The only applause Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. got while he addressed the Ukrainian Parliament on Tuesday was when he berated Russia. That’s not hard: Russia’s venality — the seizure of Crimea and the support for separatists in eastern Ukraine — is a strong unifying force in Ukrainian politics. By contrast, Mr. Biden’s ardent talk of the need to put an end to Ukraine’s ubiquitous corruption and the power of its oligarchs was met with stony silence.
Sadly, the credibility of Mr. Biden’s message may be undermined by the association of his son with a Ukrainian natural-gas company, Burisma Holdings, which is owned by a former government official suspected of corrupt practices ... Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, has been under investigation in Britain and in Ukraine. It should be plain to Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father’s efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on.

Detailed Timeline of Key Events in the Joe Biden - Hunter Biden - Ukraine-gate scandal

Jan 2009

• Event: Joe Biden becomes Vice-President of the United States
• Event: Sen. John Kerry serves as chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

June 2009

• Event: Hunter Biden, Christopher Heinz, and Devon Archer found Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment and advisory firm
• Note: this is five months after the Obama/Biden administration takes power
• Christopher Heinz is John Kerry’s stepson and an heir to the food-company fortune
• Devon Archer is a wealthy investor, top Democratic campaign bundler, and close family friend of John Kerry

In June, 2009, five months after Joe Biden became Vice-President, Hunter co-founded a second company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, with Christopher Heinz, Senator John Kerry’s stepson and an heir to the food-company fortune, and Devon Archer, a former Abercrombie & Fitch model who started his finance career at Citibank in Asia and who had been friends with Heinz at Yale. (Heinz and Archer already had a private-equity fund called Rosemont Capital.)

as both Joe Biden and John Kerry negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals often with those same foreign governments,” Schweizer wrote.
For a small firm with no track record, Rosemont Seneca scored high-level meetings with officials in China over the years, with each meeting coincidentally corresponding to official meetings between Vice President Biden and Chinese leaders.

2012

• Event: "Hunter Biden begins the process to become a public-affairs officer in the Navy Reserve"

[Hunter] Biden, 44 years old, decided to pursue military service relatively late, beginning the direct-commission process to become a public-affairs officer in the Navy Reserve in 2012.

Jan 2013

• Event: Sen. John Kerry succeeds Hillary Clinton to become Obama's Secretary of State

May 2013

• Event: "Hunter was commissioned as an ensign and assigned to a reserve unit"

Biden was commissioned as an ensign on May 7, 2013, and assigned to Navy Public Affairs Support Element East in Norfolk, Va., a reserve unit, according to the Navy

June 2013

• Event: "Hunter reports for duty, and tests positive for cocaine

after reporting to his unit in Norfolk, [Hunter] was given a drug test, which turned up positive for cocaine, according to people familiar with the situation.

December 2013

• Event: Joe makes a vice-presidential trip to China, in an attempt to cool a dispute between China and Japan. He brought Hunter along with him on Air Force Two

Seeking to cool an escalating dispute between China and Japan about an air defense zone created by Beijing over contested waters, Mr. Biden was practical. He backed Japan, America’s ally, with strong words while warning China not to scramble fighter jets in the airspace, even as he tacitly conceded that Beijing would never roll back the measure.

Hunter Biden and one of his daughters flew to China from Japan aboard Air Force Two with the vice president, who was in the midst of a diplomatic mission intended to calm rising tensions in the region.

• Event: Bohai Harvest RST, a $1 Billion investment fund, is founded by Chinese and American partners including Rosemont Seneca Partners

Formed in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in December 2013 as its first cross-border investment private equity firm, BHR is the cross-border investment arm of Bohai Industrial Investment Fund, itself among China’s first-ever RMB-denominated private equity funds approved by the State Council. BHR, with its unique mixed ownership, combines the resources and platforms of China’s largest financial institutions (including Bank of China, China Development Bank Capital, Harvest Fund, Postal Savings Bank of China, China Life and the National Council of Social Security Fund) and the networks and know-how of our U.S.-based investment fund and advisory firm shareholders.

The fund—launched by Chinese asset managers Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co. and Harvest Fund Management Co. alongside U.S. investment and advisory firms Rosemont Seneca Partners and Thornton Group LLC—started fundraising in the second quarter, and has raised its target to $1.5 billion from an original $1 billion plan, a spokesman at Bank of China International Holdings Ltd. said. BOCI is one of the largest stakeholders in Bohai.
The Bohai-Harvest fund is likely one of the biggest Sino-foreign collaborations in private equity to take advantage of the free-trade zone's benefits in converting yuan to dollars that can then be invested in foreign companies.

Rosemont Seneca is a Washington, D. C-based investment and advisory firm run by Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden and a business partner, Devon Archer, were involved in a fund that reportedly pursued an investment from the Chinese government-owned Bank of China.
The fund was announced in late 2013 — days after Hunter Biden and one of his daughters flew to China from Japan aboard Air Force Two with the vice president, who was in the midst of a diplomatic mission intended to calm rising tensions in the region.

