Biden/Abrams 2020?
By William Stroock | May 22, 2020
The Blue Checkmarks of the American media are an uncreative lot. They lack the basic curiosity once thought necessary to the art of journalism. As a former Obama White House advisor said in 2016, ‘The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.’ The Blue Checkmarks are stenographers really, retelling narratives set by the nation’s two most important newspapers the New York Times and the Washington Post.
This week both papers ran glowing profiles of Stacey Abrams, former member of the Georgia State House and failed gubernatorial candidate. The Times portrayed Abrams as the candidate who could help Biden reach swing voters. But the Washington Post took the science of hagiography to a level thought impossible by physicists. The Post published a 6,000 paeon to Abrams titled “The Power of Stacey Abrams.” Accompanying the piece was a photograph of Abrams wearing a cape and backlit like an angel. And so, the Times and the Post set the narrative: for the Blue Checkmarks, Abrams is the Democrat Party’s savior. Does the Democrat Party ever need a savior?
Democrats have a tremendous problem: their presumptive nominee is Joe Biden. This observer has been saying the same thing about Biden since the summer of 2019 and is aware he sounds like a broken record. But right now, the most important fact of campaign 2020 is that Joe Biden is old and out of touch. The Coronavirus quarantine isn’t helping the man. Biden’s been confined to his basement for two months, campaigning via Twitter, television interviews, and rallies via Zoom. At last week’s MSNBC townhall, geese honked and distracted the 77-year-old. In the background, a pink shirted Secret Service agent wandered about. Biden tried to carry on a conversation with a young Californian who had pre-recorded his question. ‘Hi… thank you for participating,’ the former Vice President said to the recording.
This can’t go on, and the Blue Checkmarks know it. Since the Coronavirus outbreak, they’ve wondered if New York Governor Andrew Cuomo could replace the sunsetting Biden. For weeks they’ve swooned at Cuomo’s daily press briefings in which he played the man in charge and on top of things. But now, Cuomo has come under fire for ordering nursing homes to accept elderly Coronavirus patients. As of this writing, more than 5,000 nursing home residents have died in New York State. Cuomo is now politically vulnerable. We know this because he’s arguing that nursing homes should be immune from prosecution for wrongful deaths. ‘Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do,’ declared the man who in March said, ‘I want to be able to say to the people of New York — I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.’ These days the king of New York seems humble, an unusual position for the three-term governor who, with great braggadocio, portrayed himself as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance. So, Cuomo is unlikely and the Blue Checkmarks are now touting Stacy Abrams.
Already, during this election cycle, the Blue Checkmarks tried elevating a losing candidate to victory. Does anyone else remember Robert Francis O’Rourke? For six months, the former El Paso Congressman and failed senatorial candidate was the heart throb of the Democrat field. The lanky 46 year-old was the reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy, the old liberal lion, tinged with a bit of Robert Redford’s weather beaten and sinewy good looks. He too was the subject of hagiographic profiles, photographed in the Texas desert standing beside his trusty pickup, hands thrust into the back pockets of his blue jeans as he contemplates the progressive task before him. ‘You’re a Rock Star!’- ABC’s Paula Faris gushed during an interview. O’Rourke didn’t win a single delegate.
The Democrat Party faithful see Biden as vessel for his advisors to advance their agenda. Already, the leftwing intelligentsia is saying Biden should pledge himself to a single term. Which makes Biden’s vice-presidential pick exceedingly important. So, who is Stacey Abrams? She served ten years in the Georgia State House rising to the position of Democrat minority leader. In 2018, she ran for the state’s open governor’s seat against Republican Brian Kemp and lost by 55,000 votes. In the aftermath of the election, without evidence, Abrams alleged systematic minority voter suppression and refused to concede. Prominent Democrats everywhere insist Abrams only lost because of minority voter suppression. Since then, she’s been a regular on cable news and is actively campaigning for the vice-presidential slot, telling an interviewer, ‘I would share your concern about not picking a woman of color because women of color, particularly black women, are the strongest part of the Democratic Party — the most loyal, but that loyalty isn’t simply how we vote, it’s how we work.’
Last week, Joe Biden asked Stacey Abrams to appear with him on MSNBC. Host Lawrence O’Donnell asked Biden if he had a reason for inviting Abrams. Did he have an announcement to make? Abrams laughed and her face lit up. Then Biden talked about Abrams’s efforts at minority outreach and voter turnout, rambling on until he ran out of steam. One could actually see Abrams’s face turn to stone.
