Loves that Deep State.
Posted on 03/12/2020 8:35:38 PM PDT by AnthonySoprano
Ron “Johnson initially wanted to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy official who served as a Blue Star consultant from 2016 to 2017. Peters, the RANKING DEMOCRAT, opposed the subpoena, saying that Telizhenko was spreading disinformation about the Bidens, possible in aid of Russia. Telizhenko began working last year with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has accused Joe Biden of pressuring the Ukrainian government to help Burisma.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Republican Ron Johnson does not Subpoena the person he said needed to be subpoenaed - because the Ranking DEM opposed it.
What did Schiff and Nadler due to the minority?
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Ron Johnson is “Investigating” this because Lindsey Graham said it shouldn’t be him, due to his close relationship with Biden.
Graham refused to look at the evidence, using the old Russian behind every bush saw.
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Thanks for posting a non-Coronavirus related article. It’s becoming a rarity here.
Now I’m really, really, really, really, confident we’ll be getting to the bottom of this. In 2039.
Stipulate that and still subpoena him. I'm tired of Russia being the root cause of everything. There are few countries in Europe that we should trust. Actually, none - even our allies. Verify. But just don't throw away possible testimony because a Rat objects.
I want to win the LS-6 454 Chevelle. (on another note)
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Yes, an Investigation would bring the Truth and Fiction to light.
That’s how it’s been done for 50 years. They are saying - you can’t inquire and examine.
New Rules for Biden.
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Deep state at work. Lots of work to be done in the GOP.
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Hahaha!
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“... Thanks for posting a non-Coronavirus related article. It’s becoming a rarity here...”
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I agree. What is with that?! Every other article posted here. I’ve checked for things that should be breaking but as usual FR is way late. Or never.
I’m so sick of the coronavirus panic I can’t take much more. I’m going on a self imposed TV blackout if I must. I’d hoped to at least see interesting things here but it’s nonstop blah blah blah coronavirus. Just stop people!
Let’s see. Russia and Ukraine have settled into something like a sitzkrieg over the lands Ukraine lost. But Ukraine will do Russia’s bidding and pass along bogus “propaganda” to the US because it would make the Bidens look bad?
We KNOW the threat Joe Biden made to the Ukrainian President over US aid and investigations into Hunter and Burisma because he _boasted_ about it!
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.
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
09/26/19 06:00 PM EDT 299
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Former Vice President Joe Biden, 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, Sh
okin 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. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
Former Vice President Joe Biden just casually dropped a bombshell admission that he personally and directly intervened in Ukraine’s governance, boasting on stage during an event hosted by the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that he got a high Kiev government official removed essentially at the snap of his fingers.
“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 said at the CFR talk on Tuesday (a follow-up to prior admissions revealing that the US actively asserted behind the scenes control of Ukraine’s new government, to the point that US officials even dictated who would occupy high offices in the war-torn country).
Biden confirmed what was only previously hinted at through an anonymous senior official who spoke to The New Yorker in 2016. It was revealed then that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General (the equivalent office to the US Attorney General), was removed only after the Obama administration threatened to withhold 1$ billion in loan guarantees.
The prosecutor general at the time, Viktor Shokin, was previously supported by the US and much of the EU, but as The New Yorker described, “after initially supporting Shokin, U.S. and E.U. officials soured on him.” Washington suddenly viewed Shokin, who had served two decades within the Prosecutor General’s office as corrupt and unwilling to initiate crackdown in major financial scandal cases involving high profile figures.
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor serves a term of six years and can only be appointed and dismissed by the president with parliamentary consent; however in the case of Shokin, Joe Biden boasted before the CFR audience that he told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and former Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk sometime in late March 2016, “I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars,” unless they immediately sacked Shokin. To the glee of his CFR listeners who laughed audibly, Biden added, “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired!”
Indeed the threat of withholding what had been the third installment of a massive loan package desperately needed to help prop up the new pro-EU/US Kiev government resulted in Viktor Shokin being hastily removed from his post by Ukrainian parliament on March 29, 2016 – within the very month Biden made the ultimatum (Shokin had initially promised he would willingly resign in a February letter, but resumed his work through March). Poroshenko then officially and formally dismissed Shokin on April 3, 2016.
But it appears that it was somewhat of an open secret as Shokin became widely referred to among Ukrainians as “the billion-dollar man”. It was also a time in which Biden and other US officials were constantly in direct communication with President Poroshenko, talking foreign aid and loan packages, and presumably according to Biden’s latest admission, how he should run his government.
