Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer explained to Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson on Friday how the Ukrainian prosecutor whom then-Vice President Joe Biden got fired was a threat to Ukrainian energy firm Burisma’s business.
Carlson and Archer spoke about the threat former Ukrainian Prosecutor General (PGO) Viktor Shokin posed to Burisma’s business at the time when then-VP Joe Biden was handling Ukraine for the Obama administration and Archer sat on Burisma’s board with Hunter Biden.
“But within, within Burisma, Shokin was considered a threat to your business,” Carlson said 36 minutes into his interview with Archer.
“Shokin was considered a threat to the business. I think any anyone in. Again, you’ve got to get the signals to the government. I think anyone in government is always a threat and always trying to shake down these businesses that were highly successful and and enriching the owners and the staff and the board. And so at the end of the day, Shokin was taking a look,” Archer replied.
“And I, and again, I wasn’t involved in Shokin or any of this, but he was a threat, he ended up seizing assets of Nikolai. House, some cars, a couple of properties. And Nikolai actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets. And the case was- I mean obviously this it’s all out there,” Archer continued.
“And the case was that Shokin, there was all this pressure to fire Shokin from this, you know, the larger community. And then he was fired and then somehow Burisma was let off the hook. I mean, that’s what the story was.”
Archer was referring to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who had property seized by the PGO’s office in February 2016, according to Ukrainian outlet Inferfax. Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi frequently called Zlochevsky by his Russian name “Nikolay” or “Nikolai” by and other business associates, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop archive.
“The PGO filed a petition to court to arrest the property of the ex-Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Mykola Zlochevsky, from which arrest was withdrawn, and other property he actually uses,” Shokin’s PGO office announced on Feb. 4, 2016, Interfax reported.
The Ukrainian parliament dismissed Shokin in March 2016, a month after he filed his resignation, Kyiv Post reported at the time. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office confirmed Shokin’s resignation letter on Feb. 19, 2016, nearly two weeks after Zlochevsky’s home was raided.
The seizure of Zlochevsky’s property was the subject of a 2019 letter from Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham to Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
His letter demanded documents and communications pertaining to Joe Biden’s communications with Poroshenko about the raid on Zlochevsky’s property and the apparent PGO investigation into Burisma. Biden met with Poroshenko on Feb. 11, 2016, White House archives show.
Graham also asked for documents and communications from an alleged meeting between then-Secretary of State John Kerry, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer in March 2016.
In Sept. 2016, then-Vice President Biden bragged about how he used a $1 billion loan guarantee to pressure Poroshenko into firing Shokin.
“You remember last year I was authorized to say we’d do the second tranche of a billion dollars. And he didn’t fire his chief prosecutor. And because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said: I’m not signing it. Until you fire him, we’re not signing, man. Get it straight. We’re not doing it,” Biden said at an event held by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Archer’s comments were part of an hour long interview by Carlson about Archer’s foreign business dealings with Hunter Biden. Carlson posted the interview on X, formerly known as Twitter, as the follow up to a ten minute interview with Archer he shared on Tuesday following Archer’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee.
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