Flashback: Joe Biden Admits Strong-Arming Ukraine to Fire Prosecutor

From January 23, 2018:

BIDEN: “I’m desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kyiv, in terms of corruption. They made — I mean, I’ll give me one concrete example. I was — not I, but it just happened to be, that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine and I remember going over convincing our team, others to convince that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess the 12th, 13th time to Kyiv and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee and I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor and they didn’t. So they said they had — they were walking out to press conference, I said I’m not going to — we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said you have no authority, you’re not the President, the President said. I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting a billion dollars. I said you’re not getting a billion, I’m going to be leaving here and I think it was about six hours, I look at him and say we’re leaving in six hours, if the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Oh, son of a bi**h. 

(Laughter)

Got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”