Is There Anyone Honestly Doing Their Job In Washington?

On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about fprmer National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella. Eric Ciaramella was the person who triggered the first impeachment of President Trump. It has recently come to light that Mr. Ciaramella was equally aware of the Ukrainian corruption involving the Biden family.

The article reports:

The “whistleblower” who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.

But four years earlier, while working as a national security analyst attached to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office, Ciaramella was a close adviser when Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine unless it fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. At the time, the corruption-riddled energy giant was paying Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars.

Those payments — along with other evidence tying Joe Biden to his family’s business dealings — received little attention in 2019 as Ciaramella accused Trump of a corrupt quid pro quo. Neither did subsequent evidence indicating that Hunter Biden’s associates had identified Shokin as a “key target.” These matters are now part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

It’s interesting that his conscience only required him to object to President Trump’s questioning the corruption in Ukraine.

The article concludes:

A spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, which is leading the Biden impeachment inquiry, declined to say whether Ciaramella is on the witness list. “I don’t have anything for you on this at this time,” said House Oversight Communications Director Jessica Collins. However, Comer has publicly described the “whistleblower” impeachment of Trump as a “cover-up” operation for the alleged Biden blackmail scheme in Ukraine involving U.S. aid and the Burisma corruption probe.

What Ciaramella witnessed and what he documented in notes he took during high-level Biden-Ukraine meetings could now be relevant to the active impeachment inquiry of President Biden. The House may have little choice but to hold the kind of hearings the Democrats blocked during the earlier impeachment by keeping Ciaramella’s identity — and his own potential conflict — secret.

As the catalyst for Trump’s impeachment, Ciaramella could now be a reluctant witness for Biden’s.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It provides a lot of insight to the lawfare that President Trump has had to deal with since he walked down the elevator in 2015.

Be Careful How Much You Skim

On Sunday, Zero Hedge posted an article with the following headline:

Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

I think this comes under the heading “You can’t make this stuff up.” Democrats in Congress have consistently blocked an audit of how money sent to Ukraine is spent, so Americans really have no idea where their tax dollars are going.

The article reports:

As Seymour Hersh recently reported, CIA Director Burns had to warn Zelensky to stop stealing so much money.

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns.

His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.

The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.

Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else.

“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,”the intelligence official told me.

Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.

The article concludes

But, remember, the first rule of sending money to corrupt Ukraine is… you don’t talk about how corrupt Ukraine is (or you get impeached).

 

The Hazards Of Using Ecology-Friendly Weapons

On Friday, rt.com posted an article about the use of eco-friendly weapons in Ukraine.

The article reports:

Some of the military hardware supplied to Ukraine by the West has become inoperable after being damaged by rodents, Le Figaro has reported, citing a French fighter in the ranks of Kiev’s forces.

Eco-friendly weapons provided to the Ukrainian military by the country’s foreign backers are “sometimes unsuitable for the realities of the front” and “don’t come out well” in an actual conflict, the reported in an article on Thursday.

As proof of its claim, Le Figaro provided an account by an unnamed French fighter, who complained that “rodents ate the cables on some of the vehicles” used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Some of the protective sheaths of electrical wires [in the Western-supplied hardware] are made of corn fiber,” which attracts mice and rats, he said.

Le Figaro stressed that “the phenomenon is marginal, but it tells the story of the confrontation of the Western military equipment with reality.”

“Western vehicles were designed as a technological showcase. But, in the mud and cold, they don’t always work,” the French fighter is cited as saying.

“Luckily, the Ukrainians still had a few crusts” in their arsenal, he added, referring to the old Soviet-made hardware.

There have been many jokes about having to plug electric tanks in to recharge them before battle, but this is the first article I have read about mice and rats eating the sheaths that are supposed to protect wires. I have, however, seen examples of rodents eating gas lines in vehicles parked near cornfields. Making protective sheaths out of material that is edible to rodents in a place where food is probably scarce does not seem like a good idea.

Exactly What Are We Supporting In Ukraine?

How is the Ukrainian government acting any differently than the Russian government they are fighting? What citizens’ rights does the Ukrainian government under President Volodymyr Zelensky support?

On Friday, Breitbart reported:

American journalist Gonzalo Lira has died in a Ukrainian prison, according to show host Tucker Carlson.

Carlson posted on X on Friday evening:

Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several weeks ago we spoke to his father, who predicted his son would be killed.

In early December, Carlson interviewed Lira’s father, who blamed President Joe Biden and the State Department for allowing his son to languish in a Ukrainian prison for criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, the West’s response to the Russian invasion, and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Lira is a dual citizen of Chile and the U.S., and was living in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of the invasion last year, as reported by Breitbart News’s Kurt Zindulka. He began giving his on-the-ground perspective of the war, attributing it to Western antagonism to Moscow.

Lira was arrested multiple times, and was last imprisoned for attempting to cross the border of Ukraine and seek asylum in Hungary. He faced multiple years in prison under Ukraine’s wartime propaganda laws, being accused of having “criminal intent aimed at the manufacture, distribution materials containing justification, recognition as legitimate, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine…as well as justification, recognition as legitimate of the temporary occupation of part of Ukraine territory.”

He was also reportedly accused of publishing videos with the faces of Ukrainian soldiers, despite many such videos being freely available online and published by news outlets.

