[Image]People, Let Me Tell You 'Bout My Best FriendIn early 2015 the former Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden's office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board. Kent's concerns went unaddressed, and in September 2016, he emphasized in an email to his colleagues, "Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine."...Former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland testified that confronting oligarchs would send an anticorruption message in Ukraine. Kent told the Committees that [Burisma owner] Zlochevsky was an "odious oligarch." However, in December 2015, instead of following U.S. objectives of confronting oligarchs, Vice President Biden's staff advised him to avoid commenting on Zlochevsky and recommended he say, "I'm not going to get into naming names or accusing individuals."Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma's board (supposedly consulting on corporate governance and transparency) when Zlochevsky allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine's prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to "shut the case against Zlochevsky." Kent testified that this bribe occurred in December 2014 (seven months after Hunter joined Burisma's board), and, after learning about it, he and the Resident Legal Advisor reported this allegation to the FBI. Remember, this is about the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Zlochevsky -- who, again, owned Burisma, and was paying Hunter Biden a lot of money to do very little besides whisper in his dad's ear.  In 2016, Ukraine's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had an active and ongoing investigation into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. At the time, Archer and Hunter Biden continued to serve on Burisma's board of directors. According to news reports, then-Vice President Biden "threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine's leaders did not dismiss [Shokin]." After that threat, Ukraine's Parliament fired Shokin. More from the report: Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. Hunter Biden opened a bank account with Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden.  Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People's Liberation Army. Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow.  Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an "Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring
---Among the key findings in the report are substantial allegations that Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, from which Hunter Biden raked in upwards of $50,000 a month for serving the board, paid a $7 million bribe to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office to close an investigation seven months following Hunter Biden's addition to its leadership.Kent testified that he learned shortly after the meeting with Danylenko that Hunter Biden was sitting on the board of the Ukrainian energy company owned by Zlochevsky. Biden's role was supposedly to consult on corporate governance and transparency. Hunter Biden joined the firm and raked in excess compensation despite no prior experience in the industry just weeks after his business partner, Devon Archer, met with Joe Biden at the White House. Joe Biden had just recently been described by the press as the Obama administration's "public face of the administration's handling of Ukraine...""I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest," Kent told House members during a private deposition in October last year. "The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president's son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time... That was the end of that conversation."State Department officials, according to the Senate report, widely viewed Zlochevsky as a corrupt, "odious oligarch" who Kent described as "a poster child for corrupt behavior."GRTWT.