All Of These People Have Histories

I haven’t watched the impeachment hearings today. It annoys me that they are even happening. I am sure I will hear about them later from various news sources. I am also sure that what I hear will depend on the news source I choose. That is one of the reasons America is so divided right now–we can’t even agree on basic facts and the mainstream media is reporting opinion–not facts. Just for the record, rightwinggranny is an opinion blog that deals in facts.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about one of the witnesses in the hearing. It seems that George Kent has an interesting history.

The article reports:

Adam Schiff and the media will likely not touch on his controversial past in Ukraine.
According to Rudy Giuliani Kent was the official behind the dismissal of the Ukrainian government investigation of George Soros’s AntAC organization.

Rudy Giuliani tore into the Schiff show trials and their empty case against President Trump.

Rudy Giuliani: Also George Kent has a problem of his own. George Kent wrote a letter in which he asked that a case be dismissed by Lutsenko. And it was a case against Soros’s NGO AntAC and that company AntAC was right in the middle of gathering the dirty material on Trump, on Donald Trump Jr. It worked with Fusion GPS. The dismissal of that case has cost the government a lot of evidence that could be very, very damning in regard to collusion. But there’s enough left. There’s enough evidence left of collusion so that you got a very, very strong case that the DNC and Hillary Clinton were paying for and gathering information for Ukraine. In fact some of it is even documentary evidence… I would like to cross-examine George Kent. George Kent was her deputy, Marie Yovanovitch’s deputy. He was also the guy who set up the two so-called anti-corruption bureaus in the Ukraine that turned out to be Soros protection bureaus.

The article continues:

Kent is not a first-hand witness and much of his testimony is based off of second-hand knowledge. [Page 206-207]

Kevin Bacon has fewer degrees of separation to the Trump Zelensky call than George Kent.

That being said, his closed-door testimony revealed far more devastating pushback on the Democrat narrative than anything else.

Kent testified that it is appropriate for the State Department to look at the level of corruption in a country when evaluating foreign aid. [Page 103]

(Reminder: The Trump administration sent Ukraine lethal aid.)

Kent also testified that Hunter Biden being on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma while Joe Biden was VP was a conflict of interest. [Page 226-227]

And according to his testimony, when he raised corruption concerns with the Obama White House, he was rebuffed and was told “There was no further bandwidth to deal” with Hunter. [Page 226-227]

It really does look like we are investigating the wrong people.

Following The Money

We don’t pay our national leaders a lot of money, yet many of them become millionaires while in office or shortly after leaving office. It happens on both sides of the aisle, and I believe it is time we looked into how this occurs. Meanwhile, in one instance someone has.

The Ukraine News Agency is reporting today that Burisma Group, a Ukrainian energy company, paid former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden received $900,000 for lobbying activities. This was reported by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada member Andriy Derkach, who cited investigation materials.

The article reports:

Derkach publicized documents which, as he said, “describe the mechanism of getting money by Biden Sr.” at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine’s press center in Kyiv on Wednesday.

“This was the transfer of Burisma Group’s funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company. Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,” Derkach said.

He also publicized sums that were transferred to Burisma Group representatives, in particular Hunter Biden, a son of the former U.S. vice president.

“According to the documents, Burisma paid no less than $16.5 million to [former Polish President, who became an independent director at Burisma Holdings in 2014] Aleksander Kwasniewski, [chairman of the Burisma board of independent directors] Alan Apter, [Burisma independent director] Devon Archer and Hunter Biden [who joined the Burisma board of directors in 2014],” Derkach said.

“Using political and economic levelers of influencing Ukrainian authorities and manipulating the issue of providing financial aid to Ukraine, Joe Biden actively assisted closing criminal cases into the activity of former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, who is the founder and owner of Burisma Group,” he said.

The article concludes:

It was reported earlier that Derkach publicized correspondence between the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and officers of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. According to publicized correspondence, starting from July 14, 2017, the lists of criminal proceedings undertaken by NABU officers were sent from the electronic mailbox of Polina Chyzh, an assistant to NABU first deputy head Gizo Uglava, to the electronic mailbox of Hanna Yemelianova, a legal specialist of the anti-corruption program of the U.S. Justice Department at U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Derkach also said that NABU-leak materials will be published on his Facebook account and materials that he got from investigating journalists have already been passed to Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations and the Prosecutor’s General Office.

He also said he will initiate the creation of an ad hoc parliamentary investigative commission and has already requested launching a criminal case against Ukrainian officials into interference into U.S. elections. The court session is scheduled for October 21, he said.

Burisma Holdings is a Cyprus-registered gas producing company holding assets in Ukraine. It is one of Ukraine’s top-three independent gas producers headquartered in Kyiv. Zlochevsky is the founder and the ultimate beneficiary owner of the company.

It may be a blessing to the Democrats that Joe Biden is no longer their leading presidential candidate.