Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to hear from the former top prosecutor of Ukraine who investigated a company that employed Joe Biden’s son.
Graham, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, floated the possibility of receiving testimony from Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor general Biden bragged about helping to get fired.
“I’d like to call it the prosecutor into the United States and have him testify — the one that Biden had fired. Isn’t it kind of odd that the only person that Biden wanted fired was the one investigating his son?” the South Carolina Republican told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.
Both President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani claim Biden improperly used his role as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire Shokin in 2016 to protect his son, Hunter Biden, from an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company at which the younger Biden held a $50,000-per-month position on the board.
This stems from a 2018 video showing the elder Biden bragging about threatening to hold back $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not terminate Shokin from his post.
Shokin was widely seen by the U.S., Europe, and the International Monetary Fund, and inside Ukraine, as a hindrance to fighting corruption, and the Ukrainian Parliament removed him in 2016 under international pressure, not just from Biden. It has also been reported that the Burisma case was dormant for months before Shokin was fired. Additionally, Kurt Volker, former special representative to Ukraine, told congressional investigators that Trump’s accusations of corruption against Biden have “no credibility,”
But notes from Giuliani, which have made their way from the State Department to Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry, show Shokin claimed the U.S. wanted him to back off when he “attempted to continue the investigations.”
Graham said Shokin was “clearly” examining Hunter Biden’s business dealings and claimed that “if it had been a Republican that pulled these shenanigans it would be all over the news.”
“I think Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election,” Graham said. “I think they were trying to hurt Trump. They may have been working with the Democrats — and I want somebody to look at Ukraine involvement in our 2016 election like [special counsel Robert] Mueller looked at the Russian involvement.”
Graham said he is in favor of a second special counsel looking into the matter, but is satisfied if U.S. Attorney John Durham is doing it as part of a review of the Russia investigation. The Justice Department has repeatedly distanced the investigation of the investigators being carried out by Durham at the direction of Attorney General William Barr from the actions taken by Trump, Giuliani, and the State Department in Ukraine.
