Biden’s ‘Dereliction of Duty Warrants Impeachment’: Members of Congress
Ben Johnson
July 24, 2023
Whistleblower testimony and newly uncovered documents prove President Joe Biden has been deeply “compromised” by multiple foreign nations, outlining the contours of a vast influence-peddling scandal that “warrants impeachment,” two members of Congress told “Washington Watch” over the weekend.
“As the allegations against the presidents continue to mount, the outcry for impeachment is also growing,” said guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on Friday. Last week, whistleblowers testified that officials embedded in the federal bureaucracy stymied their efforts to determine whether foreign nations bribed then-Vice President Biden through his son, Hunter Biden. Additionally, a U.S. senator released a long-buried interview with a whistleblower who revealed that the Bidens shook down foreign business leaders for millions of dollars in “protection” money this week.
Congressional investigations into President Biden have uncovered “enough information that shows that he has been compromised not only by China, but also by Ukraine,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) told “Washington Watch” on Friday, July 21.
“We have the information that we need” to proceed with impeachment, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who introduced a motion to impeach President Biden, told Hice later in the same show. “We have the facts. We have these whistleblowers, these criminal investigators. We have our own research.”
“The American people are tired of having someone who is compromised in the White House,” said Boebert.
The impeachment efforts come after congressional Republicans uncovered what some have called a “smoking gun” document: An interview with a whistleblower from 2020 stating Ukrainian business officials paid the Bidens $10 million in “protection” money. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) finally got the government to release the FD-1023 form dated June 30, 2020.
A confidential human source for U.S. intelligence had numerous conversations with the CEO and president of Burisma Holdings Ltd., Mykola Zlochevsky, who paid Hunter Biden more than $83,000 a month to sit on the board of the company during the Obama-Biden administration.
Zlochevsky told the source that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” Zlochevky said “both” Joe and Hunter Biden strongly advised him, if he wanted his business to thrive, he should retain the services of Hunter Biden. The Ukrainian CEO described paying off the Bidens as a form of “poluchili,” a Russian slang term that means “forced or coerced to pay;” he also used the term “protection.”
“It costs $5 [million] to pay one Biden, and $5 [million] to another Biden,” Zlochevsky told the source during a meeting in Austria in 2016, while Biden was still the vice president, according to the document.
Despite the hefty expenditures on Hunter Biden’s legal services, Burisma CFO Vadim Pojarskii told an informant the company had to hire additional help to purchase a U.S.-based company, because “Hunter Biden was not smart” enough to hammer out the business acquisition; Zlochevsky later said, “Hunter Biden was stupid, and his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter.”
The value of paying off Hunter Biden came thanks to an investigation into Burisma’s business activities by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The document said Zlochevsky assured sources close to him, “Don’t worry, Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Joe Biden soon made a public statement charging Shokin with corruption, and he strong-armed Ukrainian officials to fire Shokin behind the scenes.
Biden later recounted that he held up a foreign aid payment authorized by Congress and President Barack Obama until officials fired the prosecutor looking into his son’s employer. “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden told then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016. “Well, son of a b****! He got fired,” Biden told the elite, influential Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.
The document seems to dispel any accusations that Biden’s sudden interest in Ukrainian jurisprudence and his son’s employment by Burisma were happenstance. The informant said Zlochevsky had made 17 recordings of the Bidens: two of Joe Biden and 15 of Hunter Biden, which contain “evidence Zlochevsky was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
In another significant detail, Zlochevsky referred to Joe Biden as the “Big Guy” during a meeting with the informant in London in 2019. The foreign business leader also estimated that, due to the Bidens’ habit of laundering foreign payments through a series of interlocking shell companies, it would take 10 years for investigators to trace the source of the Biden family’s funds made to the former vice president. Ukrainian and Russian companies such as Burisma have budget line items for “Podmazat” (meaning to “oil or lubricate”) for bribing government officials, the informant revealed.
The FD-1023 form seemingly confirms details of other allegations that Joe Biden used his family members as conduits for illicit payments, in return for currying influence with Biden. Evidence has shown the Bidens shaking down foreign leaders for payments. Hunter Biden sent a WhatsApp message dated July 30, 2017, to an official with the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), demanding payment. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” said Biden, promising to hold a grudge. When agents requested location data that would determine Joe Biden’s whereabouts, their supervisors refused to authorize them.
Joe Biden was referred to as “the big guy” in an email dated May 13, 2017, detailing Hunter Biden’s business deals with the CEFC, according to two former Biden business partners, Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar.
The FD-1023 form contains “very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme,” said Grassley, who revealed he had “been pushing the Justice Department and the FBI” for “the better part of a year,” but “the FBI sought to obfuscate and redact” the facts.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said the FBI document “tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee’s Biden family influence peddling investigation.” Comer noted that, during House hearings this week, whistleblowers “testified that they had never seen or heard of this [FD-1023] record during the Biden criminal investigation, despite having potentially corroborating evidence” into their ongoing probe of the president’s son.
The Justice Department allowed the statute of limitations to run out on bribery charges during the Obama administration, Comer added. Despite claims that the DOJ did nothing to thwart the Biden investigation, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley recorded that David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. Attorney in charge of the Hunter Biden probe, told a crowd of eyewitnesses, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against Biden. The admission indicates the investigation had been rigged in the Bidens’ favor, Republicans indicated.
“We have got to look at this impeachment,” Rep. Rosendale told guest host Jody Hice on “Washington Watch.”
The four-page FD-1023 form concludes by noting one of the major players who introduced the whistleblower to the Burisma-Biden nexus, Oleksandr Ostapenko, currently “works in some office for the administration of President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy,” whom President Donald Trump asked to reveal details of the Biden family’s business deals, leading Democrats to launch their first failed impeachment attempt.
“President Trump was impeached by House Democrats over Joe Biden’s crimes,” Boebert told Hice. “Joe Biden was the one with a quid pro quo withholding aid in order to fire Shokin.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) had also introduced articles of impeachment against Biden in January 2021, noting that “corruption and collusion on behalf of the Biden family with foreign nationals is clear and compelling.”
A majority (56%) of Americans believe Joe Biden “likely” took foreign bribes, according to an I&I/TIPP poll taken earlier this month. A majority of Republicans and Democrats agreed Biden engaged in illegal favoritism of foreign causes; Democrats were only 3% more likely to deny the charges than to affirm Biden’s guilt.
Boebert filed two articles of impeachment with the House of Representatives last month, focused on Biden’s mismanagement of the southern border, which has allowed record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants, purported “refugees,” and deadly fentanyl to cross the border.
“This dereliction of duty warrants impeachment,” Boebert told Hice.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
Article reprinted by permission of the Washington Stand