Leaked audio seemingly sheds light on Biden’s efforts to pressure Poroshenko into firing Burisma investigator
RT | May 19, 2020
Audio recordings released by Ukrainian MP Andrii Derkach allegedly offer confirmation that Joe Biden pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire an attorney general in exchange for a billion-dollar loan.
Former top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin filed a criminal complaint in January, alleging that Biden had strong-armed Poroshenko into firing him while he was running multiple investigations into the Burisma gas company where Biden’s son Hunter was a board member.
Biden himself has boasted publicly that he gave Poroshenko an ultimatum to fire Shokin or the offer of the $1 billion in loan guarantees would be rescinded – but the audio recordings, if they are legitimate, add new clarity to the controversy surrounding Shokin’s dismissal.
Andrii Derkach, the independent MP who released the recordings, claims he received the audio files from investigative journalists and that they were recorded by Poroshenko himself.
“If there is a new government and a new prosecutor general, I am prepared to do a public signing of the commitments for the billion dollars,” Biden appears to say in a recording from March 22, 2016.
“I’m not suggesting that’s what you want or don’t want, I’m just suggesting that that’s what we’re prepared to do,” Biden added, as if to deflect from the fact that the offer was a quid pro quo – one billion dollars for the firing of Shokin.
Poroshenko responded that this was “extremely strong motivation” to do what the US administration was asking and named Yuriy Lutsenko (who later took over) as a possible replacement for Shokin. In a signal that the new prosecutor would need to be approved by Washington, Poroshenko said he would not tap Lutsenko for the job if Biden did not think he was appropriate.
A readout of the call posted on the US embassy’s website said the two men discussed a range of issues, but there was no mention of Shokin or the prosecutor general’s position.
In a later conversation on May 13, Biden tells Poroshenko: “I’m a man of my word, and now that a new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward and sign that one billion dollar loan guarantee.”
In his complaint against the former US VP, Shokin said Biden “curtailed an objective investigation” into Burisma by having him fired.
Biden, backed up by mainstream US media, has claimed that investigations into Burisma were “dormant” by the time he was lobbying for Shokin’s ouster and insisted that his only concern was that Ukraine had an effective prosecutor general.
Shokin has denied that the investigations were dormant and said that multiple probes into the gas company were still active at the time of his resignation. His claims are backed up by French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, who compiled documents which he says prove that the investigations were still ongoing.
Ironically, while Biden has faced no repercussions for his efforts to interfere with criminal investigations in a foreign country using US money as leverage, President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for “abuse of power” after Democrats accused him of pressuring Kiev to restart investigations into Burisma while withholding military aid from the country.
New tapes of Poroshenko-Biden calls reveal ‘independent’ Ukraine was total US client
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst
RT | May 19, 2020
On top of firing a prosecutor on orders from US Vice President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also robbed his own people by raising tariffs to please his US overlords, according to audio of their alleged calls.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach published audio recordings of what sounds like Poroshenko’s conversations with various Obama administration officials in 2015 and 2016. Derkach said he got the audio from investigative journalists, who told him that Poroshenko personally recorded the calls. They have not been independently verified.
If true, however, they show the president in Kiev literally taking orders from Washington, even as the US insisted Ukraine was a sovereign and independent nation free to decide its own destiny.
“[I’m] very well indeed, as usual when I hear your voice,” Poroshenko tells Biden in a May 13, 2016 conversation, where he rushes to tell the US vice president how much “progress” he has made in reforming Ukraine to Washington’s liking.
As one of the examples, Poroshenko cites that he has imposed tariffs of 100 percent, even though the IMF asked for only 75 percent, adding “Give us a yard, please!”
“Poroshenko was willing to strip the Ukrainians naked, and even make money on the tariffs,” Derkach said on Monday, noting that they were indeed raised twice.
Raising tariffs on Russian gas imports – and cutting subsidies to poor Ukrainians – was one of the major demands by the IMF in 2013, which the government of President Viktor Yanukovych balked at, before it was ousted in a US-backed coup in February 2014.
Derkach argues that the tariffs and other concessions Poroshenko made to Washington were intended to unblock the $1 billion IMF loan to Ukraine of which the US was a guarantor. Biden had already leveraged the loan to demand the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was looking into corruption at the gas company Burisma – which had hired Biden’s son Hunter as a board member earlier that year, presumably as a shield against prosecution.
