NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE A s our Brittany Bernstein reports, the House Oversight Committee has revealed that, as Obama administration vice president, Joe Biden not only discussed with his son, Hunter, the Biden-family business of cashing in on Joe’s political influence with corrupt foreign actors and anti-American regimes; he also approved talking points proposed by Eric Schwerin — Hunter’s then-partner and the Biden-family money manager — for the United States government to use in addressing questions about Hunter’s membership on the board of Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian energy company.
Such revelations, though explosive, are hardly surprising if you’ve been paying attention (which the media-Democratic complex hopes you haven’t). There is a context here, and it’s worth bearing in mind when we consider that it’s been nearly six weeks since July 26, when the appalling plea agreement that Biden Justice Department official David Weiss offered Hunter unraveled. In the interim, the misdemeanor tax charges offered have been withdrawn, the inexplicable deferment on a felony gun charge remains in limbo, and another six weeks of statute-of-limitations time has lapsed.
Prodded by Judge Maryellen Norieka, Weiss has now stirred himself to claim that he may indict Hunter Biden on the gun offense by the end of the month. If he supposes that’s going to end the growing vitriol about his performance, he should suppose again.
To reiterate, the statute of limitations on most federal crimes — including bribery, money laundering, and failure to register as a foreign agent — is five years. Today is September 6, 2023. Weiss, the United States attorney for Delaware, has had the Biden investigation since 2018 and has never indicted it. As of today, he has eviscerated the government’s ability to prosecute Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or any other subject of the investigation for any crimes committed before September 6, 2018.
That is to say, Weiss has ensured that the corruption evidence the House committee has homed in on — the most significant evidence because it stems from Biden’s time as vice president — cannot result in criminal charges. That includes tax crimes: They have a six-year statute of limitations, meaning Weiss has now obliterated any possible tax case based on conduct prior to September 6, 2017 — i.e., the tax years from 2014 through 2016, when Hunter took his post on the Burisma board and Joe leveraged his influence as vice president to pressure the new government in Kyiv to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Those are also, by the way, the years when Burisma founder and CEO Mykola (“Nikolay”) Zlochevsky bribed Vice President Biden, according to what Zlochevsky told an FBI informant (who is said to have a track record of providing reliable information). Based on the FBI’s report of the informant’s account, Zlochevsky told the informant that he had installed Hunter on the board and paid him lavishly in order to buy Vice President Biden’s political protection. At the time, Zlochevsky, who had been a minister in the just-ousted Ukrainian government, was under investigation by the new government of President Petro Poroshenko, which was backed by the Obama administration. The British government, too, had Zlochevsky on its radar — indeed, it seized $23 million of his assets just weeks before Hunter joined the board. In addition, Zlochevsky told the informant that he had bribed Joe and Hunter Biden with a combined $10 million that was transferred in a complex web of transactions that, Zlochevsky said, would take investigators a decade to unwind.
While the informant has not been identified, any competent investigator would observe that there is some significant corroboration of the informant’s account: It is known that, despite Hunter Biden’s lack of any marketable experience in the energy sector, Zlochevsky paid the American vice president’s son $1 million a year beginning in 2014 to sit on the board — a salary that was significantly slashed once Biden was no longer in office (and thus no longer as valuable to Burisma). Moreover, the House committee has established that the Bidens used various banking channels, a complex web of 20 limited-liability companies, and close business associates who broke big payments from foreigners into smaller transfers that were doled out over time to at least nine different Biden-family members — including Joe’s grandchildren and other relatives who clearly had nothing to do with what passes for the family’s foreign commerce. So far, the committee has identified more than $20 million in foreign payments (capitalizing on the thorough work of Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin).
To reiterate, Weiss has been the lead prosecutor on the Biden investigation since 2018. Although the information outlined above has only recently broken into the public consciousness, it is not new to the government. It should go without saying that a federal prosecutor has a far better investigative arsenal to compel the production of documents than does a congressional committee — particularly documents in the possession of the executive branch.
According to the letter that oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) sent to the National Archives and Records Administration on Wednesday, NARA — which is custodian of the Obama administration’s White House records — maintains a file titled “Records on Hunter Biden, James Biden [the current president’s brother], and Their Foreign Business Dealings.” The email correspondence highlighted by Comer is dated December 4, 2015 — i.e., when Vice President Biden was the Obama administration point man on Ukraine policy and about a year and a half after Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board.
The first email, at 10:45 a.m. (all times are Eastern), is from the aforementioned Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s longtime fellow lobbyist and business partner, who was a close adviser of Joe Biden and intimately involved in managing the Biden family’s finances. The email prescribes talking points that Schwerin suggested the Obama administration should use to respond to media questions about Hunter’s role on the Burisma board. Schwerin sent the talking points to Kate Bedingfield, Vice President Biden’s communications director. A few hours later, at 2:30 p.m., Bedingfield responded, informing Schwerin that the “VP signed off on this.”
Let’s put that in context, shall we?
On the same day, December 4, Hunter was in Dubai with his close friend and fellow Burisma board member, Devon Archer, to attend the Ukrainian company’s board meeting. Interestingly, shortly before they joined Burisma’s board, Archer and Hunter had met with Vice President Biden at the White House on April 16, 2014. Just five days later, on April 21, the vice president was in Kyiv for various meetings. Wouldn’t you know it, the very next day it was announced that Archer had been named to Burisma’s board of directors — with Hunter’s formal installment on the board announced a few weeks later, on May 12. Archer, by the way, was later convicted in a federal fraud case in which Hunter Biden was implicated but not charged. He worked with Hunter and Schwerin at Rosemont Seneca Partners and has described their business as peddling “the Biden brand” — a euphemism for access to Joe Biden and his clout.
