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Trump and his allies have also promoted a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, were engaged in corrupt activities in Ukraine. Trump's defense team promoted this conspiracy theory during his impeachment trial, and Trump has said he planned to make it a major issue during the 2020 campaign, while a Republican-controlled Senate committee ramped up an investigation in spring 2020. Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, spearheaded an effort to gather information in Ukraine to advance the conspiracy theory, and attorney general Barr confirmed that the Justice Department created an "intake process" to review Giuliani's findings. The conspiracy theory asserts that Hunter Biden was paid a large sum of money by a Ukrainian firm, Burisma Holdings, to take a job for which he was unqualified, as a means for Burisma to influence then-vice president Joe Biden, who then extorted Ukraine for $1 billion to fire a prosecutor so as to prevent Hunter Biden from being investigated for corruption. This narrative has been found to be false. Hunter Biden did take a high-paying job with Burisma, but involving matters for which he was qualified, and there is no evidence he was peddling influence with his father. Vice president Biden did withhold $1 billion in government aid to Ukraine, but for the opposite reason the conspiracy theory asserts: as a matter of American and international policy to induce Ukraine to remove a corrupt and ineffective prosecutor who was not assertively investigating Burisma. Trump defended the fired prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, “who a lot of people said was a great prosecutor and they took him off.” In a widely-circulated 2018 video, a portion of which was included in a Trump campaign ad, Joe Biden is seen taking credit for Shokin's firing, but not for the reason the conspiracy theory and Trump ad contend.

In September 2019, Shokin signed an affidavit asserting his beliefs — rather than assertions of facts — that Joe Biden engineered his removal from office to prevent an investigation into Burisma and Hunter Biden. Giuliani promoted the affidavit in television appearances, asserting that Shokin "says under oath" that he was investigating Hunter Biden when he was fired. The affidavit notes that it was provided "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash...for use in legal proceedings in Austria." Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch, had for five years been living in Austria, figthing extradition to the United States where he was under indictment for a bribery scheme. Since July 2019, Fitrash's lawyers included Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, close Trump and Giuliani associates who are regular guests on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. The New York Times reported that Giuliani had directed Lev Parnas to recommend to Firtash that he hire diGenova and Toensing, with the proposition that Firtash could help to provide compromising information on Biden, which Parnas's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to extradition matter". The Washington Post reported that in mid-August 2019, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with attorney general Bill Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped. Prior to that meeting, Barr had been briefed in detail on the initial whistleblower complaint within the CIA that had been forwarded to the Justice Department, as well as on Giuliani's activities in Ukraine. Barr declined to intervene in the Firtash case. Bloomberg News reported that its sources told them that Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin affidavit had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known Barr for decades, as they both worked in the Reagan/Bush Justice Department.

Firtash made his fortune brokering Ukrainian imports of natural gas from the Russian firm Gazprom. As vice president, Joe Biden had urged the Ukrainian government to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash from the country's natural gas industry, and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas. Firtash denied involvement in collecting or financing damaging information on the Bidens. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime".

In May 2020, Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, an associate of Rudy Giuliani with links to Russian intelligence, released snippets of recordings of Joe Biden speaking with Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president during the years Hunter Biden worked for Burisma. The recordings, which were not verified as authentic and appeared heavily edited, showed Biden linking loan guarantees for Ukraine to the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general. The recordings did not provide evidence to support the ongoing conspiracy theory that Biden wanted the prosecutor fired to protect his son. Poroshenko denied In June 2020 that Joe Biden ever approached him about Burisma and characterized the recordings as fake. One America News, a favorite news outlet of Trump's that features conspiracy theories, heavily promoted the recordings. In September 2020, the US Treasury Department 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 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."

In some cases, Giuliani and his associates worked with individuals linked to Russian organized crime and intelligence, including Firtash and Derkach. In late 2019, multiple sources reported that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for multiple felonies relating to his activities in Ukraine. The chairman of the Senate committee investigating the matter, Ron Johnson, was warned by American intelligence officials of a risk he could be playing into the hands of Russian intelligence to spread disinformation.

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post reported newly uncovered emails suggesting Hunter Biden introduced his father, then Vice President Joe Biden to a top executive at Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. Joe Biden's presidential campaign denied such a meeting took place.

References

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