Biden Stripped the Visa From a Ukrainian Witness So That He Couldn't Testify to Congress About Burisma and Hunter Biden

Trump is such a corrupt authoritarian you guys.

In the shadows of the 2020 election, the U.S. government revoked a Ukrainian witness' visa and prevented him from testifying in the Senate's probe into alleged Biden family corruption on the basis that he might be spreading Russian disinformation even though its own intelligence showed he was an opponent of Russia and rejected Moscow's overtures, bombshell memos released Thursday show.

The documents made public by the White House Government Transparency Task Force are the latest pieces of evidence to chronicle how the FBI, the State Department and other federal bodies sought to suffocate a narrative -- later proven true -- that Hunter Biden had been working for a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings that was seeking to leverage Vice President Joe Biden's connections to solve its corruption problems.

Specifically, the memos show that the FBI and State Department rushed to block former Ukraine embassy aide Andrii Telizhenko's arrival in the United States just as he was to be interviewed by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley in September 2020.

Instead of testifying, the Ukrainian government official once trusted by the Obama administration was sanctioned for being painted as a possible unwitting purveyor of Russian smears against the Biden family.

The agencies argued that Telizhenko was spreading false claims that Hunter Biden's service on Burisma's board of directors had impacted U.S. policy fighting corruption in Ukraine and that Joe Biden had changed U.S. policy when he withheld $1 billion to force the firing of Ukraine's chief prosecutor who was investigating , the memos show.

So once again: We will use the government's power to censor relevant information from the public -- and Congress! -- and we will claim RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION as the pretext.

Oh we're definitely not covering up the Biden Crime Family's corruption by contriving a reason to block a witness from testifying about them, no siree bob! We're just fighting RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE, you see.

...

In fact, evidence made public in the years after the 2020 election shows that America's top diplomats in Kyiv in fact believed Hunter Biden's presence on the Burisma board had "undercut" U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine and that Vice President Biden had overruled career officials' recommendations to give Ukraine the loan guarantees and keep the prosecutor in place.

The newly released memos not only show the grounds for claiming Telizhenko spread Russian disinformation may have been erroneous, but also that the officials who would go on to penalize him knew beforehand that the Ukrainian was in fact a vocal opponent of Moscow who had rejected overtures to be recruited by Russian sources.

Erroneous? You mean corruptly fraudulent.

"In 2014 [...] Andrii ((Telizhenko)) was banned from entering Russia due to his involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and was listed as a spy by the Russian government," an Aug. 2020 FBI memo stated. The same memo shows that Russian officials attempted to recruit Telizhenko, but that he rebuffed them.

There is a possibly related update to this story: Two FBI agents have been arrested for lying about their efforts to derail the investigation into Hunter Biden.

FBI Director Kash Patel @FBIDirectorKash

Two former senior FBI officials, Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, were taken into custody today on charges of allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden.

The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force.

Floris led the FITF as a Deputy Assistant Director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides was the FITF Section Chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations.

Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony.

Floris is also on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her role on the FITF.

Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law.

The FBI has already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump.

More details from John Sexton:

FLORIS and BENAVIDES are former FBI officials. FLORIS served as the Deputy Assistant Director and functional head of FITF [Foreign Influence Task Force, the FBI's RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION hoax division] from mid-2019 through mid-2022. BENAVIDES served as the Section Chief of FITF from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Although FITF was originally focused on combating foreign influence by Russia, its scope expanded to include foreign influence by other nation-state actors...

As described in detail below, witness accounts and contemporaneous documents from December 2019 through September 2021 show that FLORIS and BENAVIDES knew about and were actively involved in the FBI's investigations of Hunter Biden. FITF hosted classified briefings for the agents and prosecutors on the Hunter Biden case in which FLORIS and BENAVIDES were active participants. In October 2020, both FLORIS and BENAVIDES worked on the FBI's internal and Congressional responses to reporting on the FBI's receipt of Hunter Biden's laptop, with FLORIS receiving, discussing, and passing along updates on the investigations through late 2021.

Hunter Biden was a recurring subject at FITF in briefings, emails, instant messages, and meetings, including internal discussion of whether information about him was Russian disinformation. According to an October 2026 interview of FBI Employee 1--who oversaw the Hunter Biden investigations for the FBI's Criminal Division--personnel at FITF including FLORIS and BENAVIDES were in frequent communication with the Hunter Biden case teams. Information flowed in both directions; the case team would send FITF updates on their investigations and FITF would send information to the case team that FITF saw as relevant. According to an October 2026 interview of an FBI Baltimore Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC), herein referred to as FBI Employee 2, the FBI Baltimore Field Office brought the FITF into their investigations of Hunter Biden. FBI Employee 2 confirmed that FLORIS, BENAVIDES, and other members of the FITF had knowledge and awareness of their investigations and details of their investigations, including in relation to Hunter Biden's laptop.

...

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published its story on the Hunter Biden laptop, and both FLORIS and BENAVIDES assisted with the FBI's response to press inquiries the same day. FLORIS and BENAVIDES received an email from the FBI Cyber Division with the subject "Ny post... morning answer?" and a question about whether the FBI had the laptop. The Office of Congressional Affairs also sent them and a FITF Unit Chief, FBI Employee 3, an email titled "SSCI Request -- Hunter Biden Laptop." FLORIS answered that "CID is point on this matter" and copied Criminal Division (CID) management. A Director's Office media coordinator told BENAVIDES that at a tech-industry call that day, "most of the questions were about the news reports about a laptop and Burisma." When a FITF Unit Chief [FBI Employee 4] asked BENAVIDES whether FITF was tracking the laptop coverage, he replied: "Indeed...I've spoken to [initials of FBI Employee 1]," and "I would love to know if a copy exists, and was it provided to anyone...[initials of FBI Employee 1] did not know."

And then they claimed that they and the Foreign Influence Task Force were not involved in playing defense for Hunter Biden, under oath.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:10 PM

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