By Chuck Warren

CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassified and released a document regarding Joe Biden’s 2015 trip to Ukraine and the possibility of corruption.

Before I get to the document, here are the facts about Biden’s 2015 trip:

  • Biden traveled to Ukraine in December 2015 and asked President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

  • One of the possible targets for the corruption investigation was energy company Burisma Holdings, whose board Hunter Biden was on.

  • Shokin was investigating Hennady Korban, the leader of a rival party, and even detained him once. Korban’s biggest backer was Ihor Kolomoysky, the biggest shareholder at Burisma and an all-around corrupt guy.

  • Shokin was unpopular in Ukraine for having failed to bring any court charges related to corruption.

  • Shokin had a terrible relationship with his deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, who had a close relationship with the U.S. government. Shokin even prevented Kasko from traveling to the U.S. for work, which the U.S. embassy in Ukraine condemned.

  • The U.S. government and the European Union believed that Shokin was doing a poor job.

  • The Ukrainian parliament, and not the president, sacked Shokin three months later.

  • Most Ukrainians, the U.S., the E.U., the IMF, and the World Bank welcomed the sacking.

Here are the speculations:

  • Many think that Biden asked Poroshenko to protect his son from being investigated.

  • There is little news specifically about the Burisma investigation, suggesting that either Shokin was too harsh or too soft on it. The closest we get to a link is investigating Korban.

  • Shokin himself says that he was fired because of pressure from Biden.

  • In 2018, Biden bragged about getting him 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. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

  • Kasko gave an interview in 2019 claiming that Shokin was not investigating Bursima.

We do not know the extent to which Shokin and Kasko are being honest. Kasko knows how to sweet-talk Americans and could be lying. Shokin of course wants to make himself look good. But the consensus in Ukraine was that Shokin was doing a poor job. As for Biden’s bragging, he might be right, but also, we all know that Joe Biden overcompensates for his insecurities when he tells a story.

The Ratcliffe document matters in a different way. Here is a quote from the document:

“Following the visit of the U.S. Vice President. [REDACTED] officials within the Poroshenko administration privately mused at the U.S. media scrutiny of the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corrupt business practices in Ukraine. These officials viewed the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double-standard within the United States Government towards matters of corruption and political power.”

The Ukrainians took issue with the fact that Biden was preaching anti-corruption and tying U.S. aid to it while his own son was participating in corruption. They thought that Biden was being a hypocrite. They were right.

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.