"Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire:
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton."
FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, SEPT. 30, 2019:
Hillary Clinton and Ukraine
"A letter released Monday raises questions beyond the Bidens.
The Biden clan still needs to explain why a vice president’s son was enjoying a $50,000-per-month gig for which his principal qualification appears to have been his last name.
But Joe Biden isn’t the only pillar of the Democratic establishment who won’t enjoy the new spotlight on American relations with Ukraine.
And President Donald Trump isn’t the only one who wants a fuller accounting of that country’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
With the benefit of hindsight and the results of the Mueller investigation, it’s now clear that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
What is not clear and what demands further investigation is how this baseless claim managed to consume the first two years of an American presidency."
ALL FOLLOWING PHOTOS ARE OF UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT POROSHENKO WITH EITHER BILL OR HILLARY CLINTON, DURING HER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY IN 2015 TO 2016.
WHAT A HAPPY THREESOME, YES?
WHAT MIGHT THEY HAVE DISCUSSED WITH HIM IN PRIVATE?
WILL ANY DEMOCRAT IN CONGRESS ASK THAT QUESTION?
AT THE TIME THE ABOVE PHOTO WAS TAKEN, OBAMA WAS WITHHOLDING 'LETHAL AID FROM UKRAINE. HILLARY STATED SHE HAD PROMISED TO HELP DEFEND UKRAINE AGAINST RUSSIA
"LET ME MAKE YOU AN OFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE"?
Clinton Global Initiative 2015 Annual Meeting - Day 2
"WE'LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK, YOU SCRATCH OURS. GIVE US DIRT ON TRUMP,
WE GIVE YOU BILLIONS IN AID."
QUID PRO QUO.
Hillary Clinton tells Ukraine's leader she would defend its borders if she wins.
NEW YORK, 20 September 2016
"The Ukrainian leader and Clinton had an 'in-depth discussion of the crisis' in the country, her campaign said after their meeting.
Former U.S. secretary of state put her familiarity with foreign leaders on display Monday evening as she held talks with several visiting dignitaries.
A readout of the 75-minute meeting from Clinton's team mentioned Russia four times as it remonstrated with Republican Donald Trump's friendly attitude toward the country's foe.
'They discussed implementation of the Minsk agreement, Ukraine's programs on reforms, and ways the US can help support investment in Ukraine,' her campaign said, 'and she outlined her clear-eyed approach to Russia.'
Adding, 'If elected, she looks forward to deepening and intensifying cooperation with Ukraine.'AND THAT ISN'T AN OUTRAGE TO DEMOCRATS, TO 'INVESTIGATORS' IN CONGRESS?
WAS SHE USING THAT 'PROMISE' TO ENTICE POROSHENKO TO AID UKRAINIAN-AMERICAN ALEXANDRA CHALUPA?
AS YOU WILL SEE, THE PRESSURE HAD BEN ON UKRAINE T D JUST THAT FOR ABOUT A YEAR.
FOR A BRIEF VIDEO OF THIS MEETING, <SEE THIS>.
SO...WHICH NATION INTERFERED IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?
POLITICO answered that question in early January, 2017, days BEFORE Trump was inaugurated.
"Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election.
And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found."
According to that investigation, officials in Ukraine clearly stated that Trump was skeptical of them. They stated they even hired a lobbying firm to help make amends for their aid to the Clinton campaign.
"The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom [Paul] Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms.
Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.
In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea [**AT UKRAINE'S PRESIDENT'S REQUEST!**], and Manafort dropped off the radar."
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney, is a contributing editor of National Review.
He recently wrote an opinion piece to the New York Post:
"According to Democrats, any investigation of possible Democratic corruption, or of Democratic collusion with foreign officials to interfere in our elections, is itself impeachable interference in our elections.
Seriously.
Democrats apparently didn’t think the “crisis” was so dire that their Thanksgiving holiday should be postponed.
In 11 months, the American people will be able to boot President Trump from office if they believe he is unfit. So why should the political class be permitted to pre-empt voters?
Finally, Democrats have come up with an answer: Trump must be removed, because he is bent on colluding with foreign powers to interfere in our elections; he will do it “again” if he isn’t stripped of power.
“Again,” of course, hearkens back to the Democrats’ Russia “collusion” narrative. They can’t let go of that narrative, notwithstanding the fact that the Mueller probe debunked it. In their revisionist history, Trump’s quip that he hoped Russia would find the 30,000 emails Hillary Clinton destroyed somehow proves the scheme that a score of aggressive prosecutors couldn’t find.