It is unknown if Hunter Biden met with anyone in China as he traveled with his father and the rest of the official U.S. delegation in December 2013. Schweizer noted that where Hunter Biden spent most of his time during that trip “remains largely a mystery.”
However, it is a matter of record that just 10 days after this Beijing trip, Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemont Seneca secured a $1 billion investment from the state-owned bank of China, which was later expanded to $1.5 billion. As the managing partner of Rosemont Seneca, Hunter Biden would undoubtedly have knowledge of this deal, which was a first-of-its-kind arrangement for the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone. Indeed, Hunter Biden was placed on the Board of Directors of the new Chinese entity, Bohai Harvest RST.
“Rosemont Seneca was getting something for the first time that no other Western firm had in China, a private equity cross-border investment fund formed in the Chinese government’s Shanghai Free-Trade Zone,” Schweizer wrote in Secret Empires, noting that financial giants like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Blackstone did not get a deal like this, but the Chinese government decided to reward a small unknown firm managed by a man with no experience in China or private equity.
“The advantages that Biden and Heinz’s firm got were enormous,” Schweizer noted. “Along with Chinese government capital to invest, by operating from the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone they could take Chinese government funds and invest there, or take them out of the country and invest them in the United States or elsewhere. No one else had such an arrangement in China. Rosemont Seneca was essentially placed first in line.”
Though the Times’ article notes that Vice President Biden “warned” the Chinese leaders during his Beijing trip, it fails to mention the criticisms of Biden’s kid-gloves treatment of China at a time when the communist regime’s behavior was increasingly and openly menacing to U.S. allies in the region ... “To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea,” Schweizer said. “They basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely criticized on that trip for going soft on China. So basically, no challenging them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.”
The Hunter Biden deal appears to be in keeping with a foreign influence peddling tactic China uses to get favorable treatment from American politicians.
“The Chinese government has figured out that the way to get favorable treatment from policymakers in Washington, DC, is by, basically, signing sweetheart deals with the children of politicians because they think by doing so, they’ll get better policy positions from our government,” Schweizer said. “And the history indicates in the Obama administration that that’s exactly what happens.”

a lawyer for Hunter Biden said he did not conduct any business related to the China investment fund on that trip, and was not an equity owner in the fund while his father was vice president. He later acquired a 10 percent interest in the entity that oversees the fund, but to date has not received any money from the arrangement, according to the lawyer.

February 2014

• Event: Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserve after failing a drug test

after reporting to his unit in Norfolk, he was given a drug test, which turned up positive for cocaine, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Biden was discharged in February, the Navy said.

• Event: Ukrainians rise up to overthrow their corrupt (but fairly elected) president, Viktor Yanukovych (for reasons).
  • Keep in mind that at this point Ukraine is a struggling democracy, and DESPERATELY needs money
  • Note: there is compelling evidence that this "revolution" may have actually been a "U.S. backed coup"

The 2014 Ukrainian revolution (also known as the Euromaidan revolution, or Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity; Ukrainian: Революція гідності, Revoliutsiia hidnosti) took place in Ukraine in February 2014, when a series of violent events involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters in the capital, Kyiv, culminated in the ousting of the elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, and the overthrow of the Ukrainian Government.
Successive Ukrainian governments in the 2000s sought a closer relationship with the European Union (EU). The government of Yanukovych had been negotiating an association agreement with the European Union since 2012. Such comprehensive trade agreement with the EU would have impacted Ukraine's trade agreements with Russia, the latter being Ukraine's biggest trade partner at the time. Yanukovych believed that the complications could be addressed, and he said that he intended to enter the agreement, but continued to postpone. This was interpreted as an attempt to back out of signing this agreement, and led to a wave of protests which came to be known as the "Euromaidan" movement. Clashes between the protestors and the riot police became violent, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 130 people, including 18 police officers. As the tensions rose, the personal safety of the president became untenable; on 22 February he fled from Kyiv to Russia. The protesters proceeded to take control of the government. On the same day, the parliament declared that Yanukovych was relieved of duty in a 328-to-0 vote.

A December 2016 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 34 percent of respondents in the government-controlled Ukraine regarded the change in power as an "illegal armed coup", while 56 percent regarded it as a "popular revolution".

April 2014

• Event: As part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, and who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor Yanukovych (before he was forced into exile).

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevsky, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.

“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” [the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt] said.

• Event: Apr 23- Joe "Champion of the Climate Crisis" Biden visits Ukraine to pitch FRACKING and "energy independence" as the U.S. endorsed solution to Ukraine's problems. Because any child can tell you that the thing that a struggling democracy needs the very most is FRACKING!

"During his two-day visit this week to Kiev, Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden unfurled President Barack Obama‘s 'U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine.'"

The U.S. oil and gas industry has long lobbied to “weaponize” its fracking prowess to fend off Russian global gas market dominance. It’s done so primarily in two ways.
One way: by transforming the U.S. State Department into a global promoter of fracking via its Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program (formerly the Global Shale Gas Initiative), which is a key, albeit less talked about, part of President Obama’s “Climate Action Plan.”
The other way: by exporting U.S. fracked gas to the global market, namely EU countries currently heavily dependent on Russia’s gas spigot [such as Ukraine].

