Trump, Biden and a little scandal in the Ukraine

Given everything going on in America and Europe, who’d have expected that President Donald Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian president would be the big story to emerge from the recent UN summit? As a possible corruption scandal threatens to envelop both the president and one of his potential 2020 rivals, with impeachment now on the table, it’s time to look at the details.

First, a little background. In February 2014, there was a revolution in Ukraine, resulting in the ousting of the corrupt and pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukoych. A pro-Western president, Petro Poroshenko, took over. Then-President Barack Obama was prepared to work with the new government, but he (as well as many other Western governments and institutions) were still concerned about the country’s endemic corruption. Obama made Vice-President Biden his point man in Ukraine, and Biden visited the country multiple times from early 2014 to early 2016.

The issues begin with a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma. Biden’s son Hunter joined the board of Burisma in April 2014, despite having little background in energy, and was reportedly paid up to $50,000 a month. The question of a possible conflict of interest – Hunter Biden profiting in a country where his father was working with the government – was raised publicly at the time, but Biden insisted that he followed government ethic regulations, and that his son was a private citizen making his own decisions.

The crux of the matter rests on the firing of the top Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Joe Biden said that Shokin had failed to investigate corruption, and told the country’s leaders that the prosecutor had to go if Ukraine wanted $1 billion in US aid money (there were also accusations that Shokin himself was heavily corrupt). The big question is exactly why Biden called for this firing – was it to remove a corrupt prosecutor or, as Trump’s camp alleges, to protect his son from being investigated? Burisma was being investigated for corruption and its leader, Mykola Zlochevsky, served under Yanukovich, leading to allegations he used his office to benefit the company.

After Biden, the story now appears to have implicated President Trump too. After a whistle-blower leaked details of a private phone call with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it was revealed that Trump had asked his counterpart (who had come into office promising to deal with corruption) to look into the Biden allegations. Democrats immediately ceased on this, suggesting that Trump’s comments amounted to using foreign actors to dig up damaging material on a potential 2020 rivals – something that, if true, would be an impeachable offence. Trump released the transcript of the call but, despite supporting his account of the events, Democrats are still arguing that his request was essentially a quid pro quo and are pushing forward with impeachment.

How could this scandal impact on the two men? For Trump, it appears to be generally positive – Democrats are rushing for an impeachment for which there’s not really any grounds or support, and it has served to raise his approval rating to the highest it has been since his inauguration. After Republicans tried to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998 (on much stronger grounds), the country united against them – the same thing looks to be happening here. For Biden, however, it’s the last thing he needs in a presidential campaign that has been flagging as of late – initially the front-runner, Biden is now falling behind Elizabeth Warren as his momentum flags. When you’re running on the grounds of a return to normality and responsible governance, corruption allegations are the last thing you need.

It’s unlikely that there’ll be a full account of what went down, if anything, with the Bidens in Ukraine. However, now that impeachment proceedings are underway, it’s not going to vanish from the headlines, and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is still hard at work hoping to get Ukraine to make a full investigation of Joe Biden. As much as the Democrats try to make this a Trump issue, it is Biden who will suffer most here – what we may be witnessing is the beginning of the end for his 2020 prospects.