. No body bags are coming home, et cetera. Because there’s overwhelming opposition on the part of the body politic in Russia for engagement in Ukraine in a military sense.

Do I think they’re—I think the Donbas has potential to be able to be solved, but it takes two things. One of those things is missing now. And that is I’m desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kiev in terms of corruption. They made—I mean, I’ll give you one concrete example. I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

Well, there’s still—so they made some genuine substantial changes institutionally and with people. But one of the three institutions, there’s now some backsliding.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... fell-apart

The source for Sakvarelidze’s claim was an unnamed foreign consultant working within Ukrainian law enforcement. “A high-ranking official in the prosecutors’ office told him [the consultant] he suspected that one official had taken a bribe of $7m,” Sakvarelidze alleged in his television appearance. “It’s shameful of course. People like that should not represent this country.” (Sakvarelidze did not respond to interview requests. The allegation has not been proven, but it is the subject of an investigation by the newly established National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.)

Sakvarelidze, an ethnic Georgian, had been hired just weeks earlier to help clean up the law enforcement system and he set to work. Progress was slow, however. In fact, it was so slow that the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, decided to make an astonishingly forthright interjection. In September 2015, speaking in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, Pyatt stated that prosecutors “were asked by the UK to send documents supporting the seizure” of the $23m, but “instead sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting there was no case against him”. “Those responsible for subverting the case by authorising those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated,” he said.

The allegation was part of a long and damning speech, in which he laid out just how little Ukraine had reformed its law enforcement bodies, something that makes recovering the millions stashed overseas unlikely if not impossible.

Ukraine’s national finances are currently dependent on the International Monetary Fund, where the dominant voice belongs to the United States. Pyatt was not just any ambassador therefore, but the local representative of the government’s paymaster. He was putting Ukraine on notice – sort out the prosecutor’s office, because America is getting annoyed. But it didn’t work. Rival prosecutors opened criminal cases against two of Kasko’s investigators, and their allies in other institutions. “Sadly, the protection racket we uncovered … turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg,” Sakvarelidze wrote on Facebook in October 2015.

Change could only be won when international lenders forced President Poroshenko to act. It was tough talk from the west that obliged Ukraine’s parliament – long referred to sarcastically as the biggest business club in Europe – to create the anti-corruption bureau and a dedicated anti-corruption prosecution service. And it was only the bluntest of language from US officials that forced the Ukrainian government to fire crooked prosecutors. According to a valedictory interview by the former vice president Joe Biden in the Atlantic, Poroshenko only sacked the lawman blocking Kasko’s reforms because Biden made a direct threat. “Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars,” Biden said he had told Ukraine’s president. “You can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand, we’re not paying if you do.”

Biden was Washington’s point man on Ukraine throughout the Obama administration, and consistently encouraged reformers and chided their opponents. In a speech in Ukraine’s parliament in December 2015, he said the country could not hope to reform itself on European lines or regain its money, if it did not do something about its entrenched corruption. “You cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent,” he told parliament. “It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

By then, however, almost two years had passed since the revolution and many Ukrainians had become disillusioned. The credibility of the United States was not helped by the news that since May 2014, Biden’s son Hunter had been on the board of directors of Burisma, Zlochevsky’s company.

The White House insisted the position was a private matter for Hunter Biden, and unrelated to his father’s job, but that is not how anyone I spoke to in Ukraine interpreted it. Hunter Biden is an undistinguished corporate lawyer, with no previous Ukraine experience. Why would a Ukrainian tycoon hire him?

Hunter Biden failed to reply to questions I sent him, but he told the Wall Street Journal in December 2015 that he had joined Burisma “to strengthen corporate governance and transparency at a company working to advance energy security”. That was not an explanation that many people found reassuring. The Washington Post was particularly damning: “The appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst,” it wrote, shortly after Hunter Biden’s appointment. “You have to wonder how big the salary has to be to put US soft power at risk like this. Pretty big, we’d imagine.”

I’m doing okay with my arguments. Folks here are conceding more and more…and we will get to China and the inconsistency’s in the Biden family.

I just reposted comments from over two years ago. You are no closer to being informed on the issue today than you were then, and large parts of what you imagine are people conceding is you barely now acknowledging points made then.