Who Leaked Biden’s Calls to Ukraine?
Recordings of Biden’s calls with Ukraine’s former president were held on a classified system. Ukrainian sources are wondering whether it was an inside job or Russian hackers.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty/AP
They’re leaked communications from the Democratic presidential frontrunner and conservatives are already sharing them all over social media in hopes they’ll help Trump’s re-election campaign. It sounds like the final months of the 2016 election—or the height of 2019’s Burisma madness—but the tapes released on Tuesday are from a new breach.
Andriy Derkach—a Ukrainian politician with a KGB background, a penchant for conspiracy theories, and a friendly relationship with Rudy Giuliani—released a host of conversations between former Vice President Joe Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The leaked talks purport to show the two discussing the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor in exchange for American support for a billion dollar loan from the IMF. It’s something Biden himself admitted years ago and it’s since launched unfounded conspiracies about an alleged vendetta Biden had for Ukraine’s former prosecutor general. So where did the recordings come from and what do they show?
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