A year ago this month, Democrats began their impeachment crusade against President Trump because he had sought an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine. And the rallying cry then was that any concerns about the Bidens were pure, discredited conspiracy theories.
What a difference a year makes.
The GOP-led Senate Finance and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees plan to release a joint report as early as this week disclosing the results of a year-long probe into Joe Biden’s stewardship of Ukraine anti-corruption policy while his son earned big money as a board member at the corruption-plagued Burisma Holdings gas firm.
The report is expected to accuse the former vice president of engaging in a prohibited conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest by continuing to oversee the U.S. anti-corruption policies in Ukraine while his son served on the board of a natural gas company under investigation by the very Ukrainian prosecutors dependent on U.S. money, guidance and assistance in the fight against corruption that Joe Biden controlled.
The fact that Joe Biden admits he forced the firing in spring 2016 of Viktor Shokin — the Ukrainian prosecutor who was overseeing the Burisma probe — by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine only heightens the conflict concerns.
Democrats won’t be able to easily dismiss the concerns politically because Obama-era State Department officials have admitted in testimony that the Bidens’ behavior created the appearance of a conflict of interest that directly undercut U.S. efforts to fight endemic corruption in Ukraine.
But the bigger concern the report is expected to raise is whether U.S. officials during the Obama-Biden era turned a blind eye to red flags about what was going on at Burisma and with Hunter Biden and his business dealings…
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