The CIA Keeps Popping Up In The Biden-Ukraine Saga

Eireann Van Natta | Daily Caller |

Photo by DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is linked throughout the Biden-Ukraine entanglements, from Trump’s first impeachment to Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Back in 2019, the then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella anonymously accused Trump of demanding an investigation into Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine in exchange for military aid, according to Real Clear Investigations.

Ciaramella was an adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office when Biden threatened to stop aid to Ukraine unless it fired Viktor Shokin, Real Clear stated. Shokin was the prosecutor investigating the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings. Hunter joined the board of Burisma in 2014 where he was making $80,000 a month, according to bank records.

While Ciaramella was accusing Trump of using a “quid pro quo,” Hunter’s payments were not as scrutinized in 2019. A transcript of Trump’s call eventually revealed that he did not make a promise to Zelenskyy or threaten to withhold aid to Ukraine.

A slide is projected as Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, a State Department official stationed at the US Embassy in Ukraine arrive to testify during the House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 21, 2019. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Ciaramella had conversations with key Biden aides and Ukrainian prosecutors, White House emails and photos released from the National Archives demonstrated.

In one email, Ciaramella wrote “Yikes” in response to Biden’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine, Real Clear noted. He was also involved in discussions concerning the aid package that Biden made dependent on Shokin’s removal, according to Real Clear.

Ciaramella previously worked for CIA Director John Brennan, according to the investigation. He also worked with diplomats at the Obama and Biden administrations on Ukraine, including top State Department official Victoria Nuland. Additionally, Real Clear reported he was on CIA detail while at the Biden White House.

 

A report recently revealed that a group whose reporting was cited in the whistleblower letter that resulted in Trump’s impeachment received funding from the U.S. government.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) was funded by the U.S. State Department and USAID, according to a report by Drop Site News.

OCCRP’s reporting on Rudy Giuliani’s political activity in Ukraine was referenced four times in a whistleblower letter that resulted in Trump’s impeachment, according to Drop Site. The largest donor for OCCRP is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID has been accused by foreign countries of being a CIA front, Foreign Police reported. USAID’s public safety program coordinated with the CIA to provide training for foreign police forces, according to the outlet. However, the program was shut down at the direction of Congress in 1973.

 

The CIA also blocked an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) team’s investigation into Hunter Biden from using his benefactor, Kevin Morris, as a witness, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.

Shapley was directing a probe into Biden in August 2021 when Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for Delaware – Lesley Wolf – told him she was going to the CIA’s headquarters, according to Shapley’s testimony.

Wolf allegedly appeared there alongside Department of Justice (DOJ) tax attorney Jack Morgan. The CIA, Morgan and Wolf discussed Morris, Shapley stated in the affidavit.

Wolf seemed to have prevented the whistleblowers from using Morris as a witness, IRS whistleblowers told Congress. She did not share any information about why she made that decision, according to Shapley.

The intelligence community’s most open involvement in attempting to cover up for Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption was when officials labeled the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.”

In October 2020, 51 former intelligence officials including former CIA Director John Brennan signed the letter.

Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell told the House Judiciary Committee that he was contacted by then-Biden adviser Antony Blinken. The call from Blinken resulted in the letter’s creation, Morell admitted.

Former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash also signed the letter and connected Morell with former Biden Campaign Chairman Steve Ricchetti, according to Morell’s testimony. Bash later served on the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board in 2022.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee could simply get a Gang of 8 and look at all CIA files that have the word Burisma in it,” former state department official Mike Benz stated in an interview.

He pointed to an agreement between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-aligned Atlantic Council and Burisma Holdings.

“Burisma was being built up as an alternative to Russian gas,” Benz said.

 

In 2017, the Atlantic Council and Burisma signed a cooperative agreement on Jan. 19, 2017, according to the Kyiv Post. The Atlantic Council ignored warnings by a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist against partnering with Burisma. Former CIA directors Gen. David Petraeus and R. James Woolsey are listed on the Council’s Board of Directors.

“What were we doing between 2014 and 2020?” Benz said. “Why was there billions of dollars in military assistance going to Ukraine, to recapture Ukraine where Burisma held all of its mining rights, and to recapture Crimea, where Burisma held the offshore gas mining rights.”

An Atlantic Council spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation the funding allowed the think tank to combat Russian disinformation, focus on energy independence in Ukraine and improve “business cooperation” between the U.S. and Ukraine.

Benz also pointed out how Joseph Cofer Black – former Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center – joined Burisma’s board in 2017. Black was awarded the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency’s highest achievement recognition.

“We were sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to effectively improve the corporate revenue structure of a company that the previous vice president’s son was on and the then-incoming president would orient his entire foreign policy around,” Benz said.

Ryan Wesley Routh, Trump’s second attempted assassin, was a staunch supporter of Ukraine and visited the country in 2022.

Kyiev denied any relation and claimed Routh’s ideas were “delusional,” according to The New York Times.

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December 4, 2024 | 4 Comments »

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  2. https://x.com/JPLindsley/status/1863487732141506601

    LVIV, UKRAINE—One of the biggest lies repeated by both the left and the right is that Burisma, the oil and gas firm linked to Hunter Biden, is a Ukrainian company. It’s trending now due to Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, so let’s set the record straight: Burisma is not Ukrainian—it’s pro-Kremlin Russian. Here’s some explosive stuff:

    ??The Biden connection to Burisma just might explain the current White House’s refusal to let Ukraine win.

