derkach dubinsky

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>rudy funnel GRU disinfo</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see other node</font></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118">https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118</a></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T</font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">reasury Sanctions Russia-Linked Election Interference Actors</span></b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="date-format field field--name-field-news-publication-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden fielditem" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"><time datetime="2020-09-10T15:15:49Z"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>September 10, 2020</b></font></time></div><div class="field field--name-field-news-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style=""><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington&nbsp;– Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated four Russia-linked individuals for attempting to influence the U.S. electoral process. Russia uses a variety of proxies to attempt to sow discord between political parties and drive internal divisions to influence voters as part of Moscow’s broader efforts to undermine democratic countries and institutions. In the United States, Russia has used a wide range of influence methods and actors to target our electoral process, including targeting U.S. presidential candidates.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Treasury designated</span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;A</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">ndrii Derkach (Derkach)</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">&nbsp;</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13848 for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Derkach, a Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services. Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election. Today’s designation of Derkach is focused on exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting our upcoming elections from foreign interference. This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated. The Administration is working across the U.S. Government, and with state, local, and private sector partners, to make the 2020 election secure.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.”</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Derkach’s Election Influence Efforts</font></span></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election<b>, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States </b>designed to culminate prior to election day. Derkach’s unsubstantiated narratives were pushed in Western media through coverage of press conferences and other news events, including interviews and statements.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Between May and July 2020, Derkach released edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials, and he levied unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures. Derkach almost certainly targeted the U.S. voting populace, prominent U.S. persons, and members of the U.S. government, based on his reliance on U.S. platforms, English-language documents and videos, and pro-Russian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claims.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Treasury Continues to Hold Russian Actors Accountable</font></span></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today’s designation of Derkach is another example of the Treasury department promoting accountability for Kremlin-linked individuals seeking to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic processes. Treasury has previously designated the Russian troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), and its Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Prigozhin has been designated by the United States pursuant to E.O. 13661, E.O. 13694, as amended, and most recently by E.O. 13848 for providing material support to the IRA’s influence activities against the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, Treasury also designated three IRA actors pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended by E.O. 13757, and E.O. 13848 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the IRA, an entity designated pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13848.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Russian nationals&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: 700;">Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev,</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: 700;">Darya Aslanova</span>, as employees of the IRA</span>, supported the IRA’s cryptocurrency accounts. The IRA uses cryptocurrency to fund activities in furtherance of their ongoing malign influence operations around the world.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OFAC coordinated today’s action against the IRA with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the United States Secret Service.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result of today’s designations, all property and interests in property of these targets that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them. Additionally, any entities 50 percent or more owned by one or more designated persons are also blocked.</font></p><p style="margin: 3px 0px 10px;"><a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20200910" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">View identifying information on the individuals designated today.</font></a></p></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kari ref elon daily mail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">daily mail uk no lnx twt etc</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>elon Musk says Twitter's censorship of Hunter Biden laptop story was the 'definition of election interference' and that firm 'was acting as an arm of the DNC'</b></div><div>Musk spoke for nearly two hours in a 'Twitter Spaces' audio chat on Saturday</div><div>He addressed files illuminating Twitter's censorship ahead of 2020 election</div><div>Claimed Twitter acted as an 'arm of the Democratic National Committee'</div><div>Files released Friday showed Twitter staff discussing ban on Hunter laptop story</div><div>They also show requests from 'Biden team' to remove nude images of Hunter&nbsp;</div><div>By KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM</div><div>
