One day after Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, he is getting impeached.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Congresswoman from Georgia, announced Thursday afternoon she had filed the impeachment articles against Biden, making good on a promise she had made on social media.
Greene said in her announcement that the action is being taken because of Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine, specifically having to do with possibly getting Ukraine’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired in 2016 because he had an active investigation into Burisma, the energy company on whose board Hunter Biden was serving.
“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the Presidency. His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama’s Vice President is lengthy and disturbing. President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies,” the news release stated.
“President Biden is even on tape admitting to a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government threatening to withhold $1 billion in foreign aid if they did not do his bidding. President Biden residing in the White House is a threat to national security and he must be immediately impeached.”
What has been triggering the outcries of corruption and investigations into Biden and Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine has been a clip of Biden apparently boasting of getting Shokin fired.
Shokin was fired as Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, a brief tenure since he had just been promoted to the position in February 2015.
That clip of Biden is from a January 2018 talk he gave to the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Joe Biden on Defending Democracy.”
His remarks start at the 52-minute mark:
I’ll give you one concrete example. I was, not I, that just happened to be the assignment I got. I get all the good ones. So I got Ukraine. And I remember going over convincing our team, or to convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. I went over 12th, 13th time to Kyiv and I was supposed to announce that there was another $1 billion loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn’t. So they walked out of the press conference and I said, “No, I’m not — We’re not going to give you the $1 billion.” They said, “You have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said –.” I said, “Call him.” I said, “I’m telling you. You’re not getting the $1 billion.” I said, “You’re not getting the $1 billion. I’m going to be leaving here,” I think it was what, six hours. I said, “We’re leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” Well, son of a b—- got fired.
“Poroshenko” was Petro Poroshenko, then-president of Ukraine. “Yatsenyuk” was Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister of Ukraine.
This chatter is framed by Biden talking about this incident as if it was an anti-corruption effort. “I’m desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kyiv in terms of corruption,” he said.
In February 2020, Shokin filed a criminal complaint, forcing Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation to reopen an investigation into Biden’s possible role in getting Shokin fired. According to Voice of America in Ukraine, Shokin’s attorney Oleksandr Teleshetsky said the name “Biden” is present in the complaint, but the criminal case would refer to an unnamed “U.S. citizen.”
“The lawyer said that based on public statements made by Biden, his client had good reason to believe that the former vice president ordered and instigated Shokin`s removal as prosecutor general,” VOA reported.
In November, Ukrainian authorities closed that investigation.
During an interview with political commentor Dinesh D’Souza on Thursday, D’Souza suggested that the impeachment process in this case be more transparent so the public can see the evidence.
“Is this something that you would be willing to take to the mat?” D’Souza asked. “I say bring in the Ukrainian prosecutor. Bring in the evidence. One of the advantages you have as a Congresswoman is you have a public stage. Are you willing to use this stage? Let the American people see it.”
“It’s really about the people, so I’m 100 percent for a public trial, so to speak, for President Joe Biden where we can bring out the evidence and let the people be involved,” Greene responded.
The Joe and Hunter Biden-Viktor Shokin scandal is one of those scandals that feels like an obvious attention-seeker. It’s so obvious and seems to be such a familiar Cold War-esque drama fit for the tabloids that you scratch the surface and think it’s going to be fake.
But it doesn’t take long before you get deeper and immediately see that it’s a real scandal. A thorough investigation, with Shokin testifying, in Congress, in public like D’Souza suggests, could lead to bombshell revelations of the kind that will propel this country into a new political awareness.
This would be the real impeachment.
The Spring Magazine 