A 2016 letter sent by Republican members of the Senate Ukraine Caucus echoes calls for reforms to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office and judiciary that were made by then-Vice President Joe Biden. The letter, signed by Republican senators Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson, as well as several Democrats, urged the former Ukrainian president to reform the country’s government to address longstanding corruption, including the removal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. “Succeeding in these reforms will show Russian President Vladimir Putin that an independent, transparent and democratic Ukraine can and will succeed,” reads the letter. “It also offers a stark alternative to the authoritarianism and oligarchic cronyism prevalent in Russia...We similarly urge you to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's Office and judiciary.”
The letter’s existence further demonstrates that Biden was not alone in his calls for reform in the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office—rather that he had bipartisan support in the effort. The letter also undermines President Trump’s claim that it was “unfair” to dismiss Shokin in 2016, and that Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor general in order to squelch investigations into a Ukrainian energy company that his son sat on the board of.
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