It became clear after Poroshenko fired Shokin that this would not be enough, and that he would have to give even more, Derkach told reporters in Kiev, pointing to the recordings.
Biden himself boasted about getting Shokin fired at an event in Washington, and his remarks were caught on camera. When current US President Donald Trump brought up the issue of Shokin’s firing with Poroshenko’s successor Volodymyr Zelensky, the Democrats claimed he was improperly seeking foreign assistance in the 2020 election – as Biden was seeking their nomination – and had him impeached in the House of Representatives in December 2019. Trump stayed in office after the Senate acquitted him in February this year. Biden only became the presumptive Democrat nominee in mid-April.
Flynn ‘unmasking’ documents show involvement of senior Obama administration officials, including Joe Biden
RT | May 13, 2020
A newly published list of US officials who were interested in National Security Agency (NSA) records on Trump adviser Michael Flynn includes President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, as well as Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden is listed as requesting the unmasking on January 12, 2017, the same day the Washington Post published a story claiming that Flynn had misreported his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, based on leaked NSA information.
Flynn unmasking documents f… by RT America on Scribd
Yet on Tuesday, Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he “knew nothing” about the investigation of Flynn, and accused the Trump administration of using the former adviser’s case as a “diversion” from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The unmasking log was provided by the NSA to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week, and sent by the Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell to two senators who requested it, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who published it on Wednesday.
In addition to Biden, the document shows that then-DNI James Clapper made three unmasking requests about Flynn, CIA Director John Brennan made two, and FBI Director James Comey made one.
Biden’s campaign reacted at first by lashing out against the CBS reporter who published the documents, with his rapid response director Andrew Bates calling Catherine Herridge “a partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys.”
Bates later removed the tweet and issued a follow-up, calling the unmasking perfectly normal behavior by US officials concerned “over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy.”
The documents show Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff at the time, made an unmasking request on January 5 – the very day Obama met with all the intelligence principals, and a day after FBI agent Peter Strzok intervened to keep the case on Flynn open despite the lack of any “derogatory” evidence. Strzok would later be sent by Comey to interview Flynn and edit the notes of that interview (the “302”) to imply Flynn had lied to him, resulting in the former general’s prosecution by special counsel Robert Mueller.
What the documents also show is that the Obama administration’s interest in what the NSA might have on Flynn began soon after the November 2016 election, with then-US envoy to the UN Samantha Power filing an unmasking request on November 30. She filed six more after that, the last dated January 11, 2017.
Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak about US sanctions against Russia was on December 29, 2016, after Obama suddenly announced the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats and seizure of two diplomatic properties, citing Moscow’s alleged “meddling” in the presidential election.
Evidence that only recently emerged in the Flynn case showed that the leadership of the FBI and the Department of Justice sought to interview him using the pretext of the Logan Act, an 18th-century law which has never been used to prosecute anyone, and did not apply in this instance since Flynn was not a private citizen, but an official of the incoming administration conducting routine business during the presidential transition. This new evidence led the DOJ to announce last week it was dropping all charges against Flynn.
Between the manufactured pretext to go after Flynn and the prior revelation that four FISA warrants used to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page had been entirely based on the discredited ‘Steele dossier’, the Trump administration has argued that they were unfairly targeted by its predecessor in what amounted to an illegal coup.
‘President Biden’ would not erase Trump’s concessions to Israel
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | April 30, 2020
US Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden will not reverse the Trump administration’s unilateral decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem if elected president. “The move shouldn’t have happened in the context as it did, it should happen in the context of a larger deal to help us achieve important concessions for peace in the process,” he has declared.
From one US president to another, the Palestinian people can only ascertain for themselves the varying degrees of ongoing international capitulation to Israeli demands. Biden might have wished for a different context, but still requires concessions by the Palestinian leadership to the detriment of the people. Meanwhile, asserting that the embassy would remain in Jerusalem indicates that despite opposing US President Donald Trump’s actions in terms of context, Biden sees no obstacle for US foreign policy on Palestine in the decision.
Reopening the US consulate in occupied East Jerusalem “to engage the Palestinians” is the most that they can hope for in terms of diplomatic relations. This rhetoric ties in to the two-state compromise and diplomatic negotiations. According to advisor Tony Blinken, Biden would pursue the two-state diplomacy if elected, but only for Israel’s benefit. As reported in the Times of Israel, Blinken argued, “In many ways, pulling the plug on a two-state solution is pulling the plug, potentially, on an Israel that is not only secure but is Jewish an democratic – for the future. That’s not something any of us, who are ardent supporters of Israel, would like to see.”