According to Schweizer’s book, Vice President Biden met with Archer in April 2014 right as Archer was named to the board at Burisma. A month later, Hunter Biden was named to the board, to oversee Burisma’s legal team.

May 2014

• Event: Hunter joins the board of Burisma
• Note: this is ONE MONTH after Joe Biden's visit to Ukraine

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations
The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me [John Solomon] by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

• Event: Media points out potential for abuse with Hunter's new job

7. Why would a Ukrainian energy company want Devon Archer or Hunter Biden to serve on its board?
Assuming that they have been appointed to the board, the most innocent explanation is that the company wants to increase foreign direct investment and views Archer and Biden as having the experience to make that happen. Archer, for example, is a long-time investor and financier.
"The most disturbing explanation is that the company is attempting to curry favor with the U.S. government by enlisting the services of the close family friend and campaign bundler of the Secretary of the State and the son of the vice president."

Isn't that a bit fishy? Why do you say that?
Because he's the vice-president's son! That's a coincidence. "This is totally based on merit," said Burisma's chairman, Alan Apter.
He doesn't sound very Ukrainian. He's American, as is the other new board member, Devon Archer.
Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz.

But surely, that would be a failure of due diligence on the part of messrs Biden, Archer and Kwasniewski? Indeed it would, but there is a most unfortunate precedent for such a failure, which you can read about here, at some length. To sum it up: in 2006 or so, two Bidens, James Biden (future VP’s brother) and our R. Hunter Biden (future VP’s son), wildly overpaid a drug-addicted very senior Moonie for a hedge fund marketing operation that was hugely exaggerating its size and success, and turned out to be distributing ponzis, including the giant Allen Stanford ponzi, second only to Madoff, and other eyecatching frauds, such as Ponta Negra, via a sales network that included brokers with visibly very terrible FINRA records.

August 2014

• Watch Michael Hudson report that that the commercial and geopolitical logic behind the Hunter Biden role at Burisima Holdings, and the bigger US and World Bank/IMF program, was to push fracking onto a decidedly unreceptive population in Eastern Ukraine. (youtube.com)
  
• Michael Hudson: The Fracking/World Bank/IMF/Hunter Biden Dismantling Plan for Ukraine (nakedcapitalism.com)
  

Jan 2015

• Event: Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, so a British court ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”

Ryan F. Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, said that Hunter Biden would not comment for this article.

Asked about the British investigation, which is continuing, Mr. Toohey said, “Not only was the case dismissed and the company vindicated by the outcome, but it speaks volumes that all his legal costs were recouped.”

Jun 2015

• Event: U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt allegedly told Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, "the investigation has to be handled with white gloves", and that Biden had held up U.S. aid to Ukraine over his investigation

“Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing,” the notes from the interview stated. The notes also claimed Shokin was told Biden had held up U.S. aid to Ukraine over the investigation.

Sep 2015

• Event: *The same U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine makes a public, stinging attack on the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office for refusing to cooperate with the British court *

But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.

Mr. Pyatt went on to call for an investigation into “the misconduct” of the prosecutors who wrote the letters. In his speech, the ambassador did not mention Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma.

Dec 2015

• Event: Joe Biden spoke before the Ukrainian Parliament. In what might appear to be a surreal episode of the Twilight Zone, Joe actually “warn[ed] Ukrainian legislators to waste no more time in rooting out corruption” and spoke out against the power of a tiny group of oligarchs, who own about 85 percent of Ukraine's gross domestic product

The only applause Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. got while he addressed the Ukrainian Parliament on Tuesday was when he berated Russia ... By contrast, Mr. Biden’s ardent talk of the need to put an end to Ukraine’s ubiquitous corruption and the power of its oligarchs was met with stony silence.
Mr. Biden was right to upbraid Russia and to pledge an extra $190 million in aid to Ukraine. And as a Western leader who has made Ukraine his special project, he was also right to warn Ukrainian legislators to waste no more time in rooting out corruption

• Event: Dec 12, 2015, In response to Joe's speech, NYT Editorial Board points out that owner of Burisma is "suspected of corrupt practices", and "This is not a board [Hunter Biden] should be sitting on."

"Sadly, the credibility of Mr. Biden’s message may be undermined by the association of his son with a Ukrainian natural-gas company, Burisma Holdings, which is owned by a former government official suspected of corrupt practices. A spokesman for the son, Hunter Biden, argues that he joined the board of Burisma to strengthen its corporate governance. That may be so. But Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, has been under investigation in Britain and in Ukraine. It should be plain to Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father’s efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on."

Mar 2016

• Event: Biden threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

• Event: The Ukrainian Parliament votes to remove a prosecutor general Viktor Shokin

Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired. But Ukrainian officials tell [John Solomon] there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

Shokin told [John Solomon] in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”