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https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/...-letter-to-recap-scope-goals-of-investigation
Monday, August 10, 2020
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and announced his intention to issue a subpoena to Jonathan Winer, a former State Department employee.
Although the investigations have primarily focused on corruption of the presidential transition and the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) using the government’s own documents and officials for evidence, Democrats have sought to discredit the investigations by lying about the committee’s work and focusing on the Bidens. Below is an excerpt from the open letter regarding the Bidens:
This is where the Ukrainian story of Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter, begins. Following the Revolution of Dignity, U.S. foreign policy was focused on support for the pro-western, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy efforts in Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin had a much different plan. Congress and the Obama administration were acutely aware of Putin’s displeasure and his penchant for destabilizing governments not to his liking. As a result, U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine focused on two main objectives: 1) security and economic assistance, and 2) advocacy for and support of anti-corruption, judicial, and other reforms.
On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and the media described him as the “public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.” The next day, April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma. Six days later, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky. Fifteen days later on May 13, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, with public reports showing Hunter and his firm being paid $50,000 to $166,000 per month (totaling more than $3 million over five years) for his and Archer’s board participation.
All of this initial activity in Ukraine involving the Bidens, Hunter’s business partner, and a corrupt oligarch and his Ukrainian gas company occurred over a period of less than a month, and within three months of the Revolution of Dignity — a revolution against corruption in Ukraine. Following that revolution, Ukrainian political figures were desperate for U.S. support. Zlochevsky would have made sure relevant Ukrainian officials were well aware of Hunter’s appointment to Burisma’s board. Isn’t it obvious what message Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board sent to Ukrainian officials? The answer: If you want U.S. support, don’t touch Burisma.
Given all this public information, the press should be asking, and former Vice President Biden should be answering, a long list of questions:
1) Why did you meet with Devon Archer at the White House on April 16, 2014? What was discussed? Did you discuss anything related to Ukraine, Hunter Biden, or Burisma?
2) Were you aware that Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma six days later?
3) Were you aware that Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky, was generally viewed as a corrupt oligarch and that his London bank account containing $23 million had been seized by British officials only 15 days before Hunter Biden joined the board of a company he owned?
4) Was Hunter Biden aware that British officials had seized Zlochevsky’s bank account?
5) When did you first become aware of Zlochevsky’s and Burisma’s reputations for corruption?
6) Do you believe Zlochevsky and Burisma are corrupt?
7) Were you aware in April 2014 that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
8) When did you first become aware that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
9) When did you first become aware of how much Hunter Biden was being compensated by Burisma?
10) Why do you believe Burisma recruited and paid Archer and your son to be on its board?
11) What skills or knowledge do you believe Hunter Biden possesses that qualified him to be on Burisma’s board and receive $50,000 to $166,000 per month for his and his partner’s services?
12) What exactly had Shokin done that caused you to threaten to withhold $1 billion in desperately needed aid from Ukraine if President Poroshenko didn’t fire him?
13) What do you know about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China?
14) What do you know about financial benefits your brothers and sister-in-law have obtained because of their relationship to you?
The open letter is copied below and available here. The FBI subpoena is available here.
August 10, 2020
On June 4, 2020, the Senate committee I chair granted me the authority to issue subpoenas for records and testimony to certain agencies and individuals relating to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the “unmasking” of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign, and allegations of the political corruption of US agencies. Two months later, after patiently trying to work with these agencies and individuals on a voluntary basis, I have decided to begin issuing subpoenas primarily because of my strong belief that transparency in government is essential and that the American people have waited too long for the truth. Also, because Democrats have initiated a coordinated disinformation campaign and effort to personally attack Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and me for the purpose of marginalizing the findings of our investigations, I think it is important for me to lay out the history, purpose and goals of our ongoing oversight.
A Senate resolution tasks my committee with investigating, among other issues, “the possible existence of … corruption or unethical practices … [and] conflicts of interest[.]” Our current investigations fall well within this authority and have focused on two primary areas: first, allegations of conflicts of interest within the Obama administration related to Ukraine policy and, second, allegations of corruption within the Obama administration affecting the 2016 election, the transition between administrations, and Obama administration holdovers’ sabotage of the Trump administration.
