The White House has been accused of obstructing investigations for over a year now, but the latest refusal to comply with a request from the House Oversight Committee is raising some questions.
Last year, House Republicans requested early drafts of Biden’s 2015 Ukraine speech in which he called for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden was sitting on the board and earning $1 million a year. For whatever reason, the White House has refused to allow the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to release the drafts.
“For more than five months the White House has declined to authorize the production of these draft speeches to the Oversight Committee or to assert a valid privilege over them. Such a lengthy delay in processing a discrete and limited category of documents is unacceptable and appears to represent an attempt to obstruct the Committees’ legitimate investigation. These dilatory tactics must cease, and the White House must permit NARA to release these documents forthwith," House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith wrote in a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel on Wednesday. "If the White House does not permit the production of these documents, the Oversight Committee will consider the use of compulsory process to require the White House’s production of the speeches."
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) January 31, 2024
The White House is REFUSING to hand over early drafts of President Biden’s 2015 Ukraine speech where he called for the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
These drafts are important as it is believed, based on public reporting, that the then-VP… pic.twitter.com/HXuUkVGBAM
The drafts are important because the Committee wants to determine if then-Vice President Biden unilaterally changed U.S. policy on Ukraine to protect his son Hunter. As you may recall, at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, Biden publicly bragged about how he successfully pressured then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin by using a $1 billion loan from the Obama Administration as leverage.
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“They were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah… we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, ‘You have no authority. You’re not the president—the president said,’” Biden recalled. “I said, ‘Call him.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion… I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b****. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
According to evidence that the House Oversight Committee uncovered last year, Biden's actions directly contradicted the policy of Obama’s Department of Justice officials. At the time, the DOJ’s position was that Ukraine had met the necessary benchmarks for implementing anti-corruption reforms and therefore qualified for the $1 billion loan.
This showed that he wasn’t acting on behalf of the administration; he was doing so to protect himself and his son Hunter — who were both allegedly bribed $5 million each by the president of Burisma to protect the company.
That the White House isn’t allowing for the release of the draft suggests it knows the early drafts are incriminating.
