Hunter Cleared of the Worst Accusations

US Attorney David Weiss*

So, in the latest news today, Russia is poised to overrun Ukraine, Donald Trump is favored to be elected and invite Russia to conquer the rest of Europe, but it won't matter in the long run because global warming is about to stop the Gulf Stream and turn all Europe into a frozen wasteland.  It seems frivolous to rejoice about such a small thing, but David Weiss, the US Attorney/ Special Counsel tasked with investigating Hunter Biden, has indicted the informant who accused Hunter of taking a bribe, charging him with lying to the FBI.

For anyone with better things to do, the back story is this.  Republicans in Congress really want to impeach President Joe Biden for profiting off his son's business activities and illicit foreign influence, if they could just find some sort of evidence to support their accusations.

Exhibit A in their evidence was a 2020 report (called a 1023) by a hitherto unnamed confidential informant to the FBI alleging that Joe and Hunter had each received a $5 million bribe from Mykola Zlochevsky.(president of Burisma).  According to the report, the informant met with Burisma executive Oleksander Ostapenko in Kiev in late 2015 or early 2016 to discuss a merger with a US company and was told that Hunter Biden was on the board of directors "to protect us through his dad from all kinds of problems."  The informant met with Ostapenko and Zlochevsky in Vienna about two months later, around the time Joe Biden publicly called Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin corrupt and called for his removal.  While Zlochevsky said that Shokin was investigating Burisma, and while this was an obstacle to the planned merger, "Don't worry, Hunter will take care of those issues through his dad."  When pressed, Zlochevsky said he had paid $5 million to one Biden and $5 million to another.  He also said that Hunter was stupid and useless, but his father insisted that he be on the board.  After the election and during the transition, Zlochevsky expressed fear about being found and said that he was pressured into making the payments and had tapes and texts to prove it.  Finally, the informant said that he met with Ostapenko in London in 2019 and spoke to Zlochevsky, then on the run an in an unknown location, on the phone.  Zlochevsky mentioned the then-current news about investigations into the Bidens and said he had laundered the money so well it would take ten years to trace.

Such was the report the Republicans offered as their prime piece of evidence of corrupt activities by the Bidens.  Plenty of people at the time, most notably Jamie Raskin (ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee), raised serious questions about the report.  Were there problems with it?  Let me count the ways:

1. It looked suspiciously like an attempt to breath life into a debunked rumor.  Shokin, in fact, has blocked British attempts to seize Burisma assets and seemed generally uninterested in prosecuting corruption. A wide range of players unrelated to Burisma, -- including Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, the US embassy, members of Congress from both parties, the EU and the IMF -- were all seeking Shokin's ouster.  What need for a bribe?
2. The whole thing was unverified and seemed calculated to make verification impossible.  It purportedly dealt with oral conversations between Zlochevsky and the Bidens with no witnesses, and money transfers so well hidden as to be virtually untraceable.  Yes, Zlochevsky allegedly had tapes and texts, but he was the sole witness and was conveniently on the run, location unknown.
3. For bonus value, Raskin even released a questionnaire completed by Zlochevsky to Rudy Giuliani denying any sort of dealings with Joe Biden, or any improper dealings with Hunter. And yes, obviously this was self-serving.  Zlochevesky was hardly going to admit to wrongdoing.  On the other hand Donald Trump was President at the time, so it was also in Zlochevsky's interest to offer any dirt on the Bidens that Giuliani wanted.  In any event, at least the questionnaire was hard evidence of what Zlochevsky said.  The informant's report was not even that.
4. To me, however, none of these were the real red flag that something was wrong here.  The most obvious problem with the report was the date -- June 30, 2020.  Let me get this straight.  This man had been an FBI informant for years.  He heard vague insinuations about Hunter in late 2015 or early 2016.  Two months later he heard a flat-out accusation that Hunter and Joe Biden each took a $5 million bribe.  In late 2016 or early 2017, he heard that there were texts and tapes proving coercion.  And in 2019 he heard that the payment was so well laundered as to be virtually untraceable.  And in 2020, after the first impeachment made the whole matter public, he finally got around to telling the FBI about all this?!?  If I were the FBI, I would have serious problems with that. Still, the report did have one somewhat ambiguous passage raising the possibility that he might have mentioned some of this before:

This leaves open the possibility the the informant might have reported all this "the foregoing" in 2017, but also that in 2017 he said that Zlochevsky only discussed Hunter "briefly" and that "the topic was not relevant."

The indictment cleared up this ambiguity.  More to follow.