This isn’t to say that the Bidens were necessarily involved in any illegal conduct.
Nor is it to say that the effort by Ukrainian officials to put their thumb on the scale in favor of Clinton and against Trump was as serious or systematic as Russia’s cyber-espionage operations against Democratic email accounts.
And presidents should probably leave requests for investigative help from a foreign power to the Department of Justice.
Still, it is absurd to insist that seeking to probe Democratic misadventures that warrant probing is somehow impeachable conduct.
Yet in its push to undo the outcome of the 2016 election, the Democratic Party has learned to embrace absurdity."
In August 2016, under an article headlined “Ukraine’s leaders campaign against ‘pro-Putin’ Trump,’” the Financial Times noted, “The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko (a member of Ukraine’s parliament) but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election.”
Continuing, it said, “Mr Leshchenko and other political actors in Kiev say they will continue their efforts to prevent (Trump) ... from reaching the summit of American political power.”
It’s simply a known fact that Ukrainian officials DID collude with Democrats in 2016.
A Ukrainian court has so concluded.
Ukrainian officials were, by their own admission 3 years ago, in consultation with a Democratic political operative and Fusion GPS, the research firm that concocted the discredited Steele dossier at the Democratic National Committee’s and Clinton’s behest.
Ukrainians were also, again by their own admission, complicit in the leaking of information that forced Manafort’s ouster from the Trump campaign.
On August 4, 2016, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Valeriy Chaly, published an opinion /editorial column in The Hill.
"Recent comments by Republican nominee Donald Trump about the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea — occupied by Russia since March 2014 — have raised serious concerns in Kyiv and beyond Ukraine."
This is Ukraine’s Ambassador, representing the Ukrainian government.
He was a member of the Ukrainian government, whose job, authority, and position it was to speak to the United States on behalf of Ukraine.
FROM THAT SAME AMBASSADOR FROM UKRAINE, MAY 2, 2019:
"In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider, during the 2016 election, solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.
Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC.
He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.
“All ideas floated by Alexandra were related to approaching a Member of Congress with a purpose to initiate hearings on Paul Manafort or letting an investigative journalist ask President Poroshenko a question about Mr. Manafort during his public talk in Washington, D.C.,” the ambassador explained.
Reached by phone last week, Chalupa said she was too busy to talk.
She did not respond to email and phone messages seeking subsequent comment.
Chaly’s written answers mark the most direct acknowledgement by Ukraine’s government that an American tied to the Democratic Party sought the country’s help in the 2016 election, and they confirm the main points of a January 2017 story by Politico on Chalupa’s efforts.
Federal Election Commission records show Chalupa’s firm, Chalupa & Associates, was paid $71,918 by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle.
BUT THERE'S MORE.
Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, states Chaly lied that Ukraine officials knew very well that Chalupa was working for the DNC and instructed him to assist her.
He says that he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort.
Telizhenko said that when he was told by the embassy to arrange the meeting, both Chaly and the ambassador’s top deputy identified Chalupa “as someone working for the DNC and trying to get Clinton elected.”
Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his country’s assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with his assignment.
Telizhenko also said that, as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the Democrats.
As a former aide inside the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev, Telizhenko used contacts with intelligence, police and prosecutors across the country to secure information...
Chaly’s office also acknowledged that a month after his op-ed in The Hill, President Poroshenko met with then-candidate Clinton during a stop in New York.
The office said the ambassador requested a similar meeting with Trump but it didn’t get organized."
CHALUPA REALLY WORKED HARD TO "STOP TRUMP".
In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort.
She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her.
Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion.
“A lot more coming down the pipe,” Chalupa wrote a top DNC official on May 3, 2016, recounting her effort to educate Ukrainian journalists and Isikoff about Manafort."
YES, THIS WAS ALL BEFORE TRUMP BECAME PRESIDENT, SOME CAME OUT JUST BEFORE MANAFORT WAS HIRED BY TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN.
AND AFTERWARD?
Politico, again, in August 2017: “A Ukrainian member of parliament has requested a criminal investigation into possible meddling by his country’s government into last year’s U.S. presidential elections, claiming the interference has ‘seriously damaged Ukrainian-American relations.’”