</div><div>PUBLISHED: 21:45 EST, 3 December 2022 | UPDATED: 22:29 EST<b>, 3 December 2022</b></div><div>Elon Musk has claimed that Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was tantamount to interference in the 2020 election.</div><div>
</div><div>Musk made the claim in a wide-ranging two-hour audio chat on Twitter Spaces on Saturday night, one day after the publication of internal files relating to Twitter's October 2020 ban on initial reporting of the laptop contents.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">'If Twitter is doing one team's bidding before an election shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election that is the definition of election interference,' said Musk.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">'Frankly Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee, it was absurd,' added the billionaire, who has been highly critical of prior management at the company he purchased five weeks ago.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the audio chat, Musk also claimed Apple had 'fully resumed' advertising on Twitter following a pullback, and said that he banned Kanye West for 'incitement to violence' for a tweet displaying a Nazi swastika.</span></div><div>
</div><div>View gallery</div><div>Elon Musk has claimed that Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was tantamount to interference in the 2020 election</div><div>
</div><div>Musk made the claim in a wide-ranging two-hour audio chat on Twitter Spaces on Saturday night, one day after the publication of internal files from October 2020</div><div>+6</div><div>View gallery</div><div>
</div><div><b>Much of the conversation was devoted to the so-called 'Twitter Files,' a selection of internal documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday night.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The documents included internal Twitter emails appearing to show staffers removing tweets showing a nude Hunter Biden at the behest of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign and the DNC.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">However, Taibbi himself said that the files contained 'no evidence - that I've seen' that the Biden campaign had a role in suppressing the New York Post's story on Hunter's business dealings, which was controversially banned from Twitter</span>.&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>Musk said in the chat on Saturday that in addition to Taibbi, he had given the files to&nbsp;<b>Bari Weiss.</b></div><div>Musk said he had given the journalists 'unfettered access' to old internal documents, and did not guide or control how they were revealed or reported.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>'This is not a North Korea tour guide situation, you get to go anywhere you want, whenever you want, however you want,' he said. 'I'm not controlling the narrative.'</div><div>
</div><div>'It's just obvious there's been a lot of control of information, supression of information, including things that affected elections, and that just all need to be...you just want to have the stuff out there,' he said.</div><div>Musk said in the chat on Saturday that in addition to Matt Taibbi (left), he had given the files to journalist Bari Weiss (right)</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Participating in the chat, former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka asked whether there was any evidence of actual government interference in Twitter's moderation, since the documents released only showed requests from the Biden campaign.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Musk did not directly answer the question, and admitted 'I have not read the Twitter Files so that's why my understanding is limited.'&nbsp;</span></div><div>
</div><div>Musk also said he thought it was 'possible' that personnel at the social media firm gave preference to left-wing candidates during Brazil's election this year,&nbsp;<b>without providing evidence.</b>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, just days before Brazil's presidential second round runoff vote, when far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.</div><div>
</div><div>'I've seen a lot of concerning tweets about the recent Brazil election,' Musk wrote on Twitter when asked by a user about elections possibly 'handled' by the company's previous management.</div><div>
</div><div>Weeks ahead of the election in October 2020, Twitter prevented sharing of a story about Hunter Biden's international business dealings, based on emails from his laptop</div><div>+6</div><div>View gallery</div><div>
</div><div>'If those tweets are accurate, it's possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates,' added the billionaire.</div><div>
</div><div>Separately, Musk also addressed his move to ban Kanye West from Twitter once again this week, following the rapper's latest anti-Semitic meltdown.</div><div>
</div><div><b>'With Kanye it's obviously a difficult subject, but that was a case where, that was my decision. I think it's important people know that was my decision,' he said.</b></div><div>
</div><div>West was banned for posting an image of a swastika within a Star of David, a Jewish religious symbol, something Musk explained he viewed as an 'incitement to violence.'</div><div>
</div><div>'I personally wanted to punch Kanye, so it's definitely inciting me to violence, so that's not cool,' he said.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Musk said that context was important, and that a swastika in a historical context, such as a history of World War II, would not necessarily be offensive in the same way.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, in emerged on Saturday that the tweets that were removed at the request of the DNC and Biden campaign appeared to center of pornographic images of Hunter Biden.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In one of these emails, sent ten days after The New York Post first broke the laptop story on October 14 of that year, Twitter staffers were asked to 'review' five tweets deemed problematic by 'the Biden team.'</div><div>
