Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden? | Opinion

Throughout the Trump presidency, the mainstream media constantly suggested that Russia had so-called “kompromat” on the president—embarrassing materials used as a weapon of influence through blackmail. We all remember the daily deluge: “Does Russia have Kompromat on Trump?” CNN asked. “A Russian Word Americans Need To Know: ‘Kompromat,'” Greg Myre wrote at NPR, concluding that “Russia may have compromising material on President-elect Donald Trump.” The Guardian agreed, writing there was “apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on Trump… that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow.” Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine that Russia had “secret leverage over Trump,” and “a great deal of incriminating information was confirmed,” a claim reiterated by the BBC in an article called “Russia and the art of ‘kompromat’.”

And what was this kompromat that Russia had over Trump, per our august media institutions? Putin apparently had sex tapes of Trump with prostitutes peeing on him.

It seems so ridiculous that anyone—let alone our most august media institutions—believed this in hindsight. We now know that the pee tape stemmed from Hillary Clinton‘s campaign. But the kompromat conspiracy theory was essential for the Democrats‘ narrative that Russia possessed boundless influence over the president.

For the Washington Post, the (made-up) kompromat meant Trump was “an agent of Russia.” For CNN, it meant Trump was a “Russian asset.” The exact same talking point was repeated ad nauseam across the media in places like The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, Wired, and nightly on MSNBC. The specific nature of the kompromat or how Trump was a Russian agent or asset was never fixed or established, and depended upon the creativity of journalist imagination. Max Boot perfectly captured the zeitgeist in an article for the Washington Post entitled, “Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset.”

All the kompromat talk swiftly ended the moment Joe Biden became president because surely no foreign government could have any dirt on him. This left no one to ask the obvious question: Could Ukrainian officials have kompromat on Joe, given all the allegations of his corruption in Ukraine?

It’s a much more reasonable question about Joe Biden than it ever was when posed as a certainty about Trump. After all, Hunter Biden was paid many millions of dollars by the shady Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, despite having no qualifications for the job that anyone could point to beyond being the son of the Vice President at the time—which proved fortunate when his father fired the general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who had begun an investigation into the Burisma-Hunter gravy train.

And yet, in obvious contrast with their obsession with Russia’s kompromat on Trump, the mainstream media has lined up to dismiss the corruption allegations against Biden as a nothingburger. This has been no easy feat, and yet the media has valiantly obliged, arguing repeatedly that Hunter Biden was paid by Burisma for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that his father was the Vice President at the time overseeing U.S. relations with Ukraine—and that Joe did not have any knowledge of his son’s highly lucrative business dealings. And they would have you believe Vice President Biden fired Shokin because Shokin was corrupt.

The latest evidence exposes the media’s talking points as pure propaganda. On July 31, 2023, Devon Archer testified to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about both Joe’s relationship to Burisma and why he fired Shokin. Archer was Hunter Biden’s close friend who served alongside him on the board of Burisma. Under oath, Archer testified that Burisma paid Hunter millions of dollars solely because his father was Vice President. Burisma would have gone out of business without “the brand” and the brand was Joe, Archer testified. Per Archer, Joe Biden was involved in the racket; he was put on speakerphone in business meetings at least 20 times.

Archer also testified that Shokin was fired by Joe not for being a corrupt prosecutor but for investigating the millions of dollars Burisma was paying Hunter, whom the company owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, said was stupider than his dog. In subsequent interviews, Archer has even more clearly confirmed that Shokin was fired for pursuing Burisma’s enormous payoffs to the Biden family.

All of this is well-known to Ukrainian officials. Shokin himself released a video directly rebutting Biden loyalists in the American media, in which he explains in detail why Vice President Biden threatened Ukraine’s president with holding back critical American aid if Shokin was not immediately replaced with a dud.

This is Viktor Shokin. He is the Ukrainian prosecutor that Biden accused of being corrupt and had removed.

In this video he responds to accusations that his investigation into Burisma was dormant or that he was corrupt. He tells the truth about why he was removed as prosecutor.… pic.twitter.com/4kmXexBsmL

— MAZE (@mazemoore) August 4, 2023

“The depiction of these investigations as dormant has nothing to do with reality of the facts,” Shokin said. “Mr. Biden was told that we were going to start questioning his son and others, Archer and others, all involved in the Burisma case. And everyone understood very well that this fight was going to end badly for them… Biden had understood what was looming… We were about to reach the outcome of this case. Having understood all this, Biden used all the unofficial means at his disposal… Biden was acting on behalf of his own interests, for his family… Joe Biden had reason to fear that all this would eventually fall on his son.”

For his pains, Biden replaced Shokin with a new prosecutor, who promptly closed the Burisma investigation.

Nothing that has emerged recently has the shock value of a pee tape. But perhaps that’s because it’s all true. It is also consistent with the materials found on Hunter’s notorious laptop, which contains emails from Burisma executives pleading with Biden to use his influence to stop the pressure on them by Ukrainian officials.

Unlike the pee tape and other unsubstantiated charges of Russian kompromat against Trump, the evidence is robust that Joe Biden abused his power as Vice President to massively enrich his family through influence peddling. The Vice President successfully threatened to withhold financial aid if the Ukrainian president did not immediately put to bed an investigation exposing the Biden racket.

https://www.newsweek.com/does-ukraine-have-kompromat-joe-biden-opinion-1818052