“The charges against me are just because of my opinion about this conflict, I did no harm to anyone,” Lira claimed before his latest imprisonment.

In September, the State Department confirmed to Breitbart News that it was aware of Lira being imprisoned in Ukraine, saying in a statement:

We are aware of the detention of Mr. Lira in Ukraine. We take our role in assisting U.S. citizens abroad seriously and are providing all appropriate assistance. We are monitoring the situation but have no further comment at this time. We reiterate our message that U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict.

Considering the fact that Mr. Lira is an investigative journalist in Ukraine, does anyone really believe that the American State Department wanted him released?

 

 

Why We Need Accountability For The Money And Weapons We Are Sending To Ukraine

On Monday, The American Thinker posted the following headline:

Foiled Muslim terrorists were set to purchase American weapons from Ukrainian military official for pennies on the dollar

The article reports:

In April of 2022, Reuters ran an article on the status of a particular American munition—thanks to Joe Biden’s willingness to empty American stores for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the war in Ukraine, the stock of Raytheon’s “Stinger” missile was dwindling, and “re-stocking challenges” had appeared on the horizon. A month later, in May, Axios reported this:

The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon Technologies a $624 million contract to produce 1,300 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to replenish its stock after sending around 1,400 of the missile systems to Ukraine in response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

The jihadists who planned attacks on cathedrals in Austria and Germany this past Christmas were offered a rocket launcher by an unnamed army official in Ukraine, according to the Austrian news outlet, Exxpress.

The site reported on Wednesday that the German Federal Criminal Police Office had obtained testimony from one of the suspects affiliated with the Islamic State terror cell in the Afghan province of Khorasan (ISPK) that revealed the group had been approached by “a contact who is supposed to fight in the army in the Donetsk Basin” regarding the purchase of a U.S.-manufactured FIM-92 Stinger missile.

It was reported that the Ukrainian national within his country’s military ranks offered to sell the weapon for $5,000 and regularly visits Germany to attempt to sell military equipment on the black market.

The article concludes:

First, the cadaver-in-chief pulls out of Afghanistan in the most asinine and irresponsible of ways, causing the murders of American soldiers and Afghan civilians, and hands billions of dollars over to the terrorist group now running the government; then, he delivers weapons over to one of the most notoriously corrupt government cartels in the history of the world, and those arms somehow make it to the black market, being sold to the very jihadists who have “intensified” thanks to his efforts and foreign policies.

Seriously, what a tangled web—how is it possible that one man can play such a crucial role in crisis after crisis? Well, because that man is Joe Biden.

No more money to Ukraine.

The Other Side Of The Story

Impeachment continues. We all know that President Trump’s constitutional rights were violated during the initial hearings in the House of Representatives–he was not allowed to face his accusers, his lawyers were not allowed to call witnesses, and much of the cross examination of the Democrats’ witnesses was disallowed or limited. All of those things are in violation of the constitutional rights supposedly allowed ALL American citizens. Now the President’s defense team is making their case to the Senate.

Townhall posted an article today that lists six facts that were either misrepresented or omitted in the House Managers’ presentation to the Senate.

The article reports:

According to Purpura (White House Deputy Counsel Mike Purpura), there are six key facts that “have not and will not change.”

1. The transcript proves President Trump didn’t condition military aid or a meeting on anything.

“The paused security assistance funds aren’t even mentioned on the call,” Purpura said.

2. Ukrainian officials said they never felt pressured into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden or his son, Hunter, for corruption. They also said quid pro quo never took place.

3. President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials were unaware of the paused military aide.

“The security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25th call,” Purpura said.

4. None of the Democrats’ witnesses say President Trump tied an investigation into the Bidens to the military aid or a meeting.

5. “The security assistance flowed on September 11th and a presidential meeting took place on September 25, without the Ukrainian government announcing any investigation,” Purpura said.

6. President Trump has been a strong supporter of Ukraine.

“The Democrats’ blind eye to impeach the president does not and cannot change the fact, as attested to by the Democrats’ own witnesses, that President Trump has been a better friend and supporter of Ukraine than his predecessor,” Purpura explained. “Those are the facts.”

What a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money this trial has been when everyone could have simply read the transcript of the telephone call in question. We need to vote anyone out of office who has promoted the idea that President Trump has committed an impeachable offense. I truly believe that the rush to impeach has more to do with the crimes of some Congressmen that may be revealed in the Durham report than anything President Trump has or has not done.

I Don’t Think This Is The Right Answer

Breitbart reported yesterday that Senator Lindsey Graham has stated that he would work to end a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump as soon as possible. That is not the right way to handle this. The American people have been bombarded with ‘impeach President Trump’ for almost three years. They have heard lie after lie and accusation after accusation about what the President is or has done. An impeachment trial in the Senate is probably the only chance the President will get to present the evidence which disputes those lies. We need a Senate trial that calls as witnesses the Ukrainian prosecutor that was fired, Hunter Biden, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, Andrew Weissmann, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, etc. These people need to be forced to testify under oath about their actions from 2016 forward. FISA Warrants need to be looked at.

The article reports:

Graham said, “Here’s what I’m going to do with the trial: I’m going to try to get it over as quickly as possible, listen to the House case — let them present their case. If there’s nothing new and dramatic, I would be ready to vote, and we can do all this other stuff in congressional oversight.”

