Hunter Biden enlisted former members of the Clinton administration in his effort to checkmate a corruption investigation into a Ukrainian energy company that gave Hunter Biden a well-paid seat on its board, according to a new report.
The end of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation of Burisma Energy is well known. Then-Vice President Joe Biden said he told Ukrainian officials to boot Shokin or risk a loss of U.S. aid. Shokin was dismissed.
However, before that came to pass, Hunter Biden was working his U.S. contacts to head off the probe, according to the Daily Mail, which cited as its source emails from the laptop computer formerly owned by Hunter Biden.
As reported by the Mail, in 2014, Hunter Biden enlisted the help of his then-law firm, Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, to deal with Burisma’s well-founded fear of a corruption investigation from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.
He suggested using an investigative agency — Nardello & Co. — to do some digging.
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“It would be helpful to gain intelligence on who is leading the restructuring the individuals being considered for those posts,” he wrote.
“Agreed — that is part of what their human intel sources are seeking to learn,” replied Heather King, a Boies partner.
When Shokin ramped up his probe in 2015, Hunter connected Burisma with Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by former members of the Clinton administration.
Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote in a Nov. 2, 2015, email that the “ultimate purpose” of the effort was to work was “to close down for any cases/pursuits against [Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky] in Ukraine.”
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Pozharsky worried that nothing in writing spoke about lobbying the State Department, but an email to Hunter Biden from a business partner proved that was part of the deal.
“I would tell Vadym that this is definitely done deliberately to be on the safe and cautious side and that Sally [Painter, Blue Star COO] and company understand the scope and deliverables,” Eric Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden.
Pozharsky eventually gave way, writing to Hunter Biden, “If you and Devon [Archer, a fellow board member] feel comfortable that they will deliver what in real terms we are talking about, we should disregard the wording of the scope and move further with signing and starting actual work.”
The lobbying eventually came to the attention of federal authorities, who required Blue Star to file Foreign Agents Registration Act paperwork in 2021.
Archer told a House committee that he believed Hunter Biden enlisted his father’s help in late 2015.
“I think they were getting pressure and they requested Hunter help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said.
“The request is like, ‘Can DC help?’ weren’t specific, you know, ‘Can the Big Guy help?’ It was always this amorphous, ‘Can we get help in DC?’” he said.
Shokin told Fox News Sunday that he was fired “at the insistence of the then Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma.”
“There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job. But because pressure was repeatedly put on [then-Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko, that is what ended up in him firing me,” he said.
A further report by Fox News said that Archer met then-Secretary of State John Kerry not long before Shokin was fired.
