Free Republic

December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects. During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents. Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector,” but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden’s son Hunter. On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting...

A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying about a $10 million bribe that a Ukrainian businessman paid to then-vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter to “protect” his firm from a looming corruption investigation. Alexander Smirnov, 43, entered into a plea agreement with special counsel David Weiss and confessed to having created “a false and fictitious record” as part of a multi-year federal probe into the Bidens. The falsehoods included the bribery allegation, which was memorialized in an FBI FD-1023 form in 2020 and released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last year, and other aspects of...

After rejecting three previous requests, a Moscow court Monday released the former president of Russia's largest petrochemical holding on bail of 20 million rubles ($630,000). The presiding judge also ruled earlier in the day to close hearings on the case to the public. The publicized trial of two former Sibur executives, president Yakov Goldovsky and vice president Yevgeny Koshchits, is one of the few remaining vestiges of the power struggle that took place earlier this year at Gazprom, which is the controlling owner of Sibur. Goldovsky has said his actions at the helm of Sibur were only construed as crimes...

While the influence USAID funding exerts on foreign populations to induce and influence regime change may sometimes be subtle at best, other times it is much more apparent. Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine as Vice President in March 2016 may be one of the more well-known examples. After the 2020 Election and the exposé of the Hunter Biden Laptop From Hell, quite a bit of attention was given to an outburst that Joe Biden made during a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018. During his remarks, Biden infamously bragged about pressuring Ukraine officials to fire Viktor...

Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who allegedly paid a total of $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2015 and 2016 in exchange for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s assistance in getting Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired, is believed to be an asset of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) by the United States intelligence community, according to a national security source speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity. The official said:

One of the most disturbing scandals of the Hunter Biden saga is the imprisonment without trial of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov. The Ukrainian-born Israeli-American, who once told his FBI handler about Ukrainian claims of a $10 million bribe to the Bidens, has been languishing in a Los Angeles prison for nine months on charges that he lied to the FBI. Last week, federal prosecutors slapped new tax-evasion charges on Smirnov, 43, which suggests they know their original indictment is too weak for a jury to convict him when he faces trial beginning Jan. 8. Smirnov was one of the...

Special Counsel David Weiss appears to have finally made the long-awaited case exposing years of concealment and political corruption. No, it is not the case against Hunter Biden. The allegations of tax fraud in California are obvious and unavoidable. Weiss just made the case against the Justice Department and himself in protecting Hunter Biden from the most damaging charges of being an unregistered foreign agent. In a new filing, Weiss released evidence on Hunter seeking money to advance the interests of a Romanian on United States policy. I have previously testified on the Foreign Agents Registration Act and have previously...

Two House Republicans leading their chamber's President Biden impeachment inquiry sent a new letter Monday to the White House seeking documentation about the developments that led to the then-Vice President Biden demanding Ukraine fire its prosecutor developed.The new request follows a March 1 briefing provided by White House staff to the the members' respective committees detailing then-Vice President Biden’s infamous December 2015 speech to the Ukrainian parliament and the “non-public context” surrounding it.“Unfortunately, the briefing was inadequate, and White House lawyers peddled demonstrable falsehoods rather than providing substantive and verifiable information. As such, the committees are now compelled to request...

The House Oversight Committee is taking the Biden administration to task for refusing to hand over documentation that is critical for the impeachment inquiry that was launched in 2023. This could be the beginning of a contentious political battle in the nation’s capital as top House committee chairs are intensifying their efforts to obtain early drafts of a 2015 speech given by then-Vice President Joe Biden in Ukraine. It is believed that during this speech, Biden called for the firing of former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating corruption related to Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Joe Biden’s son,...

Two associates of Rudy Giuliani made their initial appearance before a federal judge on Thursday, less than 24 hours after they were arrested on campaign finance violations while trying to board an international flight with one-way tickets at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington D.C. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Va. to face a four-count indictment alleging that they, along with two other co-defendants, conspired to violate a ban on foreign donations and contributions in connection with federal and state elections. The two men remained mostly silent during their appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge...

For nearly a decade, Joe Biden used multiple email aliases to send hundreds of messages to his son Hunter’s former business partner ... The 11-page log of emails sent and received by Joe Biden between 2010 and 2019 was obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee through metadata provided by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. During that nine-year-period, Joe Biden used pseudonyms, such as “robinware456,” “JRBware” and “RobertLPeters,” to correspond with his son, other family members, White House officials and Hunter’s former business partner Eric Schwerin, according to the committee. In total, Joe Biden fired off or...

