Senate

Graham requests State Department documents on Bidens, Ukraine

by Jordain Carney - 11/21/19 5:03 PM ET

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wants the State Department to hand over any documents tied to the Bidens and Ukraine.

Graham sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting the documents “to assist in answering questions regarding allegations that Vice President [Joe] Biden played a role in the termination of Prosecutor General [Viktor] Shokin in an effort to end the investigation of the company employing his son.”

Under Graham’s request, he wants the State Department to hand over any documents tied to calls between the former vice president and former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, including if Biden brought up an investigation into Burisma, the company where his son, Hunter Biden, was on the board.

Graham also wants any documents related to a meeting between Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner, and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

Graham’s request comes as he, President Trump and other GOP lawmakers have homed in on Hunter Biden as they’ve sought to push back against the House impeachment inquiry, which is investigating the president’s actions toward Ukraine.

Hunter Biden worked on the board of Burisma, a natural gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, while his father served as vice president.

Joe Biden pushed in 2016 for the dismissal of Shokin as prosecutor because of concerns he was overlooking corruption in his own office, and threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if the prosecutor was not fired.

There’s no evidence that Joe Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind and the former vice president has denied doing so.

A bipartisan group of senators, in a publicly released letter in 2016, urged Poroshenko to make “urgent reforms” to the prosecutor general’s office. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, also told House lawmakers last month during his closed-door deposition as part of the impeachment inquiry that Biden “was representing U.5. policy at the time.”

“And it was a general assumption, I was not doing U.5. policy at the time, but a general assumption among the European Union, France, Germany, American diplomats, U.K., that Shokin was not doing his job as a prosecutor general. He was not pursuing corruption cases,” Volker told lawmakers.

Graham has faced pressure from the right to use the Judiciary Committee to investigate the Bidens.

After inviting Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to testify, he appeared to reverse course, saying that the Foreign Relations Committee should instead call State Department officials to testify on the Bidens and Ukraine.

Graham’s letter to Pompeo was sent on Judiciary Committee letterhead, suggesting that he’s reversed course a second time by seeking to have his panel look into the requested documents.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — the chairmen of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Finance committees, respectively — previously sent a letter to Pompeo seeking any documents tied to Hunter Biden and the Ukraine energy company.