The US Vice President Joe Biden (L) jokes that Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko (R) is buying lunch, before sitting down to their bilateral meeting at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington March 31, 2016. © Jonathan Ernst © Reuters
John Solomon, The Hill: Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived
Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.
In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“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,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
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WNU Editor: The current U.S. media focus is on this .... Biden team blasts ‘trolls’ amid scrutiny over behavior (AP). More here .... Can Joe Biden Survive Another #MeToo Moment? (Vanity Fair). But his family's involvement in Ukraine is where the media and Justice Department's focus should be, an involvement that this blog first pointed out 5 years ago .... Company In Which Joe Biden's Son Is Director Prepares To Drill Shale Gas In East Ukraine (July 26, 2014).
