The report reveals that Ukrainian officials felt Hunter’s business dealings undermined the anti-corruption message Biden had come to deliver.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden sought to bury an intelligence report on his December 2015 visit to Ukraine, which revealed that Ukrainian officials felt his son Hunter’s business dealings in their country undermined the anti-corruption message that Biden had come to deliver.
According to the newly released CIA report, Ukrainian officials in then-President Petro Poroshenko’s government believed that Hunter’s work for Burisma Holdings revealed a “double standard” in the way American politicians approached corruption in foreign countries, lecturing governments to clean up their act while their family members profited from lucrative influence-peddling deals.
“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 document reads.
An email attached to the CIA report indicates Joe Biden asked the intelligence community to bury the report and its damning assessment of the Biden family’s business enterprise.
“I just spoke with VP/NSA and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated. Thanks for understanding,” an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence emailed a CIA official in February 2016. Another CIA official was cc’ed on the email, which appears to have been related to query from Biden’s office about the report.
CIA director John Ratcliffe released the report Tuesday morning after “determining it is in the public interest,” he said.
Hunter Biden was making $80,000 per month as a board member of Burisma while his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. The younger Biden had no prior experience in the energy industry. As vice president, Joe Biden took a strong stance against corruption in eastern Europe, even as his son was using his family name to secure business deals.
While in Ukraine in December 2015, Biden delivered a speech calling out corruption in the country, saying “the Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”
At the time of Biden’s speech, Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma and, several months later, Biden pressured the Poroshenko administration to fire Shokin, later bragging that he threatened to withhold U.S. aid if he wasn’t fired.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ … 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 recalled telling Poroshenko.
Trump was impeached during his first term after pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 2019 phone call to investigate alleged Biden family corruption in Ukraine. Trump was impeached by the House in December 2019 but was ultimately acquitted on both articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — in the Senate.
The Biden family’s business dealings were the basis of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden in 2023 and 2024. At the same time, Hunter Biden was prosecuted on federal gun and tax charges in Delaware and California.
The impeachment inquiry revealed that the Biden family received $27 million from foreign sources during and after Joe Biden’s vice presidency. The money primarily came from entities and individuals in Ukraine, Romania, and China. When he testified in 2024, Hunter Biden confirmed that his father spoke with his business partners on speakerphone and met them at multiple dinners during his vice presidency.
Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business associate and close friend, described the Biden family “brand” in 2023 and described his memory of Joe Biden shaking hands with foreign business partners at multiple dinners. Archer worked closely with Biden on international business deals and was also a Burisma board member.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings and personal misdeeds were a prolonged scandal in the second half of Joe Biden’s presidency. The impeachment inquiry focused on Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings and the extent to which the Justice Department slow walked its investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
Hunter Biden plead guilty in September 2024 to nine federal tax charges for failing to pay over $1.4 million of taxes in a timely manner. His guilty plea came after he was convicted in June 2024 on three federal gun charges in Delaware.
In December 2024, Joe Biden pardoned his son right before his sentencing on the gun and tax charges respectively. Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon absolved his son of any potential criminal activity from January 2014 to December 2024, making it one of the most sweeping pardons in American history.