He added, “I am saying that I’m going to end this as quickly as I can for the good of the country. When 51 of us say we’ve heard enough, the trial is going to end. The president’s going to be acquitted. He may want to call Schiff. He may want to call Hunter Biden. He may want to call Joe Biden. But here’s my advice to the president: if the Senate is ready to vote and acquit you, you should celebrate that. We can look at this other stuff outside of impeachment. Impeachment is tearing the country apart. I don’t want to give it any more credibility than it deserves.”

I totally disagree. It is time for the whole truth to come out. If those responsible for the attempted coup are not held responsible, their actions will be a template for the future removal of duly-elected presidents.

Watch The Talking Points

There is no general source cited for this article. It is simply some observations I have made in the past few days. Has anyone else noticed that the current talking point of those who want to impeach the President is that he asked for a foreign country to investigate a political rival? There is a total avoidance of the fact that transcripts of two telephone calls does not validate that charge. There is also a total avoidance of the fact that the Christopher Steele dossier was an illustration of that charge. If you have doubts, read the transcript.

Another talking point is that if someone is running for office, they cannot be investigated for any past actions. This idea somehow has never applied to President Trump–they are still trying to get his tax returns in the hope of finding out that he deducted something he shouldn’t have. Have they forgotten the Clinton’s charity deductions for used underwear? Yuck.

The next talking point is that Ukraine did not interfere in the 2016 election. Again, you have to ignore a lot of basic facts to believe that. Politico wrote about Ukrainian interference in 2017. This is the link (if the article has not been taken down). There were also other articles written at the time noting that the corrupt Ukraine government had egg on its face when President Trump won the 2016 election.

All of these talking points are being spun daily–even on the supposedly conservative news programs. As voters, all of us need to pay attention when supposed experts are telling us things that are simply not true.

Lies That Went Unanswered

The Republicans were relatively successful in knocking down some of the lies told during the impeachment hearings, but they missed a few. At one point Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, under oath, asserted all the factual elements in John Solomon’s columns at The Hill about Ukraine were false, except maybe the grammar. John Solomon posted an article at his website yesterday disputing that assertion.

The article lists the following facts:

Fact 1: Hunter Biden was hired in May 2014 by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, at a time when his father Joe Biden was Vice President and overseeing US-Ukraine Policy. Here is the announcement. Hunter Biden’s hiring came just a few short weeks after Joe Biden urged Ukraine to expand natural gas production and use Americans to help. You can read his comments to the Ukrainian prime minister here. Hunter Biden’s firm then began receiving monthly payments totaling $166,666. You can see those payments here.

Fact 2: Burisma was under investigation by British authorities for corruption and soon came under investigation by Ukrainian authorities led by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

Fact 3: Vice President Joe Biden and his office were alerted by a December 2015 New York Times article that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma and that Hunter Biden’s role at the company was undercutting his father’s anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

Fact 4: The Biden-Burisma issue created the appearance of a conflict of interest, especially for State Department officials. I especially refer you to State official George Kent’s testimony here. He testified he viewed Burisma as corrupt and the Bidens as creating the perception of a conflict of interest. His concerns both caused him to contact the vice president’s office and to block a project that State’s USAID agency was planning with Burisma in 2016. In addition, Ambassador Yovanovitch testified she, too, saw the Bidens-Burisma connection as creating the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can read her testimony here.

Fact 5: The Obama White House invited Shokin’s prosecutorial team to Washington for meetings in January 2016 to discuss their anticorruption investigations. You can read about that here. Also, here is the official agenda for that meeting in Ukraine and English. I call your attention to the NSC organizer of the meeting.

Fact 6: The Ukraine investigation of Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma Holdings, escalated in February 2016 when Shokin’s office raided the home of company owner Mykola Zlochevsky and seized his property. Here is the announcement of that court-approved raid.

Fact 7: Shokin was making plans in February 2016 to interview Hunter Biden as part of his investigation. You can read his interview with me here, his sworn deposition to a court here and his interview with ABC News here.

Fact 8: Burisma’s American representatives lobbied the State Department in late February 2016 to help end the corruption allegations against the company, and specifically invoked Hunter Biden’s name as a reason to intervene. You can read State officials’ account of that effort here

Fact 9: Joe Biden boasted in a 2018 videotape that he forced Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid. You can view his videotape here.

Fact 10: Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn’t shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here.

Fact 11:  The day Shokin’s firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma’s legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here.

Fact 12: Burisma’s legal representatives secured that meeting April 6, 2016 and told Ukrainian prosecutors that “false information” had been spread to justify Shokin’s firing, according to a Ukrainian government memo about the meeting. The representatives also offered to arrange for the remaining Ukrainian prosecutors to meet with U.S  State and Justice officials. You can read the Ukrainian prosecutors’ summary memo of the meeting here and here and the Burisma lawyers’ invite to Washington here.

Fact 13: Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer’s February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here.

Fact 14: In March 2019, Ukraine authorities reopened an investigation against Burisma and Zlochevsky based on new evidence of money laundering. You can read NABU’s February 2019 recommendation to re-open the case here, the March 2019 notice of suspicion by Ukraine prosecutors here and a May 2019 interview here with a Ukrainian senior law enforcement official stating the investigation was ongoing. And here is an announcement this week that the Zlochevsky/Burisma probe has been expanded to include allegations of theft of Ukrainian state funds.  