The European Commission praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin for his efforts to fight corruption in a December 2015 progress report published nine days after then-VP Joe Biden demanded his ouster. The report flies in the face of Biden’s claims that the European Union joined his demands that Shokin be removed for being corrupt and obstructing anti-corruption reforms. In fact, the Dec. 18, 2015, progress report, obtained by the New York Post, says that the European Union was satisfied that Ukraine had achieved “noteworthy” progress, including in “preventing and fighting corruption,” and thus was eligible for visa-free travel in Europe. The...

If there’s one thing we can say about Joe Biden it’s that he’s a boastful jerk who can’t keep his mouth shut. Over the years, Dems and the media have tried to spin Joe’s arrogance into endearing “gaffes.” Let’s be clear — Joe is not a lovable guy who occasionally misspeaks; he’s an arrogant loudmouth who believes he’s better than everyone else. This character flaw has landed him in hot water multiple times. His blend of pathological lying, rude comments, and excessive bragging always backfires on him. Case in point: his on-camera boast about successfully pressuring Ukraine to fire Prosecutor...

Aweek after then-Vice President Joe Biden began pressuring Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor in late 2015 by withholding U.S. loan guarantees, the European Union reached internal consensus in a memo saying that Prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s office and the country at large had met its goals for fighting corruption, organized crime and human trafficking. The newly revealed memo directly undercuts the narrative crafted by Democrats during Donald Trump’s first impeachment and sustained during the 2020 presidential election, namely, that Biden fired Shokin over U.S. and European concerns that he wasn’t fighting corruption aggressively enough. At the time, Shokin was investigating...

Hunter Biden enlisted former members of the Clinton administration in his effort to checkmate a corruption investigation into a Ukrainian energy company that gave Hunter Biden a well-paid seat on its board, according to a new report. The end of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation of Burisma Energy is well known. Then-Vice President Joe Biden said he told Ukrainian officials to boot Shokin or risk a loss of U.S. aid. Shokin was dismissed. However, before that came to pass, Hunter Biden was working his U.S. contacts to head off the probe, according to the Daily Mail, which cited as...

Fired Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin claimed then-second son Hunter Biden was brought on to the Ukrainian gas company Burisma’s board in order to “provide protection” for CEO and founder Mykola Zlochevsky from criminal investigations. “I have no doubt that there were illegal activities engaged in by Burisma,” he told Fox News’ “One Nation” host Brian Kilmeade through a translator in an interview that aired on Saturday night. “It continued to expand and Zlochevsky, who at the time held the post of minister … started bringing in people who could provide protection for him. Hunter Biden was among them and...

EXCLUSIVE: Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin told Fox News in an exclusive sit-down interview that he was fired during the Obama administration for investigating Burisma, the energy firm whose board Hunter Biden served on. During the interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade – set to air Saturday at 8 p.m. – Shokin said it is his "firm personal conviction" that he was fired because then-Vice President Biden and Hunter were bribed. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ousted Shokin in 2016 – he was hired a year prior – due to Shokin's alleged corruption and pressure from the U.S. government...

Former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin accused President Joe Biden of corruption, saying that while he didn't want to wade into "unproven facts," his belief was that Biden bribed Ukrainian officials in exchange for Shokin's firing. "I do not want to deal in unproven facts, but my firm personal conviction is that, yes, this was the case. They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn't that alone a case of corruption?" Shokin told Fox News on Friday.

Former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin is speaking out and revealing his side of the story after then Vice President Joe Biden demanded he be fired back in 2016. At the time of his firing, Shokin was investigating corruption at Ukrainian gas company Burisma -- the same company that was paying Hunter Biden $80,000 per month to sit on the board. During closed door testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee earlier this week, Hunter Biden's former business partner -- Devon Archer -- said he believed Burisma would have gone under if not for the Biden "brand" -- including Joe...

An old video of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was removed from office under pressure from then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, is making the rounds online again following the damning testimony of Devon Archer. This video was removed on Youtube. (snip) “I understand very well that the United States has one of the strongest intelligence agencies in the world… Apparently, Mr. Biden was informed that we are approaching the moment when the interrogations of his son and other persons began,” Shokin said. “If my corruption had been proven, Biden and other politicians would have said everything out loud officially,...