Burisma
Hunter Biden, Burisma, Ukraine
https://x.com/JPLindsley/status/1863487732141506601
LVIV, UKRAINE—One of the biggest lies repeated by both the left and the right is that Burisma, the oil and gas firm linked to Hunter Biden, is a Ukrainian company. It’s trending now due to Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, so let’s set the record straight: Burisma is not Ukrainian—it’s pro-Kremlin Russian. Here's some explosive stuff:
‼️The Biden connection to Burisma just might explain the current White House's refusal to let Ukraine win.
In 2014, Burisma’s CEO was, astoundingly, ecology minister of the Ukrainian Cabinet under pro-Kremlin President Yanukovych. This is precisely the sort of corruption that led the Ukrainian people to create massive protests that became the Maidan, or "public square," Revolution.
In the winter of 2013-14, the people refused to leave the streets, even as they faced the bullets of the secret police, much like the scenes we now see in Tbilisi, Georgia. Their perseverance forced Yanukovych and his entire cabinet, including his ecology minister-slash-Burisma’s CEO, to flee to Russia around February 24, 2014.
This was a problem for Burisma: its major gas fields were in the Crimean peninsula, now firmly under control of the Ukrainian people intent on destroying corruption. But Burisma had a good friend in Vladimir Putin.
In March 2014, on the same day Putin seized Crimea, Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer was meeting with Burisma in Moscow, as he explained in Congressional testimony last year.
Shortly after, Burisma began paying Vice President Joe Biden’s son millions while Joe Biden, tasked by Obama with Ukraine policy, did nothing to help newly-free Ukraine stop Russia’s aggression in 2014. This wasn't a surprise, Biden like George HW Bush and many others were not happy in 1991 when Ukrainians declared their independence.
Later, Biden pressured Ukraine’s post-revolution government to fire its general prosecutor. The media keeps telling us vaguely that "US and EU officials" all wanted this prosecutor fired. But they give scant evidence as to the reasons.
How do we know Burisma was paying Hunter Biden? Well, in large part due to May 2019 reporting by the New York Times. One of the New York Times reporters who uncovered this Biden-Burisma slush fund became press secretary to newly-elected Ukrainian president Zelenskiy in June 2019. 😳
In July 2019, The Washington Post ran a front-page story about Biden family dealings in Russia and Ukraine. From the Times to the Post, momentum was building to investigate Biden and Burisma!
So naturally two days later, in a scheduled phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump obscurely raised questions about these dealings. I'd say that was the proper thing to do.
At the time, Biden wasn’t the presumptive Democratic nominee. Plus, the real highlight of the call was not an attempt to investigate Biden but rather just how much Trump and Zelenskiy agreed. They both sharply criticized Western leaders, especially Angela Merkel, for harming Ukraine while making deals with Putin.
Trump would later sanction Russia for the Nord Stream pipeline which Merkel, who kept a picture of a Russian empress Catherine the Great on her desk, so desired; Biden made Merkel and Putin happy by later lifting those sanctions in 2021.
Trump and Zelenskiy, two entertainers turned president, were poised to expose all these shenanigans when what to our wondering eyes did appear but two military bureaucrat twin brothers born in Kyiv and raised in the heavily Russian Brighton Beach neighbourhood of New York City.
These two unelected officials assigned by the National Security Council to the White House interfered with cooperation between elected Trump and Zelenskiy. Their names: Eugene and Alexander Vindman, the former now soon to be a new Congressional Democrat. I've been told not to mention them because they're nice or something, and the battlefield-decorated Vindmans routinely accuse anyone who questions them of bullying, but these shenanigans are costing Ukrainian lives and freedom and hurting American democracy in the process.
Some Trump officials saw oodles of corruption in both Republican and Democratic efforts over the years to plunder Ukraine and appease Moscow. We should note that Trump's first campaign advisor was also an advisor to corrupt pro-Kremlin Yanukovych.
But still some on Team Trump worked to expose the corruption. And it wasn't just about Burisma but it was often about Hunter Biden.
‼️ In 2019 and 2020, Trump and the Ukrainians tried to stop a Chinese firm Skyrizon from buying Ukrainian helicopter manufacturer Motor Sich, on global security grounds. Do you know which American private equity firm was helping Beijing's Skyrizon to buy Ukraine's Motor Sich?
Hmm. It was Beijing-based BHR founded by two very famous Chinese people called Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz son of former Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Vindman Bros’ efforts to use the Trump-Zelensky call to impeach Trump inexplicably frightened Trump's team from pursuing useful cooperation with Ukraine. Ironically, the Vindmans achieved exactly what they accused Trump of doing: obstruction of a U.S. collaboration with now fiercely democratic and free Ukraine. Yet they are painted the heroes.
The Vindmans’ interference made "Ukraine" a toxic word in Washington, as I saw firsthand during the impeachment drama. And the Trump team responded in an unhelpful, unprofessional panic, an absurdity I experienced. In October 2019, amid global wanderings, I flew from Kyiv to DC, where I visited friends for a coffee at the Trump White House. On the lawn, a screaming official ordered me to leave immediately—as soon as she learned I'd simply been in Ukraine.
Burisma’s history and actions show it is anything but Ukrainian. It’s a pro-Kremlin entity that hated Ukraine's Maidan Revolution, sought to return the old fat cat regime to power, benefitted from Putin taking Crimea, and paid millions to the son of a U.S. vice president who oversaw a policy that prevented free Ukrainians from stopping Russia. Let’s stop calling Burisma Ukrainian—it’s Russian, through and through.
Ukrainians in 2014 faced tear gas and bullets to be free—and in the following eight years they built a damn lovely society. But the evilly corrupt forces of Moscow, aided by the mundane corruption of Washington, are now working to smother one of the greatest stories of liberty in human history.
Isn't it time to clear this up?
