Oh boy.
- Thread starter Crazyhole
- Start date
Remember how everyone was saying that the prosecutor in Ukraine was fired for not investigating corruption and the burisma investigation was dormant? Yeah, they raided the home of the owner of Burisma 3 weeks before the company asked the US to help end the investigation. In walks Biden and demands the investigator be fired if they want US aid dollars.
Didn't FC say that this was just a conspiracy theory and liken it to "fire doesn't melt steel"? Kinda feels like he showed his ass once again.
This is a person who wants to rob his grandmother while at the same time insisting that having $2M in savings is “middle class”.
he’s a nut
First - I'm not going to defend Hunter Biden profiting from who is dad is. It's a clear example of fundamental challenges global politics and shows terrible judgement on his part. It's obvious the only reason he got the gig was his potential to influence US Policy. Even if everything Biden did was on the up-and-up, it still creates the appearance of a conflict, and Hunter was undoubtedly leveraging who is dad was to gain access.
That said - the "facts" in this case are mess. Keep in mind that we all agree Ukraine was a hotbed for corruption. This particular story hinges on the sworn testimony of Victor Shokin - the Prosecutor General that Biden (and the west in general) wanted removed, who has plenty of contemporaneous accounts of actually being corrupt (documented by anti-corruption activists in Ukraine).
So what is the source of Shokin's sworn affidavit, generated in September of this year? It's was produced "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash, for use in legal proceedings in Austria." That's the oligarch currently under indictment in the US and fighting extradition from Austria. Who joined his legal team this summer? Non other than Joe DeGenova and Victoria Toensing (yup the Trump defenders from Fox News). On the verge of losing his final appeal and being extradited to the US, this affidavit and other evidence was presented in Austrian court to argue he was the victim of a political prosecution in the US.
Has Shokin been lamenting the Biden/Burisma thing for years? Nope. He only made the connection this year, about 6 months into the PR campaign on the issue by Rudy and crew.
This is all context.
It doesn't hinge on Shokins statements. Documents show that burisma was being investigated and his house was raided. Documents show that 3 weeks later Burismas legal team in the US secured a visit with the state dept to discuss bringing the investigation to an end. A few weeks later Biden threatens to withhold aid if they don't fire the prosecutor.
Is Trump tough on all corruption or just this one instance of corruption? Was he tough on Russia when he blocked sanctions? Was he tough on MBS when he ordered a journalist to be murdered and cut up? Was he tough on his own company for profiting from his presidency?
No?
Oh he's only tough on corruption involving his political opponents?
Weird.
No?
Oh he's only tough on corruption involving his political opponents?
Weird.
So Solomon's new article suggests that Zlochevsky (burisma Oligarch) had his home raided in early 2016. I can't find information on that anywhere else. If that's true, it just as easily could have been Shokin caving to pressure and trying to save his job when it was already too late. He'd been under pressure since July 2015 after the "Diamond Prosecutors" scandal broke. Notoriously, under his 15 month tenure, not a single major corruption case was tried.
That said, I'd urge strong caution taking anything Solomon says at face value. I'd generally say he's a key cog in a disinformation effort lead by Rudy, providing a (previously) credible journalistic outlet to launder information through.
It's a tangled web. He has the same attorneys (DiGenova and Toensing) as Dimitri Firtash. He's all tangled up with Lev Parnas, who helped setup his Lutsenko interview. So you have Firtash paying DiGenova and Toensing, who pay Parnas as a translator. You have Firtash funding Parnas directly. You have Parnas and Fruman funding Rudy through Fraud Gaurantee, while also funding US Politicians with foreign money. It's a total shit show.
And we know Rudy is a subject of the SDNY investigation that already indicted Parnas and Fruman.
It's FAR more likely this is an orchestrated smear campaign (just like this same group ran on Amb. Yavanovich), than there being any real meat on the bones here.
You are presenting a conspiracy theory with far fewer facts than my own. Is it possible? Yes. Is it plausible? Not really. You seem to be framing this around one evil character who is orchestrating the whole thing: Rudy. I can't see any way to wargame out that situation.