The New York Times, December 2018: Under an article titled “Ukraine Court Rules Manafort Disclosure Caused ‘Meddling’ in U.S. Election,” the Times reports, “A court in Ukraine has ruled that officials in the country violated the law by revealing, during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, details of suspected illegal payments to Paul Manafort.
"Even though Western-sponsored polls in Crimea, both before and after the coup, had shown higher than 90% support by Crimeans for rejoining with Russia, right after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, Obama slapped sanctions against Russia.
Nuclear weapons were prepared, both on the U.S.-EU side and on the Russian side, for a possible nuclear war."
David Stern, “Ukrainian MP seeks probe of Ukraine-Clinton ties: Parliament member demands to know whether his country’s government targeted Trump in the 2016 campaign,” The Politico, August 16, 2017.
“A Ukrainian member of parliament has requested a criminal investigation into possible meddling by his country’s government into last year’s U.S. presidential elections, claiming the interference has “seriously damaged Ukrainian-American relations.”
“In a July 24 [2017] letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andrei Derkach, an independent MP who was formerly aligned with a pro-Russian party, requested that authorities launch a pretrial investigation into “illegal interference in the election of President of the United States organized by a criminal organization.” This organization, he said, consisted of senior members of the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, government officials, and other public figures.”
DID OBAMA AND BIDEN ABUSE THE POWER OF THEIR OFFICES IN WITHHLDING MONEY FROM UKRAINE?
From at least 2014 to the first 2 weeks of 2017, Obama had withheld U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine (as Joe Biden bragged in that now-infamous video with the Council on Foreign Relations), money they desperately needed. Obama refused to give them money for 'lethal weapons, however, to arm themselves against Russia.
WHAT WOULD UKRAINE'S OFFICIALS DO IN ORDER TO ACQUIRE ALL THE AID THAT THE 2016 CONGRESS HAD APPROVED, TO GET THAT MUCH-NEEDED U.S. 'LETHAL AID'?
BEFORE CONDEMNING UKRAINE, ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A LIFE-OR-DEATH SITUATION (REAL OR IMAGINED) TO GET PROTECTION?
WOULD UKRAINE MAYBE HELP "STOP TRUMP"?
SURE LOOKS THAT WAY.
READ ON...
FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE
December 15, 2014
The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a bill authorizing LETHAL aid for Ukraine and new sanctions against Russia, sending the measure to President Barack Obama for his signature or veto.
While the White House has declined to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, the bill authorizes -- but does not technically require -- $350 million of defense articles for Ukraine's military, including anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, ammunition and surveillance drones.
According to the administration, the U.S. government has committed over $118 million in equipment and training for Ukraine's security forces.
The bill also authorizes sanctions against Russia's defense and energy industries, including the arms exporter Rosoboronexport. The president may waive them for national security reasons.
It also allows Obama to sanction Gazprom, a state-controlled Russian energy giant, if he determines that it is withholding gas from a NATO state or Ukraine, Moldova, or Georgia.
Identical texts of the bill passed the U.S. Senate and House on December 11, but because of a loan-guarantee provision, the U.S. Senate had to vote on it again.
FROM DEFENSE NEWS--CONGRESS
September 25, 2019
BACK TO 2016; WHAT CONGRESS AUTHORIZED THAT WASN'T PROVIDED TO UKRAINE UNDER OBAMA.
"Congress has since expanded the categories of available military aid. Its authorization for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for 2016 included anti-armor weapon systems, mortars, crew-served weapons and ammunition, grenade launchers and ammunition, and small arms and ammunition ― but also unspecified “cyber” and “electronic warfare” capabilities.
EVEN CNN ADMITTED THAT OBAMA WITHHELD LETHAL AID TO UKRAINE, EVEN THOUGH CONGRESS HAD APPROVED IT, JUST AS TRUMP AND TWO UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTS HAVE SAID.
"Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks."
While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military."
"Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine"
POLITIFACT
May 7th, 2019
"Hunter Biden DID hold a directorship for a Ukrainian gas company WHILE his father was vice president. Experts agree that Hunter Biden's acceptance of the position created a conflict of interest for his father.
Vice President Joe Biden DID urge Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, with the threat of withholding U.S. aid. But that was the position of the wider U.S. government, as well as other international institutions.
Reuters reported at the time that a statement on the company’s website said the younger Biden "would help the company with "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion," and other issues. The company also retained the law firm where Biden had been working, Boies, Schiller, Flexner.
