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Newly released federal records show U.S. officials revoked the visa of a Ukrainian witness preparing to cooperate with a Senate investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, despite intelligence indicating he had rejected recruitment attempts by Russian operatives.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Newly declassified FBI and State Department records are raising questions about the Trump administration’s 2020 decision to revoke the U.S. visa of Ukrainian political operative Andrii Telizhenko shortly before he was scheduled to provide information to congressional investigators examining Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
The documents, released Thursday, Oct. 22, by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, show that federal investigators possessed information indicating Telizhenko had opposed Russian interests and rejected recruitment attempts by individuals connected to Moscow.
According to a Just the News investigation, the records raise questions about the intelligence used to justify preventing Telizhenko from entering the United States and subsequently imposing sanctions against him for alleged involvement in Russian election interference.
Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy official who worked with Washington consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, had offered to assist Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa in their investigation of Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
The senators were examining whether Hunter Biden’s business relationships created conflicts of interest while his father, Joe Biden, served as vice president.
An August 2020 FBI memorandum indicated that Telizhenko had previously been barred from entering Russia because of his involvement in Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.
“In 2014 […] Andrii ((Telizhenko)) was banned from entering Russia due to his involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and was listed as a spy by the Russian government,” the memorandum stated.
The same document described unsuccessful Russian efforts to recruit him.
“In the summer of 2019, Russian officials tried to reach out to Telizhenko via Facebook and in person,” investigators wrote. “Telizhenko blocked the Facebook account after realizing it was a Russian account.”
The memorandum added that another individual acting under a Ukrainian politician’s direction unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Telizhenko in person.
Despite those findings, federal officials suspected that Telizhenko was associated with a Russian influence operation involving Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, whom U.S. intelligence identified as having ties to Russian intelligence.
Newly released correspondence shows the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force began preparing a memorandum requesting Telizhenko’s visa revocation Sept. 8, 2020, after learning of his planned trip.
“We were just informed of Andrii Telizhenko’s intention to travel to the US. We are putting together an LHM [Letter Head Memorandum] now to request revoking his Visa,” an FBI official wrote.
However, the State Department had already revoked the visa through the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
“Actually, we stopped working on it since he was already revoked,” another FBI official wrote the following day.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent later described the action in an October 2020 email, stating that Telizhenko’s visa had been revoked before his planned travel to provide what Kent characterized as manufactured information.
The revocation prevented Telizhenko from traveling to Washington for the Senate investigation.
Earlier that year, Johnson had considered subpoenaing Telizhenko, but investigators subsequently pursued records from Blue Star Strategies after receiving an FBI briefing warning about possible Russian disinformation.
The senators’ September 2020 investigative report examined Hunter Biden’s foreign business activities, including Burisma’s efforts to establish relationships with American policymakers.
The report also considered Telizhenko’s claims that Ukrainian embassy officials had cooperated with Democratic political operatives during the 2016 presidential election.
Telizhenko first publicly raised those allegations in connection with efforts to obtain information about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
On Jan. 11, 2021, the Treasury Department sanctioned Telizhenko, accusing him of participating in a Russian-linked influence network associated with Derkach.
Treasury alleged that Telizhenko helped arrange meetings between Derkach and American contacts to promote unsubstantiated corruption allegations involving U.S. officials.
The newly released documents indicate that some intelligence officials considered Telizhenko an unwitting participant rather than someone knowingly acting on Moscow’s behalf.
A February 2020 CIA assessment stated that “Telizhenko’s collaboration with Ukrainians actively supporting the Kremlin’s preferred narratives suggests he is, at a minimum, unwittingly fueling known Russian government influence programs.”
Much of the underlying intelligence remains redacted.
Telizhenko has repeatedly denied working with Derkach or knowingly assisting Russian interests.
“Not true,” he told Just the News when asked about allegations of cooperation with Derkach.
“From my end, I started my [reporting] on Hunter Biden long before Derkach came into the picture,” he said.
The former Ukrainian official described the sanctions as personally devastating.
“That came to me as a shock when they accused me of that connection [to Russia],” Telizhenko said. “I was sanctioned for six years, putting my life into disaster. But, I would’ve done it again. Telling the truth about this, I hoped would lead to something good.”
The records have also renewed questions about how senior American diplomats evaluated Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma.
In a November 2016 email to then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Kent warned that Hunter Biden’s board position created difficulties for American anti-corruption efforts.
“The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules,” Kent wrote.
The email shows that diplomats recognized a potential conflict of interest, although it does not establish that Joe Biden altered U.S. foreign policy to benefit his son.
Additional reporting on internal policy recommendations has examined whether career officials initially supported providing Ukraine with $1 billion in loan guarantees before Biden demanded the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Other documents involving European diplomatic discussions raised questions about the timing and reasoning behind the policy decision.
The Washington Post subsequently revised its characterization of events, acknowledging the possibility that Biden had “called an audible” during his December 2015 trip to Kyiv, according to additional reporting.
The developments do not independently establish that Biden intervened to protect Burisma from prosecution. The broader U.S. and international anti-corruption effort had supported Shokin’s dismissal.
The declassified documents also revive scrutiny of an FBI initiative known as Operation Round River, which reportedly identified Johnson, Grassley and other officials as possible conduits for Russian disinformation.
Earlier reporting on FBI records described intelligence monitoring of information involving Hunter Biden and Ukraine during the 2020 campaign.
Telizhenko previously worked with Ukrainian prosecutors and the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, where he communicated with Obama administration officials and National Security Council personnel, according to previously disclosed correspondence.
The dispute surrounding his testimony also formed part of broader disagreements over the congressional investigations that followed Trump’s first impeachment.
Some subsequent reviews of the impeachment record have challenged earlier conclusions about the Biden family’s Ukrainian business activities.
Johnson and Grassley defended their decision to seek information from controversial witnesses, arguing that investigators should examine evidence before determining its credibility.
“As with any inquiry, you get answers by asking questions. Those who restrict themselves from reviewing matters associated with ‘people of ill repute’ won’t have much luck uncovering wrongdoing or improving accountability,” the senators said in a joint statement.
Derkach, meanwhile, fled Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion and subsequently received recognition from the Russian government. He later became a Russian senator, according to BBC reporting.
The newly disclosed memos establish that U.S. officials knew Telizhenko had rejected certain Russian overtures before his visa was revoked. They do not, however, conclusively resolve whether he knowingly or unknowingly contributed to a foreign influence operation.
The disclosures renew questions about the government’s handling of congressional witnesses, the evidence required for sanctions and the degree to which intelligence assessments influenced the Senate’s ability to investigate politically sensitive allegations during the 2020 election.
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