The Daily - What the Bidens Actually Did in Ukraine

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Yesterday, we looked at the origins of President Trump’s baseless theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election. This theory inspired one of the two investigations he sought from Ukraine that triggered the impeachment inquiry. Today, we look at the origins of the president’s second theory. Guest: Kenneth P. Vogel, a reporter in The New York Times’s Washington bureau. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s diplomatic record on corruption in Ukraine contradicts President Trump’s claims.There are a lot of accusations flying back and forth between the president and the former vice president. Let us help you sort them out.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Yesterday, we looked at the origin of President Trump's theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election. One of the two theories that he asked Ukraine's president to investigate. Today, Trump's second theory. It's Wednesday, November 27th. So when Trump goes on Fox & Friends on Friday for this long stream of conscious phone interview, he reiterates his theory, totally debunked theory, about the Ukrainians and not the Russians hacking into the DNC servers. And then he also brings up

this other theory. So, Mr. President, the accusation is this, that you're using aid, taxpayer dollars, to attack a political opponent in Joe Biden. And that has to do with Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and their work in Ukraine. Ken Vogel is a Washington correspondent for The Times. And I will tell you this about Joe Biden. I never said it specifically on him, but I watched Joe Biden with the prosecutor, who a lot of people said was a great prosecutor, and they took him off. And he was prosecuting that company. And the kid, who never made 10 cents in his life, and all of a sudden is making millions of dollars.

Ken, what exactly is the president's second theory here about the Bidens? theory here about the Bidens. What Trump alleges is that Joe Biden, during his time as vice president, pressured the Ukrainian government to fire their top prosecutor, essentially their attorney general, because that prosecutor was pursuing an investigation into this energy company in Ukraine that was paying Hunter Biden as a board member, and that the reason why Joe Biden pushed for the firing was to protect Hunter Biden and his employer. So the theory is basically that the vice president does a favor for his son

in the form of official action in Ukraine. Correct. Okay, so where does the story behind that claim begin? You got to go back to 2014. 44-year-old Hunter Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's youngest son, was discharged from the Navy Reserve. Hunter Biden, who's a Yale-educated lawyer

and had dabbled in various business ventures. Biden was given a routine drug test, which he failed. Had just been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine during a drug test. It was the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge. And at this point, he and some partners are starting to explore international opportunities. And one of his partners gets this gig on the board of this

Ukrainian gas company that is looking for some Western political connections. And Hunter Biden asks if he can get in on this as well. And he is brought onto the board of this company. And a son of the U.S. vice president has joined the board of directors of Ukraine's largest private gas producer. Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma Holdings. This company is called Burisma Holdings. It does primarily natural gas. And it is bringing on to its board a number of folks with big political names in the West. And one of them is Hunter Biden.

in the West, and one of them is Hunter Biden, he is paid as much as $50,000 or even more in some months to serve on the board of this company and ostensibly to help it with governance reforms to sort of introduce Western corporate governance standards into this company. And how clear is it, Ken, that the reason why Hunter Biden is coming onto the board is because of his family connection? I mean, is it more or less explicit? brought onto the board. You know, his defenders point out that he had, in fact, served on other boards, including the board of Amtrak, where his dad famously has a lot of connections and clout. But he doesn't really have much other applicable experience that would suggest that he is otherwise the ideal candidate to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. He doesn't have any experience in Ukraine or Ukrainian law or even in energy. Okay, so what do we need to know about Burisma at this moment when Hunter Biden arrives on the board? Burisma has faced allegations of corruption, including many that are embraced by

the West and by the State Department, which sees it in many ways, both the company itself, Burisma, and the oligarch who owns the company as poster children for post-Soviet corruption in Ukraine. Ken, do we know if Hunter Biden understood this when he went on the board? If he had done any due diligence, you would think that he should have known. There were certainly investigations that were already ongoing, both in Ukraine and in the West, into the oligarch who owned the company on suspicion of money laundering. And those investigations had support from the United States government.