If the US once again aligns itself with the two-state paradigm, the purported discord between Washington and the international community will be eliminated. However, a return to the defunct hypothesis does not include a reversal of the unilateral decisions which Trump has implemented. Israel’s gains will still be losses for the Palestinians regardless of who wins the presidential election.
Biden’s opposition to annexation must be analysed separately from his comments regarding the embassy relocation to Jerusalem. Disagreement does not equal a reversal of actions. Recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was the first step taken by the US in a series of political manoeuvres which paved the way for the current annexation plans. If Biden is stating that he will not consider reversing the embassy decision, he is signalling tacit approval for the momentum created by Trump to facilitate Israel’s colonial project in Palestine.
The international community has also played a treacherous game. In promoting two states as the only solution, it created an illusion of Trump being against the international consensus. However, the political disagreements will only be temporary. If the US elects a president who endorses the two-state paradigm, the international community will not refer to the unilateral US actions taken by the Trump administration, but rather focus on the US diplomatic engagement within international consensus post-Trump. There will be no effort to reclaim what Palestinians lost during Trump’s presidency, in much the same manner as the UN prefers to commemorate violations against the Palestinian people as opposed to upholding accountability and the right of return.
‘Hillary’s Been Enabling Sexual Predators’: Biden Accuser Rips Clinton for Endorsing Him
© AFP 2020 / DOMINICK REUTERS
Sputnik –
During a conference call on Tuesday, Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the presidential race, received a formal word of support from Hillary Clinton, yet another party member to wish the former vice president luck as he prepares to take on President Trump in November.
The former Senate staffer who is accusing Joe Biden of sexually abusing her in the 1990s has blasted Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I’m a lifelong Democrat”, Biden accuser Tara Reade told Fox News, before continuing her rant:
“But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me”, Reade fumed.She addressed at length Hillary Clinton’s “history enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviours and their inappropriate sexual misconduct”, arguing that this is not “what this country needs”.
“We don’t need that for our new generation coming up that wants institutional rape culture to change”, she stressed.
Biden’s press service has continuously dismissed the sexual assault claims, with Kate Bedingfield, Mr Biden’s communications director, busting the claims straight away, inviting journalists to verify them first: “Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims. We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false”, she said. Independently, the campaign released a statement from Marianne Baker, an executive assistant to Mr Biden from 1982 to 2000, who said: “In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period. Not from Ms Reade, not from anyone”.
Biden received Clinton’s endorsement via livestream on Tuesday, as both Democrats are stuck at home due to the current coronavirus crisis-caused lockdowns and self-isolation measures.
Biden has received a flurry of endorsements from prominent party members including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday, and former President Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 rival, earlier this month. Sanders, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, who was the last to give up the fight in the primary, also endorsed Biden seeking not to further split the party during a healthcare crisis.
However, amid all the endorsements, calls have been on a rise for the presumptive Dem nominee to personally respond to Reade’s claims, as she thundered the other day in comments to Fox:
“I will not be smeared, dismissed, or ignored. I stand in truth and I will keep speaking out”, Biden’s former employee said.Reports of ‘Prominent Senator’ Behaving Badly
A number of other persons who appear to corroborate her claims have recently made headlines, one of them being Reade’s former neighbour, who told Business Insider that she recalled hearing about the ex-Biden staffer’s alleged assault when Reade said the incident occurred – back in 1993.
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it”, she shared with the publication.
Another individual, Lorraine Sanchez who worked with Reade in the mid 1990s, told the edition that she remembered Reade explaining her dismissal from her previous job by raising concerns about sexual harassment by her former boss.
The allegation surfaced after a clip came out that allegedly features the voice of Reade’s mother phoning into “Larry King Live” in 1993 and asking if her daughter should turn to the press about a “prominent senator” behaving inappropriately.
Reade, who was among the women who came out last year with stories about Biden being too handsy, claiming he “just had her up against the wall” in a Capitol Hill hallway in 1993, when Reade worked on his staff during his tenure as a senator for Delaware.
Joe Biden’s ‘conspiracy theory’ memo to U.S. media doesn’t match the facts
John Solomon Reports | January 21, 2020
Former vice president Joe Biden’s extraordinary campaign memo this week imploring U.S. news media to reject the allegations surrounding his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company makes several bold declarations.
