President Trump’s accusations of corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden have “no credibility,” said the man at the center of the Ukraine controversy.
“I have known former Vice President Biden for 24 years, and the suggestion that he would be influenced in his duties as vice president by money for his son simply has no credibility to me,” Kurt Volker, former special representative to Ukraine, told House investigators Thursday in prepared testimony. “I know him as a man of integrity and dedication to our country.”
Recommended Stories
Volker’s endorsement contradicts an allegation Trump made Thursday morning, accusing Biden of using his influence to push for the ouster of a prosecutor who was investigating the younger Biden’s Ukrainian patron.
“Nobody has any doubt that they weren’t crooked,” Trump told reporters. “And they got rid of a prosecutor who was a very tough prosecutor.”
Volker, in defending Biden, said that these suspicions were “fueled by” outgoing Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko in an attempt to forge a political alliance with the Trump administration by targeting Biden. Lutsenko aired these allegations in U.S. media and in private conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney.
“I believed that these accusations by Mr. Lutsenko were themselves self-serving, intended to make himself appear valuable to the United States, so that the United States might weigh in against his being removed from office by the new government,” Volker said in his prepared remarks.
The allegation turns on Biden’s decision to call in 2015 for the firing of Lutsenko’s predecessor, Viktor Shokin. The two Ukrainian prosecutors have claimed that Shokin was ousted because he was investigating former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky on corruption charges. Zlochevsky’s company, Burisma, hired Hunter Biden in 2014.
“That was a crooked deal — 100 percent,” Trump said. “He had no knowledge of energy; didn’t know the first thing about it. All of a sudden, he is getting $50,000 a month, plus a lot of other things. Nobody has any doubt.”
But Biden pushed for Shokin’s firing after U.S. officials rebuked the prosecutor for failing to investigate Zlochevsky in a case brought by British officials, who accused him of stealing $23 million of Ukrainian taxpayer money.
“Officials at [Shokin’s] office were asked by the U.K to send documents supporting the seizure,” Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2015, said in the months prior to Biden’s denunciation of Shokin. “Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result the money was freed by the U.K. court and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
Local anti-corruption activists believed that Zlochevsky’s company hired the younger Biden in order to avoid pressure from the U.S. government.
“They want there to be less suspicion that they’re involved in corrupt under-the-table dealings,” Daria Kaleniuk, director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, said at the time.
Volker testified Thursday that he warned Giuliani that Lutsenko was misleading him. “To my surprise, Mr. Giuliani had already come to the conclusion on his own that Mr Lutsenko was not credible and [was] acting in a self-serving capacity,” Volker said.
[Read more: Volker’s secret testimony appears to quash ‘quid pro quo’ theory]