And that is where Joe Biden comes in. What do you mean? We, the United States, stand with you and all the Ukrainian people. Well, Joe Biden at this time is vice president. And one of his key foreign policy tasks that he takes on at the assignment of President Barack Obama is to help Ukraine stand up to Russian aggression. It is not just a foreign policy judgment. It is a personal, it's an emotional commitment as well. And one of the things that is seen as an impediment to Ukraine establishing a stable government is this scourge of corruption that has long plagued

it and is seen as limiting its ability to attract international investment and to be a stable government that can mount a response to Russian aggression. And when is he given that assignment? I mean, it comes pretty much at about the same time as Hunter Biden is going on to the board of this Ukrainian gas company in early 2014. So that's kind of complicated. It is, and it certainly would provide rationale for this Ukrainian gas company and its oligarch owner to want to have a powerful Westerner who is seen as having connections to the Obama government,

which at this point is pushing Ukraine to clamp down on the very type of corruption that this oligarch and his company is seen as embodying. Does anyone raise the question of whether this is not a great idea that Joe Biden is suddenly investigating corruption in Ukraine around the same time that his son is now on the board of a major Ukrainian energy company that is accused of corruption. Yes, we know that there's a guy in the State Department by the name of George Kent who had deep experience both in Ukraine and in fighting corruption. He had served as the anti-corruption coordinator in the State Department's European Bureau.

And he does raise concerns about Hunter Biden joining the board of Burisma and how Hunter Biden's position could affect Vice President Biden's standing as a corruption fighter or the leader of the U.S. effort to push Ukraine to clamp down on corruption. But a decision is made that father and son can simultaneously do these two things.

It actually appears as if the decision was to not make a decision and to not address this. George Kent tried to bring this to the attention of the vice president's staff and was essentially told that Vice President Biden did not have the bandwidth to address this at a time when he was dealing with other family issues, particularly his son, Beau Biden, his other son, struggling with brain cancer. Okay, so what exactly does Vice President Joe Biden do during this period in his role as the guy in the Obama administration who's trying to root out corruption in Ukraine? What does it actually look like? Well, Biden focuses on two areas that are seen in the West as bastions

of Ukrainian corruption. One is the energy sector, and the other is the judicial system. The international community has long seen the Ukrainian judicial system and particularly the prosecutors therein as one of the key problems that perpetuate Ukrainian corruption. These prosecutors have long been known for using the threat of prosecution to essentially solicit bribes from potential targets of corruption. So they are not only not prosecuting corruption, they are in fact participating in their own brand of corruption. This was one of the key things

that Joe Biden trained his sights on when he went after Ukrainian corruption. Got it. So a company would basically pay off the prosecutor and the prosecutor therefore wouldn't really prosecute. Yes. And the guy who is seen as emblematic of this type of corruption is Viktor Shokin. He's the prosecutor general of Ukraine.

It's essentially like the attorney general of Ukraine. And what makes this complicated, though, is that one of the folks who Shokin is not prosecuting because it is believed he is using the threat of prosecution to solicit bribes from is none other than the oligarch who owns the company Burisma Holdings that is paying Hunter Biden to serve as a board member. Ah, yeah. And this is why some of the folks in the State Department had flagged this as a potential concern that could undermine Joe Biden's ability to drive this message and be seen as a credible messenger when in his own house, under his own roof, there is someone who is working with a potential target of the type of prosecution that Joe Biden is trying to encourage the Ukrainians to pursue. Okay, so what does Biden ultimately do about Shokin?

Thank you very much. Well, Biden privately pressures the then president of Ukraine to get rid of Shokin, and he actually goes and gives a speech that gets a lot of play before the Ukrainian parliament. But in addition, you also have a battle. Urging them to clamp down on corruption. Against corruption. And it's not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption.

