Declassified records reveal a jaw-dropping move by then-Vice President Joe Biden to keep a sensitive CIA report under wraps back in 2015.
This story, unearthed through documents released by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, centers on Biden’s apparent influence to prevent the spread of intelligence highlighting Ukrainian officials’ concerns about his family’s alleged corrupt business ties in their country, as Fox News reports.
Let’s rewind to December 2015, when Biden visited Kiev for what Ukrainian officials under President Petro Poroshenko hoped would be a substantive discussion on key personnel matters.
Instead, they got a generic public speech on Dec. 9, 2015, with Biden preaching about corruption and the urgent need for reform in Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office.
Ukrainian leaders were left bewildered and disappointed, feeling that Biden sidestepped the real issues while their concerns about his family’s ties to questionable business practices -- namely Hunter Biden’s lucrative role on the board of Burisma Holdings -- went unaddressed.
They saw this as a glaring double standard, with the U.S. seemingly turning a blind eye to corruption when it touched powerful political families.
Fast forward to early 2016, and a CIA report capturing these Ukrainian frustrations was drafted, bearing the telling subject line about reactions to a senior U.S. official’s visit.
Biden, however, wasn’t keen on this intel seeing the light of day, expressing a strong preference that it not be disseminated beyond the agency, as confirmed by a February 10, 2016, email from a PDB Briefer stating, “Good morning, I just spoke with VP/NSA and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated” (PDB Briefer, name redacted).
The CIA obliged, keeping the report locked tight within its walls, a move that now raises serious questions about the politicization of intelligence for personal or political gain.
Meanwhile, during that same December 2015 visit, Biden publicly called for transparency, declaring, “Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interest and their government responsibilities."
Yet, just months later in March 2016, Biden leaned hard on Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin -- who was investigating Burisma -- by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid, a tactic he later boasted about at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event.
Isn’t it curious how the anti-corruption crusader seemed so eager to axe the very man digging into his son’s company? That’s the kind of hypocrisy that makes even the most patient taxpayer squirm.
This saga didn’t end in 2016 -- by July 2019, President Donald Trump was pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to probe the Biden family’s dealings, particularly Hunter’s Burisma role and Joe’s push to oust Shokin, leading to Trump’s impeachment by the House for abuse of power, though he was acquitted in 2020.
More recently, a House impeachment inquiry into Biden concluded he abused his office and engaged in conduct to enrich his family, further fueling the fire over whether power was wielded to protect personal interests.
These declassified records, obtained by Fox News Digital, aren’t just dusty history -- they’re a stark reminder of how intelligence can be manipulated when political stakes are high, leaving us to wonder how often inconvenient truths are buried under the guise of “national interest.”
