Biden pushed Ukrainian officials to fire top prosecutor investigating Burisma

Hunter Biden and his business partners with ties to Burisma attended a December 2015 holiday party hosted by then-Vice President Joe Biden just a few days after he returned from his famous trip to Ukraine, where he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if the country’s leaders did not fire their top prosecutor, according to records reviewed by Fox News Digital.

As vice president, Biden traveled to Ukraine, where he famously put pressure on the country’s leaders to fire then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder and former president of Burisma Holdings, where Hunter served as a board member from April 2014 to April 2019. Biden's defenders have said that Shokin was fired not because he was pursuing corruption too aggressively, but rather because he was too lax.

Biden visited Ukraine from Dec. 7-9, 2015. Three months after the visit, Shokin was fired, and Biden would later use it to boast about his foreign policy skills.

"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 said in 2018, according to a transcript of his remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Well, son of a b----. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."

After Biden returned to Washington from his short trip to Ukraine, he hosted a holiday party at the vice president's Naval observatory residence on Dec. 12, 2015, where Hunter and several of his business partners from his now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners were also in attendance, records show.

According to White House visitor logs, Hunter visited the White House on Dec. 12, 2015, with Rosemont Seneca co-founder Devon Archer, Rosemont Seneca President Eric Schwerin and Sebastian Momtazi, an associate who worked in Rosemont Seneca’s New York City office with Archer. Archer, who was also on the Burisma board with Hunter, and Momtazi both had Burisma.com email addresses, according to emails reviewed by Fox News Digital.

While the visitor logs don’t specify the business partners were there for a vice presidential party, it did say they were there for "holiday reception." Hunter was scheduled to attend a "VP Holiday Party" at 3PM that day with Archer and several others, according to an email from his abandoned laptop, which has been verified by Fox News Digital.