Posted on 08/06/2020 2:21:51 AM PDT by Libloather
One of President Trump’s top supporters in the Senate is pressing ahead with a politically fraught investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and Ukraine, despite warnings from Democrats that he risks laundering Russian disinformation into the United States through the Senate ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, is scrutinizing a Ukrainian gas company’s hiring of Biden’s son onto its board and the activities of a lobbying firm it hired in Washington, reviving a thread of the Trump impeachment proceedings that the president’s allies hope could damage Biden.
Johnson has said he is investigating whether Hunter Biden’s involvement with the gas company posed a conflict of interest to then-Vice President Biden’s work on Ukraine policy. His committee has been collecting documents and in recent days interviewed three witnesses, including a top State Department official who testified during the impeachment hearings, according to people familiar with the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. Johnson told the Hill newspaper that he is planning to publish his report by mid-September, weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Workin on another out of wedlock grandkid.
With his spending habits (especially on drugs)....he’ll easily burn through $100k a month.
Here we go, with 37 working days before the election the Senate launches a Hunter Biden investigation. Does everyone see what these hack politicians do? Have you caught on to their phony stunts? The corruption is so deep and thick that it’s nearly impenetrable. They come to DeeCee broke and leave as millionaires. What journalistic stories could be written if there was any honesty left in the profession.
Yep, just like Lindsay Graham today during the hearing did everything he could to get Sally Yates to testify that Jim Comey had “gone rogue.” I shouldn’t have been surprised I guess, but I couldn’t believe it.
It was amazing to watch her resist for a moment before the lights went on and she realized the game being played, whereupon she immediately said “Yes.” The implication, of course, was that the spying on Trump was just because of this rogue agent over here, James Comey, so that’s that and no need to look at anyone else.
CFP——The Optima FBI raids in Cleveland and Miami 3 days ago sent a CLEAR SIGNAL to the President’s enemies that yes indeed, he and Barr and Rudy are going to see this through.They are **really going to do it**. They have not been bluffing.
The raids were directly linked to the Ukrainian corruption that caused at least $6 billion in US taxpayer money sent to Ukraine to disappear. The two offices that were raided were involved in a massive amount of money laundering.
It turns out that two of the Ukrainian oligarch’s that ran PrivatBank, a large bank that got $1.8 billion in US aid and ‘lost’ it, laundered hundreds of millions of dollars through over a dozen shell companies & then used the laundered $$$$ to purchase real estate in Cleveland.
For about a year and a half, ever since @RudyGiuliani revealed he was investigating the money trail of all of this stolen US aid in Ukraine the Democrats & the DNC Media roundly mocked and lampooned him. It didn’t stop anything.
Joe Biden was paid $900,000 for lobbying efforts from Burisma Holdings in Ukraine.
Ukrainians Find Misuse of $5.3 BILLION in US Aid During Obama Admin
US Aid reported as misused was given to the embassy’s favored NGO’s
GP | December 6, 2019 | Jim Hoft
In October Ukrainian Parliamentarian Andrey (Andriy) Derkach revealed in a press conference that Joe Biden was paid $900,000 for lobbying efforts from Burisma Holdings in Ukraine. Much of the $5.3B in US Aid Ukraine reported as misused was given to the embassy’s favored NGO’s. That embassy directed the police not to investigate.
Yovanovitch, witness for the Impeachment Witchunt, was the US’ Ukranian Amb.
She testified to Congress there was NO “do not prosecute” list (cue hysterical laughter machine here).
America-hater Obama thumbed his nose at Art. 2, Sec. 3.
The Take Care Clause is arguably a major source of presidential power because it seemingly invests the office with broad enforcement authority. Yet, at the same time, the provision also serves as a major limitation on that power because it underscores that the executive is under a duty to faithfully execute the laws of Congress and not disregard them.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com.....records of the phone calls between “individuals whose voices sound like” those of ex-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Vice President Joseph Biden, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry who discussed the course of Ukrainian domestic policy in very precise detail.
On that tape, Joe Biden factually tells Poroshenko what to do, and Poroshenko seeking advice, cooperates his actions and frankly reassures Biden that all his orders will be executed. Mr. Derkach said that the contents of those records are sufficient to incriminate Poroshenko a treason. As for our side of the pond, the tables are rapidly turning against Biden, who, so far, “magically” shrugged off all corruption accusations.
Yours truly, as a native Russian and Ukrainian speaker, was thrilled to listen to every single word that was said on that press conference.
