Re: Serhiy Leshchenko
"...a Ukrainian court ruled that the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort."
“Ukraine, a U.S. ally and neighboring foe of Russia, is soon to find out. And it’s a case with implications in the United States, where the fallout from the unproven Trump-Russia collusion scandal has engulfed several Ukrainians.
The country’s chief corruption prosecutor on Thursday opened an investigation into “suspicions” that Serhiy Leshchenko, a crusading anti-corruption member of Ukraine’s parliament and former investigative journalist, accepted bribes in 2016 from a Russian source that enabled him to buy a luxury condo far above his means. ...”
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A Ukrainian court last December ruled that Leshchenko and the head of the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) — an investigative agency modeled on America’s FBI — both illegally meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by leaking financial documents that smeared then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
The documents, known as “the black ledger,” identified payments Manafort secretly received from a Russian-backed political party in Ukraine years earlier and led to Manafort’s abrupt resignation from the Trump campaign. He eventually pleaded guilty to lobbying and tax violations and is in prison.
The court ruling against Leshchenko was an extraordinary admission of foreign government influence on America’s last presidential election.
But it wasn’t Leshchenko’s only intrusion into American politics, apparently.
Sworn testimony released a few weeks ago by Congress revealed Leshchenko also was “a source” of Russian dirt on Trump that was fed to Hillary Clinton’s opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, the firm that created the so-called Steele dossier that led to a two-year Russia probe that recently cleared Donald Trump of colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin
So, a Ukrainian parliamentarian fed dirt to Clinton’s team and leaked to the media information that harmed the Republican candidate’s campaign? That seems like more collusion than was uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
But the most tantalizing information about Leshchenko surfaced in my interview Thursday with Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytskyy, who revealed that the alleged bribes to the parliamentarian and the condo purchase occurred around the time that Manafort stepped down under pressure based on Leshchenko’s leak.
“Absolutely that is one of the things they are going to be investigating,” Kholodnytskyy told me when asked whether any of the Russian money could have been paid as an inducement or a reward for Leshchenko’s meddling in the U.S. election.
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To repeat...