The memo by Biden campaign aides Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken specifically warned reporters covering the impeachment trial they would be acting as “enablers of misinformation” if they repeated allegations that the former vice president forced the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden worked as a highly compensated board member.
Biden’s memo argues there is no evidence that the former vice president’s or Hunter Biden’s conduct raised any concern, and that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation was “dormant” when the vice president forced the prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine.
The memo calls the allegation a “conspiracy theory” (and, in full disclosure, blames my reporting for the allegations surfacing last year.)
But the memo omits critical impeachment testimony and other evidence that paint a far different portrait than Biden’s there’s-nothing-to-talk-about-here rebuttal.
Here are the facts, with links to public evidence, so you can decide for yourself.
Fact: Joe Biden admitted to forcing Shokin’s firing in March 2016.
It is irrefutable, and not a conspiracy theory, that Joe Biden bragged in this 2018 speech to a foreign policy group that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev if then-Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko didn’t immediately fire Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. 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 told the 2018 audience in recounting what he told Poroshenko
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event.
Fact: Shokin’s prosecutors were actively investigating Burisma when he was fired.
While some news organizations cited by the Biden memo have reported the investigation was “dormant” in March 2016, official files released by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, in fact, show there was substantial investigative activity in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing.
The corruption investigations into Burisma and its founder began in 2014. Around the same time, Hunter Biden and his U.S. business partner Devon Archer were added to Burisma’s board, and their Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm began receiving regular $166,666 monthly payments, which totaled nearly $2 million a year. Both banks records seized by the FBI in America and Burisma’s own ledgers in Ukraine confirm these payments.
To put the payments in perspective, the annual amounts paid by Burisma to Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm were 30 times the average median annual household income for everyday Americans.
For a period of time in 2015, those investigations were stalled as Ukraine was creating a new FBI-like law enforcement agency known as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau ((NABU) to investigate endemic corruption in the former Soviet republic.
There was friction between NABU and the prosecutor general’s office for a while. And then in September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt demanded more action in the Burisma investigation. You can read his speech here. Activity ramped up extensively soon after.
In December 2015, the prosecutor’s files show, Shokin’s office transferred the evidence it had gathered against Burisma to NABU for investigation.
In early February 2016, Shokin’s office secured a court order allowing prosecutors to re-seize some of the Burisma founder’s property, including his home and luxury car, as part of the ongoing probe.
Two weeks later, in mid-February 2016, Latvian law enforcement sent this alert to Ukrainian prosecutors flagging several payments from Burisma to American accounts as “suspicious.” The payments included some monies to Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s firm. Latvian authorities recently confirmed it sent the alert.
Shokin told both me and ABC News that just before he was fired under pressure from Joe Biden he also was making plans to interview Hunter Biden.
Fact: Burisma’s lawyers in 2016 were pressing U.S. and Ukrainian authorities to end the corruption investigations.
Burisma’s main U.S. lawyer John Buretta acknowledged in this February 2017 interview with a Ukraine newspaper that the company remained under investigation in 2016, until he negotiated for one case to be dismissed and the other to be settled by payment of a large tax penalty.
Documents released under an open records lawsuit show Burisma legal team was pressuring the State Department in February 2016 to end the corruption allegations against the gas firm and specifically invoked Hunter Biden’s name as part of the campaign. You can read those documents here.
In addition, immediately after Joe Biden succeeded in getting Shokin ousted, Burisma’s lawyers sought to meet with his successor as chief prosecutor to settle the case. Here is the Ukrainian prosecutors’ summary memo of one of their meetings with the firm’s lawyers.
Fact: There is substantial evidence Joe Biden and his office knew about the Burisma probe and his son’s role as a board member.
The New York Times reported in this December 2015 article that the Burisma investigation was ongoing and Hunter Biden’s role in the company was undercutting Joe Biden’s push to fight Ukrainian corruption. The article quoted the vice president’s office.
In addition, Hunter Biden acknowledged in this interview he had discussed his Burisma job with his father on one occasion and that his father responded by saying he hoped the younger Biden knew what he was doing.
And when America’s new ambassador to Ukraine was being confirmed in 2016 before the Senate she was specifically advised to refer questions about Hunter Biden, Burisma and the probe to Joe Biden’s VP office, according to these State Department documents.
Fact: Federal Ethics rules require government officials to avoid taking policy actions affecting close relatives.
