(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) In a recently resurfaced 2016 phone call, then-Vice President Joe Biden warned former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that cooperating with the incoming Trump administration could threaten Ukrainian economic and “physical security,” according to Infowars.
Leaked audio from days after the 2016 election, before Trump’s inauguration—Biden calls Poroshenko, then head of state of Ukraine, and threatens him with assassination if he cooperates with the incoming Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/j3dDzYU3gd
— Rodney Howard-Browne (@rhowardbrowne) July 16, 2022
VP Biden can be heard on the call instructing Poroshenko to conclude an investigation into the soon-to-be-nationalized Ukrainian bank PrivatBank before the International Monetary Fund made a decision pumping millions of dollars into the country.
“Anything you can do to push the PrivatBank to closure so that the IMF loans comes forward, I would respectfully suggest is critically important to your economic as well as physical security,” Biden told Poroshenko.
According to the One America News Network—which first released the so-called “Bribe Tapes” in 2020—Biden’s aim in the call was to threaten the Ukrainian president with assassination if he allowed the Trump administration to look into the details of Biden’s operations in the notoriously corrupt eastern European country.
“In other words, Biden does not want Ukraine asking any more money from Trump,” the OANN anchor said. “Doing so would cause Trump to look into the details.”
Biden can also be heard warning Poroshenko not to trust incoming President Donald Trump’s understanding of the delicate situation in Ukraine, and suggesting that a low-information Trump could very well tank the Ukrainian economy.
“This is getting very, very close to what I don’t want to have happen,” Biden said. “I don’t want Trump to get in a position where he thinks he’s about to buy onto a policy where the financial system is going to collapse and he’s going to be looked to pour more money into Ukraine.”
The recording was part of a larger 2020 release of phone calls between Biden and Poroshenko, which revealed improper collusion between the outgoing vice president—who handled Ukraine policy during the Obama administration—and the Ukrainians.
In one call, Biden told Poroshenko that, after the fashion of John Kerry’s “shadow diplomacy” with Iran, he intended to remain “deeply engaged” in Ukrainian politics even after leaving office.
Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of the Burisma natural gas company from 2014 until 2019.
It is unclear to what extent Joe Biden fulfilled his promise to remain involved—which may have been a violation of the Logan Act, much like Biden himself suggested weaponizing against incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn was forced out in the early days of the Trump presidency after being ensnared by an FBI perjury trap orchastrated by agent Peter Strzok and other top-level officials.
The supposed scandal helped pave the way for the Russia-collusion hoax that cost millions of dollars and cost valuable political capital for the nascent Trump presidency.
After campaigning to impeach Trump on the basis of phony Russia collusion claims, Democrats retook Congress in 2018 and, ironically, impeached him for equally phony allegations that he had attempted to collude with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In an infamous July 2019 phone call, Trump had asked that Zelenskyy reopen a corruption probe into Burisma that was closed by the Poroshenko administration. Biden had previously threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if Poroshenko did not fire the investigating prosecutor.
Since assuming the presidency, Biden has sunk an additional $50 billion into Ukraine to aid its war against Russia, which began in 2014 following a CIA-backed color-revolution during the Obama administration.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
