Senator Ted Cruz accused President Joe Biden’s appointee, George Kent, of lying to the Senate about the relationship between the Biden family and the Ukrainian oil company, Burisma.
During a November 30th hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a senior State Department official gave false testimony about a billion dollar bribery scandal involving Joe Biden. The official, George Kent, is President Biden’s appointee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Estonia.
At Kent’s nomination hearing, Senator Ted Cruz (R–TX) questioned him about Biden’s actions in Ukraine while Kent was overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Europe and working in Ukraine. At the time, Biden was the vice president and serving as President Obama’s point man for Ukraine.
This affair began in March 2014 when Biden gave a speech before the Ukrainian parliament in which he promised that the U.S. would help Ukraine increase its gas production. That same month, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarchplaced Biden’s son Hunter on the board of his gas company and began paying Hunter $83,333 per month.
Cruz directly asked Kent, “Did Joe Biden do anything that benefited the corrupt oligarch who was paying his son a million dollars a year?” Kent attempted to dodge the question, but Cruz pressed him, and Kent replied, “He did not.”
At Kent’s nomination hearing, Senator Ted Cruz (R–TX) questioned him about Biden’s actions in Ukraine while Kent was overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Europe and working in Ukraine. At the time, Biden was the vice president and serving as President Obama’s point man for Ukraine.
This affair began in March 2014 when Biden gave a speech before the Ukrainian parliament in which he promised that the U.S. would help Ukraine increase its gas production. That same month, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarchplaced Biden’s son Hunter on the board of his gas company and began paying Hunter $83,333 per month.
Cruz directly asked Kent, “Did Joe Biden do anything that benefited the corrupt oligarch who was paying his son a million dollars a year?” Kent attempted to dodge the question, but Cruz pressed him, and Kent replied, “He did not.”
Kent’s reply is demonstrably false. In particular, his claim that the prosecutor was not investigating the oligarch is belied by the following facts:
- The prosecutor general, whose name was Viktor Shokin, signed a sworn affidavit stating:
- “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors.”
- The president of Ukraine “was emphatic that I should cease my investigations regarding Burisma. When I did not, he said that the US (via Biden) were refusing to release the USD $1 billion promised to Ukraine. He said that he had no choice, therefore, but to ask me to resign.”
- Just two weeks before he was forced out of office, the prosecutor general obtained a court order to seize some of Zlochevsky’s properties, including his land, houses, and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
- Hunter Biden’s laptop contains a November 2, 2015 email from a Burisma executive that instructed Hunter and his business partners to enlist “top US officials” to “visit” Ukraine and pressure Ukrainian officials to “close down” all “cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.
“Nikolay” is the informal first name of the oligarch, as proven by another email on Hunter’s laptop which states, “Nikolay is indeed sole shareholder but not of Burisma, but of Brocity company that ultimately holds 100% of Burisma.”
Replying to the email from the Burisma executive, Hunter and his partners explicitly agreed to do what Burisma asked of them and explained that they were “deliberately” concealing the names of the U.S. officials who will carry out this plan to “be on the safe and cautious side.”
One month later, Joe Biden did exactly what these emails specified. Furthermore, he did this by pressuring two of the three “key targets” that Burisma identified in its email to Hunter: the “President of Ukraine” and the “Prosecutor General.” In December 2015, Biden visited Ukraine and told Ukraine’s president and prime minister that he would withhold a billion dollar loan guarantee from Ukraine unless they fired the chief prosecutor. Biden later boasted, “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
The prosecutor who replaced Shokin dropped all criminal charges against the oligarch, and years later, Biden praised this prosecutor as “solid.”
Biden’s illicit actions, which are substantiated by a wealth of other incriminating facts, accord with textbook definitions of bribery, extortion, and obstruction of justice. Yet, high-ranking government officials, journalists, big tech executives, and so-called fact checkers have systematically misled the public about what took place. Kent’s false testimony is the latest example.
Produced in association with JustFacts
