Conservatives have long claimed that former President Joe Biden used his political power and influence to benefit his family’s corrupt business dealings. Now, declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents are confirming it. CIA Director John Ratcliffe published new documents on Tuesday, revealing that Biden, while serving as vice president, intervened to prevent the CIA from publishing a report on his son Hunter’s corrupt dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

In late 2015, Biden visited Ukraine to meet with then-President Petro Poroshenko. According to the new CIA report, Poroshenko and his administration “expressed bewilderment and disappointment at the 7-8 December 2015 visit of the Vice President of the United States to Kiev, Ukraine.” The report continued, “These officials highlighted that, prior to the visit, the Poroshenko administration and other (redacted) Ukrainian officials expected the U.S. Vice President to discuss personnel matters with Poroshenko during the visit, and had assumed that the U.S. Vice President would advocate in support of or against specific officials within the Ukrainian government.”

Poroshenko administration officials were shocked that Biden “had come to Kiev almost exclusively to give a generic public speech, and had not had any intention of discussing substantive matters with Poroshenko or other officials within the Ukrainian government.” Ukrainian government officials also “privately mused at the U.S. media scrutiny of the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corrupt business practices in Ukraine.”

Hunter Biden had become a board member at Burisma, a conglomeration of energy exploration and production companies, in April of 2014, while Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky was facing investigations for money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption. The younger Biden had been hired by Burisma to help the company improve its relationship with the U.S. government, with an eye towards global expansion. It just so happened that his father, the U.S. vice president, was appointed as then-President Barack Obama’s point man on Ukraine. Biden’s 2015 visit to Ukraine included a push to fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was at the time investigating Burisma. Ukrainian government officials “viewed the alleged ties of the U.S. Vice President’s family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double-standard within the United States government towards matters of corruption and political power,” according to the new CIA report.

To further complicate matters, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents contain testimony from a confidential human source (CHS) that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma was to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” According to the CHS, Burisma was seeking to expand into U.S. markets. When executives expressed concerns in 2015 that Shokin’s investigations into the company for corruption would negatively impact Burisma’s chances of securing a foothold in the U.S., Zlochevsky reportedly responded, “Don’t worry, Hunter will take care of all those issues through his dad.” The CHS further alleged that Zlochevsky admitted to bribing the Bidens, paying Hunter and his father $5 million each to “deal with Shokin.” Biden did succeed in pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin, reportedly threatening to withhold foreign aid if his demands were not met. “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 told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Well, son of a b****. He got fired.”

The CHS also reported that there were numerous text messages, recorded phone calls, and financial records between Zlochevsky and the Bidens; at least two of the alleged phone call recordings included Joe Biden himself. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has spearheaded efforts to investigate the Biden family’s corruption, pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over whether or not the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI have located these records. “That document mentioned one text message, two audio recordings, and three financial records that allegedly proved a bribery scheme with the Biden family and foreign interests,” Grassley said, noting that FBI Director Kash Patel had told the Senate that previous FBI directors had made “no” effort to unearth those documents. “What steps has the department taken to determine whether these records exist?”

Bondi confirmed that Patel “is working hard on this with the members of the FBI,” but added, “At this point, I don’t want to discuss any of that publicly.”

The CIA initially prepared a report in 2016, detailing Ukrainian government officials’ concerns over the Biden family’s dealings and potential links to corruption in the country. The report, intended for dissemination within the CIA, was buried at Biden’s request. The then-vice president’s National Security Adviser, Colin Kohl, told the CIA that Biden “would strongly prefer” that the report “not be disseminated,” and it was subsequently buried.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Oversight Project President Mike Howell said, “This is exactly the type of evidence that proves what we’ve been saying all along.” He explained, “The weaponized government essentially operated as pulling out every last stop for anything no matter how frivolous if it related to Trump, and bending over backwards and upside down to ignore clear and convincing wrongdoing of political allies.” Howell added, “There needs to be accountability for this civil rights disaster.”

Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer told TWS, “The newly declassified documents confirm a pattern we’ve seen for years: senior government officials, including Joe Biden, used their positions not to ensure accountability, but to shield politically connected family members from scrutiny. Transparency shouldn’t depend on who holds power.” He continued, “The House and Senate need to press for full disclosure of all intelligence and interagency communications related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The American people deserve to know whether national security was compromised for political convenience.”