by Wayne Adair, Hamilton
With great interest – and even greater concern – I read an opinion piece in a recent issue of another newspaper by May Mailman mentioning what she perceives as weaknesses in the Biden administration. In this deeply flawed essay, Ms. Mailman delivers a parcel of distortions, exaggerations and misinformation bordering on downright lies.
I am tempted to address each and every false allegation, but such a document would be longer than the original piece.
Instead I will focus on the most egregious and easily debunked fiction she presented: Joe Biden’s motivation to force the ouster of a Ukrainian official.
It took about one minute of online research to find the truth of this matter. To recap, here is basic coverage from the Washington Post:
In early December 2015 President Barack Obama dispatched his vice president, Joe Biden, on a diplomatic mission to Ukraine. Among other goals, Mr. Biden was to urge the government to crack down on prosecutor general Viktor Shokin who was widely recognized internationally as inept and corrupt.
Ms. Mailman claimed Biden’s goal was to force Shokin’s ouster because he planned to investigate the vice president’s son Hunter Biden who was on the board of energy company Burisma. This is incorrect.
The true goal of VP Biden’s mission was, in fact, to get rid of Shokin because he refused to investigate companies like Burisma and other dishonest individuals in government and businesses.
Biden told then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that unless he dismisses the ineffective prosecutor general, $1 billion in US loan guarantees would be withdrawn. This carrot-and-stick tactic worked.
This was not a unilateral concept dreamed up solely by the Obama administration. The European Union, the International Monetary Fund and dozens of reform-minded Ukrainians offered full-throated support.
The source of Ms. Mailman’s disinformation seems to have originated with Just the News, a conservative website that published details of Biden’s mission, but turning the narrative 180 degrees from fact to fiction. A host of other conservative outlets, like FOX News, began waving the false flags.
Don’t believe me? Fine. Type “Biden fires Ukrainian prosecutor” into your favorite search engine and read the facts for yourself. The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, Reuters as well as other reliable news outlets provided extensive coverage.
If you can ignore the Biden administration’s string of legislative successes in a divided Congress and still don’t like the president, fine. At least dislike him based on fact, not fallacy.