President Joe Biden promoted Obama-era Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt – who publicly criticized the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General amidst investigations into the Hunter Biden-linked gas and oil company Burisma – to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources.
The nomination of Pyatt was announced in April of 2022 and makes him the president’s leading official on energy security.
Pyatt has publicly criticized the office of Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the Hunter Biden-linked energy firm Burisma. Pyatt’s ascension to the State Department, therefore, is complicated given the revelations that the Biden family received millions of dollars in exchange for Shokin’s firing.
NEW: @mtgreenee reviewed the FBI informant doc:
1) Biden given $5M bribe to get Viktor Shokin fired in Burisma probe
2) Two pieces of evidence of payments to Hunter and Joe
3) Burisma hired Hunter to make Shokin’s probe go away
4) Hunter was ‘stupid’pic.twitter.com/a9i8Ni5f4Q
— Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) June 8, 2023
Speaking in 2019, the former Vice President publicly admitted to withholding U.S. government aid to Ukraine to pressure the country’s leaders into firing Shokin, who was leading a probe into potential corruption plaguing Burisma. Hunter Biden was paid up to $1 million per year from 2014 through 2019 to serve on Burisma’s board, despite no relevant industry experience.
Pyatt appears to have echoed Biden’s anti-Shokin attacks, singling out the prosecutor’s office in a 2015 speech at the Odesa Financial Forum.
"That obstacle is the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption. Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform,” Pyatt asserted.
Pyatt’s nomination comes amidst continued conflict between Russia and Ukraine, placing him in charge of the Bureau of Energy Resources within the U.S. Department of State which leads the agency’s efforts in international energy security.
Pyatt previously served in the Obama administration from 2013 to 2016 as its Ambassador to Ukraine, and during his tenure, was also embroiled in a leaked phone call controversy with then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland.
The two were caught on tape discussing cutting deals in internal Ukrainian politics, with Nuland favoring one opposition leader over another. They appeared to plot strategies to replace elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych by installing Artseniy Yatseniuk, expressing anger with the European Union for favoring Vitali Klitschko as a replacement.
"Fuck the EU,” Nuland blurted out on the call, as the pair plotted the fate of the Eurasian nation together. Together, Nuland and Pyatt are believed to have led U.S. efforts to orchestrate a 2014 revolution in Ukraine that ultimately led to President Yanukovych’s ousting.
