CIA Declassifies Report on Biden's 2015 Ukraine Visit

On Tuesday morning, CIA Director John Ratcliffe shared "intelligence regarding Ukraine after determining it is in the public interest." The 8-page redacted document, dated Dec. 2015, regards the visit from then-Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraine from Dec. 7-8 of that year.

Ukrainian officials in then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's administration "expressed bewilderment and disappointment" at Biden's visit to Kiev.

"After the visit, these officials assessed that the Vice President of the United States has come to Kiev almost exclusively to give a generic public speech and has no intention of discussing substantive matters with Poroshenko or other officials within the Ukrainian government," the document reads.

It goes on to say that ahead of the visit, Ukrainian officials "expected the U.S. Vice President to discuss personnel matters with Poroshenko" while he was on the ground and "had assumed that the U.S. Vice President would advocate in support or against specific officials within the Ukrainian government."

Following the visit, which did not go as expected, "officials within the Poroshenko administration privately mused as the U.S. media scrutiny of the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President's family to corrupt business practices in Ukraine."

This, the officials believed, was "evidence of a double-standard," as Biden spoke out against corruption in Ukraine but was accused of being guilty of similar practices himself.

The speech given by Biden to the Ukrainian Rada, or Parliament, while in Kiev during that state visit, included a call for the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, on whose board his son Hunter sat. Hunter Biden was paid $80,000 per month for his service.

"As the Prime Minister and the President heard me often say," Biden told gathered officials, "I never tell another man or another nation or another woman what’s in their interest. But I can tell you, you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent. You cannot name me one. They are thoroughly inconsistent. And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption."

"The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform," Biden said. "The judiciary should be overhauled. The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles—not sweetheart deals. It’s not enough to push through laws to increase transparency with regard to official sources of income. Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interest and their government responsibilities. Every other democracy in the world—that system pertains."

Biden would later brag about that visit, saying that during that time he was instructed to "provide for loan guarantees" to Ukraine. "I remember going over, convincing our team... that we should be providing for loan guarantees... and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee."

Biden said that Poroshenko and then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had given a commitment that they "would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't."

When they left the conference where Biden gave his speech calling for the end of corruption in Ukraine, Biden said he turned to the two leaders and said "I'm not going to, we're not going to give you the billion dollars." Then Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk, per Biden, said that only then-President Barack Obama could withhold the guarantees.

Biden revealed that he said "Call him," and told the leaders. "I'm telling you you're not getting a billion dollars."

"I said, you're not getting a billion," Biden bragged later. "I'm going to be leaving here.' I think it was what, six hours. I looked, and I said, 'I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired."