Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) requested records from the State Department related to former Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016 on Thursday.
The letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo comes as Republicans seek to train scrutiny on Biden’s actions in Ukraine amid impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump over his own efforts to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his would-be rival for the White House.
Graham is seeking records related to phone calls that occurred in February and March 2016 between Biden and Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, regarding U.S. demands that the country fire its top prosecutor. The prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was unpopular with Western leaders, who viewed him as corrupt, and Biden was representing official U.S. policy and that of allied governments.
At the time, Biden’s son, Hunter, held a lucrative board position with Burisma holdings, a Ukrainian gas company. Burisma, and its owner, Mykola Zlochesky, had faced investigative scrutiny from Shokin’s office, presenting a potential conflict of interest for Biden.
Biden’s side has said that investigations into Burisma were long dormant by the time he secured Shokin’s firing in late March 2016. On Thursday, a key witness in the impeachment probe, U.S. Embassy Kyiv official David Holmes, said the same during his testimony.
But in February 2016, Shokin’s office seized Zlochevsky’s property as part of a corruption investigation, according to a report from the time from the news service Interfax-Ukraine.
Graham’s letter notes that Hunter Biden began following Tony Blinken, a longtime Biden aide then serving as deputy secretary of state, on the day of the Interfax report and suggests the two may have discussed Shokin’s investigations. Neither the State Department, Blinken nor the Biden campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.
The letter from Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seeks all communications between Biden’s office and Poroshenko’s office between the news of the raid and Shokin’s March 29 firing.
It also seeks records related to a meeting between another Burisma board member, Devon Archer, and then-Secretary of State John Kerry on March 2, 2016.
Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden’s, was also a close friend and business partner of Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz.
News of the Archer-Kerry meeting, as well as Hunter Biden’s Twitter follow of Blinken were first reported by the conservative journalist John Solomon based on State Department documents he obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Despite the letter and their partisan differences, Graham and Biden have a history of warm relations. Graham became visibly emotional when talking about his former Senate colleague in 2015.
“He’s the nicest person I think I’ve ever met in public life.” Graham said at the time. “He is as good a man as God ever created.”
