Ron Johnson releases a report on Hunter Biden that calls Hunter Biden's position with
Ukraine firm "problematic", but fails to show how it changed U.S. policy
"A pair of Senate Republican committee chairmen released a report Wednesday arguing that Hunter Biden’s board position with a Ukrainian energy company was “awkward,” “problematic” and interfered with “efficient execution of policy” for the Obama administration, but offered few specific examples that it impacted Vice President Joe Biden’s actions and failed to demonstrate that it changed the administration’s policy toward Ukraine.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) co-authored the report, which comes just weeks before the Nov. 3 election between President Trump and Joe Biden.
The GOP report concludes that “Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” while charging that he and other Biden relatives “cashed in on Joe Biden’s vice presidency.
But at the same time, the report states that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”
Hunter Biden held a lucrative job on the board of the company Burisma while Joe Biden was vice president. At the time, Joe Biden and the Obama administration was seeking to root out corruption in Ukraine.
In a statement issued before the report’s release, Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates accused Johnson of trying “to subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars — an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore right-wing conspiracy theory that hinges on Sen. Johnson himself being corrupt and that the senator has now explicitly stated he is attempting to exploit to bail out Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.”
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"The accusation stems in part from public statements made by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who previously belonged to a pro-Russian party, claiming to have sent documents to Johnson and Grassley to aid in their probe. Johnson and Grassley have stated repeatedly that they have had no contact with Derkach, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department earlier this month as an “active Russian agent.”
But Johnson has had contact with another Ukrainian national, former diplomat Andriy Telizhenko, who once worked as a consultant for Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that worked on behalf of Burisma. Telizhenko has advanced the theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to boost Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump. Recently, he also has been publishing unverified transcripts of tapes reflecting conversations between Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko — tapes that Derkach has been publicizing as well.
Democrats have suggested that Telizhenko may be functioning as a conduit for others to funnel Kremlin-backed conspiracies to congressional investigators. Johnson and Grassley have said that they vetted all of Telizhenko’s information through other sources. Both Ukrainians have a relationship with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, though Telizhenko told The Post earlier this month that he barely knows Derkach and has taken pains to stay away from him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-gop-report-calls-hunter-bidens-board-position-problematic-but-offers-few-specific-examples-it-changed-obama-administration-policy/2020/09/23/4b66d41e-fd44-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html
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