Office of Government Ethics rules require all government officials to recuse themselves from any policy actions that could impact a close relative or cause a reasonable person to see the appearance of a conflict of interest or question their impartiality.
“The impartiality rule requires an employee to consider appearance concerns before participating in a particular matter if someone close to the employee is involved as a party to the matter,” these rules state. “This requirement to refrain from participating (or recuse) is designed to avoid the appearance of favoritism in government decision-making.”
Fact: Multiple State Department officials testified the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
In House impeachment testimony, Obama-era State Department officials declared the juxtaposition of Joe Biden overseeing Ukraine policy, including the anti-corruption efforts, at the same his son Hunter worked for a Ukraine gas firm under corruption investigation created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
In fact, deputy assistant secretary George Kent said he was so concerned by Burisma’s corrupt reputation that he blocked a project the State Department had with Burisma and tried to warn Joe Biden’s office about the concerns about an apparent conflict of interest.
Likewise, the House Democrats’ star impeachment witness, former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, agreed the Bidens’ role in Ukraine created an ethic issue. “I think that it could raise the appearance of a conflict of interest,” she testified. You can read her testimony here.
Fact: Hunter Biden acknowleged he may have gotten his Burisma job solely because of his last name.
In this interview last summer, Hunter Biden said it might have been a “mistake” to serve on the Burisma board and that it was possible he was hired simply because of his proximity to the vice president.
“If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?,” a reporter asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” Hunter Biden answered. “But that’s — you know — I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”
Fact: Ukraine law enforcement reopened the Burisma investigation in early 2019, well before President Trump mentioned the matter to Ukraine’s new president Vlodymyr Zelensky.
This may be the single biggest under-reported fact in the impeachment scandal: four months before Trump and Zelensky had their infamous phone call, Ukraine law enforcement officials officially reopened their investigation into Burisma and its founder.
The effort began independent of Trump or his lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s legal work. In fact, it was NABU – the very agency Joe Biden and the Obama administration helped start – that recommended in February 2019 to reopen the probe.
NABU director Artem Sytnyk made this announcement that he was recommending a new notice of suspicion be opened to launch the case against Burisma and its founder because of new evidence uncovered by detectives.
Ukrainian officials said that new evidence included records suggesting a possible money laundering scheme dating to 2010 and continuing until 2015.
A month later in March 2019, Deputy Prosecutor General Konstantin Kulyk officially filed this notice of suspicion re-opening the case.
And Reuters recently quoted Ukrainian officials as saying the ongoing probe was expanded to allegations of theft of public funds.
The implications of this timetable are significant to the Trump impeachment trial because the president couldn’t have pressured Ukraine to re-open the investigation in July 2019 when Kiev had already done so on its own, months earlier.
For a complete timeline of all the key events in the Ukraine scandal, you can click here.
These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story
By John Solomon – The Hill – 09/26/19
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, Volodymyr 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.
Administer Justice’: What the Trump-Zelensky Call Transcript Does and Doesn’t Say
Sputnik – September 25, 2019
The White House has released a transcript of the controversial 25th July call between Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky – meanwhile, US lawmakers have begun a formal impeachment inquiry into the content of their conversation.
Not long after the call ended, an intelligence community ‘whistleblower’ lodged a complaint about Trump’s conduct during the chat. The exact contents of the complaint haven’t been released, but ever since senior Democrats have claimed the President had been attempting to boost his reelection prospects by pressuring Zelensky to contact Attorney General William Barr and allege Joe Biden lobbied Kiev officials to benefit his son Hunter’s private-sector work in Ukraine.
Moreover, they suggest Trump threatening to withhold aid from the country – which he has admitted – was intended to force Zelensky’s hand on the issue.
For his part, Trump and members of his administration have alleged Biden dangled the prospect of US financial support to coerce the Ukrainian government into firing its top prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016, at a time he was investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and allegedly Hunter.
Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call – got them by surprise!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2019
For his part, Trump claims it’s merely a matter of not wanting “our people”, like former Vice President Biden and his son, “creating the corruption already in the Ukraine”.
‘Sounds Horrible’
While the Wall Street Journal reported, based on anonymous briefings, that Trump asked Zelensky eight times to investigate Biden’s son and his work in Ukraine, in the transcript Trump mentions Biden thrice, as part of a wider discussion about the origins of the ‘Trump-Russia’ probe.