Fact 15: The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump’s election chances. You can read the embassy’s statement here and here. Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying “Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning.” You can read her testimony here.

Fact 16: Chalupa sent an email to top DNC officials in May 2016 acknowledging she was working on the Manafort issue. You can read the email here.

Fact 17: Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an OpEd in The Hill in August 2016 slamming GOP nominee Donald Trump for his policies on Russia despite a Geneva Convention requirement that ambassadors not become embroiled in the internal affairs or elections of their host countries. You can read Ambassador Chaly’s OpEd here and the Geneva Convention rules of conduct for foreign diplomats here. And your colleagues Ambassador Yovanovitch and Dr. Hill both confirmed this, with Dr. Hill testifying this week that Chaly’s OpEd was “probably not the most advisable thing to do.”

Fact 18: A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine’s government in the 2016 U.S. election.  You can read the court ruling here. Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality.

Fact 19: George Soros’ Open Society Foundation issued a memo in February 2016 on its strategy for Ukraine, identifying the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Centre as the lead for its efforts. You can read the memo here.

Fact 20: The State Department and Soros’ foundation jointly funded the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. You can read about that funding here from the Centre’s own funding records and George Kent’s testimony about it here.

Fact 21: In April 2016, US embassy charge d’affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here. Kent testified he signed the letter here.

Fact 22: Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here.

Fact 23: Ambassador Yovanovitch and her embassy denied Lutsenko’s claim, calling it a “fabrication.” I reported their reaction here.

Fact 24: Despite the differing accounts of what happened at the Lutsenko-Yovanovitch meeting, a senior U.S. official in an interview arranged by the State Department stated to me in spring 2019 that US officials did pressure Lutsenko’s office on several occasions not to “prosecute, investigate or harass” certain Ukrainian activists, including Parliamentary member Leschenko, journalist Vitali Shabunin, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre and NABU director Sytnyk. You can read that official’s comments here. In addition, George Kent confirmed this same information in his deposition here.

Fact 25: In May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions sent an official congressional letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking that Yovanovitch be recalled as ambassador to Ukraine. Sessions and State confirmed the official letter, which you can read here.

Fact 26: In fall 2018, Ukrainian prosecutors, using a third party, hired an American lawyer (a former U.S. attorney) to proffer information to the U.S. government about certain activities at the U.S. embassy, involving Burisma and involving the 2016 election, that they believed might have violated U.S. law. You can read their account here. You can also confirm it independently by talking to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan or the American lawyer representing the Ukrainian prosecutors’ interests.

Fact 27: In May 2016, one of George Soros’ top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here.

Fact 28: In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here.

In the article John Solomon asks Lt. Col. Vindman to provide any information that contradicts these facts. If Lt. Col. Vindman is not able to do that, he needs to correct his testimony.

Is There Anyone Honest In This Farce?

Breitbart posted an article today about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony. The article cites an obvious lie in the official summary of President Trump’s phone call to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The article reports:

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman admitted he made up elements of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an official summary.

Prior to the call, Vindman included a discussion about corruption in the talking points provided to the president but Trump did not use them in the call.

The summary Vindman wrote after the call read:

President Trump underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – within its internationally recognized borders – and expressed his commitment to work together with President-elect Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.

However, when he testified, Lt. Col. Vindman admitted that the part about rooting out corruption was not actually in the call–they were in his talking points provided to the President.

This is consistent with the actions of Lt. Col Vindman–sources have revealed that the reason he was concerned about the call was that his talking points were not followed. It is becoming apparent that the man is behaving like a spoiled child who is unhappy because someone didn’t listen to him.

Do we have to remind the entire State Department that the President is the person who sets foreign policy? I realize that a President only serves for four or eight years, but during those years, he is in charge. If State Department employees cannot grasp that concept, they need to find another employer.

Why Are We Always Hearing The Same Names?

I’m not real fond of conspiracy theories. I don’t know the details of the John Kennedy assassination, and I have no idea if a cure for cancer is being suppressed. But the electronic age makes it possible to trace connections between people and groups through email records. I suspect there are more than a few people walking around now that don’t appreciate that fact. One person that might not have wanted his emails exposed would be Eric Ciaramella, the person most like to be the unnamed whistleblower.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article with the following headline, “Emails: Open Society Kept Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities.” Eric Ciaramella is a CIA Analyst who worked for the Obama and Trump administrations. Why would he be receiving Open Society (a George Soros organization) emails (along with then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair)?

The article reports:

The emails spotlight Soros’s access to national security officials under the Obama administration on the matter of Ukraine.

In one instance, Jeff Goldstein, senior policy analyst for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, sent a June 9, 2016 email to Nuland and Ciaramella, who were the missive’s primary recipients.

CC’d were three other State Department officials involved in European affairs, including Alexander Kasanof who worked at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

The message read:

I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine.

The email revealed that “GS” – meaning Soros – “is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with PM Groyman,” referring to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The email stated that Soros told Hahn “that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future.”

Is it possible that the current hearings focused on the actions of President Trump and the Ukrainian President trying to deal with the corruption in Ukraine are being staged to distract us from the extreme corruption that was going with the cooperation of the Obama administration?