The position with Burisma came at a time when the younger Biden had joined with Christopher Heinz (the stepson of then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.) and Devon Archer (a Kerry family friend) in a string of investment and consulting firms.
Firms run by Biden and Archer "pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection," the New York Times reported.
Biden’s Burisma directorship attracted attention because Burisma was owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a minister under Russia-friendly President Viktor F. Yanukovych who subsequently went into exile after a popular revolution.
[MANY UKRAINIANS AS WELL AS MOSTLY FOREIGN MEDIA ARTICLES CALLED IT WHAT IT WAS...A U.S.-SUPPORTED COUP, NOT A REVOLUTION.]
"After Yanukovych was ousted, Zlochevsky faced a variety of corruption-related investigations involving his business.
In 2015, Ukraine’s newly appointed prosecutor general Viktor Shokin inherited some of the investigations into Zlochevsky and his company. (Zlochevsky and the company have denied the allegations.) Shokin WAS ousted as prosecutor in 2016, exactly as Biden had asked.
In a White House press briefing on May 13, 2014, spokesman Jay Carney was asked about it, and whether it presented the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Carney said, "I would refer you to the Vice President’s office. I saw those reports. Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the Vice President or President. But I would refer you to the Vice President’s office."
A year and a half later, the New York Times published an article that suggested that "the credibility of the vice president’s anti-corruption message may have been undermined" by Hunter Biden’s dealings with the company.
In that 2015 article, Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the vice president, played down any impact on the elder Biden’s policies.
"Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer," she said. "The vice president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company.
Meanwhile, accounts differ on whether Shokin was poised to prosecute Burisma at the time he was removed.
In an interview with the Ukrainian website Strana.ua this month, Shokin said the cases were indeed active.
However, Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin’s deputy overseeing international cooperation before resigning in February 2016 citing corruption in the office, produced documents to Bloomberg that under Shokin, the investigation into Burisma had been DORMANT.
[DORMANT, MEANING THEY WERE 'ON THE LIST' BUT JUST WERE NOT BEING ACTIVELY PROSECUTED.]
"There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky," Kasko told Bloomberg.
"It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015."
[THIS FAILS TO MENTION THE CHARGE OF ANOTHER TOP UKRAINIAN OFFICIAL THAT SHOKIN HAD SHELVED IT AFTER TAKING A $7 MILLION BRIBE TO DO SO.]
"We found wide agreement among Ukraine policy experts that Hunter Biden’s decision to become a director for Burisma presented a serious conflict of interest.
"It’s not a crime, but it is a lapse. It’s troubling," said Lincoln A. Mitchell, an adjunct research scholar at Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies who has written about governance in the former Soviet Union.
Pifer, who expressed reservations about the arrangement to the New York Times in 2015, said subsequent developments have only confirmed those concerns.
"It was a mistake for Hunter Biden to join the Burisma board, particularly given that the vice president was the senior U.S. official engaging Ukraine," Pifer said. "Hunter Biden should have been more mindful of his father's position."
And Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin professor who previously headed the university’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, said Hunter Biden’s hiring echoes the strategy common within Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, in which powerful interests try to secure influence on foreign policy by leveraging family members and associates of key leaders.
"Calling Hunter Biden a private citizen ignores the obvious links to the vice president," Herrera said. "Conflict-of-interest rules should have applied. If Biden is working for the Obama administration on Ukraine, his son should not have been on the board of a company there that could be affected by U.S. policy spearheaded by his father."
[CORRECTION BY NYT, May 8, 2019: This version clarifies that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were the two partners who "pursued business with international entities." Christopher Heinz was not a part of those pursuits.]
NONE OF THE MSM WHO WERE DEFENDING OBAMA/BIDEN FOR WITHHOLDING FUNDS FROM UKRAINE MENTIONED THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WAS HEADLINE NEWS IN THE BBC ON FEB. 7, 2014.
"Voice thought to be Pyatt's: I think we're in play... But I think your argument to him, which you'll need to make, I think that's the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I'm glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I'm very glad that he said what he said in response.
"Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience.
Nuland: OK. He's now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fu*k the EU.
Nuland: So on that piece, Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president's national security adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's willing.
Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.
Biden WAS appointed as Obama's "point man" to Ukraine.
On September 25, 2015, during a speech at Odesa Financial Forum, Pyatt criticized the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office.
