An inquiry led by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee to investigate allegations of corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden during the Obama administration has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing, The New York Times reported.
The release of the committee’s findings brings to a close an investigation that, according to ABC News , committee Chair Senator Ron Johnson admitted he hoped would hurt Vice President Biden’s prospects in the November election.
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The key matter for the inquiry involved Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian energy concern Burisma Holdings.
During the Obama administration, Burisma was mired in corruption allegations with Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Biden, sitting on the company’s board. Prominent Republicans alleged that Ukrainian officials ousted the prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma at the behest of VP Biden, for the benefit of his son.
Experts on Ukraine have said that the prosecutor was in fact fired because he was failing to investigate corruption at Burisma, CNN reported.
However, while the committee’s report didn’t find evidence of wrongdoing, it did note some misgivings for the presence of Hunter Biden on Burisma’s board.
“The Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” the report said, without getting into specifics of how Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma interfered with foreign policy.
Testimony and emails from career diplomats including George Kent, the top State Department official in the Ukraine at the time, showed that they “regularly considered how Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma might affect the execution of U.S. policy,” and called his role with Burisma “awkward” and “problematic” for diplomatic officials.
Despite those concerns, Kent added that the Obama administration was in favor of investigating Burisma.
In his testimony, Kent said that he “did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny.”
“So there was no time, as I’ve testified, that the U.S. government, the U.S. Embassy ever made a decision” regarding Bursima “where we took the presence of a private citizen on the board into account,” Kent added.
As Senate Democrats pointed out in their own document regarding the allegations, all 10 witnesses interviewed by the committee testified that Biden had never interfered with policy to benefit his son.
Indeed, Democrats have seized upon the report as evidence that the Republican committee’s investigation was purely politically motivated.
Much of what was in the report had already been revealed in news reports months ago, during impeachment hearings, and even before the report was released, Senator Johnson admitted it would contain no “massive smoking guns,” according to The New York Times .
“The Chairmen have uncovered absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing by Vice President Biden,” read the Democrat document. “Instead, this effort has been a partisan and unnecessary distraction from important business before both Committees as the country faces a once in a century pandemic.”
The Biden campaign also responded to the report by calling it a distraction.
“Why? To subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars — an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement.
Democrats have alleged that the investigation is based upon a disinformation campaign being spread by Russia. Just last week, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against Andrii Derkach for election interference, identifying him as a Russian agent who had been attempting to spur more corruption investigations like Johnson’s with tapes edited to supposedly show impropriety by Biden in Ukraine, The New York Times reported.
h/t: The New York Times , ABC News