    In 2014, Burisma’s CEO was, astoundingly, ecology minister of the Ukrainian Cabinet under pro-Kremlin President Yanukovych. This is precisely the sort of corruption that led the Ukrainian people to create massive protests that became the Maidan, or “public square,” Revolution.

    In the winter of 2013-14, the people refused to leave the streets, even as they faced the bullets of the secret police, much like the scenes we now see in Tbilisi, Georgia. Their perseverance forced Yanukovych and his entire cabinet, including his ecology minister-slash-Burisma’s CEO, to flee to Russia around February 24, 2014.

    This was a problem for Burisma: its major gas fields were in the Crimean peninsula, now firmly under control of the Ukrainian people intent on destroying corruption. But Burisma had a good friend in Vladimir Putin.

    In March 2014, on the same day Putin seized Crimea, Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer was meeting with Burisma in Moscow, as he explained in Congressional testimony last year.

    Shortly after, Burisma began paying Vice President Joe Biden’s son millions while Joe Biden, tasked by Obama with Ukraine policy, did nothing to help newly-free Ukraine stop Russia’s aggression in 2014. This wasn’t a surprise, Biden like George HW Bush and many others were not happy in 1991 when Ukrainians declared their independence.

    Later, Biden pressured Ukraine’s post-revolution government to fire its general prosecutor. The media keeps telling us vaguely that “US and EU officials” all wanted this prosecutor fired. But they give scant evidence as to the reasons.

    How do we know Burisma was paying Hunter Biden? Well, in large part due to May 2019 reporting by the New York Times. One of the New York Times reporters who uncovered this Biden-Burisma slush fund became press secretary to newly-elected Ukrainian president Zelenskiy in June 2019. ?

    In July 2019, The Washington Post ran a front-page story about Biden family dealings in Russia and Ukraine. From the Times to the Post, momentum was building to investigate Biden and Burisma!

    So naturally two days later, in a scheduled phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump obscurely raised questions about these dealings. I’d say that was the proper thing to do.

    At the time, Biden wasn’t the presumptive Democratic nominee. Plus, the real highlight of the call was not an attempt to investigate Biden but rather just how much Trump and Zelenskiy agreed. They both sharply criticized Western leaders, especially Angela Merkel, for harming Ukraine while making deals with Putin.

    Trump would later sanction Russia for the Nord Stream pipeline which Merkel, who kept a picture of a Russian empress Catherine the Great on her desk, so desired; Biden made Merkel and Putin happy by later lifting those sanctions in 2021.

    Trump and Zelenskiy, two entertainers turned president, were poised to expose all these shenanigans when what to our wondering eyes did appear but two military bureaucrat twin brothers born in Kyiv and raised in the heavily Russian Brighton Beach neighbourhood of New York City.

    These two unelected officials assigned by the National Security Council to the White House interfered with cooperation between elected Trump and Zelenskiy. Their names: Eugene and Alexander Vindman, the former now soon to be a new Congressional Democrat. I’ve been told not to mention them because they’re nice or something, and the battlefield-decorated Vindmans routinely accuse anyone who questions them of bullying, but these shenanigans are costing Ukrainian lives and freedom and hurting American democracy in the process.

    Some Trump officials saw oodles of corruption in both Republican and Democratic efforts over the years to plunder Ukraine and appease Moscow. We should note that Trump’s first campaign advisor was also an advisor to corrupt pro-Kremlin Yanukovych.

    But still some on Team Trump worked to expose the corruption. And it wasn’t just about Burisma but it was often about Hunter Biden.

    ?? In 2019 and 2020, Trump and the Ukrainians tried to stop a Chinese firm Skyrizon from buying Ukrainian helicopter manufacturer Motor Sich, on global security grounds. Do you know which American private equity firm was helping Beijing’s Skyrizon to buy Ukraine’s Motor Sich?

    Hmm. It was Beijing-based BHR founded by two very famous Chinese people called Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz son of former Secretary of State John Kerry.

    The Vindman Bros’ efforts to use the Trump-Zelensky call to impeach Trump inexplicably frightened Trump’s team from pursuing useful cooperation with Ukraine. Ironically, the Vindmans achieved exactly what they accused Trump of doing: obstruction of a U.S. collaboration with now fiercely democratic and free Ukraine. Yet they are painted the heroes.

    The Vindmans’ interference made “Ukraine” a toxic word in Washington, as I saw firsthand during the impeachment drama. And the Trump team responded in an unhelpful, unprofessional panic, an absurdity I experienced. In October 2019, amid global wanderings, I flew from Kyiv to DC, where I visited friends for a coffee at the Trump White House. On the lawn, a screaming official ordered me to leave immediately—as soon as she learned I’d simply been in Ukraine.

    Burisma’s history and actions show it is anything but Ukrainian. It’s a pro-Kremlin entity that hated Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution, sought to return the old fat cat regime to power, benefitted from Putin taking Crimea, and paid millions to the son of a U.S. vice president who oversaw a policy that prevented free Ukrainians from stopping Russia. Let’s stop calling Burisma Ukrainian—it’s Russian, through and through.

    Ukrainians in 2014 faced tear gas and bullets to be free—and in the following eight years they built a damn lovely society. But the evilly corrupt forces of Moscow, aided by the mundane corruption of Washington, are now working to smother one of the greatest stories of liberty in human history.

    Isn’t it time to clear this up?

  3. And how do you suppose we protect our national security without the CIA and FBI?

    Trump needs to eviscerate the CIA, just as Patel plans to do to the FBI.