Ron Johnson, Walking Simpson's 'You Tried' Gif, Releases Biden Ukraine Report

Slow clap.

DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW?!?!1¿1??¿?!

Did you know that Joe Biden's son is a fuckup who traded on his family name and got a job on a Ukrainian company's board like every other child of a politician in DC including two who are working in the White House right this very moment?

Oh, you did? Well, then, the report just dropped by The Senate's Dumbest Republican™ won't contain much new information for you.

Despite being warned by US intelligence agencies and members of his very own party that he and Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley were laundering Russian propaganda, Senator Ron Johnson went ahead and dropped his hastily polished turd this morning, right in the middle of the SCOTUS nomination/200,000 coronavirus deaths/crazy shit Trump said last   night news cycle, where it promptly rolled into the corner largely unnoticed.

The big conclusion of the report is that Hunter Biden being on the board of Burisma was UNLEGAL because it violated anti-awkwardness statutes.

 Yes, for real. 

See, former Acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Ukraine George Kent testified that "the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all US officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine." Which is a fair assessment, and one that Biden's longtime State Department official Amos Hochstein also brought to his attention — having the son of the American Vice President in the employ of a corrupt oligarch was a bad look when we were telling Ukraine to clean up its act or else .

But there's no evidence that Biden changed US policy to help his son, so Johnson leans into the criminal "awkwardness."

Johnson warns ominously that, "Although Kent believed that Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board was awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine," only Kent and Hochstein mentioned it to Biden personally. From which we are to infer ... something?

It was extremely awkward for the State Department to have to "maintain situational awareness of Hunter Biden's association with Burisma," and George Kent testified that he "would have advised any American not to get on the board of Zlochevsky's company." Check and mate, libs!

"The awkwardness for Obama administration officials continued well past his presidency," Johnson continues, pointing to one time in December of 2019 when someone asked John Kerry a question about it. Johnson neglects to point out that both the awkwardness and the question were likely a result of a raging Russian disinformation campaign spearheaded by the president's pro bono lawyer Rudy Giuliani , not because people were still upset about something Joe Biden said in 2015.

In fact, there are quite a few glaring omissions in Johnson's little book report. He forgets to mention that George Kent testified in the impeachment hearings that there was absolutely nothing corrupt in the way Vice President Biden handled the Ukraine issue. Let's take a wildass guess that Kent said exactly the same thing behind closed doors to Johnson's Get Biden investigators, but that didn't make its way into the report, and Johnson refused to release the full transcripts.

Johnson points to allegations that Burisma paid a $7 million bribe to Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 to get the case against its owner dropped, but then asks us to believe that the vice president's insistence in 2015 and 2015 that Ukraine fire its chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin was also an effort to get the case dropped. Because, linear time how does it go? 

And, lest we forget, Ron Johnson himself signed a letter in 2016 demanding that Ukraine clean house in its prosecutor's office, the very Russian talking point that's supposed to be the linchpin of his case against Biden. Which is ... awkward.

And speaking of awkward, check out this footage from the April 16, 2014 meeting at the White House between Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer and Joe Biden.

Oh, Ron Johnson, you really Johnson-ed the hell out of this report!

So into the space where actual info might be, the good senator inserts speculation and implication, leavened with extensive attacks on Democrats and the Deep State. Since Rudy's buddy Andrii Derkach has been declared a Russian spy , Johnson relies instead on Derkach's agent Andrii Telizhenko , the source for the debunked 2017 Ken Vogel article implying that perhaps Ukraine was the real collusion. Johnson's fellow Republicans dug in their heels and refused to bring a shady character like Telizhenko in to testify, but Johnson whines for pages and pages about mean Democrats impugning his witness.

He also spends a lot of time telling us that Hunter Biden is gross and made money off his last name. Which ... hey, no argument here, dude. But in the end, Johnson admits that he came up empty in his quest to prove that Joe Biden lifted a finger to use the power of his office to help his son.

"The extent to which Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear," Johnson writes. "But what is clear from the records, however, is that State Department officials, particularly Kent himself, regularly considered how Hunter Biden's connection to Burisma might affect the execution of U.S. policy."

So Biden didn't do shit, but the State Department had thoughts about Hunter Biden? That's all he's got, after weeks of hyping this report and promising that "we're going to learn a whole lot more of Vice President Biden's unfitness for office"? Really?

Oooooof, now that's AWKWARD.

[ Senate Report / Politico / WaPo ]

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