Biden had previously disclosed in his personal memoirs that he “had been on the phone with either Poroshenko or… Yatsenyuk, or both, almost every week” for months attempting to guide nearly every major decision of the Poroshenko administration after the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2014 coup d’état which inaugurated the Ukraine crisis.
As a reminder, in 2014 – not long after Ukraine’s US-endorsed and facilitated presidential coup – Joe’s son Hunter joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, the largest private gas producers in Ukraine, incorporated in Cyprus, a European tax haven.
Elsewhere in the talk, Biden revealed that the Obama White House “spent so much time on the phone making sure that everyone from… [former French president Francois] Hollande to [former Italian prime minister Matteo] Renzi wouldn’t walk away” from anti-Russian sanctions.
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We certainly hope that Biden continues to open his infamously big mouth as he will only further confirm that the US version of events whether in Ukraine, Syria, or other parts of the world championed by political figures who happen to take their dictates from Washington, etc…) is nowhere close to the reality.
Burisma board members included:
<><> Hunter Biden (after Joe Biden was tasked by Obama to handle Ukraine matters for the US)
<><> the former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski
<><> CIA'er Joseph Cofer Black – the former head of the US anti-terrorist center and special US envoy on combatting terrorism
<><> Devon Archer--Hunter's equity fund partner (roommate of Chris Heinz, John Kerry's stepson).
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So to summarize: Joe Biden participated in illegally overthrowing the president of a foreign country,
installing his hand-picked guys, firing undesirables, looting Ukrainian state money, extorting local oligarchs,
pillaging IMF loans, fuelling fratricide in Donbass, etc.
What a “clean” and “honest” VP.......and 2020 presidential candidate.
John Solomon: Documents Show Connection Between Hunter Biden Attorneys and Fired Ukrainian Prosecutor
thepostemail.com ^ | 9/25/2019 | sharon rondeau
FR Posted on 9/26/2019, 12:34:06 AM by bitt
“A VERY DIFFERENT STORY” by Sharon Rondeau
(Sep. 25, 2019) — John Solomon of The Hill said he has acquired “more than 450 pages” of documents from the State Department and Hunter Biden’s “legal team” demonstrating that the attorneys were working to stop an investigation launched by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin into principals of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was a Board member in 2014 and 2015.
Shokin served under former Ukrainian President Petro Poroschenko, who lost re-election in April to Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
(Excerpt) Read more at thepostemail.com ...
Question: Was Clinton Foundation mega-donor Viktor Pinchuk being investigated WRT the theft of IMF $5 billion
simultaneously with the investigation into Hunter Biden’s $3 million Burisma salary?
SALIENT POINT: The Ukrainian prosecutor Joe Biden forced out was investigating all the Ukrainian money being stolen;
he was fired when Joe Biden twisted his arm for investigating Hunter Biden’s extortion.
HMMMMMMM....Could be Obama kicked Joe’s *** ...... peeved their cut was Hunter's measly $3 million out of the missing $5 billion?
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REFERENCE: VP Biden Set Up Scenario for Meeting Between Top Ukrainian Officials and His Son’s Company
FR Posted on 9/23/2019, 10:48:00 PM by janetjanet998
Quoting John Solomon: Let me add a new fact that I just learned tonight. While talking to US diplomats today overseas in Europe I learned that on April 22, 2014 less than three weeks before the Burisma Holdings announced that Hunter Biden was joining their board, Vice President Joe Biden met with the Prime Minister of Ukraine ......
.......and in that meeting, according to a that I obtained tonight.......
Joe Biden specifically encouraged the Ukrainians to expand natural gas production with the help of Americans coming to the country.
The VP set up the exact scenario that Hunter Biden just a few weeks later cashed in on.
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(HAT TIP THINDEN: <<< the Ukraine scam resembles Obama-era Madison Guarantee/ Savings Loan crisis on steroids >>>>>
<><> Bigtime govt grants and/or IMF loans are made to “friendly” countries....... //////
<><> loans and grants go to hand-picked “straw man” entities or corporations...
<><> for public consumption, “straw man” entities go belly up & default....
<><> but the real money is moving through several stops on the way to Cyprus, off-shore banks, etc, for laundering...
<><> the laundered funds are then split sub rosa among the usual cast of greedsters: Congressman, Soros NGO’s, The Clinton Foundation, the Bidens/Obama, etc.....
Don’t forget the “MISSING” 6 BILLION DOLLARS from HILLIARY s STATE DEPARTMENT!!
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