‘I looked at them and said, “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money…”‘
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As information continued to unfold in what the media sought to hype as a massive scandal for President Donald Trump over his alleged conversation with the Ukrainian president, many seemed to ignore that what Trump was being accused of is precisely what he sought Biden to be investigated for.
Trump stands accused of repeatedly urging Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in July to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But attempting to coerce the Ukrainian justice system is nothing new since Biden openly acknowledged doing the exact same thing while vice president under Barack Obama.
At that time, Hunter Biden was under investigation in a corruption scandal involving the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, whose board the younger Biden was hired to serve on ad a paid consultant.
While vice president, Joe Biden pressured then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to pull the plug on the investigation by saying that the U.S. would revoke a $1 billion loan guarantee if Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin were not immediately 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 later in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
The complaint came to light after a whistleblower, believed to have been listening in on the call, expressed his concern to Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general.
Trump backers within the Justice Department pushed back on Atkinson’s claim that the matter should be brought before the attention of the House Intelligence Committee, where partisan, anti-Trump Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. has desperately sought material that would undermine the president and possibly open the door to impeachment proceedings.
Nonetheless, Atkinson brought the matter to Schiff’s attention, issuing two letters to express his concern.
Trump continued on Friday morning to reject any accusations of impropriety on the call and to dismiss the scandal as yet another partisan witch hunt in a long series of efforts to undermine him.
….statement. Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation, that they would not have also come forward. Do you know the reason why they did not? Because there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2019