The recommendation by Nunes is the latest mention of Solomon during the impeachment hearings. Solomon’s name or work has been cited in all but two of the 10 impeachment deposition transcripts released to date.
Solomon’s reporting is inseparable from the impeachment proceedings because President Donald Trump’s requests to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a July 25 phone call can all be traced back to articles that Solomon wrote for The Hill, an online newspaper. In several columns over the course of two years, Solomon exposed an appearance of a conflict of interest on the part of former Vice President Joe Biden, detailed actions taken by Ukrainian officials to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and chronicled a tense relationship between the U.S. Embassy in Kiev and Ukraine’s prosecutors due to pressure from American officials to back off from prosecuting select individuals and groups.
All three requests relate at least in part to Solomon’s reporting, placing him in the midst of the political firestorm surrounding the impeachment inquiry. In what appears to be a veiled attempt to paint Solomon into a partisan corner, The New York Times, among other media, has focused on his work as a “Fox News personality,” while dismissing his decades-long career with The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and The Hill.
In an email to The Epoch Times, Solomon said the sources who originally came forward to him about Ukraine included Democrats, Justice Department officials, and State Department officials, none tied to the Trump administration or Rudy Giuliani. The sources alleged “there was unusual interference by U.S. embassy Kiev in a handful of law enforcement cases,” Solomon said.
“This interference allegedly had created a dysfunctional relationship between our embassy and Ukraine prosecutors. Months of reporting and document gathering confirmed the stories I eventually wrote,” he added.
In her testimony on Oct. 11, Yovanovitch denied that she provided any list to Lutsenko and argued that she was pushing Ukrainian prosecutors to apply the law consistently, instead of selectively prosecuting political opponents.
In testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry on Oct. 15, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent told lawmakers that the U.S. Embassy pushed back against the prosecution of four of the people on Lutsenko’s list, directly confirming Solomon’s report.
Kent also confirmed that U.S. authorities pushed back against the prosecutions against Vitali Shabunin, a journalist who helped found AntAC, Sergey Leschenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament who helped release the so-called “black ledger” of damaging information on then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Artem Sytnyk, who also played a role in the release of the “black ledger.”
“We warned both Lutsenko and others that efforts to destroy NABU as an organization, including opening up investigations of Sytnyk, threatened to unravel a key component of our anti-corruption cooperation,” Kent said on Oct. 15.
In addition to backing up Solomon’s reporting about the do-not-prosecute list, Kent confirmed the reporter’s columns that shed light on the appearance of a conflict of interest created by Joe Biden when he, as vice president, forced the ouster of the top Ukrainian prosecutor at the time. The prosecutor was investigating Burisma, the company that paid Hunter Biden to sit on its board of directors.
Kent told lawmakers that he became aware of Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma in early 2015 and relayed his concerns to the office of the vice president. Biden’s office told Kent that the vice president had no “bandwidth” to deal with the issue, as his other son, Beau, was struggling with cancer at the time. Neither Joe nor Hunter Biden took any steps to alleviate the perception of a conflict of interest.
But Kent went further and revealed that a prior investigation into Burisma was allegedly shut down after an official at Ukraine Prosecutor General’s office accepted a $7 million bribe in May 2014. Hunter Biden joined Burisma the month before, in April 2014, weeks after prosecutors in the United Kingdom seized $23 million belonging to the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.
Like Kent, a number of witnesses told the impeachment inquiry that Biden’s involvement in Shokin’s firing created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Nunes noted during the Nov. 19 impeachment hearing that a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee had threatened to no longer talk to The Hill because the outlet published Solomon’s articles. While the outlet had earlier announced that it would be reviewing Solomon’s work, it’s unclear if the Democrat’s request prompted the audit. Solomon announced in September he was leaving The Hill to start his own media firm.
“I don’t know what prompted The Hill to review my work. But I encouraged them to do that more than a month ago, because I have nothing to hide and all my facts and evidence backing up every claim are linked in the columns. I have a high degree of confidence every fact is accurate. And every news article and column I wrote for The Hill went through the normal editing and rigorous review process,” Solomon said.
Solomon has been reporting on the impeachment inquiry as it unfolds, even as his work has arguably figured in events that triggered the inquiry.
“I simply try to stay focused on the facts, giving the American public information to make up their own minds,” Solomon said.