Don’t Look For This Name On The Witness List

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko.

The article reports:

Badly undermining Democrats’ impeachment narrative, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told the press in Kiev on Thursday, “I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance.”

That is, between the investigations President Trump wanted into 1) Ukrainian interference in the 2016 campaign and 2) Joe and Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma, on the one hand, and US aid that Trump put on hold this summer, on the other.

He specified that he didn’t hear that message from Trump’s top envoy, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, who “did not tell us, and did not tell me exactly, about the relation between the assistance and the investigations.”

In summary: “Yes, investigations were mentioned, you know, in a presidential conversation. But there was no clear connection between these events.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also made it plain he never felt undue pressure to investigate the Bidens. And he never did, yet the aid went through anyway.

If you were paying close attention to the circus in Washington, you probably noticed that the charges against President Trump have suddenly changed from quid pro quo to bribery. That is the result of focus groups engaged by the Democrats that showed that the concept of bribery carried more impact that the idea of quid pro quo. When bribery doesn’t resonate the way they want it to, they will move on to something else. Meanwhile we have trade deals that need to be approved and infrastructure that is crumbling. Hopefully, the voters will replace the ‘resistance’ leaders in the House of Representatives in the next election.

As Email Evidence Is Uncovered…

Periodically I write an article that I have little understanding of. This is one of those. I am posting it because it is important, but I don’t fully understand exactly what went on.

John Solomon Reports posted an article yesterday about newly released memos that show that Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016 election cycle, including one just a month before Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his son’s company for corruption.

The Conservative Treehouse also posted a similar article yesterday. The Conservative Treehouse has screenshots of the memos in question.

Remember, this is the scandal the mainstream media describes as a conspiracy theory. When there is concrete evidence, it is no longer a theory.

I am beginning to think that the reason the media wants to bury the entire Ukraine scandal involving former Vice-President Biden is that it will eventually link to Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

This is the story found at John Solomon Reports:

During that February 2016 contact, a U.S. representative for Burisma Holdings sought a meeting with Undersecretary of State Catherine A. Novelli to discuss ending the corruption allegations against the Ukrainian firm where Hunter Biden worked as a board member, according to memos obtained under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. (I filed that suit this summer with the help of the public interest law firm the Southeastern Legal Foundation.)

Just three weeks before Burisma’s overture to State, Ukrainian authorities raided the home of the oligarch who owned the gas firm and employed Hunter Biden, a signal the long-running corruption probe was escalating in the middle of the U.S. presidential election.

Hunter Biden’s name, in fact, was specifically invoked by the Burisma representative as a reason the State Department should help, according to a series of email exchanges among U.S. officials trying to arrange the meeting. The subject line for the email exchanges read simply “Burisma.”

“Per our conversation, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies requested a meeting to discuss with U/S Novelli USG remarks alleging Burisma (Ukrainian energy company) of corruption,” a Feb. 24, 2016, email between State officials read. “She noted that two high profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company (including Hunter Biden as a board member).

“Tramontano would like to talk with U/S Novelli about getting a better understanding of how the U.S. came to the determination that the company is corrupt,” the email added. “According to Tramontano there is no evidence of corruption, has been no hearing or process, and evidence to the contrary has not been considered.”

At the time, Novelli was the most senior official overseeing international energy issues for State. The undersecretary position, of which there are several, is the third-highest-ranking job at State, behind the secretary and deputy secretary. And Tramontano was a lawyer working for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington firm that was hired by Burisma to help end a long-running corruption investigation against the gas firm in Ukraine.

Tramontano and another Blue Star official, Sally Painter, both alumni of Bill Clinton’s administration, worked with New York-based criminal defense attorney John Buretta to settle the Ukraine cases in late 2016 and 2017. I wrote about their efforts previously here

Burisma Holdings records obtained by Ukrainian prosecutors state the gas firm made a $60,000 payment to Blue Star in November 2015.

The emails show Tramontano was scheduled to meet Novelli on March 1, 2016, and that State Department officials were scrambling to get answers ahead of time from the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

The records don’t show whether the meeting actually took place. The FOIA lawsuit is ongoing and State officials are slated to produce additional records in the months ahead.

Please follow the links above to see the screenshots and read the entire story. We now have proof that the Bidens engaged in behavior that is probably illegal. The question is whether or not the mainstream media will report it.

This Obviously Did Not Go As Planned

Theoretically a lawyer interrogating a witness is never supposed to ask a question that he doesn’t already know the answer to. Asking a question you don’t know the answer to can lead to all sorts of bad things. Adam Schiff is a lawyer–he should know that. Well, evidently he had a moment when he forgot that principle.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the testimony before the basement committee being run by Adam Schiff. Tim Morrison, the National Security Council’s Senior Director for European Affairs, was testifying. Mr. Morrison was in on the call, so he is not a hearsay witness.

This is the quote from the testimony from CBS News:

I also reviewed the Memorandum of Conversation (“MemCont’) of the July 25 phone call that was released by the White House. I listened to the call as it occurred from the Situation Room. To the best of my recollection, the MemCon accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call. I also recall that I did not see anyone from the NSC Legal Advisor’s Office in the room during the call. After the call, I promptly asked the NSC Legal Advisor and his Deputy to review it. I had three concerns about a potential leak of the MemCon: first, how it would play out in Washington’s polarized environment; second, how a leak would affect the bipartisan support our Ukrainian partners currently experience in Congress; and third, how it would affect the Ukrainian perceptions of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed.

