One of Hunter Biden’s former business associates — now in prison — has told Congress that Biden sought roughly $5 million from fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Firtash to help try to quash a U.S. indictment while his father was vice president and presiding over U.S.-Ukraine policy, according to an eyewitness to the testimony.
Jason Galanis’ jailhouse account of an effort to assist Firtash was recently provided to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in President Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry, and it corroborates a story from Just the News in 2021 in which Firtash’s longtime righthand man Hares Youssef confirmed the future first son was engaged in 2015 to try to help solve Firtash’s legal woes in the United States.
Both Hares in 2021 and Galanis last month said Hunter Biden was unsuccessful – Firtash still faces charges and is fighting extradition to the United States from his safe harbor in Austria – but the efforts ultimately resulted in a $3 million investment in a tech fund called mBloom that Galanis and other Hunter Biden partners had formed.
Galanis said approximately $300,000 of that money eventually made its way into Rosemont Seneca Bohai, one of Hunter Biden’s firms. That firm was also used for payments he received from a second Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky and his Burisma Holdings energy firm.
You can see those bank records here.
Lawyers for Boies Schiller Flexner, Hunter Biden, and Firtash did not immediately return calls or emails seeking comment. The Boies firm, headed by David Boies, is well-known for representing high-profile defendants such as Elizabeth Theranos and Harvey Weinstein. He also argued on behalf of Al Gore before the Supreme Court of the United States in during l the disputed 2000 election.
Firtash is one of Ukraine’s most controversial figures, indicted by the Obama-Biden Justice Department in April 2014 on corruption allegations but represented over the years by some of America’s most powerful lawyers, like former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis, ex-U.S. Attorney Dan Webb and former DOJ officials Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing.
His lawyers have argued that the charges filed in federal court in Chicago against Firtash were unwarranted, and the legal team has managed to thwart his extradition for nearly a decade. “He didn’t pay any bribes. He’s not even charged with paying bribes. He’s charged with a scheme to bribe, involving a transaction in India, that never happened,” Davis said back in 2021.
In his own recent interview with Congress, Hunter Biden wasn’t asked about any representation of Firtash but he acknowledged knowing that Firtash was in the energy business in Ukraine and was believed to be aligned with Russia and Vladimir Putin.
“There were two gas companies inside of Ukraine at that time. One of them was the state-owned, which was highly corrupt and connected to people like Firtash, which was directly going into Vladimir Putin’s pocket,” Hunter Biden testified, explaining Firtash’s ties to Russia were part of the reason he joined Burisma’s board.
“The only independent company was Burisma. And Burisma was supplying 60 percent of all natural gas to power the entire industry in Ukraine, including 78 percent of all steel mills. And so they needed to survive,” he added.
A person who attended Galanis’ interview with Congress in late February in a federal prison said Galanis told investigators he learned the specific details of the Firtash arrangement in multiple conversations with Youssef, a top lieutenant to Firtash and one of Galanis’ business associates. Galanis said he had at least three conversations with Youssef about Hunter Biden’s involved, the source said.
According to the source’s account, Galanis told congressional impeachment investigators:
- Hunter Biden offered to help Firtash try to “influence or attempt to quash” his federal indictment;
- Galanis believed either $5 million or $5.5 million was delivered to Boies, where Hunter worked as a lawyer. The payment was to compensate Hunter Biden for trying to resolve Firtash’s U.S. legal issues;
- Youseff became “very unhappy” with Hunter Biden’s work on the matter because of the lack of progress resolving Firtash’s criminal case;
- Eventually, the effort ended and Youseff arranged to transfer $3 million of Firtash’s money to a tech startup associated with Galanis and other Hunter Biden business partners called mBloom.
- mBloom then sent about $300,000 of that money to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a firm where Hunter Biden often got paid for his Burisma work.
READ MORE:
Views: 68