Joe Biden is falsely alleged to have, as vice president of the United States (2009–2017), withheld a loan guarantee and taken a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.Multiple sources:
As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.
Joe Biden followed State Department intentions when he withheld the loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into removing the prosecutor, who was seen as corrupt and failing to clean up Ukrainian corruption, in accordance with the official and bipartisan policy of the United States, the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A confidential informant told the FBI that Burisma's owner said he was coerced to pay bribes to both Bidens to ensure Shokin was fired, though the informant was indicted in 2024 on charges he had fabricated the account.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that proxies of Russian intelligence promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about the Bidens "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration." The New York Times reported in May 2021 that a federal criminal investigation was examining a possible role by current and former Ukrainian officials, including whether they used former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was the subject of a separate but related federal investigation, to spread unsubstantiated claims.
A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. A sweeping Republican House committee investigation of the Biden family has found no wrongdoing by December 2023. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy directed three committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry in September 2023, and on December 2 his successor Mike Johnson said he believed Republicans had enough votes in the House to initiate impeachment proceedings. The three committees released a report in August 2024 asserting Biden had "engaged in impeachable conduct", but they did not recommend proceeding to impeachment.
Background
Since the independence of Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has had a history of running direct and active measures to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine. This included placing operatives in the government, influencing elections, and encouraging corruption.
After the 2016 United States presidential election the United States Department of Justice accused Russian intelligence agents, working for the Internet Research Agency (IRA), of having used social media accounts to influence the election in favour of Donald Trump and to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign. While some have suggested their goal was to destabilise the United States by supporting both sides, a research paper published in The International Journal of Press/Politics and another in the Computational Communication Research journal concluded that the IRA "trolls" posted mostly pro-Republican content. Government Accountability Institute, a Florida-based operation founded by Stephen Bannon in 2012, played a key role in spreading the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory.
The series of false allegations about Joe Biden and Burisma emerged at a convergence of interest between Russian efforts to help Trump's candidacy, operatives and supporters of the Trump campaign, and media in the United States.
The thesis of the false conspiracy theory asserts that Joe Biden sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son, and that he did it in a quid pro quo manner by trading loan guarantees for the personal favor. This is in contrast to the attempted quid pro quo by President Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to pressure Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a quid pro quo manner to start a publicly announced investigation of Burisma and the Bidens in exchange for military aid and a visit to the White House. Trump's effort resulted in his first impeachment.
In January 2018, a videotaping by the Council on Foreign Relations shows Biden taking credit for withholding the loan guarantees to have the prosecutor fired. His actions were implementations of bipartisan US policy rather than done for any of the reasons alleged in the conspiracy theory.
Bribery allegation In June 2020, a confidential informant, later convicted for false statements to the FBI, Alexander Smirnov, lied to the FBI that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky had said he had been coerced into paying Hunter Biden a $5 million bribe, as well as a $5 million bribe to "another Biden," to ensure Shokin would be fired. The FBI memorialized Smirnov's lies in an FD-1023 form, which read in part:
Zlochevsky said he had a total of "17 recordings" involving the Bidens; two of the recordings included Joe Biden, and the remaining 15 recordings only included Hunter Biden. [The informant] reiterated that, per Zlochevsky, these recordings evidence Zlochevsky was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.
Smirnov also told the FBI that Zlochevsky said Burisma had hired Hunter Biden to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems."
The FD-1023 came to the attention of the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee investigation of the Biden family in 2023, leading to allegations of bribery that contributed to the Republican-controlled House voting to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Biden in December 2023. Republican committee member Nancy Mace asserted in a September 2023 public hearing, "We already know the president took bribes from Burisma."
In February 2024, Smirnov was arrested by the FBI upon arriving in Las Vegas on a flight from an overseas location. He was indicted on charges that he had fabricated his account of conversations with Zlochevsky. The indictment asserted Smirnov appeared to have a political bias against Joe Biden, telling FBI handlers during the 2020 presidential campaign that he had evidence that would put Biden in jail. Days after the indictment, prosecutors said Smirnov had admitted Russian intelligence officials had passed a false story about Hunter Biden to him and Smirnov had been "actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections" since meeting with Russian agents in late 2023. Prosecutors also said Smirnov is a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen who should be detained pending trial; the presiding magistrate judge ordered him released provided he surrender his passports and wear a GPS monitor. In December 2024, Smirnov pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI and was sentenced to six years in prison the following month.
