Posted on 11/14/2019 4:32:47 AM PST by gattaca
Sixty-five diamonds and a shady chauffeur underpin the investigation that doomed former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and grew into an impeachment investigation targeting President Trump.
Shokin earned the enmity of the United States government through his loyalty to a chauffeur who was caught with a "cache of diamonds" after Shokin gave him a job as a local prosecutor, a key impeachment witness told lawmakers. The ex-driver, Oleksandr Korniyets, abused his position to force wealthy businessmen to give him money in order to avoid criminal charges, George Kent, one of the State Department’s top officials for Europe, testified. Korniyets' misdeeds came to light after reformist investigators raided his apartment and found dozens of diamonds, along with cash and other valuables. But despite public uproar, Kent said, Shokin tried to shield him.
“Shokin went to war,” Kent told lawmakers during his Oct. 15 deposition. “It was absolute warfare protecting his associate, and he destroyed the inspector general unit that we'd been standing up.”
Kent’s testimony gives the context for Joe Biden’s demand that Ukrainian leaders fire Shokin following the “diamond prosecutor” scandal, as the case came to be known. The controversy put Shokin on the wrong side of the first investigation launched by the watchdog who had partnered with U.S. officials to reform the prosecutor’s office.
“The first case turned out to have been the former driver of Shokin, who — he made his driver a prosecutor,” said Kent, the deputy chief of mission in Ukraine from 2016 to 2018.
Korniyets, the chauffeur-turned-prosecutor, was implicated in the summer of 2015, when a Ukrainian businessman told the new inspector general that he was “being shaken down” by Shokin’s cronies, Kent explained. This complaint turned into a “test case” for the reform efforts, as the inspector general launched an investigation of Korniyets' activities.
“One of the things they confiscated from his former driver was a cache of diamonds,” Kent said.
The 65 diamonds in Korniyets' apartment had been seized from a jewelry factory in a previous shakedown, according to the factory owner. The aggrieved businessman complained that Korniyets had opened a case against him that “would be closed in exchange for 'forgetting' the money and gold stolen during the search,” according to Deputy Prosecutor General David Sakvarelidze, who was ousted by Shokin after he called for his boss’s resignation. The jewelry factory owner was shot dead in his car in Kyiv in March.
Korniyets was released on bail, while Shokin retaliated against the officials involved in the case. “He wanted to destroy anybody connected with that effort,” Kent testified. “He eventually managed to force out everybody associated with that, including the deputy head of the security service, the intel service, who had provided the wiretapping coverage.”
Shokin’s aggressive defense of his ex-driver was evidence for U.S. officials and reform-minded Ukrainians that he was a profiteer. As a result, Geoffrey Pyatt, then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, asked Biden to demand that then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fire Shokin.
Poroshenko's reluctance hurt U.S. interests because the U.S. was using loan guarantees to encourage Western banks to invest in Ukraine, putting American taxpayers on the hook if Shokin or other prosecutors stole the money.
“Shokin's removal then became a condition for the loan guarantee,” Kent testified. “To the best of my knowledge, the idea came from Ambassador Pyatt ... and then was pitched to the Office of the Vice President.”
Rudy Giuliani seized on Biden’s role in Shokin’s ouster to accuse the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate of corruption. Giuliani argued that Biden targeted Shokin at a time when the prosecutor general was investigating an oligarch who owned a company that hired Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son.
But Shokin did not not investigate the oligarch.
Kent, while explaining the State Department “spent roughly half a million dollars” building the case against the oligarch, told lawmakers that he confronted another of Shokin’s deputies personally over the case.
“We spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help your country get your stolen assets back, and somebody in your office took a bribe and shut a case, and we're angry,” Kent recalled telling the Ukrainian official.
The question is will any Republican bring this up? Only Jim Jordan seems to have courage to protect America.
“Shokin’s removal then became a condition for the loan guarantee,” Kent testified. “To the best of my knowledge, the idea came from Ambassador Pyatt ... and then was pitched to the Office of the Vice President [Biden].”
Well, I guess they got President Trump on the ropes now.
Washington D.C. seems like “Bizarro World” from the Superman comic books.
So according to this article, biden forced ukraine to get rid of a crooked prosecutor while Giuliani and Trump tried to make Biden look bad.
Even the Examiner is ####ing us now.
good to read bias first thing in the morning.
How convenient this comes out now and we should take Kent’s statements as gospel.
CRIMINAL STATE Kouks dismiss it.
They trashed Trump in 2016 .
“They trashed Trump in 2016.”
Our domestic enemies are looking to hurt US when he leaves.
Something doesn’t smell right, “But Shokin did not not investigate the oligarch.”
My understanding was they raided the oligarch, you don’t do that if you aren’t investigating.
This puts Biden’s forcing out of Shokin in a better light. But, it’s still a quid pro Joe. And then, there’s the millions funneled through Hunter.
This puts Biden’s forcing out of Shokin in a better light. But, it’s still a quid pro Joe. And then, there’s the millions funneled through Hunter.
My thoughts exactly. Even if Joe’s motivation for wanting Shokin out was legitimate, threatening to withhold aid is still quid pro quo.
Exactly. John Solomon reported that the government had raided the oligarch’s residence a month before Biden made his demand for Shokin be fired. Burisma was under active investigation despite the Dems saying that was not the case. Solomon has documented all of this.
As Schiff’s efforts implode, there seems to be a coordinated effort to rescue Biden by the Dems, Deep State, and the MSM. The entry of Deval Patrick into the race today spells the end of Biden. The Dem Establishment has their new “moderate” candidate, probably hand picked by Obama. Biden is now a dead man walking. The black vote was the only thing keeping him afloat. Patrick will take a large chunk of that now.
It starts with joe Biden being corrupt.
Obama would have taken on a VP who was blackmailable. Obama despises America and all Americans. He despises Biden. Hired him only to get him to do his bidding.
Biden was so corrupt his kid was corrupt. Biden has a blind spot for how inept his kid had become.
It spun out of control then Hillary did not get in. Now he’s in a panic throwing it all in hoping to be prez collecting funding getting media and congressional protection under the big get- trump- out- or- were- all-screwed umbrella.
The details are boring. How Jim Jordan manages to fix this is what will be interesting
He lives America has a degree in economics, one in education and has a law degree. He was a 2 time college champion wrestler which is more pertinent to the case and he is married to his childhood sweetheart
He makes Lindsey Graham look like Biden.
The gop actually put him in charge of this. That is a major turn.
Biden's other son, the dead one, got rid of Larry Sinclair at a very key moment. Biden was rewarded with the VP slot.
If his alleged misdeeds came to light AFTER 'reformist' investigators raided his apartment, then what pretext was used to raid the apartment in the first place?
And how does one discern the difference between a reformist investigator and the normal kind? Are 'reformist' investigators the political ones or nonpolitical? Are they paid indirectly or directly by Soros or the US taxpayer via friends of Biden, or not?
That is a very peculiar qualifier word for an impartial reporter to use in describing a supposed internal or police investigation. It suggests the source is not impartial.
The source is probably Chalupa or one of the other folks on the Atlantic Council.
And why hasn't there been an investigation into how that happened?
And is he still driving Miss DiFi?
None of these side vignettes have any bearing on the basis this case.
Red herrings. We’re the foolish hunting dogs off the trail
No longer. We hired Trump, Devon Nunes and Jim Jordan.
Exactly. The assertion he wasn’t being investigated makes no sense.
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