Just before Obama left office, U.S. officials feared Hunter Biden firm in Ukraine paid second bribe

Twenty-two days before President Obama left office, the U.S. ambassador to Kiev wrote top officials in Washington that she feared Burisma Holdings had made a second bribe to Ukrainian officials - shortly before a corruption probe against Hunter Biden's natural gas employer was abruptly closed before Donald Trump took office.

Then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's concerns were first raised in a Ukrainian news story about a Russian-backed fugitive lawmaker in Ukraine, who alleged Burisma had dumped low-priced natural gas into the market for officials near Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to buy low and sell high, making a bribe disguised as a profit.

Back in February 2015, then-embassy official George Kent reported to the U.S. Justice Department evidence that Burisma had made a $7 million cash bribe to Ukrainian prosecutors before those prosecutors killed a separate corruption probe in the United Kingdom by failing to produce required evidence.

Inside the embassy, U.S. officials who had worked alongside Vice President Biden for years were resigned to the closure of the case and frustrated that a company tied to Hunter Biden had undercut U.S. efforts to fight endemic corruption in Ukraine "The Burisma tale of getting a court to shut down a PGO investigation noted below would amount to nearly the same mechanism - rich connected businessman politician seeks to use the court/judge of unknown reputation to close an investigation of a business with a dodgy reputation," Kent wrote Yovanovitch on Jan. 13, 2017, one week before Trump took office.

Pdf Right up to Obama's last day in office, the U.S. embassy officials continued to follow and remark on Burisma's escape from prosecution.

The Obama-Biden era documents gathered by this news organization over more than a year under FOIA clearly show State officials believed the Bidens' behavior created the appearance of a conflict of interest because Joe Biden continued to preside over anti-corruption policy in Ukraine while his son worked for a company under investigation for corruption.

Now the latest documents show those same officials had reported not one, but two alleged efforts by Burisma to pay bribes to end the investigations while the vice president's son served on the company's board.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/just-obama-left-office-us-officials-feared-hunter-biden