My committee began investigating corruption in the Obama administration in March 2015 when it was revealed that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was violating State Department policy, and possibly section 793(f) of the criminal code, by her extensive use of a private e-mail server for official and classified government business. We quickly uncovered information about how Secretary Clinton’s private e-mail server was stored. Based on documents from the company hired to manage her server, we discovered that the method for storing and maintaining the server raised numerous concerns regarding security and preservation of records.
Our investigation also uncovered and made public the extensive editing of then-FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, statement that exonerated Secretary Clinton. We found that edits to Comey’s statement downplayed the seriousness of her actions in several ways. They replaced “gross negligence” with “extremely careless.” They weakened a conclusion that it was “reasonably likely” that foreign adversaries gained access to Secretary Clinton’s private e-mail account by saying instead that it was “possible.” And they removed a reference to the fact that she engaged in “an email exchange with the President [Obama] while Secretary Clinton was on the territory of such an adversary.” It is important to note the FBI officials who were involved in the editing process: Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok and Jonathan Moffa. This was the same cast of characters that soon after initiated the investigation targeting candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.
Soon after the election, President-elect Trump made it clear that he had no intention of pursuing further investigation of Clinton. Since my committee had already issued an interim report on the Clinton email scandal, and she had been held politically accountable by losing the election, I felt there was no longer any need for our investigation to continue. Other than documents we released for transparency and the interim report, we never held a hearing or publicly interviewed witnesses. As far as I was concerned, the case was closed. Little did I know that others were only beginning their investigations and sabotage.
On Jan. 10, 2017, CNN reported that President-elect Trump had been briefed by Comey about salacious and unverified allegations compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. These allegations had been shopped to multiple news outlets, who had declined to publish them. But as soon as CNN broke the story about the director of the FBI briefing the president-elect about them, Buzzfeed decided it had a sufficient news hook to justify publishing what became known as “the Steele dossier.”
On Jan. 11, 2017, Ken Vogel published an article in Politico that described a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative working with Ukrainian officials to conduct opposition research in 2016 on then-candidate Trump and his campaign. The article was largely ignored by the mainstream media, which was being fed an unprecedented number of leaks and a narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump — a narrative that eventually morphed into the claim that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia.
The number of news stories based on leaks from “well placed” individuals inside government caught my attention, and I asked my staff to do an analysis based on public reporting comparing leaks in the early days of previous administrations. The results were revealing. On July 2, 2017, we released a report identifying 125 leaks in the first 126 days of the Trump administration. Many of these leaks helped fuel the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative. As FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok infamously described it at the time, “Our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they’re kicking in to overdrive.”
The Trump-Russian collusion narrative had taken on a life of its own. Gen. Michael Flynn had resigned as national security adviser, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from any investigation involving Russia and the Trump campaign, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would eventually appoint Robert Mueller as a special counsel to lead an investigation into the allegations of Russian interference and collusion.
The combination of the Mueller special counsel investigation and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to task the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with investigating these matters effectively shut down my committee’s access to relevant documents and key witnesses. My committee was sidelined, and our investigation was essentially put on hold.
On July 20, 2017, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley sent an oversight letter to Rosenstein in reaction to the Vogel Politico article. As additional information became public regarding possible corruption within the FBI’s investigation, my committee reinitiated its oversight efforts, sending multiple requests for information and documents to the FBI and the Department of Justice. In January, 2018, those oversight efforts resulted in us obtaining, and making public, the vast majority of the highly revealing and informative text messages between Strzok and fellow FBI agent Lisa Page.
In early 2019, to help move both committees’ oversight forward, Senator Grassley, who by then had become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and I decided to combine efforts. Between February 2019 and July 2020, we issued a series of oversight letters to numerous individuals, organizations, departments and agencies focusing on reported foreign influence in the 2016 election and the corrupt use of FBI investigations to sabotage the Trump administration. Although we have received some records in response to those requests, the response time has been extremely slow and the information has been woefully incomplete.
Some of the slow response time and incomplete production of records can be legitimately attributed to classification issues and reviews. But I suspect there are other, more nefarious explanations. I don’t have polling data, but I doubt anyone could seriously dispute that a majority (probably a large majority) of career bureaucrats within federal agencies voted for Clinton and not Trump.
