Then-Vice President Joe Biden's team intervened in February 2016 to prevent the CIA from disseminating an intelligence report to policymakers about the perceptions senior Ukrainian officials held about his son's business dealings, newly declassified memos show.
The request that the intelligence community withhold the report from others in the U.S. government by Biden's national security advisor was "extremely rare and unusual," a senior CIA official told Just the News.
"I just spoke with VP/NSA and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated," the vice president's Presidential Daily Brief briefer told the CIA. "Thanks for understanding."
The report, reviewed by Just the News, compiled the reactions of senior Ukrainian government officials to the December 2015 visit of Vice President Biden to Kyiv.
In the aftermath of the country's Maidan Revolution and the Russian seizure of Crimea, Biden had been appointed President Barack Obama's point man to manage U.S. policy towards the fledgling, pro-Western government.
The document shows that the Ukrainian officials in the government of then-President Petro Poroshenko, were disappointed with the vice president's visit to their country for his lack of substantive discussions with their leader. Those same officials "privately mused" about the U.S. media's scrutiny on Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine, the report shows.
"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 CIA relayed.
The intelligence report also shows that the Ukrainian officials "expressed bewilderment and disappointment" about the vice president's visit because he did not engage in any of the expected discussions about substantive matters with Poroshenko or other senior officials.
In other words, he only came to Ukraine to threaten them into dropping an investigation into Hunter Biden's employer. Rather than discussing the issues he claimed he was making the trip to discuss, he focused only on protecting Hunter Biden's foreign paymasters.
The vice president's December 2015 visit to Kyiv has been the subject of much scrutiny surrounding Hunter Biden's business dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. It was on that trip that Vice President Biden decided to alter U.S. policy to call for Poroshenko to fire his chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. The vice president threatened to withhold a substantial U.S. loan guarantee if not.
At the time, Shokin was probing Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for corruption. His son, Hunter, had just officially joined the board of the company in May 2014. Shortly before the vice president's trip, then-Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt warned Biden's top advisors that the U.S. government considered Burisma corrupt.