A photo showing Amos Hochstein, the current special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, on Air Force Two with then Vice President Joe Biden could be damning, Republican Conference Chairwoman Rep Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said.
Joe Biden and That Photo
Hochstein served a State Department envoy on energy issues and was photographed briefing Biden on Dec. 6, 2015, on his way to Ukraine for his fateful meeting with Ukrainian President Poro Poroshenko.
Biden threatened Poroshenko that he would withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee unless Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin were fired.
Shokin noted this month that Burisma was under investigation at the time of his firing in March 2016 and that Hunter Biden likely would have been ensnared.
“This damning picture of then Vice President Joe Biden on Air Force Two en route to Ukraine talking with Amos Hochstein is just further evidence that Biden and senior officials in the Biden Administration not only knew of Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings but also that Joe Biden was intimately involved while Vice President,” Stefanik told Fox News.
Emails and congressional testimony show that Hunter Biden sought out Hochstein’s contacts while seeking to figure out how to navigate a Ukrainian tax on private energy companies in 2014.
“… [T]he Ukrainian authorities are still pushing for further legislative initiatives which are going to cause even more damage to the gas industry,” Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote in a Sept. 24, 2014 email forwarded by Devon Archer to Hunter Biden. “I am genuinely looking forward to your ideas on how we could influence this process. Please, note that I am going to share this information with the US embassy here in Kyiv, as well as the office of Mr Amos Hochstein in the States.”
Hochstein Complained About Hunter Biden Burisma Role
He met with Joe Biden on Apr. 16, 2015, in the West Wing, the same day Biden dined with Pozharskyi at Café Milano in Georgetown.
Hochstein reportedly complained in October 2015 that Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board of directors could jeopardize Obama administration goals.
He warned that it could fuel Russian disinformation campaigns. The Washington Examiner reports that Hochstein warned Joe Biden about this during a West Wing meeting.
An email from Hunter Biden’s secretary from Nov. 4, 2015, noted that he was supposed to meet with Hochstein for coffee at 4 p.m. that day. A Nov. 12, 2015 email stated that Hochstein had tried calling Hunter Biden.
“We were starting to think about a trip to Ukraine, and I wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message — to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma,” Hochstein told Congress in 2020.
Stefanik: Joe Biden not a Passive Observer
The close relationship between Hunter Biden, Hochstein, and Burisma leads Stefanik to believe that Joe Biden was not a passive observer of his son’s business deals in Ukraine.
“All evidence points directly to Joe Biden being deeply compromised. House Republicans will leave no stone unturned in our investigations into Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling scheme,” Stefanik said.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com
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