January 2009: Hunter
Biden (right) quits lobbying because his father has
become vice president, and sets up investment and
advisory firm firm Rosemont Seneca with friends
Christopher Heinz - John Kerry's stepson - and Devon
Archer (left), a former Kerry aide
July 2010:
Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who owns its
biggest natural gas company Burisma joins the
government of its president Viktor Yanukovych
February 2014:
Yanukovych is deposed in a revolution which claims
scores of lives and Burisma Zlochevsky is thrown out
of government too
April 16:
Burisma is secretly accused of money-laundering by
Britain's Serious Fraud Office. On the same day
Archer meets Joe Biden at the White House. Six days
later Archer joins the board of Burisma
April 28:
Britain's Serious Fraud Office freeze $23 million of
Burisma's cash, every dollar which exists in the
UK's banking system
May 12:
Hunter
joins the board of Burisma to improve 'corporate
governance.' Hunter's salary is later revealed to be
$50,000-a-month. Burisma board advisor Vadym
Pozharskyi who had met Hunter in Lake Como, Italy,
days earlier, emails him asking to 'use his
influence' to stop prosecutions. During the summer,
the new prosecutor-general of Ukraine opens an
investigation into Burisma
February 2015:
Senior diplomat George Kent, on temporary assignment
to Kyiv, learns of Hunter's role. He phones a
staffer at Biden's office to it could 'create
perception of a conflict of interest.' That
month Viktor Shokin takes office as Ukraine's
prosecutor general, despite already being the
subject of questions about his own links to
corruption
April 17:
Email from Hunter's laptop shows Pozharskyi writing
Hunter: 'thank you for inviting me to DC and giving
an opportunity to meet your father and spent some
together.'
Summer:
The
Burisma investigation appears to become dormant
January 2016:
Biden travels to Ukraine amid mounting international
disgust at Shokin failing to tackle corruption. One
of the concerns raised by the European Union and IMF
is that he has failed to investigate Burisma. Biden
tells Poroshenko he needs to go. He later boasts: 'I
looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting
the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.'
Shokin in fact is finally removed from office in
March after internal turmoil in Kyiv
2018:
Trump's
attorney Rudy Giuliani starts 'investigating' the
Bidens' links to Ukraine, enlisting the help of Lev
Parnas and Igor Fruman, who are now indicted on
fraud charges. Ukraine's latest prosecutor general
announces he will investigate Burisma early the next
year
April 12, 2019:
Hunter - or a man saying he is Hunter - takes
three damaged Macs to John Paul MacIsaac's Apple
repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. MacIsaac puts
data from one on a new hard drive
April 25:
Joe
Biden announces presidential run
July 11:
The
laptops have not been picked up and are now
considered 'abandoned' according to MacIsaac's terms
and conditions
Summer:
MacIsaac claims he becomes worried about what he has
seen on the laptop whose contents he put on a disk,
and thinks he might be killed by a Biden associate
for having it in his shop
Fall:
MacIsaac
either contacts the FBI or is contacted by them; he
has said both
December 9 or 19:
The FBI pick up the laptop, but MacIsaac has
made a copy for himself. Giuliani later says the
shopowner has made four. They give him a grand jury
subpoena to hand it over, even though he was going
to anyway
Early January 2020:
The FBI tell MacIsaac not to talk to anyone and to
stall if a Biden representative comes to get the
laptop back
February:
Trump is acquitted at end of his impeachment trial
May:
On
Giuliani's account, MacIsaac hands over the hard
drive to Robert Costello, Giuliani's attorney, by
this month at the latest as well as trying to give
it to other Republicans
September: Steve
Bannon, Trump's ex-aide and now indicted on fraud
charges, tells New York Post about existence of
laptop
September 28:
Bannon boasts to a Dutch TV interviewer 'I have
Hunter's hard drive'
October 11: Giuliani
gives Post the hard drive
October 14: Post
publishes emails and partially-clothed pictures of
Hunter from the laptop - one of them with an
apparent crack pipe - and says it has an 11-minute
sex-and-drugs video. Giuliani promises there is
'more to come,' Republican senators promise to
investigate but Democrats say the former New York
mayor has 'paraded with Russian agents'