Joe Biden Pushed For Fracking After Hunter Biden Joined Burisma Board: Days after Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of the controversial Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, then Vice President Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to frack for gas, the Daily Mail reports.
The New Hunter Biden Problem
Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board on Apr. 18, 2014 and made $50,000 per month while he was on the board.
Three days later, a White House press release shows that Joe Biden pushed for exploiting Ukraine’s “unconventional gas reserves” with Ukrainian officials, another descriptor for fracking.
An unidentified senior government official, identified by the Daily Mail as current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, briefed reporters on the vice president’s plans.
“… [H]e’ll discuss with them medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.” Sullivan said according to the White House press release from the trip.
Ukraine Benefits?
State Department officials had serious issues with the message Hunter Biden’s presence on the board presented for the Obama administration’s anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.
The push for additional fracking in Ukraine proved financially lucrative for Burisma. Its production increased from 100 cubic meters of natural gas in 2010 to 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2018. This generated an estimated $400 million in revenue for Burisma.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick who was on Air Force Two with the vice president on the April 2014 trip to Ukraine, told the Daily Mail he realized after reading emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that Sullivan had referred to fracking.
Hunter Biden’s appointment to Burisma’s board was not publicly known at the time. Joe Biden denies having discussed business with his son. Joe Biden’s office denied that Burisma had any influence on him in July 2014 interview with Time magazine.
“The Vice President does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company,” spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff told Time.
He said in an interview that Burisma hired him onto its board because it saw his name as “gold” because the Russians were trying to seize Ukraine’s natural resource via the pipelines that crossed its territory.
“Burisma wanted to do one thing: they wanted to create a bulwark against that Russian aggression. They knew that had to expand internationally and into other sectors in order to diversify and protect themselves, and the Biden name is synonymous with democracy,” Hunter Biden said in an undated interview.
Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky was subjected to several fraud investigations, but he never was convicted. The FBI considered Zlochevsky corrupt, according to a senior Obama State Department official. The State Department considered Zlochevsky an “odious oligarch”
Joe Biden saw to it that Ukraine’s parliament fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was looking into corruption by Burisma executives. The then vice president told Ukrainian President Poro Poroshenko that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in aid unless Shokin was fired. That happened.
He admitted having done so during a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer discussed his father’s visit to Ukraine in an Apr. 22, 2014 email exchange. Joe Biden told the Ukrainian legislators that Europe and America stood ready to help Ukraine exploit its gas reserves.
“We need to make sure this rag tag temporary Government in the Ukraine understands the value of Burisma to its very existence,” Archer wrote Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden replied: “You should send to Vadim [Pozharsky]- makes it look like we are adding value.”
Pozharsky was the Burisma executive who met with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and a Kazakh business associate at the exclusive Café Milano restaurant in Georgetown in April 2015.
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