It is interesting that Mr. Morrison understood that the contents of the call would be twisted and used for political purposes. He was right. At this point I would also like to note that it is very likely that Joe Biden’s son was not the only relative of an American politician tied up in Ukrainian oil corruption. I suspect that as more information comes out about Ukrainian corruption we will see other names we recognize.

 

A Very Interesting Group Of Connections

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some interesting connections that Colonel Alexander Vindman, Adam Schiff’s recent impeachment witness has.

The article notes:

Then last night, Obama’s former Russian Ambassador Michael McFaul jumped in with Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney on anyone who called Vindman out for spying on President Trump in the White House. NBC reported

Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration, praised Vindman in a tweet Monday night and called the attacks on the witness “shameful.”

“I served with Lt. Colonel Vindman in Moscow,” McFaul wrote. “Vindman is a patriot, who has served his country with honor and distinction, both on and off the battlefield. He was an absolutely first-rate military attache at the embassy, one of the best on the team.”

The fact that Vindman is connected to McFaul is alarming.  McFaul was one of the first to attack President Trump’s attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for investigating Ukrainian corruption involved in the Russia collusion scam.  During his work, Rudy identified the crimes committed by the Bidens in their pay-for-play scam in the Ukraine.

…Perhaps the most shocking observation of McFaul is related to his invitation in front of Congress at a Foreign Affairs Committee. Pictures of the event are telling, not necessarily because of McFaul, but rather because of the individual he has sitting directly behind him, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

McFaul’s Congressional hearing occurred eight days after the now famous Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr. This meeting resulted in Donald Jr. being interrogated for hours by Congress over his meeting with Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya, who attended a Women’s March in Chicago, the day after President Trump was inaugurated, has denied any connections with the Kremlin. She is now famous for the following –

Veselnitskaya met with Donald Jr. during the 2016 presidential election campaign after a promise to deliver damaging opposition research that would prove Hillary Clinton’s collusion with the Russian government.

Donald Jr. has admitted no such research was obtained and that the meeting was essentially fruitless.

What is more shocking is that Veselnitskaya met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, before and after her meeting with Donald Jr. Fusion is the firm behind the phony Trump-Russia dossier that was never confirmed and very possibly all made up but nevertheless was used by Obama’s Deep State to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on President Trump.

Vindman is also connected to Glenn Simpson.  Vindman was in Eurasia, specializing in Russian affairs, at the same region as Glenn Simpson, who was also specializing in Russian affairs was there, as well as Christopher Steele, who was also specializing in Russian affairs at the time. 

Wow. The connections between those attempting to change the election results of 2016 are simply amazing.

Crooks Thrive In Darkness

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that Democrats are refusing to allow Republican lawmakers to view the transcripts from the impeachment proceedings. What manner of justice is this?

The article reports:

Democrats refuse to allow Republicans ANY CONSIDERATION in the entire process. They will not allow Republicans to call ANY witnesses. Democrats are only leaking tidbits that help them to the media.  And Democrats are NOT EVEN CALLING on their main witness — a partisan anti-Trump CIA officer who was spying on President Trump in the White House and who has NO DIRECT KNOWLEDGE of the president’s specific phone call to the Ukrainian leader. The leaker’s only evidence is hearsay that has already been debunked by the released transcript of the phone call.

And now this…
Democrats are already losing their battle with the truth and with the public.
Americans know they are hiding and lying.
Every top swing vote state, by wide margins, do not approve of this sham impeachment process of President Trump.

The article concludes:

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ): The reality is when you close the doors, you’re saying we don’t trust anybody but us to get to the truth. And they’re actually, the word came out tonight, they’re not even going to let these guys, members of the committee, get access to the transcripts anymore.

Laura Ingraham: What? What? Whoa-woah-woah… What is the, what are they doing that for? Why are they doing that?

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY): they want to be able to prepare their report. And they don’t want to let us to get the rest of the information out. So this is not a level playing field…

THESE PEOPLE ARE LAWLESS!

The Republicans in the Senate can call witnesses. Why haven’t they?

There Seems To Be A Lot More To The Ukraine Story

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article shedding light on an aspect of the Ukraine scandal that has yet to be explored.

The article reports:

Last week House Democrats called in fired US Ambassador Marie Yovanovich to testify in their sham impeachment proceedings.

Ambassador Yovanovich is a noted Trump-hater who blocked Ukrainian officials from traveling to the United States to hand over evidence of Obama misconduct during the 2016 election to President Trump.

Yovanovich was US ambassador to Ukraine during the 2016 election when the Ukrainian government was colluding with the DNC and Hillary Campaign to undermine the US presidential election.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenkoko told journalists in March that Yovanovitch gave him a “do not prosecute” list during their first meeting.

It gets worse.

The article continues:

Starting in 2018 Yovanovich denied Ukrainian officials visas to enter the United States to hand over evidence of Obama administration misconduct to Trump administration officials.

Wednesday night on Hannity John Solomon announced that the former Ambassador Yovanovich was monitoring the reporters digging into Ukrainian lawlessness.

