Declassified U.S. intelligence intercepts describe a scheme in which Ukrainian government officials and American government personnel allegedly plotted to route hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for Ukrainian clean energy projects back to Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The intercepts, dating to late 2022, were recently discovered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has asked USAID officials to scour their records to determine whether the plot was actually carried out and whether a criminal referral to the FBI is warranted.

The declassified summary, obtained by Just the News, lays out the alleged mechanics in striking detail:

"The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden's reelection campaign."

Ninety percent. Of hundreds of millions in American tax dollars. Laundered through a foreign infrastructure project that the conspirators themselves apparently knew was bogus.

The blueprint for vanishing money

The intercepts describe a plan built for deniability. According to the declassified summary, the conspirators designed the scheme so that the fake infrastructure project would eventually be "disapproved as unnecessary," but only after funds had already been allocated and rendered "impossible to return or use for a different purpose."

The money trail was engineered to go cold. The summary states:

"The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track."

"Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden's election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from."

Two American subcontractors were identified in the intercepts, but their names remain redacted and classified. Officials told Just the News that Gabbard's team has not found substantive evidence that the allegations were thoroughly investigated during the Biden administration.

That detail alone demands scrutiny. U.S. spy agencies captured these communications in late 2022. The Biden administration sat on them. No known investigation followed. And now, only after a change in administration, is anyone asking whether the plot moved from conversation to execution.

Ukraine moves to get ahead of the story

The ripple effects arrived fast. Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) announced investigative searches at the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. NABU confirmed the actions were "sanctioned" and "being carried out as part of the investigation."

Andriy Yermak, the now-former Head of the Office of the President, resigned from his position in late November. He insisted "the investigators have no obstacles" and pledged "full cooperation."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been working closely with President Donald Trump's envoys to craft a peace plan to end the four-year war started by Russian aggression in 2022, delivered a national address framing the shake-up as a matter of internal credibility:

"When all attention is focused on diplomacy and on defending ourselves in this war, we need internal strength. Internal strength is the foundation of our external unity and of our relations with the world."

"So today, these are the next internal decisions. First. There will be a reset of the Office of the President of Ukraine. The Head of the Office, Andriy Yermak, has submitted his resignation. I am grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine's position on the negotiation track exactly as it should be represented. It has always been a patriotic position. But I want to eliminate any rumors and speculation."

Zelenskyy is threading a needle. He needs American support for his country's survival, and he knows the political ground has shifted beneath his feet. The resignation of his top aide, paired with a corruption investigation timed to the intercepts' disclosure, reads as a government scrambling to demonstrate it takes the allegations seriously before Washington forces the issue.

The Biden-Ukraine money trail that never went away

The intercepts land in an evidentiary landscape that has been building for a decade. The Biden family's entanglement with Ukrainian money has been documented by congressional investigators since at least 2020, when Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) released a joint report tracing a precise sequence of events in the spring of 2014:

"On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son's business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and he soon after was described in the press as the 'public face of the administration's handling of Ukraine.' The day after his visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma."

"Six days later, on April 28, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Fourteen days later, on May 12, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board."

The timeline speaks for itself. A White House meeting. A vice-presidential trip. A board appointment. A $23 million asset seizure. Another board appointment. Millions in payments. All within 26 days.

Hunter Biden himself acknowledged the obvious in 2019, when asked whether he would have been invited onto Burisma's board if his last name weren't Biden. His answer: "Probably not, in retrospect." He added, "I don't think that there are a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name weren't Biden."

The bribery allegations and the Smirnov complication

In 2023, Grassley released an FBI FD-1023 record dated June 2020 containing allegations from a confidential human source that Burisma's owner, Zlochevsky, claimed Hunter Biden could "protect us through his dad, from all kinds of problems." Zlochevsky allegedly told the source, "Don't worry, Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad."

Grassley recounted that Zlochevsky reportedly stated he "had to pay $5 million to Hunter Biden and $5 million to Joe Biden," an arrangement Zlochevsky described as "poluchili," Russian crime slang for being "forced or coerced to pay."

The source was later revealed to be Alexander Smirnov, who was charged in February 2024 with making a false statement to federal agents and creating a false and fictitious record. Smirnov pleaded guilty in December 2024 to four felony counts, including creating a false record and three counts of tax evasion. That guilty plea muddied the evidentiary waters around the bribery claims specifically.

But the Trump DOJ signaled in April 2025 that the story may not be settled, telling a federal judge that "the United States intends to review the government's theory of the case underlying Defendant's criminal conviction." Whether Smirnov's plea was the product of genuine false statements or a coerced outcome in a politically charged prosecution remains an open question.

The pardon that covered everything

None of these questions will ever reach Hunter Biden in a courtroom. In December 2024, Joe Biden pardoned his son for any offenses against the United States "which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024."

Read that date range again. January 2014, the precise period when the Burisma board arrangements began, through December 2024. The pardon blankets the entire timeline of every known allegation, from the board payments to the tax evasion to whatever the intercepted communications might eventually reveal. Biden had long pledged he would not pardon his son. He did it anyway, on terms broad enough to foreclose any future prosecution related to Ukraine.

The pardon cannot shield Joe Biden himself from scrutiny. It cannot prevent the DNI from determining whether taxpayer funds actually moved. It cannot stop USAID records from surfacing. But it ensured that the one person most likely to face criminal exposure for the operational details will never sit in a witness chair under oath.

The first impeachment looks different now

It is worth remembering what happened the last time a president asked questions about Biden and Ukraine. In July 2019, Trump referenced Burisma in a call with Zelenskyy. A whistleblower complaint by Eric Ciaramella, also involving Alexander and Eugene Vindman, sparked Democratic-led impeachment proceedings in the House. Trump was acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.

The entire apparatus of institutional Washington mobilized to punish a president for raising the subject. The message was clear: asking about Biden family corruption in Ukraine was itself an abuse of power. The intelligence community, the media, and congressional Democrats treated the question as illegitimate.

Now declassified intercepts from those same intelligence agencies describe Ukrainian government officials plotting to funnel American tax dollars to Biden's campaign. The question Trump raised was not only legitimate. It may have been understated.

What comes next

The critical question is no longer what was discussed in those intercepted communications. The critical question is whether money moved. Gabbard has directed USAID to search for records. A criminal referral to the FBI hangs in the balance. Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies are conducting searches at the highest levels of their own government.

If the plot remained talk, it is still a scandal of intent, revealing how officials in Kyiv and Washington contemplated using American aid as a campaign finance vehicle. If the plot was executed, it is one of the largest corruption schemes in American political history, implicating a sitting president's re-election campaign, a foreign government receiving billions in U.S. aid, and the federal agency tasked with distributing it.

Joe Biden is out of office. His son is beyond prosecution's reach. But the records exist, the intercepts are declassified, and for the first time, the people asking the questions are not the ones being investigated for asking them.