On May 19, 2016, Pyatt was nominated by U.S. President Barack Obama to serve as United States Ambassador to Greece and was pulled out of Ukraine.
BY THE WAY, Yovanovitch was born in Canada to Russian parents and first came to Kiev in 2001 from assignment in MOSCOW, among other stations, and had headed "the Russian Desk" for the U.S. state department, from May 1998 to May 2000.
She had studied at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow in 1980.
From August 2001 to June 2004, she was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine.
Nuland remained as part of Obama's staff.
BUT, she never stopped meddling in Ukraine.
Nuland told CBS that she received a copy of the Steele dossier in July 2016 and forwarded it to the FBI. She has argued that she did right to forward the dossier to the bureau, but in doing so became one of many Obama administration officials who helped, wittingly or unwittingly, to launder Steele's allegations by adding credibility to the unverified document in acting as a highly-placed conduit.
Nuland attempting to interfere with investigation of Maidan snipers case.
20 Oct 2015
"The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO) released a statement that Russia wasn't involved in the killing of Maidan protesters, Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said.
Immediately after the statement, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland announced that she wants to get rid of the PGO and replace it with a new judicial institution, Azarov said.
Something fishy is going on in Ukraine right now: has Nuland decided to eliminate the PGO because it couldn't find evidence that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers were involved in the shooting of protesters during the Maidan Revolution in Kiev?
"It seems that someone is very keen on "hiding the evidence" of the investigation of killings on Maidan square," the former Prime Minister wrote on his Facebook account.
Azarov is convinced that all killings were orchestrated by leaders of the current political regime in Ukraine. That's why a proper investigation into the case of the killing of Maidan protesters by unknown snipers will never happen.
"It's unclear to me why investigators never questioned Turchinov, Pashinsky, Parubiy [all three closely involved with Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council]...
It's unclear why nobody examines numerous videos that recorded the moments of the killings," Azarov continued."
Who remembers this one?
May 23rd, 2016, “U.S. Tests Advanced Missile For NATO Interceptor System
"Barely a month before the CIA and State Department overthrew the previous, the pro-Russian, President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, the government of Netherlands decided, after 18 years of “dithering,” to allow the U.S. to arm our F-35 bombers there with nuclear weapons.
THAT BRILLIANT DECISION REALLY PUSHED PUTIN'S BACK TO THE WALL.
WE WERE FLIRTING WITH IGNITING WORLD WAR 3.
FIRE THEM ALL?
From 2014 until March of 2019, the U.S. ambassadors in Kiev & others in the Obama staff (Joe Biden, as he has admitted) demanded that each and every "special investigator" be fired, one right after the other.
Yovanovitch's speech in March, 2019, calling for the ouster of the newest one, is still posted to our Ukraine embassy page online.
On Ukrainian government web pages, for the past 5 years, their prosecutors have posted 'news' about whom they were investigating.
Burisma has been under investigation for about 7 years now, because the man who helped formed Burisma is charged with bilking Ukraine out of close to $17 Billion.
He fled to the U.S. after the U.S. BAN on his passport was lifted.
In 2016, soon after her appointment, Yovanovitch came under fire from several Ukraine members of parliament AND the special prosecutor and they expressed wishes that she be recalled.
She wasn't.
Jeff Sessions asked that she be removed from her post in 2017.
She wasn't.
Current Ukraine president Zelensky expressed his dislike for Yovanovitch and told Trump she had been fond of Poroshenko, his predecessor.
In March, 2019 (BEFORE Trump's calls), Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said. "At that time, [Yovanovitch] thought that our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. embassy put a shadow on that anti-corruption policy."
Lutsenko was probing a claim from a member of the Ukrainian parliament that the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, attempted to influence the 2016 vote to the benefit of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
He was fired & discredited in the press.
He then produced an audio tape of Syntyk apparently admitting he had indeed tried to help Clinton.
During Yovanovitch's testimony before Congress, Rep. Stewart asked, “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the president of the United States has been involved with at all?”
Yovanovitch replied, “No.”
Ukraine did indeed help the HRC campaign try to discredit and defeat Donald Trump; they've admitted it, apologized and were investigating it until forced to cease and desist.
You may have read about the famous, mysterious "black ledger" that, for a time, seemed to prove Manafort was being given a lot of money through the first deposed president, Yanukovych.
If you but search that term, you'll see the ledger was a fake.
