Newly declassified memoranda show then-Vice President Joe Biden’s staff intervened in February 2016 to block the Central Intelligence Agency from circulating an intelligence report to policymakers that summarized how senior Ukrainian officials perceived his son’s business dealings and his December 2015 trip to Kyiv.
According to the documents, the request came from the vice president’s national-security adviser and was relayed inside the intelligence community by Biden’s Presidential Daily Brief briefer: “I just spoke with VP/NSA and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated. Thanks for understanding.”
A senior CIA official described the intervention as “extremely rare and unusual,” saying the material otherwise met the threshold for distribution to U.S. officials working on Ukraine policy.
The report compiled reactions from officials in the government of then-President Petro Poroshenko following Mr. Biden’s visit. Those officials “privately mused” about U.S. media scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s business ties in Ukraine and “viewed the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double-standard within the United States Government towards matters of corruption and political power,” the CIA relayed. The same officials “expressed bewilderment and disappointment” that the vice president did not engage in expected substantive discussions with Mr. Poroshenko or other senior figures, Just the News reports.
At the time, Biden had been designated President Barack Obama’s point person on Ukraine policy after the Maidan Revolution and Russia’s seizure of Crimea. His December 2015 trip has drawn scrutiny because the vice president decided then to press for the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, warning that a substantial U.S. loan guarantee would be withheld if the move wasn’t made. Mr. Shokin was investigating Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky; Hunter Biden had formally joined Burisma’s board in May 2014.
Prior to the trip, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt warned Mr. Biden’s top advisers that Washington considered Burisma corrupt. Mr. Pyatt later told his successor, Marie Yovanovitch, that Hunter Biden’s role “undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine,” echoing what Ukrainian officials were thinking, according to the CIA.