The central topic of the conversations on the highest level was a figure of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, whom American counterparts insisted to be removed from the Office as a key precondition of landing Ukraine $1 billion that it strove to receive from IMF to keep its collapsing economy afloat.
KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Some $16.5 million received by Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, as payment from Burisma was stolen from Ukrainian citizens, member of parliament Andriy Derkach has said.... (Excerpt) Read more at google.com
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ITEM----Hunter Biden-linked company received $130M in special federal loans while Joe Biden was VP
Financial experts say the offshore corporate structure is used to shield earnings from US taxes
Washington Examiner ^ | November 21, 2019 | Alana Goodman / FR Posted by gattaca
Federal records show 177 well-connected (read politically-connected) firms participated in TALF.
For investors, there was little risk w/ rewards guaranteed. The Federal Reserve (read taxpayers) funded as much as 90% of the investments.
If bonds were profitable, the borrowers benefited. If not, the department took over the depreciated assets with no repercussions for borrowers.
Then-Sen Joe Biden was a key advocate for the financial bailout, which was expanded under Obama.
Biden even delayed his 2009 Senate exit to cast his final vote to increase funding for the Program before taking office as Obama's VP.
Biden said about the massive giveaway: "Had we not bailed out the large banks, there would have been a flat-out depression.”
John Solomon———Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in Spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents – many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles – conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraine’s new president, Volodymer Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. “… The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”
Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.
Documents I obtained this year detail an effort to change the narrative after the Times story about Hunter Biden, with the help of the Obama State Department.
Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague two days after the Times story about a strategy to counter the “new wave of scrutiny” and stated that he and Hunter Biden had just met at the State Department. The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”
I have sued the State Department for any records related to that meeting. The reason is simple: There is both a public interest and an ethics question to knowing if Hunter Biden and his team sought State’s assistance while his father was vice president.
The controversy ignited anew earlier this year when I disclosed that Joe Biden admitted during a 2018 videotaped speech that, as vice president in March 2016, he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin.
At the time, Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma. Shokin told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm. Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirm the payments, which in many months totaled more than $166,000.
Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations.
Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma’s owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General’s office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
After I first reported it in a column, the New York Times and ABC News published similar stories confirming my reporting.
Joe Biden has since responded that he forced Shokin’s firing over concerns about corruption and ineptitude, which he claims were widely shared by Western allies, and that it had nothing to do with the Burisma investigation.
Some of the new documents I obtained call that claim into question.
In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.
Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.
Burisma’s own accounting records show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
Just days before Biden forced Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the No. 2 official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there. Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”
Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma.
Painter then asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation, the memos show. Eventually, Blue Star would pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor’s office.
At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.
Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.
On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.
Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.
Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.
“They realized that the information disseminated in the U.S. was incorrect and that they would facilitate my visit to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering the true information to the State Department management,” the memo stated.
The memo also quoted the Americans as saying they knew Shokin pursued an aggressive corruption investigation against Burisma’s owner, only to be thwarted by British allies: “These individuals noted that they had been aware that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine had implemented all required steps for prosecution … and that he was released by the British court due to the underperformance of the British law enforcement agencies.”
The memo provides a vastly different portrayal of Shokin than Biden’s. And its contents are partially backed by subsequent emails from Blue Star and Buretta that confirm the offer to bring Ukrainian authorities to meet the Obama administration in Washington.
For instance, Tramontano wrote the Ukrainian prosecution team on April 16, 2016, saying U.S. Justice Department officials, including top international prosecutor Bruce Swartz, might be willing to meet. “The reforms are not known to the US Justice Department and it would be useful for the Prosecutor General to meet officials in the US and share this information directly,” she wrote.
Buretta sent a similar email to the Ukrainians, writing that “I think you would find it productive to meet with DOJ officials in Washington” and providing contact information for Swartz. “I would be happy to help,” added Buretta, a former senior DOJ official.
Burisma, Buretta and Blue Star continued throughout 2016 to try to resolve the open issues in Ukraine, and memos recount various contacts with the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Kiev seeking help in getting the Burisma case resolved.
Just days before Trump took office, Burisma announced it had resolved all of its legal issues. And Buretta gave an interview in Ukraine about how he helped navigate the issues.
Today, two questions remain.
One is whether it was ethically improper or even illegal for Biden to intervene to fire the prosecutor handling Burisma’s case, given his son’s interests. That is one that requires more investigation and the expertise of lawyers.
The second is whether Biden has given the American people an honest accounting of what happened. The new documents I obtained raise serious doubts about his story’s credibility. And that’s an issue that needs to be resolved by voters.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill.
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