Take it from the guy who wrote the story your article was based on. [theintercept.com] Shokin was responsible for the probe, but he was holding it up. Biden was asking him to stop protecting the organization his son worked for. Trump's call is about paying Ukraine to make official statements that undermine a presidential contender. It's not even about a real investigation, not that one is warranted.

"In May, when this issue began to surface, The Intercept’s Robert Mackey wrote an excellent piece debunking the lies in the new pro-Trump version of the Biden story. In the process, he provided greater detail than I had included in my 2015 story. He wrote that Shokin had been forced from office at Biden’s urging because he had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption and stifled efforts to expose embezzlement and misconduct by public officials. Biden did threaten to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Shokin was ousted. But that was because Shokin had blocked serious anti-corruption investigations, not because he was investigating Burisma."

@WilyRickWiles

This is quite the tangled web:

• Joe Biden assigned to deal with Ukraine, Feb 2014.
• Burisma (owned by Zlochevsky) has $23 million account frozen by a British fraud office, April 2014.
• That same month Burisma placed Hunter Biden on their board
• A Ukrainian prosecutor, Shokin, was the lead in a fraud investigation against Burisma
• "U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia." Rosemont Seneca is listed as an investment firm
• Shokin claims that prior to being fired, he had specific plans to interrogate Hunter Biden. This claim is being denied by his oposition.
• Hunter Biden's position at Burisma undermined Obama's anticorruption message. It makes the US look hypocritical.
• In 2015 Shokin's office opened another investigation into Zlochevsky which was transferred to the Ukraine's anti-corruption Bureau which failed to file on the case.
• Biden petitioned Ukraine to fire Shokin at the end of 2015
• Ukraine fires Shokin March 2016.
• End of 2016 London released it's hold on the $23 million to Zlochevsky
• Zlochevsky returns to th Ukraine in 2018 with no charges filed against him.

[thehill.com]
[theintercept.com]
[theintercept.com]

@RobBlair "But the British money-laundering investigation was stymied by Ukrainian prosecutors’ refusal to cooperate. The Ukrainian prosecutors would not turn over documents needed in the British investigation, and without that documentary evidence, a British court ordered Britain’s Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

In September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in which he attacked the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office for failing to cooperate with the British investigation. In his speech — which I quoted in my story — Pyatt mentioned Burisma’s owner by name."

@RobBlair If Shokin planned to investigate Burisma, he had a funny way of showing it.

@WilyRickWiles - Its a bit fishy when the guy is fired in early 2016, another Ukrainian agency botches the same investigation and London doesn't release the funds until late 2016. Biden not recusing himself, as a minimum, is considerable lack of judgment. All three articles fail to articulate the timeline.

@RobBlair The funds were released by 2015, before Biden's visit. A UK court released the funds after Shokin refused to cooperate and assisted Zlochevsky's lawyers.

@RobBlair Would it have been better if Biden had recused? Yes. I mean it would have been better if his son hadn't been on Burisma's board to begin with. But all appearances suggest that Biden was pushing US and international policy, which was to push Ukraine to investigate Burisma. Not the opposite, which is what Trump is pushing.

@ObiRonMoldy
"So Trump's claim that VP Biden got the prosecutor, Shokin, who was investigating Hunter Biden fired, is bogus."

@ObiRonMoldy - this is still developing:

• Shokin claims that he intended to interrogate Hunter Biden
• "John Solomon of The Hill said he has acquired “more than 450 pages” of documents from the State Department and Hunter Biden’s “legal team” demonstrating that the attorneys were working to stop an investigation launched by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin into principals of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was a Board member in 2014 and 2015."

[thepostemail.com]

[thehill.com]