Serhiy Leshchenko who handed the ledger over, admitted in interview that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump.
“For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times. You'll also read that in the POLITICO piece below.
"FBI, warned early and often that Manafort file might be fake, used it anyway", read one headline.
It, along with the now-disproven "Steele Dossier" are 2 of the main items the FBI took to the FISA court to get their wiretaps.
Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.
It was Kholodnytsky whom U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, in March this year said must be ousted.
LOGICALLY, WHO INTERFERED IN 2016?
"The ultimate problem is that the United States allows the formation of hundreds of thousands of anonymous companies that have permeated this country with laundered money.
The PrivatBank case shows that dirty money is not necessarily concentrated in the big cities and in real estate but can penetrate the real economy.
The PrivatBank case provides a graphic illustration of the need to prohibit anonymous companies in the United States once and for all.
Trump wanted Burisma investigated because Joe Biden and John Kerry, via the International Money Fund, delivered an initial $1.8 Billion to the Ukraine and Ukraine officials have stated that money disappeared, but that same amount just happened to show up in an offshore bank account in the name of Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the founders of Burisma.
Kolomoisky was on a U.S. visa ban list until just after Hunter Biden joined Burisma. The ban was then lifted and Kolomoisky began buying property in Cleveland, Ohio and living both in the U.S. & Switzerland. Ukraine's PrivatBank filed suit to recover missing funds. From 2006 through December 2016, the total movement of funds (credits) into the [ultimate beneficiary owners’] laundering at PrivatBank Cyprus was $470 billion, which amounts to approximately double the Gross Domestic Product of Cyprus during the same period” (p. 77).
If this is true, this is the biggest case of money laundering in history, and it has been perpetrated by one single group. This case shows how money laundering from Ukraine to the United States allegedly takes place. See Atlantic Council's article on this from June 4, 2019 or Reuters from Jan. 24, 2018. The Kerry & Biden families are just two of many whom Ukraine wants to investigate as they try to recover all those billions. Both names appear in online government documents on Ukraine's websites, from at least 3 former prosecutors there."
A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten [DWN] reported on Thursday.
In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country’s financial system.
JANUARY 24, 2018, REUTERS:
"Ukraine money-go-round: how $1.7 billion in bank loans ended up offshore"
BOTTOM LINE?
SHOULD TRUMP OR ANY PRESIDENT, KNOWING WHAT PRESIDENTS KNOW THAT WE ARE NOT PRIVY TO, BUT CAN IMAGINE, PERHAPS, GIVEN ALL OF THE ABOVE, HAVE DEMANDED AN INVESTIGATION OF ALL THE SORDID AFFAIRS OF UKRAINIAN OFFICIALS, EVEN IF JOE BIDEN'S NAME WAS MENTIONED BY THOSE SAME OFFICIALS OVER A PERIOD OF 5 LONG YEARS?
THE DEMOCRATS SPENT TWO LONG YEARS TRYING TO PROVE THAT THE RUSSIANS WERE ABLE TO KEEP HILLARY FROM WINNING.
HILLARY DID WIN, THE POPULAR ELECTION, WHICH SURELY SHOWS RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE DID NOT CHANGE THE VOTES OF THOSE WHO CHOSE HER AS PRESIDENT.
TWO YEARS OF CRIES OF 'RUSSIAN COLLUSION WITH TRUMP', EVEN AFTER MUELLER, OBAMA, THE DEMS IN CONGRESS, ELECTION OFFICIALS IN ALL 50 STATES ALL STATED THAT NOT ONE AMERICAN VOTE WAS CHANGED BY THE "PHISHING" RUSSIA DID.
NOT EVEN THE LEAKED EMAILS POSTED BY WIKILEAKS ALTERED THE OUTCOME OF THE POPULAR VOTE WHICH FAVORED CLINTON.
NOBODY HAS EVER INSINUATED THAT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WAS HACKED BY OR INFLUENCED IN ANY WAY BY RUSSIA. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DO.
WHY WON'T THE DEMOCRATS NOW DEMAND A SIMILAR INVESTIGATION INTO THE ADMITTED UKRAINIAN INTERFERENCE IN THAT SAME ELECTION, THAT PERHAPS COST TRUMP THE ALMOST 3 MILLION VOTES THAT HILLARY WON BY DIRTY TRICKS AGAINST BERNIE SANDERS AND A FAKE RUSSIAN DOSSIER?
