Document Shows Ukraine Reopened Probe of Hunter Biden's Company Well Before Trump Phone Call: Report
A recently uncovered document reportedly reveals the Ukrainian government had reopened the investigation into Hunter Biden-linked firm Burisma Holdings long before President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine.
According to investigative reporter John Solomon, the United States was aware of Ukrainian prosecutors’ decision to reopen a 2016 investigation into the activities of the energy firm, on which Hunter Biden held a board seat, “as early as February of 2019.”
This development does potentially catastrophic damage to House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against the president, Solomon said on “Hannity” Tuesday, making it unlikely Trump leveraged U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine in July for the purposes of forcing the nation to dig up dirt on 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son.
“The U.S. government had open-source intelligence and was aware as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation,” Solomon said.
“This is long before the president ever imagined having a call with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky,” he added, calling the development a “significant shift in the factual timeline.”
This information, Solomon said, was left out of the initial whistleblower report that led Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats last month to pursue impeachment proceedings against the president.
The exact charges upon which Trump would face impeachment seem to be up in the air, with Pelosi and Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler highlighting different portions of the Ukraine scandal narrative as presidential improprieties.
The omission of a key piece of potentially exculpatory evidence within the initial whistleblower report, however, leaves questions as to whether the still-unnamed intelligence agent was politically motivated or merely ignorant to the disclosure.
“That is a significant change in the timeline — it was omitted from the whistleblower’s complaint, and the question is did he not know it or did he exclude it because it didn’t fit the narrative he was trying to write,” Solomon continued.
“That’s a question for Congress to answer,” he concluded.
According to Solomon, Ukrainian investigators at the anti-corruption agency NABU had been in talks to take a closer look at “unusual transactions” in Burisma’s financial holdings.
Hunter Biden was on the board when a particular $3.4 million payment flagged as suspicious was made to the firm.
A 15-page “notice of suspicion” was officially filed by NABU investigators in March and a further investigation began, with the office formally requesting assistance from another Ukrainian investigative agency a month later.
The former vice president has attempted to downplay claims that his position as a “point-man” for President Barack Obama’s policy with regard to Ukraine and his son’s hiring by Burisma was a potential conflict of interests, Fox News reported.
Joe Biden publicly derided CBS News reporter Bo Erickson last week for posing the question in a news conference, according to the New York Post.
“It’s not a conflict of interest,” Biden said. “There’s been no indication of any conflict of interest from Ukraine or anywhere else. Period. I’m not gonna respond to that.”
“You should be looking at Trump,” he said.
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