by Steven Richards and John Solomon
Hunter Biden told Congress earlier this year during his impeachment deposition that he would never have assisted his Ukrainian business partners in resolving their travel visa issues. But evidence newly obtained by Congress directly conflicts with that testimony.
In one email, in fact, Hunter Biden asserts he is working with someone to get visa issues resolved for Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Burisma Holding energy firm that hired the future first son on its board.
“Me [sic] contact has said that he will take care of it— BUT I have not gotten confirmation yet that he has done so with 100 percent certainty,” Hunter Biden wrote Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi in a February 2015 email that was seized by the FBI during a criminal investigation a decade ago and recently obtained by Just the News.
In another document the FBI has possessed since 2016, the U.S. law firm that employed Hunter Biden — Boies, Schiller & Flexner — also declared in a 58-page strategy memo for Burisma that it was working on the visa issue after Hunter Biden arranged for the firm to get a retainer.
The emergence of yet more new email evidence turned over to Congress by former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, comes as the chairmen of the three House committees leading the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden are preparing to refer the first son and possibly his uncle, James Biden, for federal prosecution for false statements to Congress. Lying to Congress is a federal crime, punishable by a sentence of up to five years.
“It’s the next thing that should be moving forward,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith told Just the News on Monday. Smith specifically cited Hunter Biden’s testimony on Burisma visas as one of the grounds for a potential referral.
“One of the lies that we pointed out of the three, in fact, dealt with the CEO of Burisma. Hunter Biden told Congress that he has never worked with any visas…trying to help anyone with any visas with his, with his father, in fact, or the administration, and in fact, we have documentation showing that Hunter Biden can take care of the CEO Burisma visa, just send him the documentations,” Smith told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Monday.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. Lowell in a statement disputed Smith’s characterization of Hunter Biden’s testimony. “Here they go again, grasping at straws and twisting Hunter’s testimony to try to revive an impeachment inquiry that was a complete and utter failure,” Lowell said in a statement, according to Fox News.
In his testimony earlier this year, Hunter Biden told congressional investigators that Burisma retained Democratic Party-connected Blue Star Strategies in part to do work related to Zlochevsky’s visa precisely because he was “not willing to provide” that service himself.
“Some of the things that — that Burisma, understandably and credibly, needed in terms of services I was not willing to provide. One of those things were do any work as it related to visas that they needed,” Hunter Biden said.
“Number one, I don’t have that expertise. Number two, I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa. And, number three, the chances of, even if it was the Vice President’s son of the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is no more going to grant a visa because I asked them to or anybody than, you know, fly to the moon.” he added.
Hunter Biden indicated that work on the visa issue began when he connected Burisma with Blue Star—which email evidence indicates happened in late 2015. However, other documents show Hunter Biden’s law firm planned to look into the cancellation of Zlochevsky’s visa and help him to obtain an new one. They also show Hunter Biden used his personal contacts in efforts to resolve the issue. The documents are part of a mountain of 3.39 million pages of evidence that federal agents seized during the 2016 election in a securities fraud investigation.
More than a year before Blue Star Strategies came onto the scene, Hunter Biden’s law firm was retained by Burisma and drafted an extensive legal defense plan to extricate the controversial energy company from an ongoing criminal investigation in Ukraine by the authorities in Kyiv, Just the News reported Monday.
One of the goals listed in the extensive plan: “Determine the basis for the cancellation of entry related to Nikolay Zlochevskiyi’s multiple entry U.S. visa, believed to be valid through May 11, 2016, and help obtain a new visa,” according to the document obtained by Just the News.
The plan also detailed previous efforts by Burisma lobbying firm ML Strategies to help secure Zlochevsky a new visa.
“After learning that Mr. Zlochevskiy’s visa had been revoked but receiving guidance advising Mr. Zlochevskiy to submit a new visa application, we are currently in the process of following up with the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, as well as the State Department’s Ukraine Desk, and if necessary, the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington, DC, to inform our expectations for the Embassy’s future consideration of Mr. Zlochevskiy’s new visa application,” the draft plan reads.
Though Hunter Biden is not directly mentioned in the document, other emails obtained by Just the News show that he played a central role in organizing the law firm relationship at its inception even as he was moving to take a fiduciary role at Burisma as a board member.
“Mike – Hunter and I just spoke. We’re cancelling the call unless Hunter tells us otherwise,” Boies Schiller lawyer Heather King wrote a colleague on April 22, 2014. “His team spoke to Burisma at 9 and they are anxiously awaiting the engagement letter, so I told Hunter you and I would finish our internal work on that today so they can have it within the next 24 hours.”
Biden even made his future role on the Burisma board contingent on Boies being retained. In one email, Hunter Biden was asked by one of his law firm colleagues whether he wanted to be added as a named partner for the agreement Boies was negotiating with Burisma. “I would include my name,” Hunter Biden wrote back. “I cc’d Devon to get his thoughts. I plan on joining the Board- but contingent on Burisma engaging BSF as legal counsel.”
The following year, when Zlochevsky’s revoked American visa threatened to derail a Burisma board meeting in Mexico, emails suggest Hunter Biden personally used his government contacts to try to resolve the issue.
“Just to let you know, our sources at the Mexican embassy confirmed to us that if a person has had certain unsettled issues re the American visa in the past, there’s a strong probability that he or she might have problems at the Mexican border,” Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi wrote Hunter Biden and Devon Archer ahead of the planned trip. “With this in mind, I feel that we should consider the risks for Nikolay going there.”
“Hunter is still trying to get confirms from our contacts there,” Archer replied.
“Me [sic] contact has said that he will take care of it— BUT I have not gotten confirmation yet that he has done so with 100% certainty,” Biden wrote Pozharskyi hours later, confirming his direct involvement.
These new documents closely match with those released by the House Ways and Means committee last month that suggest Hunter Biden did not tell Congress the full story about his visa work.
According to the emails, ahead of that same Mexico trip and just days before the emails discussing Hunter Biden’s actions, Archer told Pozharskyi “Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the Visa,” referring to Mykola Zlochevsky by an apparent nickname. “Considering we are having dinner with the Foreign Minister Thursday night we think we have a good shot of smoothing things out.”
After this exchange, the evidence shows that Pozharskyi forwarded Zlochevsky’s passport and a copy of his revoked visa directly to Hunter Biden.
In an interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show Monday, Chairman Smith said Hunter Biden should be referred to the Department of Justice for lying to Congress. He specifically identified Hunter Biden’s testimony about his “unwillingness” to do visa work as contradictory to the written records.
“The facts speak for themselves. And I think that, that that’s why the criminal referral should happen, because lying to Congress is a felony,” Smith said. “And based on the documents the IRS whistleblower has provided, he lied to Congress three different times, February 28 of this year. One thing we’ve been able to look into, is it appears that the Biden family definitely, definitely gets too close to the sun. And when you travel too close to the sun, you’re gonna get burned.”
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News.
Photo “Hunter Biden” by Burisma Holdings. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol Building” by Mark Fischer. CC BY-SA 2.0.
