Ukraine prosecutor whose ouster Biden pushed was ‘threat,’ says Devon Archer

WASHINGTON — Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was fired after then-Vice President Joe Biden threatened to pull $1 billion in US aid, was “a threat” to natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year, the first son’s former business partner Devon Archer confirmed in an interview released Friday.

“He was a threat. He ended up seizing assets of [Burisma owner] Nikolai [Zlochevsky] — a house, some cars, a couple properties. And Nikolai actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets,” Archer told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Shokin’s office won a court order to seize Zlochevsky’s property on Feb. 2, 2016, the Kyiv Post reported at the time. Shokin was fired on March 29, purportedly due to his own corruption.

Archer’s remarks are significant because they contradict the position of House Democrats that Shokin was not considered a threat to Burisma — a point likely to be hotly contested if Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) launches an impeachment inquiry, as he said last week was becoming likely.

Archer confirmed Monday during an interview with the House Oversight Committee that Joe Biden attended an April 2015 dinner in Washington with Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi and that Hunter stepped away from a December 2015 meeting in Dubai to call his father, joined by both Pozharskyi and Zlochevsky. Just days before that call, Biden had addressed Ukraine’s parliament during a trip to Kyiv.

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Biden later boasted that during the same visit, he had pressured officials to seek Shokin’s removal.

“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” said Biden, referring to a $1 billion loan guarantee, at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

Biden is known for factual embellishments during public remarks and his boast doesn’t neatly fit the timeline of his known visits to Ukraine. He did not visit in 2016, the year Shokin was fired, though he reportedly spoke on the phone four times in February and March 2016 with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and once with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as he pushed for the prosecutor’s removal.

Archer joined Burisma’s board in April 2014 alongside Hunter Biden as then-Vice President Biden assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy in the chaotic aftermath of a pro-Western revolution. Archer met with Joe Biden at the White House that same month, but told the committee the meeting as an innocuous visit in which Archer showed his own young son around.

In his interview with Carlson, Archer provided other commentary on the Burisma-Shokin relationship that could be used by Biden defenders — including Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who has been House Democrats’ point person in arguing that Shokin was not a threat to Burisma and that he was fired due to pervasive US and European concerns that he was corrupt.

“It certainly wasn’t made clear to us at the board level… that [getting Shokin fired] was a favor to be done,” Archer said.

Carlson pressed, “Joe Biden knew that his son was on the board of this company that was being hassled by the prosecutor whose firing he was calling for —”

“Right,” Archer said.

Within Burisma, Archer said that executives told board members that Shokin was “already taken care of,” which he interpreted as meaning his threat was blunted.

“That was the narrative that was fed to the board,” Archer said. “We were told that [his ouster] was bad. We don’t want a new prosecutor, Shokin was taken care of.”

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But Archer said it wasn’t possible to take such remarks at face value and that in retrospect he doubts they were the complete picture.

“This is not like, you know, checkers — it’s multiple dimensions here,” Archer said. “In this particular case, it’s pretty high stakes and pretty sophisticated.”

“It was kind of pounded into our heads” that Shokin’s ouster was not desired, Archer added. “Obviously as I look back, in the rear view it doesn’t paper as well.”

Former President Donald Trump was impeached by House Democrats in 2019 for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of the Biden family while the White House stalled the distribution of about $400 million in US military aid to Kyiv. He was acquitted by the Senate.

Archer testified Monday to the House Oversight Committee that Burisma added Hunter to its board so that “people would be intimidated to mess with them … legally.”

“I do believe that at the end of the day that Burisma wouldn’t have stayed in business so long if Hunter was not on the board… I think they got some years,” Archer told Carlson.

Archer said that Zlochevsky “ended up in Cyrpus” after his assets were seized “and I think he’s still there.”

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Joe Biden’s actions toward Ukraine and other countries whose businesspeople hired his son — including China, Romania and Russia — will come into sharp focus if Republicans launch an impeachment inquiry.

In addition to the prosecutor’s ouster, former White House stenographer Mike McCormick says Joe Biden advocated US support for Ukraine’s natural gas industry during a trip to Kyiv just days after Hunter quietly joined Burisma, in what he described as a clear conflict of interest.

After stopping in Kyiv, Joe Biden raised eyebrows by visiting the island of Cyprus, where Zlochevsky resided and where Burisma was incorporated, on April 21, 2014. Later that year, at the urging of the Obama-Biden administration, Congress approved $50 million to support Ukraine’s energy sector, including the natural gas industry.

In his congressional testimony, Archer said that he’s unaware of the veracity of an FBI informant’s claim that Zlochevsky claimed in 2016 he paid $5 million apiece in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden. Archer speculated that Zlochevsky may have been exaggerating or referring to the approximate amount that he and Hunter Biden were paid over time.

The FBI informant said Zlochevsky claimed to have kept records of his bribes as well as two tape recordings featuring Joe and 15 involving Hunter Biden.

Archer was sentenced last year to one year in prison for defrauding a Native American tribe and the Justice Department on Saturday asked a federal judge to begin the process to incarcerate him.

The White House did not provide comment for this article.