There is evidence now that Yovanovich was spying on John Solomon.

There will be more to come.

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.

The Truth Is Very Different From What The Media Is Reporting

If you are someone who relies on the mainstream media, you are probably ready to impeach President Trump. That is sad and destructive. The media has been leading the charge on impeachment since January 2017 when President Trump was sworn in. This is a political activity aimed as defeating the President in the 2020 election. If it works, it will provide the template for future campaigns. That will be very damaging to our republic, particularly if the media decides to take sides as they have currently done.

The Federalist posted an article yesterday about the testimony of Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served for two years as the top U.S. diplomatic envoy to Ukraine.

The article reports:

Congressional testimony from the former top American envoy to Ukraine directly contradicts the impeachment narrative offered by congressional Democrats and their media allies. Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served for two years as the top U.S. diplomatic envoy to Ukraine, testified on Thursday that he was never aware of and never took part in any effort to push the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter. He also stressed that the interactions between Giuliani and Ukrainian officials were facilitated not to find dirt on Biden, but to assuage concerns that the incoming Ukrainian government would not be able to get a handle on corruption within the country.

Volker’s full remarks, which were obtained by The Federalist, can be read here.

Volker said that an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Volker to connect the advisor to Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump.

“[I]n May of this year, I became concerned that a negative narrative about Ukraine, fueled by assertions made by Ukraine’s departing Prosecutor General, was reaching the President of the United States, and impeding our ability to support the new Ukrainian government as robustly as I believed we should,” Volker said. “After sharing my concerns with the Ukrainian leadership, an advisor to President Zelensky asked me to connect him to the President’s personal lawyer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”

“I did so solely because I understood that the new Ukrainian leadership wanted to convince those, like Mayor Giuliani, who believed such a negative narrative about Ukraine, that times have changed and that, under President Zelensky, Ukraine is worthy of U.S. support,” Volker said. “I also made clear to the Ukrainians, on a number of occasions, that Mayor Giuliani is a private citizen and the President’s personal lawyer, and that he does not represent the United States government.”

Volker vehemently denied that he ever urged the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on the Biden family.

“As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion,” he said.

Volker testified that he never even mentioned a delay on U.S. military assistance to Ukrainian officials until late August, when news reports indicated that funding had been put on hold. Volker’s statement directly undercuts claims that the funding was part of a quid pro quo meant to force the Ukrainians to take certain actions in order for the military aids to be released. (The underline is mine.)

As you can see this latest attempt to discredit President Trump is smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately it will continue until the politicians behind it are voted out of office. Those government officials who have used their office either for personal gain or to spy on their political opposition need to face severe penalties.

What we need here is a “Mordecai moment.”

Show Me The Man And I’ll Find You The Crime

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of Stalin’s secret police, is said to have told Josef Stalin,  “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

That is the story of the Democrats and President Trump. This is getting ridiculous. The only good thing about this latest escapade is that it brings into light some of the dealings that Joe Biden had with the Ukraine regarding a prosecutor. The transcript of the telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky creates more of a problem for Joe Biden than it does for President Trump. There is also the YouTube video of Joe Biden bragging about causing the firing of a Ukrainians prosecutor (posted here).

It is time for the Democrats to realize that the presidential election is about a year away and that if the American voters don’t like President Trump, they will vote him out of office. Until that election, the Democrats need to try to do something helpful that is actually supported by the American people.

Twisted

No one ever claimed that the team put together by Robert Mueller to investigate President Trump was politically unbiased, but I at least expected them to report the facts as they uncovered them. Evidently my expectations were too high. On May 8, I posted an article about Joseph Mifsud, claimed by the Mueller Report to be a Russian asset. It turns out that he was training American intelligence officers. His contract with George Papadopoulos had nothing to do with Russia. On June 1st, I posted an article about the editing of a phone message from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn. The message was edited in a way that left an impression totally different than what was actually happening. Well, okay, maybe that was just an oversight. That’s two strikes. Now we have another incident where something totally misleading (and false) was stated in the Mueller Report.

John Solomon at The Hill posted an article yesterday with the following headline, “Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source.” The person in questions in Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik.

The article reports:

In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.

But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.

Why Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.

It gets worse:

Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller’s office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor’s team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik’s intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation.

Kasanof’s and Purcell’s interviews are corroborated by scores of State Department emails I reviewed that contain regular intelligence from Kilimnik on happenings inside the Yanukovych administration, the Crimea conflict and Ukrainian and Russian politics. For example, the memos show Kilimnik provided real-time intelligence on everything from whose star in the administration was rising or falling to efforts at stuffing ballot boxes in Ukrainian elections.

Those emails raise further doubt about the Mueller report’s portrayal of Kilimnik as a Russian agent. They show Kilimnik was allowed to visit the United States twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, a clear sign he wasn’t flagged in visa databases as a foreign intelligence threat.

The emails also show how misleading, by omission, the Mueller report’s public portrayal of Kilimnik turns out to be.

For instance, the report makes a big deal about Kilimnik’s meeting with Manafort in August 2016 at the Trump Tower in New York.

By that time, Manafort had served as Trump’s campaign chairman for several months but was about to resign because of a growing controversy about the millions of dollars Manafort accepted as a foreign lobbyist for Yanukovych’s party.