I'll agree that both argue conspiracies - I disagree that yours has more facts and I'd argue mine has substantially more credibility. The testimony and now transcripts being released are filled with evidence that is informing/supporting the general thesis that I'm arriving at. Random nugget from Volker's testimony:
Speaking about Rudy
"So I had learned through the media that he was going to go to Ukraine and he was intending to pursue these allegations that Lutsenko had made, and he was going to go investigate these things. And I reached out to him to brief him, a couple of key points. Lutsenko is not credible. Don’t listen to what he is saying."
Lutsenko is the "Ukrainian Official" in the Furman/Parnas indictment and is the primary source for Solomon's March stories, no doubt the antecedents of what you've been following since April are driven significantly by that. Lutsenko has been all over the map and changed his story multiple times - most recently saying he never had evidence that reflected poorly on Joe or Hunter Biden. Regardless, I don't find his claims credible either way because he might change his mind again next week anyway."So I had learned through the media that he was going to go to Ukraine and he was intending to pursue these allegations that Lutsenko had made, and he was going to go investigate these things. And I reached out to him to brief him, a couple of key points. Lutsenko is not credible. Don’t listen to what he is saying."
Here's a good rundown of how this whole thing spun out of Solomon's interview with Lutsenko.
That article is long on rhetoric and short on facts. Obvious bias notwithstanding, there is one very critical error to the piece: it suggests that trump was referring to Lutsenko when he said they had a very good prosecutor who was treated poorly, but trump was referring to Shokin. Lutsenko was currently the prosecutor in ukraine when Trump made that phonecall so he couldn't possibly have been referencing him. Lutsenko is the person who said that burisma was no longer being investigated but Shokin said that it was and their own court documents verify that. Lutsenko is the guy who has changed his story on Biden, thus discrediting himself. FOIA requests prove that burisma was being investigated as recently as 6 weeks before biden called for shokin to be fired.
The Rolling Stone article does nothing other than discredit Lutsenko, which had already been done. Solomon went further and found actual evidence that goes beyond what Rudy learned from Lutsenko, proving the initial account and disproving the later retraction.
There's also the problem that Rolling Stone is a junk rag that pushes bullshit and lies as asserted truth. And this really isn't even debatable.
How many times have they been sued for printing false stories?
There are no good actors here. The left and the right are both crooked politicians.
You posted the Townhall analysis not Solomon's actual report. Also, here' the direct link to the emails that Solomon got via FOIA just for reference.
You mention that the evidence shows Burisma being investigated as recently as 6 weeks prior to Biden calling for Shokin's removal. It's actually more than that. The USG's official position was that under Shokin, the PGO's office was enabling rather than fighting corruption. The investigations into Zlochevskiy had never ended, they were just sitting around dormant. And our Amb. specifically used Zlochevskiy as an examples of these failures. So if there was corrupt intent on Joe Biden's end, he had failed to influence US Policy or our Ambassador in Ukraine as of Sept 2015.
So as of this point in time, you could argue that NOT PUSHING for the firing of Shokin was Joe helping Hunter/Burisma. I'm sure if Biden hadn't pushed for Shokin's firing, we'd have an opposite narrative right now that Hunter's influence with Joe was helping to keep Shokin in place, sheilding Burisma from an even worse fate (see how easy that is?). The emails show that as of Feb 2016, USG official policy is still hostile to Zlochevskiy. Did Joe try and change policy or recall an ambassador hostile to Shokin?
No, but of course Trump did recall an Ambassador hostile to Lutsenko when Lutsenko was pitching red meat to Solomon...
Of course there is that one little issue that 4 weeks before Biden called for Shokins firing, Shokin filed a lawsuit in Ukraine against Burisma. That doesn't sound dormant to me. Ukranian court documents prove this to be true.
Not being an ass but do you have links to said documents or lawsuit?
So all we have to do is line up two or three events in sequence without any evidence they are actually connected, then ignore any contemperanous evidence that goes against the desired narrative? Ok here's a good one:
- June 7 2017 Rudy travels to Ukraine and meets with Poroshenko and Lustenko
- June 9 - Manafort investigations are brought under Lutsenko's control and shelved.
- June 20 Poroshenko gets White House visit and meeting with Trump
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