</div><div>One of the tweets removed at the request of the Biden campaign is seen above. The original image, which showed Hunter Biden nude from the waist down, has been cropped above</div><div>+6</div><div>View gallery</div><div>
</div><div><b>'More to review from the Biden team,' that staffer's redacted correspondence read - garnering a reply hours later from another Twitter employee - one that assured the worker the task had been 'handled.'&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</b></div><div>
</div><div>That same day, another email reveals that there was an additional complaint from the DNC and two more tweets were deleted.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>It is not clear from the leaked emails what the deleted tweets were about, however&nbsp;<b>Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Andrew Kerr said he had discovered the contents of several of the tweets.</b></div><div>
</div><div>He said three of the tweets the Biden camp demanded be deleted contained 'Hunter Biden porn' and photos of Biden's genitalia, from the laptop.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div><b>He claims one of the tweets requested to be deleted by the DNC was from actor James Woods and depicted Hunter smoking crack and a committing a sex act.&nbsp;</b></div><div>
</div><div>And he says the second tweet was a link to Hunter Biden weighing and using drugs, and another link to a Hunter Biden sex tape.</div><div>Share or comment on this article: Elon Musk says Twitter's actions were the 'definition of election interference'</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 12 22</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>We’ve been warned. When the Republicans take control of the House, it’s going to be all Hunter’s laptop, all the time.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite haughty GOP denials, the laptop story is probably a cover for another Russian hack and leak operation, and the Republicans are gleefully laundering it.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans have browbeaten various social media execs – who are surely nervous about being called before GOP committees – into saying they were wrong to throttle access to what everyone correctly assumed was foreign election interference laundered through Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and election interference go-to-guy Rudy Giuliani.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/aid-to-ukraine-republicans-jammed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="self" title="view post: On aid to Ukraine, the Republicans are jammed" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">On aid to Ukraine, the Republicans are jammed</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Various major media outlets have authenticated a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">small percentage</a>&nbsp;of the data dump as having belonged to Hunter Biden. But that’s exactly what you’d expect in a hack and leak operation. The question is whether the data were really abandoned by Hunter Biden or whether they were uploaded to that laptop as a pretext for trafficking in stolen secrets.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“That’s Rudy”</font></strong></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In October 2020, weeks before the general election,<b>&nbsp;the New York Post&nbsp;</b>ran a story about what Rudy Giuliani claimed was a hard drive abandoned by Hunter Biden at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Over 50 retired intelligence pros signed an open letter arguing that L’Affaire MacBook bore&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">all the hallmarks</a>&nbsp;of Russian disinfo. Twitter’s former head of safety said this week that the story&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-twitter-exec-concedes-wrong-190813534.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">set off</a>&nbsp;“every single one of my finely tuned [Russian intelligence] hack and leak campaign alarm bells."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/gop-strategist-trump-russian-cash" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="self" title="view post: GOP strategist pardoned by Donald Trump convicted of illegally funneling him Russian cash" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">GOP strategist pardoned by Donald Trump convicted of illegally funneling him Russian cash</a></font></strong></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Conveniently, the former shop owner who gave the data to Giuliani is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/18/forgotten-and-ignored-context-emergence-hunter-biden-laptop-story/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">legally blind</a>, so he can’t say whether the man who dropped off the machines was Hunter Biden. He’s also a frothing conspiracy theorist who was unable to tell&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a straight story</a>&nbsp;about the provenance of the laptop.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">We know Vladimir Putin personally directed a campaign of interference in the 2020 elections that focused on feeding anti-Biden propaganda to influential Americans, including members of Trump’s inner circle, according to a 2021&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">report</a>&nbsp;by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The report doesn’t name names, but&nbsp;<b>contains enough clues to identify Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, as the useful idiot in chief.