Part IV: From ‘wanted man’ to ‘in demand’
How Burisma’s founder turned scrutiny into prestige
“I said I’m going to be leaving here in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting a billion dollars. Well, son of a bitch. Got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid. At the time.” — Joe Biden, January 2018.
By Tatiana Prophet
According to James Risen at The Intercept and Lucian Kim at National Public Radio, when Joe Biden called for a prosecutor to be fired in 2016, that prosecutor was not investigating Biden’s son Hunter; according to everyone in the Western world, Viktor Shokin was corrupt himself and had no interest in exposing corruption. Why, then, did Shokin’s replacement close the books on the investigation into Hunter’s employer, Burisma Holdings?
Wrote Risen: “The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase – not lessen — the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.”