VP Biden Linking Ukraine Loan to Prosecutor’s Firing Surprised State Department Officials, Emails Show

Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin holds a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 2, 2015. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)

Key White House, National Security Council, and State Department officials were caught by surprise when they learned in January 2016 that then-Vice President Joe Biden had abruptly changed U.S. policy to require the firing of Ukrainian special prosecutor Viktor Shokin as a condition for Ukraine receiving $1 billion in U.S.-backed International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans, according to emails cited by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and reviewed by The Epoch Times.

“There are State Department emails where they are, like, ‘Oh!’ surprised. There were people in the State Department saying, ‘Oh, Biden says they aren’t getting the money unless Shokin is fired,’ and they are surprised, saying, ‘Why did you do that, we didn’t talk about this; we didn’t plan that.’ So it was a total change from the consensus where the State Department was,” Mr. Jordan told reporters during a Nov. 4 question-and-answer session focused on the status of the House impeachment investigation of President Biden.

That probe is technically only an “inquiry,” but it’s expected to be upgraded to an official House investigation with a vote next week in the lower chamber. Mr. Jordan told reporters on Dec. 4 that he’s confident that the Republican majority will prevail in that vote despite having only a two-vote advantage over the Democrats.

Whether the vice president was pushing for Mr. Shokin’s ouster to aid his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings is a focus of the impeachment inquiry. Hunter Biden sat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings Ltd., which was being actively investigated by Mr. Shokin regarding allegations of corruption.

Investigators with Mr. Jordan’s panel; the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.); and the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), are focused on President Biden’s alleged participation in and benefit from his family’s receipt of millions of dollars of income throughout a period of several decades from individuals, as well as corporate and state entities, in Ukraine, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Romania during and after the senior Biden’s years as vice president under President Barack Obama.

Surprise From Officials

In one of the State Department emails to which Mr. Jordan referred, Eric Ciaramella, a White House National Security Council (NSC) deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, expressed shock to three colleagues on Jan. 21, 2016.

“Yikes,” he said. “I don’t recall this coming up in our meeting with them on Tuesday.”

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Mr. Ciaramella, who didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, was reacting to an email sent earlier that day from Elisabeth Zentos, an NSC colleague, that was also addressed to Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2013 to 2016, and Anna Makanju, who was then a special adviser to the vice president for Europe and Eurasia. Mr. Ciaramella is now a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mr. Pyatt, who’s presently the State Department’s assistant secretary for energy resources, couldn’t be reached for comment, according to a State Department spokesman, because he was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, attending the COP28 U.N Climate Change Conference. Ms. Makanju, who’s now vice president for global affairs at San Francisco-based OpenAI, didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Mr. Pyatt responded to the Zentos email, saying “Buckle in” and “We also need to readdress all the LG [loan guarantee] anti-corruption conditions ... and at this stage, there’s only one that really matters.”

Ms. Makanju didn’t respond in the email thread reviewed by The Epoch Times.

Mr. Jordan said State Department officials were surprised to learn of then-Vice President Biden’s ultimatum to then-Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko because it was previously settled U.S. policy to pressure Ukraine to root out official corruption that had plagued the country since it declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

Up until that ultimatum, the U.S. hadn’t made Ukraine’s receipt of the IMF loan guarantees conditional on Mr. Shokin’s removal. Briefing materials reviewed by the vice president during his December 2015 flight to Ukraine included planning for him to sign the U.S. agreement to back the IMF loans, with no reference to firing Mr. Shokin.

The judiciary chairman contends that then-Vice President Biden’s abrupt reversal followed from the fact that Mr. Shokin was investigating Burisma.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks to the press after coming out of the Hunter Biden special counsel David Weiss’s closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on Nov. 7, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

‘Called an Audible’

Mr. Jordan noted that during a Dec. 4, 2015, meeting in Dubai between Burisma executives Mykola Zlochevsky, Vadym Pozharsky, Mr. Biden, and Devon Archer, one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, the two Ukrainians pleaded with the two Americans to do something to relieve the “government pressure” that they were receiving from Mr. Shokin’s investigation of corruption allegations against Mr. Zlochevsky.

Mr. Archer told the oversight committee during a closed-door transcribed interview that in response to those pleas, Mr. Biden “called D.C.,” referring to his father, then the vice president. Three days later, the vice president “called an audible”—changed his plans—to reverse U.S. policy and demand Mr. Shokin’s firing, according to The Washington Post.

In a summary timeline of the events, the oversight committee observed that Mr. Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in the spring of 2014 and was joined by Mr. Biden shortly thereafter. Mr. Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mr. Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, he was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014.

“Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden ‘called D.C.’ in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company,” the committee stated.

The oversight panel has, to date, documented $6.5 million in income to the Biden family and their associates from their Ukrainian activities.

The Epoch Times reached out to both the State Department and the National Security Council for comment but didn’t receive any replies by press time.