The office of the general prosecutor desperately needs reform. The judiciary should be overhauled. The energy sector needs to be competitive. Rule by market principles, not sweetheart deals. That doesn't really do the trick. Maybe the Ukrainians are starting to move in this direction, but they don't actually take the steps necessary to fire Shokin. And what Biden does is he threatens to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine if the then president doesn't act to get rid of Shokin. So you're saying that in order for Joe Biden to get rid of this problematic prosecutor,

he is threatening to withhold money from Ukraine, which feels like a now familiar concept. Yeah, it certainly does have a certain familiar ring to it. But what's different in what Biden did from what Trump's team did is that what Biden was doing was actually carrying out the official policy of the United States government, which was to push for this prosecutor's ouster and to use a

combination of diplomatic carrots and sticks in order to achieve that end. And $1 billion in loan guarantees is certainly a rather big carrot or stick, depending on which way you look at it. Right, right. And did it work? So on Tuesday, 29th of March, the Rehobovna Rada of Ukraine voted to grant consent by President Petro Poroshenko to dismiss Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Eventually it did. It's not totally clear what role Biden and the loan guarantees played in it versus the mounting pressure from the international community and other international Western lenders. But eventually...

The person who was building the system of corruption in prosecutor's office cannot reform it. Shokin's appointment was a mistake. The then president does take the steps to get the parliament to officially oust Shokin. to get the parliament to officially oust Shoken. And what does Shoken's ouster mean for Burisma, this company that Hunter Biden sits on? Yeah, I mean, you might think that this would be really bad for Burisma if it is widely regarded as a corrupt company

or getting rid of a corrupt prosecutor who could be bought off from bringing prosecutions against targets of corruption, that if you get rid of that guy and bring in someone who is going to be more of an anti-corruption crusader, that the potential targets of corruption prosecutions like Burisma might be really in a bad spot. But in fact, it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. We'll be right back. So, Kent, you said that the aftermath of Joe Biden forcing out this prosecutor was more complicated than it seemed for Burisma, this company that employs Biden's son. So what actually happens?

welcomed this new prosecutor and the chance to work with him because they thought that if this prosecutor subscribed to Western approaches to jurisprudence, that they would be able to convince this prosecutor by giving him evidence that, in fact, these allegations against Burisma and its oligarch owner were baseless. So you're saying that Burisma thinks if we play by normal rules and we have a regular old prosecutor, we can get cleared of these charges because in their minds, they're not actually corrupt. Yes. And this is very important to them at the time because they are trying to expand and pursuing Western investment. And the cloud of these corruption investigations that Shoken had hanging over them was sort of a hindrance to them.

So they welcome the chance to have a new prosecutor who they believe they can convince that allegations against them are off base and should be dropped. So what ends up happening to Burisma once this new prosecutor is welcomed in to kind of take a look around? Well, Burisma sends in a team of very well-compensated, very highly regarded American lawyers and PR folks to meet with the new prosecutor. And while the new prosecutor initially takes something of a hard line against Burisma and forces them to pay some back taxes or fines, eventually, after 10 months, the new prosecutor announces that he has fully closed all of the legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations against the oligarch owner of Burisma and his companies. And the new prosecutor announces that the oligarch owner of Burisma is being removed from the wanted list. So the oligarch who had been in exile returns to Ukraine.

So this all ends up pretty well for Burisma, the elimination of this corrupt prosecutor. So should we then assume that Burisma was perhaps never corrupt in the first place? No, I don't think that we can assume that. In fact, the anti-corruption activists in Ukraine really decried this decision to drop the cases against Burisma and its oligarch owner. So in Ukraine, at least, as well as in some

quarters in the State Department, it is not in any way viewed as a clean bill of health for Burisma or its oligarch owner. So Ken, I want to summarize everything you just told me and hold it up against President Trump's theory, the theory that Vice President Biden did what he did as a favor to his son once his son is holding companies, including Burisma, hostage and taking bribes in order not to investigate them. And in pushing out that prosecutor, Biden sets in motion a series of events that conclude with an investigation of Burisma coming to an end, even though from everything you're saying, the company is still seen as corrupt. Do I have all that correct? Yes. Okay. So in the end, Biden takes an action that does benefit Burisma and less directly his son. Indirectly, having the new prosecutor does benefit Burisma and its oligarch owner. And

Hunter Biden does remain on the board of Burisma until this year. But I think this is where we get into questions of intent. And there is no evidence that it was the intent of Vice President Joe Biden to take this action to benefit Burisma, let alone his son. So can we say that this theory, that the vice president did what he did in Ukraine to help his son, can we say that it is false?

