Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory

The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of unevidenced claims centered on the false allegation that while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States, he engaged in corrupt activities. Hunter Biden is a lawyer whose career previously included a period as an executive vice-president at MBNA and three years at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He then worked as a lobbyist until 2006, when he was appointed to the board of directors of Amtrak by George W. Bush. No evidence has been found indicating Hunter Biden engaged in influence peddling with his dad.

About Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory in brief

Summary Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theoryThe Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of unevidenced claims centered on the false allegation that while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States, he engaged in corrupt activities. They have primarily been spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The conspiracy theory alleges that then-Vice President Biden withheld loan guarantees to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor, so as to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma and to protect his son. Hunter Biden is a lawyer whose career previously included a period as an executive vice-president at MBNA and three years at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He then worked as a lobbyist until 2006, when he was appointed to the board of directors of Amtrak by George W. Bush, a post from which he resigned in February 2009, shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, with his father Joe Biden becoming Vice-President. No evidence has been found indicating Hunter Biden engaged in influence peddling with his dad. While Vice President Biden did withhold USD 1 billion in government aid to Ukraine in 2015, this was done as a matter of American and international policy to induce Ukraine to remove a corrupt and ineffective prosecutor, not to prevent an investigation of Burisma. Shokin was finally removed from office in March 2016 by an overwhelming majority vote in the Ukrainian Parliament, after an investigation into extortion of another company led to associates who were found in possession of diamonds, cash and other valuables as well as documents and passports belonging to Shokin. Poroshenko was subsequently defeated in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election by the reformist candidate Volodymyr Zelensky, who ran on an anti-corruption platform.

The impeachment of Donald Trump was triggered by reports of a phone call with Zelenski where Trump demanded an investigation in exchange for the release of congressionally mandated financial and military aid. The Senate investigation into the allegations that Hunter Biden ‘cashed in’ on his father’s business deals concluded in September 2020 that there was no evidence of improper influence by his father. Trump said he planned to make it a major issue during the 2020 United States presidential race, while a Republican-controlled Senate committee carried out an investigation in spring 2020. The Justice Department created an ‘intake process’ to gather information to advance the allegations in Ukraine to advance Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who worked with individuals linked to Russian intelligence and organized crime. The recordings, which were heavily edited, were not verified as authentic and appeared to be edited to be part of a recording of a supposed conversation between Joe Biden and Poroshenko, in which Biden discussed loan guarantees for the ouster of the country’s corrupt prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, which was not verified to be authentic. This narrative is inconsistent with contemporaneous reports and has repeatedly been found to be false. As he had no prior experience in the energy sector, this is viewed as a likely attempt to buy influence via his father, and was considered awkward by advisors to the Obama administration. Shokin had failed to seriously investigate the affairs of corrupt oligarchs, including Burisma’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky.