When Republicans announced that they were yet again investigating scandals involving Hunter Biden's Ukrainian ties, I was at least slightly curious to see what else they had come up with. The answer turned out to be nothing at all. They were just going back to the discredited and debunked scandal from 2019 alleging that Joe Biden pressed for the firing of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General to protect his son's investment in Burisma.
This scandal has the same flaw as the Uranium One scandal that Republicans deployed against Hillary Clinton -- it ignores how the Washington DC bureaucracy -- the deep state if you will-- works, how large and powerful it is, and how difficult the system makes the sort of individualized corruption Republicans are alleging against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
We have discussed the Uranium One "scandal" at some length. Short version: The Obama Administration approved the sale of a US uranium company to a state-owned Russian corporation. Republicans attempted to blame this on Hillary Clinton, since she was Secretary of State in charge of foreign policy at the time, and to say that she approved the sale because the Russians made donations to the Clinton Foundation. Problems: (1) nearly all the donations were by Americans or Canadians and were made before Hillary became Secretary of State, (2) the State Department was one of nine agencies needed to approve the sale and (3) approval by the State Department was a subordinate with no input by Hillary whatever. In short, a large bureaucracy with many moving parts approved the sale. Hillary's sole role in the Uranium One sale was one of passive acquiescence. She would not have been able to undertake a policy of this type on her own as a favor to donor because the need for consensus among so many agencies would have stopped her.
Fast forward to Joe Biden pressing for the Prosecutor General to be fired. Let us concede one important difference here. Biden's role was not limited to passive acquiescence He was the Administrations point person on Ukraine. The Administration sent Biden to Ukraine to put pressure on the government, and he did with considerable vigor. Unlike Clinton, Biden played a major role in setting and implementing policy. Did he do it for personally corrupt reasons?
And here I do recognize that no Republican will be impressed with the argument that Biden was carrying out the Obama Administration's policy. They will presumably argue that Biden persuaded Obama to adopt a policy of removing the Prosecutor General in order to benefit Biden's son, and that Obama went along with it.
That argument does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
In February, 2014, a popular uprising overthrew Ukraine's pro-Russian government let by Viktor Yanukovich. All accounts agree that Ukraine under Yanukovich was rife with corruption, including having a natural resources minister -- Mykola Zlochevsky -- who also operated Ukraine's largest independent gas company -- Burisma. What I have not heard anyone even attempt to address is how large a portion of Ukraine's total corruption Burisma is. Is Burisma just one part of a massive puzzle, or is it the hub of the whole system? (Or one of many such hubs). This article gives at least one suggestion. In 2013 Zlochevsky was estimated to be the 86th richest man in Ukraine. In April, 2014, Britain froze some $23 million in assets Zlochevesky had stashed in that country.* The court case was met with vigorous litigation by Zlochevsky's lawyers and obstruction by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, led by Viktor Shokin. In January, 2015, the British courts released the funds, finding insufficient evidence. Also contributing to dropping charges -- a letter from some high-ranking official in the Prosecutor General's office saying that Zlochevsky was not under criminal investigation. In March, 2015, the Deputy Prosecutor General alleged that charges were dropped due to a bribe.**
It is not clear how large a role any of this had in Shokin's fall from grace. Shokin appears to have lost the backing of the US embassy in July, 2015 when a raid of two high-ranking prosecutors revealed bags of diamonds, cash, and documents linking them to Shokin. Unsurprisingly, Shokin blocked further investigation. During his time in office, not one major figure was convicted. If he made an exception for Burisma, evidence for it is sorely lacking. In September, 2015, then-ambassador Greg Pyatt*** gave a speech denouncing the Prosecutor General's office for refusing to fight corruption, specifically naming the refusal to reclaim Zlochevsky's assets from Britain (the only specific instance named), but still blaming the problem on subordinates and treating Shokin as a good-faith actor. If this was meant as a shot across Shokin's bow, he failed to take the warning. By October 31, 2015 anti-corruption activists staged a protest. Outside of Ukraine, a wide range of individuals and institutions were calling for Shokin's resignation, including members of the US Congress of both parties, the European Union, and the IMF. Presumably not all these players were motivated by having a son on the board of Burisma.
All of this is essential to make a point. Biden was in no way a rogue actor. He was pursuing a policy supported by the Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, the US embassy in Ukraine, US politicians from both parties, the EU, and the IMF. I have seen the argument that Shokin was at least holding open the possibility of prosecution, that Biden had him replaced with someone who closed the prosecution altogether, and that the broad consensus is a distraction. But the broad consensus cannot be a distraction. It is significant in the if Biden had declined the role of point man on Ukraine or (better yet) if Hunter Biden had declined the job with Burisma, US policy would still have been to remove Shokin.
Biden does appear to have been responsible for the decision to take a more aggressive approach. In December, 2015, he took a plane to Ukraine, originally planning to sign a billion dollar loan guarantee and call for Shokin's removal. Biden appears to have taken the lead -- and convinced others in the Obama Administration -- to make the billion dollar loan guarantee conditional on removing Shokin.
Neither action occurred during Biden's December, 2015 visit. It was not until February, 2016 that Shokin was fired, and not until June of that year that the US signed the loan guarantees. It is fair to point out that Shokin's successor, Yuri Lutsenko, was no better in fighting corruption (in Burisma or elsewhere) than Shokin was. Biden's critics make much of a 2018 appearance with the Council on Foreign Relations in which he said:
I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
Biden is being a bit crude here. He is also compressing into six hours an event that took several months and exaggerating his influence. But can one make an obvious point here? If he was acting out of corrupt motives, one would not expect him to exaggerate his role so much, or to brag about it in a public forum.
In short, both Uranium One and Ukrainian Two (the second go-round of trying to create a scandal around the firing of Shokin) make the same mistake -- they assume decisions are made entirely at the top and ignore just how big the US bureaucracy is and how many moving parts go into such a decision. Ironically, this point was actually illustrated in the first Trump impeachment. After Congress duly appropriated military aid for Ukraine, Trump put a hold on it. Numerous agencies called for the release of the aid. Only the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) supported the hold, for reasons unknown. Clinton and Biden were not rogue actors making decisions out of personally corrupt motives; they were acting in concert with the larger bureaucracy (the deep state if you will). Trump, by contrast, was acting out of personally corrupt motives, and found himself at odds with numerous federal agencies. And yes, a US President does have authority to override bureaucratic agencies, but not the authority to withhold funds duly appropriated by Congress.
And just to be clear, this is not intended to say that the federal bureaucracy is infallible, or that no one is ever justified in defying it. Requiring a bureaucratic consensus in policy making is effective in preventing actions motivated by personally corrupt motives. It can still be corrupt in the sense that institutional interests are not necessarily the same as the national interest. Bureaucratic consensus is notably rigid and tends to stifle innovation. It leads to a degree of group think that tends to suppress dissent. (Hence Obama officials who referred to it as the "Blob.") It is no guarantee whatever that the policy decisions will end up being good ones. But it is effective at reigning in rogue actors acting for personal gain.
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**This article was written in 2017, before any allegations were made that Joe Biden was acting on behalf of his son. It does, nonetheless, mention Hunter Biden and the extremely damaging impression he created. Incidentally, Shokin is never named in the article.
***Marie Yovanovitch became ambassador in 2016.
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