President Biden kept classified documents related to his December 2015 phone call with Ukraine’s prime minister after advising aides:[g]Submit a copy of this conversation,” Special Counsel Robert Hur said in Thursday’s bombshell report.
The phone conversation between Vice President Biden and then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk took place on December 11, 2015, days after the now 81-year-old Biden returned from a visit to Kyiv — during which time Biden and then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk Mr. Poroshenko pressured Ukrainian President Petro to dismiss then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“obtain [a] From a copy of this conversation [the Situation Room] Please record me,” reads a handwritten note from Biden (signed “Joe”) in the upper right corner of the call transcript, detailing the purpose and points of the conversation.
The document was found in a box at the president’s eponymous think tank, the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., in a folder labeled “VP Personal.”
The one-page document had a classification designation of “secret.”
In the same folder, Ho’s team found a five-page transcript of calls between Biden and Yatsenyuk.
“Given Mr. Biden’s handwritten notes, documents A9 and A10 [the pre-call talking points and the transcript] “Compared to other notable classified documents recovered from the Penn Biden Center, there are additional indications of intentional retention by Mr. Biden,” Hur wrote in his scathing report.
The special counsel determined that Biden’s executive assistant had saved both summaries and transcripts in a “VP personal” folder. Hua also pointed out that the content of all calls between foreign leaders is typically “classified by default.”
Despite signs of “deliberate retention,” Mr. Xu defended his decision not to charge the president with a crime, claiming there was “reasonable suspicion.”
“Mr. Biden’s handwritten memo does not ask his executive assistants to keep in their records a confidential call sheet (A9) with the highlights of the call. Rather, he simply requested a record of the call itself.” ,” Hur said. “And no jury could reasonably conclude that the content of the call between Mr. Biden and the Ukrainian prime minister was national defense information.”
The special counsel found that during the call, “the two parties exchanged pleasantries, and the prime minister praised Mr. Biden for his speech to the Ukrainian parliament on December 9, 2015.”
According to Mr. Xu, “They did not participate in substantive policy discussions.” “While there may be technical or nuanced reasons to maintain the call’s classification, no reasonable jury could conclude that the content of the call was post-Obama national defense information or that Biden By requesting records of calls, it cannot be concluded that they were intended to preserve national defense information. ”
“Evidence suggests that the marked classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center were sent and stored there in error. Therefore, we do not pursue any criminal charges related to those documents. I refuse.”
An FBI informant claims that Mr. Biden pushed for Mr. Shokin’s removal as prosecutors were investigating natural gas company Burisma Holdings, and that Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, had been working as an expert on the company since spring 2014. Despite his lack of knowledge, he won a seat on the board of directors with a monthly salary of $80,000. work.
Before his call with Yatsenyuk, Biden had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees during a December 2015 visit to Kiev.
In January 2018, Biden boasted about his pressure campaign. In remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations.
“They were supposed to announce that there was another $1 billion in loan guarantees. And I had assurances from Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they did not do that. ” Biden said.
“I said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ or, ‘We’re not going to give you a billion dollars.’ They said, ‘You don’t have the authority.’ is not the president.” I said, “Call him,” Biden continued. “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours.’ If the prosecutor doesn’t get fired, we don’t get any money.” Well, son of a bitch. he was fired. And they had solid personnel in place at the time. ”
According to Ho’s report, Biden met with Yatsenyuk again in person at the Penn Biden Center in May 2017, long after the 2015 call, where documents of the classified call were discovered.