Noting the US does “a lot” for Ukraine, spending “a lot of effort and time” – “much more” than European countries, “who should be helping you more than they are”, are doing – the President asks for a favour.
“Our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation… I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I’d like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it… That whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine,” Trump inquires.
1/ Transcript shows Trump first asks Zelensky to help Barr/DOJ probe into Russiagate’s origins (recall that Ukrainians bragged about giving dirt to DNC https://t.co/9kv66xyh5N). Zelensky brings up Giuliani. Only one mention of Biden — and there’s no quid pro quo, not even close. pic.twitter.com/1Q4tCyvNvm
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 25, 2019
In other words, the President was referring to allegations the Democratic party colluded with Ukrainian officials to perpetuate smears alleging Trump had ties to the Russian state ahead of the November 2016 Presidential election.
He goes on to state he heard Ukraine had a prosecutor “who was very good” but was “shut down”, which was “really unfair”.
“A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. [Rudy] Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General… The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me,” Trump adds.
Missing the Point
While mainstream media outlets have almost universally presented Trump’s request as potentially suspicious, the actual contents of the conversation are a far cry from allegations that a “promise” was sought by Trump, with penalties for non-compliance. For one, no mention of US aid to Ukraine being reduced or stopped outright is made at any point, whether directly or indirectly – and in response to Trump’s requested “favour” Zelensky merely notes his country’s next prosecutor general will be his candidate, who will reopen the investigation of Burisma, and probe why it was closed in the first place.
Wow. The amount of reaching is actually quite remarkable. Shows you’re very creative
— Banana (@makeupbyana_kin) September 25, 2019
Furthermore, the Ukrainian President makes clear the question of whether the inquiry was nobbled, and by whom, is also an issue of intense interest to him, and forms part of a wider push to “drain the swamp” and “have a new format and a new type of government” in the country.
“The issue of the investigation is… actually the issue of making sure to restore honesty [in the country], so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure we administer justice in our country,” he states.
The abject lack of a ‘smoking gun’ in the transcript – and indeed the content clearly contradicting pre-release speculation – may account for why Democrats have now demanded to see the full complaint that was lodged, and for the staffer who lodged it to testify before Congress about their concerns.
Biden told ex-Ukraine President Yanukovich to resign, former VP reveals in memoirs
RT | December 26, 2017
Joe Biden bluntly demanded that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich resign back in 2014, the former US vice president revealed. He also confirmed the US was deeply involved in Kiev’s affairs during that year’s crisis.
From the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the US sought to direct Yanukovich in his handling of the riots on Maidan Square that eventually led to a coup in Ukraine, Biden says in his new book titled “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship And Purpose,” which was published in November, but has now been brought into the media spotlight in connection with the US’s role in the crisis. Biden reveals that he repeatedly called the then-Ukrainian president, telling him what he should or should not do.
At some point, Biden outright demanded that Yanukovich, a legitimately-elected leader of a sovereign nation, resign because he had “lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people” from Washington’s point of view. “I was telling him [Yanukovich] it was over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away,” Biden writes in his book, referring to “the last of [his] urgent calls to Yanukovich in late February of 2014.”
The former US vice president also claims that it was Yanukovich and his loyal law enforcement forces who were responsible for the Kiev massacre back in 2014. In fact, the events, in which unknown snipers gunned down dozens of protesters and several police officers in central Kiev, remain largely unsolved nearly four years on. The investigation of the tragedy was de facto put on the back burner by the new Ukrainian authorities.
The probe initially managed to produce several suspects, with all of them being Berkut riot police members, even though it was known from the very beginning that sniper fire initially came from protester-controlled positions. Later, the head of an MP committee probing the mass killings mentioned “unidentified public organizations” as possible culprits, but no charges were known to have been placed. These facts, however, never stopped Biden from accusing Yanukovich of “loosing his riot police on the streets of Kiev… to murder demonstrators” and declaring the ousted president the main culprit behind the crisis.
Even though the new Ukrainian government, which came to power after the coup, was far more agreeable to US officials, it garnered no particular praise from the former US vice president. Biden calls former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk “a young patriot” and repeatedly draws attention to his efforts to support the “emerging Ukrainian democracy,” but at the same time complains about “bickering” within the Ukrainian elites and their reluctance to put “loyalty to country” over their personal interests.