Back to the December 4, 2015, board meeting. Why, you may be wondering, would a Ukrainian energy company hold its board meeting in Dubai? Well, because Zlochevsky was living there in exile for fear of being arrested (just in case you needed reminding about why he’d be interested in paying for Joe Biden’s influence).
In the run-up to the board meeting, as I’ve previously recounted, Zlochevsky’s confidant, Burisma CFO Vadim Pozharsky, had emailed Hunter, Archer, and Schwerin on November 2, bemoaning the lack of “concrete tangible results that we set out to achieve” when Hunter and Archer joined Burisma. Pozharsky carped that business-planning documents Hunter and Archer had supplied failed to
offer any names of top US officials here in Ukraine (for instance, the US Ambassador) or Ukrainian officials (the President of Ukraine, chief of staff, Prosecutor General) as key targets for improving Nicolay’s [i.e., Zlochevsky’s] case and his situation in Ukraine.
To ensure that everyone was “on the same page” regarding “our final goals,” Pozharsky demanded “concrete deliverables” — in particular, a list of top “US policy-makers” who would travel to Ukraine in the coming weeks to help achieve the “ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [Zlochevsky] in Ukraine.”
Plainly, Zlochevsky’s troubles were the top agenda item at the board meeting on December 4 — the same day that Schwerin emailed Vice President Biden’s communications director. Whatever Hunter and Archer said in that regard at the board meeting did not satisfy Zlochevsky and Pozharsky. While the two Americans were sitting in the bar at the Four Seasons Resort in Dubai, they got a call from Pozharsky, who said Zlochevsky had an urgent need to speak with Hunter.
The two Ukrainians made the short trip to the Four Seasons, where they joined their American colleagues at the bar. As they discussed Zlochevsky’s straits, Pozharsky put Hunter on the spot, asking, “Can you ring your dad?” Hunter agreed and placed the call. When the vice president of the United States — the Biden Brand himself — came to the phone, Hunter put the call on speaker and explained that he and Archer were sitting together with “Nikolay and Vadym.”
How come so familiar? Well, it wasn’t just because “Nikolay” had by then paid Hunter and Archer over $2 million. Nor was it just because, when Hunter joined Archer on the board, Pozharsky had bluntly admonished them: “We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc., to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions” against Zlochevsky by the new, Obama administration–backed Poroshenko regime in Kyiv.
It was also because, despite Burisma’s notorious corruption and Zlochevsky’s fugitivity, Hunter and Archer had invited Zlochevsky’s factotum, Pozharsky, to come to Washington for an April 16 dinner at the Café Milano in Georgetown. There, Vice President Biden attended and mingled with some of the Bidens’ highly remunerative business associates. Having been given such intimate access, Pozharsky gushed in a morning-after email: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”
So when Hunter told his dad that “Nikolay and Vadim” were with him and Archer in Dubai on December 4, the vice president knew exactly to whom he was referring. Putting the call on speakerphone, Hunter stressed that the two Ukrainians “need our support.” The conversation, however, was mainly pleasantries. It was late in the evening in the United Arab Emirates, which meant it was still early afternoon in Washington. Exactly what time is not clear. But as noted above, Chairman Comer reports that it was 2:30 p.m. that afternoon when the vice president’s communications director emailed Schwerin to say that Biden had approved the proposed Burisma talking points.
A few days later, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine — he met with Poroshenko and addressed the Ukrainian parliament on December 8. It was during that visit, according to Joe Biden himself, that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine unless Poroshenko fired chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin . . . who then just happened to be investigating Zlochevsky and Burisma.
Just a few weeks later, in early 2016, the FBI’s informant reported that he’d met with Zlochevsky in Vienna and asked about Shokin’s investigation. According to the informant, Zlochevsky replied, “Don’t worry. Hunter will take care of all those issues through his dad.” Later, the informant says Zlochevsky told him about the $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden.
As we think about the investigation David Weiss has purportedly been conducting in conjunction with the FBI and the IRS for the last five years without filing any charges or taking any meaningful action, let’s think about where the information I’ve just outlined comes from.
NARA, an agency that (as we’ve seen in the Trump investigations) works closely with the Justice Department, has been in possession of the Obama-administration records — including the emails Comer is seeking — throughout the five years of Weiss’s investigation.
The correspondence between Hunter and Pozharsky was preserved in the Hunter Biden–laptop data, which the FBI has had since 2018.
The informant reported to the FBI in 2017 that Zlochevsky had said he’d bribed Vice President Biden by putting Hunter on the Burisma board and transferring the $10 million to the Bidens through complex transactions. The informant was reinterviewed on June 30, 2020, and then-attorney general Bill Barr directed that the resulting report be conveyed to Weiss. Ergo, the FBI has had the inculpatory information for six years, and Weiss for at least three years.
And it was five years ago, in 2018, that Biden publicly proclaimed, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, that he’d threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid that Ukraine desperately needed unless Poroshenko agreed to fire Shokin — who, a few months later, was in fact fired.
And mind you, I haven’t even mentioned, say, the millions the Bidens got from China, the evidence of which similarly has been known and knowable since 2018.
So here’s the question for Weiss: What the hell have you been doing for the last five years?
The answer, of course, is: burying the Biden investigation. And for that service, Biden attorney general Merrick Garland has branded him “special counsel” — a position for which he is unqualified based on the relevant regulations and unfit based on performance . . . or lack thereof.
But don’t you worry: Weiss is now promising that, by the end of this month, he will indict a gun charge so straightforward it could have been indicted with about a week’s competent investigation five years ago — and would have been if the defendant’s name hadn’t been Biden. That would be the same gun charge Weiss tried to disappear six weeks ago. Garland is right: The Biden probe couldn’t be in better hands — at least from the Biden administration’s perspective.