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This time, the collusion between Trump and the Russians was right out in the open. With Trump’s support, Giuliani spent much of 2019 ostentatiously shuttling to Ukraine and huddling with Kremlin-linked oligarchs, including an active Russian agent who was later&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sanctioned</a>&nbsp;by Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Treasury Department for interference in the 2020 election.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Data from Hunter Biden’s computer were&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">on the market</a>&nbsp;in Kyiv around the time Giuliani went disinfo-shopping. As you recall, Giuliani was searching for dirt in Ukraine because Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, which, according to that ODNI report, was hacked by the Russian spy service known as the GRU in late 2019.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Multiple US intelligence agencies repeatedly and explicitly warned Donald Trump in 2019 that Giuliani’s bottomless thirst for dirt on the Bidens made him&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation/2020/10/15/43158900-0ef5-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the target</a>&nbsp;of a Russian intelligence operation.</b>&nbsp;National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned Trump that any information Giuliani brought back from his Ukraine junket should be considered “contaminated” by the Russians. Trump reportedly shrugged and said, “That’s Rudy.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stolen and dumped</font></strong></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Let’s not forget Trump’s first impeachment was the result of a desperate bid to wring dirt out of the Ukrainians. Trump froze congressionally authorized defense aid to Ukraine in order to strong-arm the country’s new president into announcing a bogus investigation into Hunter Biden.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans have falsely claimed that forensic analyses have proven that the data was found on a laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware. These analyses have shown that some of the materials were produced by Hunter Biden. But that’s how hack and leak attacks work.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a hack and leak, data is stolen and dumped.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A largely genuine trove of stolen data is also the perfect place to hide forged or stolen elements, which enjoy unearned credibility because they’re packaged with real stuff. That’s why the victims of hack and leaks are advised never to confirm the authenticity of anything.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The attackers are counting on the public to draw the erroneous conclusion that, because some things are genuine, the whole package is real, and – most importantly – that it came from where the cover story says it came from,&nbsp;<b>be that an imaginary collective of good-hearted “hacktivists”</b>&nbsp;or a computer repair shop in Delaware. Anywhere but the GRU.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GRU is notorious for hacking and leaking.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A GRU unit known as FancyBear or APT128 famously deployed this tactic against the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. They also targeted&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/291486-thousands-of-soros-docs-released-by-alleged-russia-backed-hackers/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">George Soros</a>, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/gru-hacking-to-undermine-anti-doping-efforts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">World Anti-Doping Agency</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45747472" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">scientists</a>&nbsp;investigating the poisoning of a former Russian agent, and countless others. For particularly high-value targets, GRU combines hacking with good-old-fashioned stalking, following their targets around, hoping to catch them using insecure hotel wifi.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Isn’t it a crazy coincidence that a disk image of “Hunter Biden’s laptop” was revealed to the world by the same guy who we know was the main conduit for Russian disinformation about the Bidens? A guy who has also been investigated for other kinds of election interference on behalf of Trump.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you believe that, I’ve got an extended warranty to sell you.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/elon-musk-fiona-hill-ron-desantis" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="self" title="view post: Fiona Hill warns Musk is 'transmitting a message' for Putin as DeSantis rushes to billionaire’s defense" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Fiona Hill warns Musk is 'transmitting a message' for Putin as DeSantis rushes to billionaire’s defense</a></font></strong></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/">https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div>POLITICS 2020 ELECTION</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>EXCLUSIVE: ALLEGED HUNTER BIDEN EMAILS CIRCULATED IN UKRAINE AS RUDY GIULIANI DUG FOR DIRT THERE LAST YEAR&nbsp;</b></div><div>
</div><div>Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden; Personal attorney to President Donald Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani Photo-Illustration by TIME; DNCC/Getty Images; Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 RNC/Getty Images</div><div>BY SIMON SHUSTER&nbsp;</div><div><b>&nbsp;OCTOBER 21, 2020&nbsp;</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Explicit photos and emails purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden were circulating in Ukraine last year at the same time that Rudy Giuliani was searching for dirt there on former Vice President Joe Biden, two people approached about the material during that period tell TIME.</b></div><div>