“I had spent months exchanging phone calls with both [President Petro] Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk, trying to convince them each, separately, to put loyalty to country over loyalty to political party,” Biden writes, referring to Ukrainian President Poroshenko alongside Yatsenyuk, who was eventually dismissed from the government in 2016. He also repeatedly mentions the two politicians’ “stubborn unwillingness to work together.”
Widespread corruption in Ukraine seems to be another issue that constantly irritated Biden. The former official admits that he had to be “hard on Poroshenko since his election” and to constantly urge him to “continue to fight the elements of corruption that were embedded in the political culture of Ukraine’s Soviet and post-Soviet governance,” particularly in the president’s own party.
Biden claims he went as far as to direct almost each step of the Ukrainian authorities. “Now you’ve got to put people in jail,” Biden says he told Yatsenyuk when the Ukrainian official came to the US. He also admits that he “had been on phone with either Poroshenko or… Yatsenyuk, or both, almost every week” for months.
However, Biden believes the present Ukrainian government “had exhibited a penchant for corruption, self-dealing and self-destructive behavior.” He also points out that Europe was in fact reluctant to support the idea of anti-Russian sanctions and he had to repeatedly remind Poroshenko “not to give the Europeans any excuse for walking away from the sanctions regime against Russia.” Indeed, anti-Russian sanctions appear to have been of particular importance for Biden, as he seemed much more concerned about keeping them in place than about Washington’s European allies.
Biden also admits that he had a low opinion of the Minsk Accords aimed at bringing about peace in Ukraine. However, he seemingly fails to understand their purpose, describing the initial 2014 deal as something that “did little to hold [Russian President Vladimir Putin] back.”
Biden believes that Russia – which is not even a party to the treaty – is not fulfilling its commitments under the agreements. The OSCE-brokered Minsk Agreements between representatives of Kiev and the breakaway rebel regions of eastern Ukraine were hammered out by Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, and formed the basis for a lasting ceasefire. However, the deal’s implementation has been largely stalled by Kiev’s refusal to uphold its part, including amnesty for rebel fighters and special autonomous status for the regions they control.
Biden was wrong: Intel agencies find no evidence of ‘Russian meddling’ in Italian polls
RT | December 14, 2017
Italian intelligence services did not find evidence to back up allegations voiced by former US Vice President Joe Biden. He claimed Moscow had meddled with Italy’s polls before and plans to do it again.
Two Italian intelligence agencies did not find any evidence of the alleged Russian interference into last year’s constitutional reform referendum, despite conducting “attentive monitoring” of possible foreign meddling, ANSA news agency reported. The chiefs of the Internal Information and Security Agency (AISI) and the External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE), Mario Parente and Alberto Manenti, respectively, faced the parliamentary intelligence committee this week.
The parliamentary hearings were triggered by an article by Biden, dubbed, “How to stand up to the Kremlin,” published earlier in December by the journal Foreign Affairs. Among the numerous accusations, largely repeating the mainstream media “Russian meddling” narrative, Biden claimed that Moscow interfered in the Italian Constitutional referendum and warned about alleged meddling in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
“A Russian effort is now under way to support the nationalist Northern League and the populist Five Star Movement in Italy’s upcoming parliamentary elections,” Biden stated, without providing any proof to back up the claim. The allegations prompted an angry response from the parties accused of getting Russian support.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League (Lega Nord), said that Italy’s ruling Democratic party “lost the referendum and will lose the elections, because the Italians have good sense, and not because Putin wants it,” as quoted by La Repubblica.
The 5 Star Movement responded to Biden by stating that “we all must respect the vote” and “know how to lose.” President Barack Obama’s former deputy simply did not get over the Democrats’ defeat last year, and was seeking to blame the Russians for everything he didn’t like, the party said in a Facebook post.
“Today, Biden says it is Russia’s fault, as he says it is Russia’s fault that Trump won and his party lost. Biden goes further and says Russia is helping the 5 Star Movement. He does not provide any evidence, this is unacceptable,” the post reads. The party’s candidate for prime minister, Luigi di Maio, dismissed Biden’s allegations as “fake news,” stating that millions of Italians voted ‘No’ during the referendum on their own, without “being paid by the Russians.”
The 2016 Constitutional referendum was aimed at reorganizing the Italian Senate and redirecting more powers from the regions to central government. The reform, however, failed spectacularly, as nearly 60 percent of Italians voted against it, prompting the resignation of then-PM Matteo Renzi, who currently leads the Democratic Party.
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Former Insiders Criticize Iran Policy as U.S. Hegemony
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
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