DID UKRAINE'S SELF-ADMITTED INTERFERENCE CHANGE 2016 ELECTION VOTES?
WHAT'S WRONG WITH TRUMP AND MILLIONS OF AMERICAN VOTERS WANTING ANSWERS TO THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP LOST THE POPULAR VOTE DUE TO UKRAINIAN COLLUSION WITH THE DNC AND MANY WITHIN THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN?
WHAT ARE THE DEMOCRATS AFRAID OF?
_______________________________________
END NOTES:
**The Russian occupation of Crimea was triggered when the Ukrainian parliament metaphorically kicked up its heels and pushed the former Russian-leaning Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, out of office on corruption charges.
By removing Yanukovych from office, the Ukrainian parliament “destabilized” Russia’s control over the Crimean military bases it occupies under long-term leases with the Ukrainian government which were negotiated during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Having let that genie out of the bottle by demonstrating its independence from Russia, the Ukrainians sent a perhaps unintentional message that Russia’s former province was no longer “reliable.”
That was the Ukrainian crisis, as far as Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned, because it threw a shadow over Russia’s long-term occupancy rights.
When the Soviet Union broke up into 12 autonomous republics, Crimea was bundled with Ukraine for an obvious reason: geography. A separate, independent Crimea would have no choice but to route all ground shipments to and from Crimea through Ukraine, putting Crimeans at Ukraine’s mercy with respect to its commerce with the rest of Europe. So, instead, Crimea was set up as an “autonomous parliamentary republic” within Ukraine, essentially becoming an independent nation inside another independent nation.
Putin has no interest in becoming embroiled in a long, bloody guerrilla war with Ukraine. That would be a crisis Putin wants no part of, because there is nothing in Ukraine that Russia wants, except for the military bases in Crimea. There are no roads between Russia and Crimea. The only ground routes between Russia and its military bases in Crimea run through Ukraine. That is the main reason Putin is interested in Ukraine at all, because a hostile regime in Kiev could effectively blockade land routes between Russia and its Crimean bases.
As an “autonomous parliamentary republic,” Crimea presumably has an absolute right to ask Ukrainian troops to leave. They also appear to have the right to seek a closer relationship with Russia, to the point of outright annexation, which could easily include inviting Russian troops to occupy the region. That appears to be happening right now."
THINK FOR A MOMENT...
AMERICA STILL RUNS 'GITMO' IN CUBA, THE CUBA THAT WE HAVE HELPED TO RUIN, ECONOMICALLY, FOR FAR FEWER REASONS THAN WE SHOULD BE SANCTIONING CHINA, SAUDI ARABIA, PAKISTAN.
WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN IF CUBA TRIED TO KICK AMERICA OFF THAT ISLAND?
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF CUBA'S PRESIDENT TRIED TO CUT AMERICA OFF FROM GITMO?
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF JAPAN TOLD AMERICA TO GET THE HELL OUT OF JAPAN?
OR GERMANY DID?
WOULD OUR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS JUST PACK US UP AND EXIT?
IT'S BEEN TRIED, MANY TIMES, AND WE'RE STILL THERE IN ALL THOSE COUNTRIES.
HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT FROM RUSSIA'S INTERESTS IN CRIMEA?
SHOULDN'T THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE, OF UKRAINE/CRIMEA HAVE A SAY-SO, ALL THE PEOPLE OF CUBA, JAPAN, GERMANY, ETC?
WHAT ABOUT US?
WHAT RIGHT DO WE AMERICANS HAVE IN DECIDING WHICH NATIONS WE INVADE, WHICH ONES WE ROB FROM, OR INTERFERE WITH?
WHAT WOULD WE, THE PEOPLE, DECIDE?
"In his first interview since fleeing to Russia, Ukraine‘s ousted president said Wednesday that he was “wrong” to have invited Russian troops into Crimea and vowed to try to persuade Russia to return the coveted Black Sea peninsula.
Defensive and at times teary-eyed, Viktor Yanukovych told The Associated Press and Russia’s state NTV television that he still hopes to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get the annexed region back."
Ultimately, the United States has no dog in this fight.
Ukraine is not an American ally. No treaty obligations require the United States to get involved in this no-win situation.
The knee-jerk reaction that the United States has to get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, or referee between neighboring countries at odds with each other, has to be challenged because, sooner or later, push is going to come to shove and the United States will have to put up or shut up–again.
