A newly uncovered cache of State Department records revealed that Joe and Hunter Biden may not have been the only high-level officials seeking quid-pro-quo arrangements from Ukrainian officials.
Operatives close to the campaign of failed 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton also sought to build inroads with the country’s top prosecutor that would suggest the corrupt energy company Burisma was somehow involved with Clinton.
“This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption,” he said, in reference to the efforts to impeach Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate the corruption scandal.
The revelation came as part of 38 pages obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.
In fact, the offer to grant then-prosecutor-general Yuriy Lutsenko special access to Clinton came from Karen Tramontano, a deputy chief-of-staff during the administration of former President Bill Clinton who happened to be the CEO of Blue Star Strategies.
Burisma hired the company to lobby on behalf of its interests in the US.
Lutsenko reported the offer to George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs.
Kent advised him not to accept the offer due to the potential conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, and he reported the episode to then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in a September 2016 email.
Lutsenko had taken the post only months before, in May 2016, and ultimately allowed a corruption probe against Burisma to go “dormant” according to Democrats who repeatedly denied the Biden family had acted inappropriately.
However, it wasn’t the first time Kent found himself embroiled in Burisma’s bribery efforts. In 2014, only months after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board, the company succeeded in persuading then-prosecutor general Vitaly Yarema and other prosecutors to drop the probe with a $7 million bribe.
Yarema was forced out after Kent brought the matter to light and complained. He also attempted to warn the office of then-Vice President Joe Biden of the conflict of interests but was rebuffed.
His successor, Viktor Shokin, reopened the investigation until, Joe Biden—while serving as vice president—threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if Shokin wasn’t fired.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, on which Tramontano is a board member.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