We can say that there is no evidence that Joe Biden acted corruptly to help his son in Ukraine. We're looking for corruption. There's tremendous corruption. We're looking for why should we be giving hundreds of millions of dollars to countries when there's this kind of corruption? And if you look at my call, I said, you know, corruption. I think he said it to me. He's looking. He got elected on the basis of corruption. And I also, He's looking. He got elected on the basis of corruption. I'm struck, Ken, about what we can say definitively here versus what we can say definitively about the president's first theory,

about CrowdStrike and Ukraine hacking the DNC servers. That theory draws on fabricated facts and is thoroughly disprovable and has been disproven. The second theory about the Bidens, it draws on real facts, but there's no evidence of it. And yet it's not really disprovable. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a lot more complicated. It's a lot more nuanced. There are a lot more facts. And there is a fact pattern that did trouble employees in the State Department at the time and then subsequently, as it's gotten a lot more attention, has troubled ethics experts who say that the Bidens did not

do a good enough job addressing concerns about conflict of interest. Now, all that said, it does not mean that Trump's theory that Biden acted corruptly to benefit his son is correct. There is no evidence of that to be 100% clear. Right, it seems like both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden put themselves in a position where people could later question their motives and their judgment. Because either Hunter Biden

should not have been on that board at the same time that his father was taking on corruption in Ukraine or his father, knowing that his son was on that board, should not have taken on corruption in Ukraine. Yes, that's right. And what's interesting is that the way that the Bidens sought to address this and to avoid these conflicts of interest is by expressly not knowing about what one another were doing. In other words, Joe Biden said he did not want to know anything

about what Hunter Biden was doing in the private sector, because how could he be doing anything in his job as vice president to help his son if he did not know what his son's interests were? Now, there's an argument to be made that that's not really a good way to inoculate yourself against these concerns. The way to inoculate yourself is to know about what another are doing so you can avoid these potential areas of overlap. So, Ken, I wonder, in the end, what is the power of these two theories that the president has pursued here about Ukraine and the DNC and Ukraine and the Bidens in the impeachment inquiry, especially as it enters these final crucial weeks? These two theories are why we are in the middle of an impeachment inquiry.

The fact that President Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations into these two theories is, for Democrats, a justification for removal from office. The very definition of the type of high crime and misdemeanor that is justification for removal from office. justification for removal from office. And that's how Democrats have been talking about these theories as debunk conspiracy theories and will continue talking about them as impeachment proceeds. And for Republicans who are trying to defend Trump, he's kind of making their life more difficult here because while they see there being some validity in the theories that he's pushing about the Bidens, they see this theory that it was the Ukrainians and not the Russians who hacked into the DNC servers as totally crazy. Many of them, most of them, I would say even, privately, they'll say this, they wish that he would stop talking about it

because they think that this dilutes the argument that they could make that there was a legitimate corruption concern that President Trump was urging the Ukrainian government to pursue. So they prefer the Biden theory vastly to the DNC server theory. Yeah, that's right. And they think that despite the way that the president has misrepresented the Biden theory and ascribed motivations that cannot be substantiated to Joe Biden, that nonetheless, this is a theory that could be politically helpful

to the president and politically damaging to Joe Biden. And that is among the reasons why we are going to continue hearing the names Hunter Biden and Joe Biden from Republicans for as long as these impeachment proceedings go. Thank you, Kim. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that President Trump had already been told of a whistleblower's complaint about his dealings with Ukraine when he released $400 million in military aid to the country. The reporting offers a potential motivation for the president's decision to unfreeze the money and raises the

possibility that Trump might have kept withholding the money as part of a quid pro quo had the whistleblower not complained about his actions. That timeline is likely to become a focus for impeachment investigators. And on Tuesday, the impeachment inquiry entered a new phase with the Judiciary Committee saying it would hold its own public hearings next week, following hearings in the Intelligence Committee. The Judiciary Committee said it would convene a panel of scholars to discuss the constitutional grounds for impeaching Trump and invited the president's legal team to participate. So far, there is no word on whether the president's lawyers will do so.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. We'll be back on Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. Meantime, later today, we'll release a new miniseries from NYT Audio called Jungle Prince, told by my colleague Ellen Barry. It uncovers the true story behind a decades-long legend of a fallen royal family living in a ruined palace in India's capital.