A newly released CIA document revealed that Vice President Joseph R. Biden sought to suppress a 2016 intelligence report in which Ukrainian government officials “mused” about his family’s ties to “corrupt business practices in Ukraine.”
The document was based on U.S. intelligence gathered in December 2015 that revealed officials in the administration of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused the U.S. of a “double standard [on] matters of corruption and political power” because of the Biden family’s “ties to corruption.”
At the time, Mr. Biden’s son Hunter was earning a $1 million annual salary serving on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which was under a fraud investigation.
Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the Burisma board had garnered national media attention by 2015. It raised questions about conflicts of interest, particularly because Mr. Biden had been named the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine.
The formerly top-secret memo, declassified by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and reviewed by The Washington Times, was never distributed to the appropriate intelligence officials.
According to a 2016 email from a high-ranking but unidentified intelligence liaison, Mr. Biden ordered it buried.
“I just spoke with [the vice president’s national security adviser] and he would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated. Thanks for understanding,” the liaison wrote to an unidentified CIA official in an email dated Feb. 10, 2016.
The vice president’s national security adviser at that time was Colin Kahl, who went on to serve as an undersecretary of defense in the Biden administration. He is now a senior fellow at Stanford University.
Mr. Kahl did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times.
Mr. Biden did not immediately respond to an email to his office.
Mr. Biden sought to keep the Ukraine memo from distribution even though “the information would have met the dissemination threshold,” according to a 2024 review of the intelligence reports processing system.
Despite that determination, the Biden administration continued to keep the report hidden last year because “it did not add to the intelligence picture in 2024,” in part because Mr. Poroshenko was no longer in office.
The previously classified memo was released after a yearslong House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the Biden family’s scheme to profit from Mr. Biden’s powerful position as vice president and later as the Democratic presidential nominee. Most of the Biden family deals involved businesses in foreign countries.
A report released last year by House Republicans presented evidence suggesting Mr. Biden frequently intervened to assist his family, especially his son Hunter Biden, in securing lucrative business deals with Ukraine, Russia, China, and other nations dating back to his vice presidency.
According to bank records cited in the report, foreign business partners paid $18 million to the Biden family from 2014 to 2023. The funds were traced to bank accounts of Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger brother James Biden, James Biden’s wife, Sara Biden, Mr. Biden’s daughters-in-law Hallie Biden and Melissa Cohen Biden, along with the president’s nieces and grandchildren.
Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board was also scrutinized in the House inquiry. Investigators interviewed former business associate Devon Archer, who said Hunter Biden was under pressure from Burisma officials in 2015 to get help from Mr. Biden in stopping Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s corruption investigation into the company.
He told investigators that he thought Hunter Biden phoned his father for help in the matter while in the presence of the Burisma executives.
Mr. Biden later bragged that he demanded Mr. Poroshenko fire Mr. Shokin or risk losing $1 billion in International Monetary Fund loans.
Mr. Biden denied participating in the business dealings of his son or other family members.
The Ukrainians, however, suspected Biden family corruption in 2015.
U.S. intelligence officials captured their sentiments in the days after Mr. Biden’s Dec. 7 visit as vice president to Kyiv, where he delivered a speech calling on Ukraine to rein in corruption.
According to the intelligence assessment, officials in the Poroshenko administration “expressed bewilderment and disappointment” in the visit because, in their view, Mr. Biden had no intention of discussing “substantive” matters with Mr. Poroshenko or other officials.
After Mr. Biden’s visit, Poroshenko 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.”
They viewed those ties “as evidence of a double standard within the United States government toward matters of corruption and political power.”
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said the declassified report “backs up our investigation into the Biden family’s corrupt foreign business deals.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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