By Zachary Stieber
Contributing Writer
Then-Vice President Joe Biden said that he “strongly” preferred that the CIA not distribute a report about his visit to Ukraine in 2015, according to documents declassified by CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Tuesday.
The report, labeled as “nondisseminated,” relayed how officials in Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s administration “expressed bewilderment and disappointment” following Biden’s trip to Ukraine in December 2015, assessing that he had gone to Kiev “almost exclusively to give a generic public speech, and had no intention of discussing substantive matters with Poroshenko or other officials within the Ukrainian government,” a U.S. intelligence report dated shortly after the visit stated.
The officials had expected Biden to go over personnel matters with Poroshenko, including advocating for or against specific officials within the Ukrainian government.
Biden during his speech had called on reform within the Ukrainian government. He also said that the country’s energy sector “needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles — not sweetheart deals.”
Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor in Ukraine, was at that time probing Burisma Holdings, a major Ukrainian energy firm that employed Biden’s son. In early 2016, Biden successfully leveraged the threat of withholding U.S. financial assistance to have Shokin removed, he recounted during a 2018 event.
“I said, ‘you’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, [expletive], he got fired,” Biden said at the time. “And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
In the wake of the visit, Ukrainian officials “privately mused at the U.S. media scrutiny of the alleged ties of the U.S. vice president’s family to corrupt business practices in Ukraine,” the newly declassified report stated. “These officials viewed the alleged ties … as evidence of a double-standard within the United States government towards matters of corruption and political power.”
An email also declassified by Ratcliffe, written by a Presidential Daily Brief briefer from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that the briefer had spoken with Biden and that Biden “would strongly prefer the report not be disseminated.”
The report was marked on the first page as “non-disseminated.” It was also labeled as sensitive further down and a warning said that due to the sensitivity, the report should only be distributed to named recipients.
Those recipients and much of the report were redacted.
The CIA declined to comment. Biden could not be reached for comment.
Shokin has said that he was ousted due to the probe into Burisma.
A report from GOP members of three House of Representatives committees, published in 2024 after investigations into Biden family business dealings with Ukraine and other countries, concluded that Biden engaged in impeachable conduct, including withholding the loan guarantee “until Ukraine took government action to stop the investigation into” Burisma.
At the time, representatives for the White House said in response to the report in a statement provided to media outlets that Republicans “only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories.”