Russia did not invade Ukraine.
No one did.
Russia did not even invade Crimea.
They were invited in by a group of partisans who invaded the Crimean parliament, tossed the incumbents out, declared themselves the new government and invited their Russian friends to join the party."
TRUTH REALLY SUCKS SOMETIMES, BUT THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE TRUTH.
THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE CAN HANDLE THEIR OWN AFFAIRS QUITE WELL, HAVE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME BY MAKING THE CHOICES THEY MADE, OR HAVE ALLOWED TO BE MADE.
THE U.S., RUSSIA, CHINA AND THE E.U. ALL TREAT THE UKRAINE (AND OTHER NATIONS OF EARTH) LIKE A JUICY BONE AND THE U.S. AND E.U. ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR THAT BONE TO BEAT OUT RUSSIA FOR THE FINANCIAL GAIN THEY WILL GET IF THEY CAN WIND UP WITH THE UKRAINIAN BONE.
'SUPER POWERS' HAVE INVADED AND BUTTED INTO OTHER NATIONS' AFFAIRS FOR OVER 100 YEARS NOW.
ONCE UPON A TIME, WE DECLARED WARS TO GET AT ANOTHER NATION'S NATURAL RESOURCES, BUT TODAY, IT'S ALL DONE BY PROXY, BEHIND THE SCENES, AND ALWAYS IN THE NAME OF 'DEMOCRACY'.
WHEN ANY OF THOSE NATIONS PROTEST OR TRY TO BLOCK FOREIGN INTERFERENCE INTO THEIR AFFAIRS, THERE IS ALWAYS HELL TO PAY.
WHAT IF TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT UKRAINE AND THE NEED TO FURTHER INVESTIGATE BURISMA?
-------
FURTHER READING:
-- U.S. hand in Ukraine coup impossible to deny
19 Feb 2015
"Washington was investing heavily in Ukraine long before the Maidan protests started in Kiev in 2013. According to Victoria Nuland, the State Department's top diplomat for Europe, since 1991 America has poured $5 billion of taxpayers' money into what she called assisting Ukrainians in building "democratic skills and institutions."
Some of the money went into sponsoring various NGOs, political parties and media outlets. For instance, Hromadske.tv, an internet-based television channel created in summer 2013, received a grant of some $50,000 from the US embassy. The channel provided full-time coverage of the Maidan protests and gave a platform to various opposition figures.
Such funding is a well-known tool of the American government. Washington describes it as promoting a positive change and denies accusations that it gives money to get leverage to pursue its own goals in targeted countries. But in Ukraine US officials played a far more prominent role than simply funding local players.
Some like film director Oliver Stone even call it a US-staged coup, while former US Congressman Ron Paul called for the US to stop meddling in Ukraine.
The US government's support for the post-coup government in Kiev never dwindled even as it went on to encroach on media freedom and the free speech and launched a military crackdown on its dissenting eastern regions. At times, critics say, it was difficult to distinguish the new Ukraine from an entity directly ruled from Washington.
One ironic episode occurred in December, when the Ukrainian Security Service building flew a US flag alongside a Ukrainian one over its entrance. Photos of the flags were quickly dismissed as a propaganda fake by Ukrainian bloggers, but the SBU later confirmed that it ran up the stars and stripes to honor visiting US Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, who is in charge of arms deals with the State Department.
The debate over the flag was partially fuelled by rumors in Ukraine that the SBU allocated an entire level in its HQ to US consultants, including active CIA agents.
A humorous moment came in Biden's trip when he chaired a session with Ukrainian officials, taking the seat normally reserved for the president of Ukraine. Ironically, Dozhd TV, a leading Russian opposition TV channel, erroneously called Biden the acting president of Ukraine and misquoted him as demanding that Russia "stopped meddling into US internal affairs."
For Biden, Ukraine's economic future is a matter of concern not only due to his office but also due to his family's ties with the Ukrainian energy sector. In May, Ukraine's largest private gas company, Burisma Holdings, announced the appointment of VP Biden's son, Hunter, to its board of directors. The White House insisted the appointment posed no conflict of interest for America's second-ranking public official.
These and other examples of US "power brokering" raise some doubt about Washington's claimed distance from the regime change in Ukraine. After all, the US has a long record of meddling in other countries' affairs, ousting governments Washington didn't like and imposing those it did.
Why would Ukraine be any different, skeptics ask?
//WW
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