Specifically, the Mueller report flagged Kilimnik’s delivery of a peace plan to the Trump campaign for settling the two-year-old Crimea conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

“Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel’s Office was a ‘backdoor’ way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine,” the Mueller report stated.

But State emails showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016 to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington. Kasanof, his former handler at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, had been promoted to a top policy position at State, and the two met for dinner on May 5, 2016.

I am grateful for investigative reporters. It is time to acknowledge that the Mueller Report, despite the fact that it found no evidence of collusion on the part of the Trump campaign, is tainted. It is time to put this entire farce to rest and lift the cloud the Democrats have placed over the Trump administration. It is time to allow the President to solve the problems at our southern border, deal with Iran, negotiate trade deals, and generally be President.

Equal Justice Under The Law?

It has become very obvious in recent years that people close to the Clintons who break the law are held to a different standard than the rest of us. The amount of evidence destroyed in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server is amazing–and no one was ever charged with destroying evidence. Now we have a new example of how to break laws with no consequences if you are a supporter of the Clintons.

The American Thinker posted the following today:

Tony Podesta, the Democratic über-operative and brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, has been offered immunity from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for his testimony against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  The two men were doing the exact same “crime,” which was acting as unregistered lobbyists on behalf of the Ukrainian government, but Podesta skates, while Manafort goes to prison for the rest of his life.

As Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who broke the story, pointed out, the only difference between them is that Manafort worked for Donald Trump.

Is there anyone honest enough in Washington to call ‘shenanigans?’ This should chill every person who has ever done business overseas or worked in Washington. I have news–if this is allowed to stand, it could happen to anyone in the future if the tables are turned. I would hope the political right would be too honest for this sort of thing, but this sets a precedent that is frightening.

The article concludes:

What we are seeing is one set of laws for Democrats and another set of laws for Republicans.  Its analogy in the press is media bias – one kind of coverage for Republicans, and another kind for Democrats, as we recently saw with the undocumented children case, which it turns out was President Obama’s doing, not President Trump’s, but guess who got the wall-to-wall coverage.  People notice things like that.  The Deep State doesn’t, but normal people do see these double standards.  Double sets of laws for the elites and masses are precisely why voters turned to Donald Trump back in 2016.

This Manafort-Podesta thing isn’t about justice.  It’s about the Deep State’s bid to preserve its power.  It can only serve as rocket fuel for Trump.

I hope this injustice encourages voters to vote out of office anyone who has supported this witch hunt.

Some Perspective On The Ukraine

On Thursday the U.K. Telegraph posted an article by Edward Lucas about the situation in the Ukraine. Obviously, events there are moving very quickly. The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article by Mark Almond yesterday. Both articles point to the danger of the spread of the unrest in the Ukraine. Please follow the links to the articles. There is a lot of information in both articles.

The article in the Daily Mail reminds us that the Ukraine is made up of both Russians and Ukrainians. Each group has their own concept of what the country’s relationship with Europe and Russia should be. There is a serious division among the population of the country.

The article in the Telegraph states:

Without Vladimir Putin, Ukraine would be at peace today. It was Russia which forced Ukraine to shun the economic agreement offered by the EU in October, launching a crippling trade war against Ukrainian exports. It was Russia which offered cheap gas and soft loans as the Ukrainian economy tottered. It was Russia which installed hundreds of “advisers” in key Ukrainian public bodies and ministries, including the SBU secret police, to ensure that they toe the Moscow line. Without Russia’s silent putsch, Ukrainians would have not have needed to build barricades in the streets in protest at the regime’s misrule. Even then, without the continued and escalating Russian pressure on Mr Yanukovych, the conflict could have been defused.

We have seen enough of Putin to know that he will not let the Ukraine move toward Europe politically and economically without a fight. President Putin has openly stated that his dream is to bring back the old Soviet Union.

The Telegraph reports:

But Russia’s interference in Ukraine has intensified in recent months, just as Western efforts have floundered. European policymakers still cling to the notion that talks with Russia can bring a mutually beneficial solution to Ukraine’s agony. That is a false hope. The Kremlin does not like win-win solutions. It likes outcomes in which it wins, and its detestable Western rivals lose, preferably humiliatingly – this, for Mr Putin, is a matter of personal prestige. In short, though the EU finds the whole notion of geopolitics old-fashioned and unappealing, geopolitics is happening on its doorstep. And it is losing.

America is out of the game, too. The Obama administration has neglected its European allies since the day it took office. Its senior official dealing with Ukraine, Toria Nuland, is admirably energetic – and blunt (she recently declared “F— the EU” in a phone call to her ambassador in Kiev, bugged and then leaked by Russian intelligence). But she lacks the clout to make the wheels of policy turn in Washington. Without Moscow’s interference, the EU and United States could marshal their modest resources to make a difference. Faced with Russia in all its implacable fury, both are outgunned. The fallout from Edward Snowden’s leaks of secret material from the National Security Agency has corroded and weakened the transatlantic alliance: fury with American snooping in countries such as Germany has paralysed what should be vital discussions on security.

Hopefully this will end with freedom for the people of the Ukraine, but I am not optimistic. I remember how hard Poland fought to be free of the Soviet Union. Putin does not give up easily, and he does not compromise.

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