It was highly unusual, and a serious threat to national security, when detailed descriptions of President Trump’s phone conversations with the prime minister of Australia and the president of Mexico were leaked to the press only two weeks into his administration. My committee’s report on leaks showed that 62 of the 125 leaks in the first 126 days of the Trump administration could affect national security. That compares to eight and nine such leaks in the corresponding time periods of the Obama and Bush administrations, respectively. Perhaps Sen. Chuck Schumer was right when he presciently warned Trump before his inauguration, “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Senator Grassley and I are currently learning exactly how right Senator Schumer was.
Leaks of this nature are proof that individuals within the administration, the departments and agencies, have engaged in activities that seek to undermine the president’s policies. The unresolved questions surrounding the impeachment whistleblower complaint provide further evidence of this reality.
It is not hard to imagine that individuals who would affirmatively take action to sabotage the president’s policies would also frustrate our attempts to obtain information that could shed a negative light on a previous or future president more to their liking — especially if they themselves had been involved in actions we now are investigating. Some may be high-level government officials who are still in a position to know what evidence exists, and have every incentive to frustrate our attempts to obtain it. Regardless of the cause, the slow-walking of producing documents for our investigation delayed our efforts and has prompted me to begin issuing subpoenas.
In August 2019, a whistleblower initiated a complaint with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Intelligence Community Inspector General. The cooperation between HPSCI and the whistleblower remains murky, particularly in light of HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff’s initial denial that his committee had contact with the whistleblower prior to the filing of the complaint — a statement Schiff later admitted was false. We do know from public reporting that there were connections between the whistleblower, an impeachment witness, and their former colleagues who “coincidentally” left the executive branch and joined HPSCI staff around the time the whistleblower complaint was filed. Unfortunately, those connections, and any effect they might have had on the filing or pursuit of the complaint, have never been adequately explored.
My personal knowledge of the events involving Ukraine and the allegations that led to impeachment were detailed in my Nov. 18, 2019, 10-page letter to HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan. While the Democrats’ narrative of the president’s wrongdoing consumed the media’s attention, the public grew increasingly curious about the facts and circumstances surrounding former Vice President Biden’s Ukraine responsibilities and the very obvious conflict of interest posed by his son, Hunter Biden, serving as a member of the board of Burisma — a Ukrainian gas company owned by an individual who is generally viewed as highly corrupt. Because Chairman Grassley and I were already looking into allegations involving a Democratic National Committee operative and certain Ukrainian individuals, we were not going to turn a blind eye to this.
We didn’t target Joe and Hunter Biden for investigation; their previous actions had put them in the middle of it.
Many in the media, in an ongoing attempt to provide cover for former Vice President Biden, continue to repeat the mantra that there is “no evidence of wrongdoing or illegal activity” related to Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board. I could not disagree more. A brief summary of the timeline of events in Ukraine will support my assessment.
Ukraine gained its independence with the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Three years later, in December 1994, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances against the threat or use of force against its territorial integrity or political independence.
Unfortunately, shedding the legacy of Soviet totalitarianism and corruption is not an easy task. In late 2004 and early 2005, in what became known as the Orange Revolution, large protests over widespread election fraud and voter intimidation led to the overturning of the Ukrainian presidential election. Roughly 10 years later, a series of protests led by a coalition of pro-western and anti-corruption advocates resulted in what is called the Revolution of Dignity. On Feb. 22, 2014, Ukraine’s president, Victor Yanukovych, widely viewed as the puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, abdicated his office by fleeing to Russia.
This is where the Ukrainian story of Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter, begins. Following the Revolution of Dignity, U.S. foreign policy was focused on support for the pro-western, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy efforts in Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin had a much different plan. Congress and the Obama administration were acutely aware of Putin’s displeasure and his penchant for destabilizing governments not to his liking. As a result, U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine focused on two main objectives: 1) security and economic assistance, and 2) advocacy for and support of anti-corruption, judicial, and other reforms.
On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and the media described him as the “public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.” The next day, April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma. Six days later, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky. Fifteen days later on May 13, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, with public reports showing Hunter and his firm being paid $50,000 to $166,000 per month (totaling more than $3 million over five years) for his and Archer’s board participation.