A woman leaves the offices of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor in Kiev, Ukraine, on Oct. 02, 2019. Ukraine has found itself at the core of a political storm in U.S. politics since the release of a whistleblower's complaint accusing President Donald Trump of abuse of power in requesting an investigation into Joe Biden, and Biden's son, Hunter. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Ex-Ukraine Prosecutor Told Giuliani He Was Pressured to Drop Biden Probe

The former prosecutor at the heart of the Ukraine controversy was pressured to drop a probe into a gas company linked to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, according to notes from a private conversation he had with presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

According to Giuliani’s notes, which were obtained by Fox News, Ukrainian ex-prosecutor Viktor Shokin told Giuliani in a Jan. 23 phone call that his “investigations stopped out of fear of the United States,” after a top diplomat asked that Shokin probe Burisma Holdings with “kid gloves.”

Burisma is the company that employed Hunter Biden as a member of its board, paying him up to $50,000 a month. U.S. banking records cited by The Hill indicated Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, typically amounting to more than $166,000 a month. The period in question is when current 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden was America’s point-man on Ukraine matters as vice president.

Giuliani’s notes, as cited by Fox, say that “Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador [to Ukraine] Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing.”

Now former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin holds a press conference in Kiev on Nov. 2, 2015. Shokin has claimed he was pressured to drop a probe into Burisma, a Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

‘He Got Fired’

Shokin was fired in April 2016, amid long-standing charges of corruption. In March of the same year, Joe Biden threatened to cut off $1 billion in guaranteed loans to Ukraine unless Shokin was dismissed.

“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 recounted at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Well, son of a [expletive], he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Shokin also told a European court in a sworn affidavit that he was removed because he refused to drop the investigation.

“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,” Shokin wrote.

Shokin said former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko came to him multiple times and asked him to close down the probe into Burisma but the prosecutor refused.

“In my conversations with Poroshenko at the time, he was emphatic that I should cease my investigations regarding Burisma. When I did not, he said that the U.S. (via Biden) were refusing to release the USD$ 1 billion promised to Ukraine. He said that he had no choice.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden (L) and his son Hunter Biden at the Duke Georgetown NCAA college basketball game in Washington on Jan. 30, 2010. (Nick Wass/AP Photo)

President Donald Trump has claimed the reason Biden wanted Shokin fired was due to the Burisma probe, out of consideration for the interests of his son.

“Look, Biden and his son are stone-cold crooked. And you know it. His son walks out with millions of dollars. The kid knows nothing. You know it, and so do we,” Trump said at an Oct. 2 press conference.

However, the now-former Ukrainian prosecutor who Shokin was replaced with told the BBC that a probe into the Bidens would have to start in the United Sates.

“I don’t know any reason to investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden according to Ukrainian law,” said Yuriy Lutsenko, who stepped down last month. “It is the jurisdiction of the US,” he said, adding that any “possible embezzlement” at Burisma “happened two or three years before Hunter Biden became a member of the board.”

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said on Sept. 27 it was investigating activity at Burisma between 2010-2012, but that it was not looking into changes to its board in 2014, when Hunter Biden joined.

The possibility of a probe in a jurisdiction other than Ukraine was echoed by Gennady Druzenko, who in the years 2014-2015 held the post of government ombudsman in Ukraine. Druzenko told The Epoch Times that while “Ukrainian officials have said on numerous occasions that all of the Bidens’ actions in Ukraine were lawful,” there remains the potentially unsettled question of whether U.S. laws may have been broken.

“The question of whether Joe or Hunter Biden breached U.S. law while the latter was receiving an unusually high fee from Burisma, or while pressuring the previous Ukrainian president to fire the Prosecutor General of Ukraine who investigated the Burisma case, is still open,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s former prime minister has called for a renewed investigation into Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov speaks during an interview with Reuters in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 26, 2019. (Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

“I think it’s essential (he’s investigated),” Mykola Azarov told Reuters in Moscow, where he fled after street protests toppled Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.

“If, using his knowledge, he played an active role then there’s nothing scandalous about it,” Azarov said, referring to Hunter Biden’s role at the company. “But if he was simply on the books and getting money, then that could be seen as a violation of the law.”

Azarov added that he believes allegations from Giuliani and others that Joe Biden got Ukraine’s prosecutor general fired to protect his son should also be investigated.

Reuters contributed to this report.