House investigators threatened this week to use “compulsory” methods against the White House, which has, for five months, refused to permit the release of drafts of President Joe Biden’s 2015 anti-corruption speech in Ukraine. The speech drafts are key to Republicans who have named the firing of the Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for investigating Burisma, the energy company paying Hunter Biden millions, as evidence of the first family’s international influence peddling scheme.
The House Committees on Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and
Means sent a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel on Wednesday demanding that he rubberstamp the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) release of Biden’s draft calls for the end of corruption to the Ukrainian Rada.
The Oversight Committee, led by Chairman James Comer, requested NARA hand over “all drafts” of Biden’s 2015 in August to reinforce their investigation into Biden family corruption. The demand, which the committees noted Comer was well within federal law to make, came shortly after Biden associate Devon Archer admitted the then-VP spoke with his son’s foreign business partners.
There is already “overwhelming evidence” — including Shokin’s corroboration — that Biden leveraged his authority in the Obama administration to orchestrate the prosecutor’s removal to benefit the company paying his son.
In 2018, Biden bragged that Shokin was canned because he used his vice presidential powers to threaten to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loans from Petro Poroshenko, the then-president of Ukraine.
The FD-1023 form that the FBI desperately tried to conceal from Republican investigators also contained testimony suggesting the Burisma chief coordinated with the Bidens to kill Shokin’s investigation. The “highly credible” confidential human source who gathered the information for the form reported that Burisma chief Mykola Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings, including two of Joe Biden, that prove he “was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
House investigators still want to see the drafts of Biden’s corruption speech because they believe it will help with their Biden impeachment inquiry.
NARA, which previously released Former President Donald Trump’s presidential records to Congress “after only one month of White House review,” refused because the Biden White House extended its review period via executive order three times.
“Such a lengthy delay in processing a discrete and limited category of documents is unacceptable and appears to represent an attempt to obstruct the Committees’ legitimate investigation,” the letter states. “These dilatory tactics must cease, and the White House must permit NARA to release these documents forthwith.”
During its first extension in September, the White House justified its delay to NARA by claiming it would coordinate the release of the 2015 Biden speech with Comer.
“To date, the Oversight Committee has no record of anyone from the White House attempting to contact the Committee to ‘explore’ any accommodation regarding these documents, casting considerable doubt as to whether the White House has requested these extensions in good faith or is simply attempting to delay the production of this very limited tranche of documents to the Committee,” the committees continued. “Nor has the White House asserted any privilege over these draft speeches, presumably because none is applicable.”
The White House has until Feb. 7 to permit NARA to release the letter drafts. Failure to do so and continued stonewalling, which U.S. Archivist Dr. Colleen Shogan confirmed to the committees is the White House’s fault, will result in the “use of compulsory process to require the White House’s production of the speeches.”