Conspirators The falsehoods about Hunter Biden were spread by possible Russian operatives in the Ukrainian parliament, right-wing media supportive of Trump, and members of the Trump campaign, such as Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.
Russian involvement Russian involvement was coordinated by Russian GRU lieutenant general Vladimir Alekseyevin, his deputy Oleksiy Savin, and Ihor Kolesnikov. They coordinated a network spreading the false allegations through Ukrainian lawmakers Oleksandr Dubinsky and Andrii Derkach, Prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk and businessmen Dmytro Firtash and Konstantin Kilimnik. The three were given ten million dollars and used corrupt access to the Ukrainian Parliament and connections to media and politicians in the United States to spread the falsehoods. Dubinsky, Derkach and Kulyk were sanctioned by the U.S. government in the closing days of the Trump administration, and in November 2023 Ukrainian authorities indicted them on treason charges.
Ihor Kolesnikov Ihor Kolesnikov, a Soviet-era GRU officer, coordinated the election subversion network from Kyiv. Kolesnikov would organize Press Conferences for Oleksander Dubinsky and Andri Derkach. He was sentenced to fifteen years for treason in May 2022.
Oleksander Dubinsky Oleksandr Dubinsky is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament who four years ago helped Rudy Giuliani in his attempts to find information in support of the false Biden-Ukraine conspiracy. Dubinsky is accused of treason for allegedly working to help Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Dubinsky held a press conference with Andrii Derkach to spread the false rumors. He also met with Rudy Giuliani in 2019 for the production of a falsified film about the conspiracy.
In May 2021 Dubinsky was sanctioned by the US Government, his assets frozen, and his YouTube channel shutdown. In November 2023 Oleksander Dubinsky was charged for carrying out subversive informational activities by publishing "fakes about the alleged interference of Ukrainian high-ranking officials" in the U.S. 2020 presidential elections.
Andrii Derkach Andrii Derkach is a former Ukrainian politician, now stripped of citizenship,. who is believed to have been an agent or asset of Russia. He played a central role in spreading falsehoods about Biden and Ukraine.
Derkach released snippets of a supposed conversation between Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Poroshenko, in which Biden linked loan guarantees to the ouster of Viktor Shokin, the country's corrupt and ineffective prosecutor general. The recordings, which were not verified as authentic and appeared to be heavily edited, did not provide evidence to support the ongoing conspiracy theory that Biden wanted the prosecutor fired to protect his son. In June 2020, Poroshenko denied that Joe Biden ever approached him about Burisma and characterized the recordings as fake. In September 2020, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Derkach, stating he "has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services". The Treasury Department added that Derkach "waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election," including by the release of "edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials".
Kostiantyn Kulyk In 2019, as deputy prosecutor general. Mr Kulyk wrote a 2019 memo calling for an investigation into Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board. Later that year he had plans to meet Mr Giuliani to discuss the allegations in order to spread the false conspiracy.
Kulyk has been indicted on multiple corruption charges. Kulyk, though, fled Ukraine after Russia's invasion in 2022 and is also sanctioned by the United States for his role in the subversive activities.
Dmytro Firtash Dmytro Firtash was a middleman for Gazprom and connected to the Ukrainian government. He has acknowledged that he was installed as a middleman by Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich.
Since 2014 Firtash has faced bribery charges and fought extradition to the United States while he has been released on bail in Austria. He wired one million dollars to the wife of Lev Parnas, a former associate of Giuliani. He provided a now-discredited affidavit from Kulyk accusing Biden of wrongdoing. Trump and Giuliani associates Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing attempted to persuade Attorney General William Barr to drop charges against Firtash but failed.
Konstantin Kilimnik