Fox News host Laura Ingraham revealed emails on Wednesday night that connected the alleged Ukrainian whistleblower with a 2016 meeting that the Obama administration held with Ukrainian officials about corruption involving Ukrainian gas company Burisma. The emails also discussed whether the role that 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had with the company could complicate any investigation.
“The chain centers on a request from New York Times reporter Ken Vogel,” Ingraham began. “[In] May of 2019, Vogel sends an email to State Department official Kate Schilling about a story he was working on regarding an Obama-era meeting with Ukrainian prosecutors. In his request, Vogel mentions a name who some have reported is the whistleblower. We have not yet confirmed this name, so we are blacking it out for here.”
Ingraham read the email from Vogel, which stated:
We are going to report that State Department official Elizabeth Zentos attended a meeting on the White House on January 19th, 2016, with Ukrainian prosecutors and embassy officials. The subjects discussed included efforts within the United States government to support prosecutions in the Ukraine and United Kingdom of Burisma holdings and concerns that Hunter Biden’s position with the company could complicate such efforts.
“On May 1st, State Department official Kate Schilling forwarded Vogel’s email to her colleagues Elizabeth Zentos and George Kent Remember him? He was one of the House Democrats all-star impeachment witnesses,” Ingraham said. “According to Schilling’s email, Kent has previously been a source for Vogel — I wonder how many times. Follow up emails reveal the conversation ending on May 3rd when the State Department eventually declined to comment.”
Ingraham said that her show confirmed the meeting by looking through the archives of the Obama White House visitor logs, which she said showed that the alleged whistleblower “checked in numerous Ukrainian officials into the White House on January 19th 2016, the day Vogel claimed there was a meeting on the Burisma and Biden.”
“Also at the meeting were Ukraine’s lead anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-corruption bureau, both of whom were there to discuss the complications of Hunter Biden’s sweetheart gig,” Ingraham continued. “So what happened to that New York Times story about the 2016 meeting? Pretty hot, don’t you think? It was never published, we asked Ken Vogel, the reporter, why nothing ever came of it but he didn’t respond.”
Ingraham then noted the importance of the timeline of events with respect to The New York Times’ looking into the meeting in May 2019.
“The timing of their request and the subsequent squashing of the story are very interesting. Biden announced his candidacy on April 25th, 2019,” Ingraham said. “The exchanges we laid out here occur the following week. Now we have some questions. Number one, why wasn’t the whistleblower concerned about Joe Biden overseeing Ukraine policy while his son was cashing in? Was it only troubling that Trump himself tried to get this thing investigated? Number two, why didn’t this story ever run? Did Biden’s team manage to put it down, fearing blowback from his son Hunter’s dirty dealings?”
It’s also worth noting that several weeks after the Obama White House met with Ukrainian officials in January 2016 to discuss Burisma corruption and Hunter Biden, then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine into firing its prosecutor, who was investigating corruption at the company.
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