WT editorial:
“…Joe Biden just couldn’t quit Ukraine. When he served as vice president, Mr. Biden travelled more than once to Ukraine to strongarm the Slavic country into ousting its top prosecutor, one Victor Shoki. On his December 2015 visit to Kyiv and a subsequent March 2016 journey to the country, Mr. Biden brought with him what is commonly referred to as “leverage.” The Obama administration threatened to withhold aid from the country, unless they canned Mr. Shoki. A lot of aid, too: Some $1 billion in loan guarantees. That was a serious threat to war-torn Ukraine, which can at times barely keep its own lights on.
Why did the vice president want Mr. Shoki gone? Corruption, the story goes. Mr. Shoki was a notoriously venal figure, and that’s why it wasn’t only the Obama administration that wanted him out — the European Union, International Monetary Fund and other international bodies pined for his dismissal as well.
They were probably onto something. Ukraine is indeed a notoriously corrupt country. According to Transparency International, the NGO that tracks such things, Ukraine ranks 120 out of 180 countries worldwide on the perception of public corruption. It rates somewhere in the neighborhood of the Dominican Republic, Djibouti and Kazakhstan. Pakistan, Turkey, Panama are less corrupt than Ukraine, says Transparency International. (Placid Denmark is deemed the world’s least corrupt country, by the way.)
And indeed, the appointment of Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, to a plum, $50,000-a month directorship at a Ukrainian natural gas company, while the senior Biden was still vice president, points to a country where corruption is the norm. And also, unfortunately, where competence and expertise aren’t: Prior to his appointment, Hunter Biden had exactly zero experience in the energy industry.
Was there something untoward in Hunter Biden’s appointment and the vice president’s subsequent pushing for Victor Shoki’s ouster? “No!,” the mainstream media and their Democratic allies cry. The Bidens have been “exonerated,” they say. It’s an answer that satisfies only if one doesn’t look too closely at who precisely did the exonerating…”