by Steven Richards and John Solomon at Just the News
For four years the American public was assured that when then-Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor by withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees in late 2015 that he was simply carrying out U.S. policy constructed by career officials.
At the time, the prosecutor was investigating the Burisma Holdings energy firm that was paying Hunter Biden $1 million a year to be on its board. Democrats have argued since 2019 that the firing of the prosecutor had nothing to do with Burisma.
This week, Just the News released official government memos showing that U.S. policy in fact was the opposite of what Joe Biden did and that the vice president was actually urged to give Ukraine the $1 billion in loan guarantees because U.S. officials believe the prosecutor had made adequate progress in the fight against corruption.
The scores of documents that Just the News obtain from FOIA litigation, House and Senate investigators and U.S. government officials chronicle that story.
Here is the timeline of events that led to the dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
June 11, 2015:
Current Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, then the State Department’s lead official on Ukraine, sent a letter to Viktor Shokin – the Ukrainian prosecutor general – on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry congratulating Shokin and suggesting they were “impressed” about the job he was doing on corruption reform.
Sept. 24, 2015:…
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