Former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin is speaking out years after then-Vice President Joe Biden secured his firing. In a now-infamous clip, Biden bragged about how he hijacked American aid in order to force the firing of Shokin, who he claimed was corrupt.
Since that tape emerged, much more has been learned about the situation, including the fact that Hunter Biden, the president's son, was working for a company that Shokin was investigating. That company's co-founder Mykola Zlochevsky would later be implicated by an FBI FD-1023 form in which a confidential human source quoted him as saying Burisma hired Hunter Biden to get Shokin fired.
Now, Shokin is speaking to Fox News and discussing what transpired at the time, with the full interview to be released on Saturday.
“I do not want to deal in unproven facts, but my firm personal conviction is that, yes, this was the case. They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in US money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?
As RedState recently reported, Joe Biden almost certainly knew Shokin was investigating Burisma (and by virtue, his son) at the time. That's because the then-vice president met with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's top business associate, just days before his official trip to Kyiv. At the time, the mainstream press spun a narrative that Shokin was hopelessly corrupt in order to cover for the elder Biden even though there was never any real evidence presented to back up that claim.
To put it succinctly, Joe Biden inserted himself into American foreign policy toward Ukraine and used that power to fly to Kyiv and get a prosecutor fired who was investigating his a company his son was deeply involved in. Shokin is right to suspect that the Bidens were bribed for their involvement.
Understand, though, that not a single cent of money needed to have passed hands for this to be a scandal. A vice president holding appropriated U.S. resources hostage to benefit his son (and perhaps himself) stands on its own as objectively corrupt. In fact, the entire ordeal is very similar to what Democrats accused Donald Trump of doing before impeaching him the first time. Where are those same Democrats now? That's rhetorical, of course.
It's always been astonishing to me that the original video that surfaced in 2019 showing that Biden hijacked aid to get Shokin fired was treated as no big deal. Perhaps, four years later, we'll finally start to see a reckoning about what happened, even if only politically.