</div><div>The emails’ alleged availability, which has not been previously reported, comes to light in the wake of Giuliani’s recent claims that he obtained private photos and emails of Hunter Biden from a broken laptop abandoned in Delaware. Giuliani, who is President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has passed this material to right-wing news outlets, which began publishing it last week. Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment on the origins of the material he obtained.</div><div>
</div><div>Over the past year, the practice of selling or leaking private communications has become so common in Ukraine that the government has announced plans to pass a law against it. Igor Novikov, a former adviser to Ukraine’s President who now researches disinformation, referred to the practice as Ukraine’s “national sport” in a recent interview with the Washington Post.</div><div>
</div><div>The two people who said they were approached with Hunter Biden’s alleged emails last year did not know whether any of them were real and they declined to identify who was behind the offers, the first of which came in late May 2019 and the second in mid-September 2019. The two people said they could not confirm whether any of the material presented to them was the same as that which has been recently published in the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week the New York Post began publishing the material they obtained from Giuliani, and the sources and authenticity of the published emails has been hotly debated ever since. Hunter Biden and his father’s presidential campaign have declined to comment on the leaks in detail or to address whether any of the published emails are genuine. Hunter Biden has been unable to figure out where the material could have originated, says a person familiar with the situation.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Over the past week, Trump has used the leaks from Giuliani to fuel his claims of corruption against the Biden family.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The President called on Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the material in the recent reports. “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Trump said in an interview with Fox on Tuesday, two days before he faces Biden in the final debate of the presidential race. “He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One mystery that has surrounded Giuliani’s effort to aid Trump’s re-election bid is the original source of the photos and emails he has leaked to the New York Post. No other news organization has been able to verify the contents of the leak. The Biden campaign, along with U.S. national security officials and social media platforms, have warned that the leaked files could include forgeries meant to confuse or mislead voters in the final weeks of the campaign. Experts on disinformation have also raised serious concerns about the leaks.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The two people who said they were approached about Hunter Biden’s photos and emails last year did not know whether they originated from the same source as those that Giuliani has since leaked to the media. When the New York Post first published photos of Hunter Biden last week,&nbsp;<b>“It brought back memories of the same information that was being introduced to us a year ago,” says the first person informed about the existence of this material.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Rudy Giuliani listens as President Trump speaks during a news briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2020. (Salwan Georges—The Washington Post/Getty Images)</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In an interview with TIME, a second person described an offer that was made to him in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in mid-September 2019. This person declined the offer, he says, and only recalled it in detail when familiar-looking material was published in the New York Post last week.&nbsp;<b>This person alleges that the people offering this material had a buyer in mind for it: they said they wanted to sell it to Republican allies of President Trump. Their asking price was $5 million, he says, adding: “I walked away from it, because it smelled awful.”</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>In its first report about Hunter Biden on Oct. 14, the New York Post published what it described in a headline as a “smoking gun email” dated April 2015 between Hunter Biden and an adviser to Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden held a lucrative board seat while his father was Vice President. The email, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed, appeared to suggest that the adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi, had met and “spent some time” with Joe Biden, thanks to an introduction from Hunter Biden. If the alleged meeting took place, it would seem to undercut the repeated claims from Biden and his son that they never discussed Burisma.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The Biden campaign has denied that any such meeting happened. A</b>mos Hochstein, who served as an adviser to Joe Biden on Ukrainian affairs in 2015, said the then-Vice President did not attend a meeting with Pozharskyi. “He never met with Biden. Never,” Hochstein tells TIME.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">During his travels in Europe last year, Giuliani met with a variety of Ukrainian politicians, businessmen and former law enforcement officers whom he has since described as “whistleblowers” and witnesses to the Biden family’s alleged corruption in Ukraine. None of the accusations these sources made via Giuliani has stood up to public scrutiny, and no evidence has emerged of wrongdoing by Joe Biden in Ukraine.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>When TIME asked Novikov, the former adviser to Ukraine’s President, about the alleged offers of access to Hunter Biden’s emails, Novikov said it would be “nothing new” for someone in Ukraine to market such material. The trade in kompromat—a Russian word for “compromising material”—has gone into overdrive in Ukraine since last year,&nbsp;</b>when the country became entangled in internal U.S. politics, especially during the impeachment inquiry against President Trump, Novikov says. Various political operatives have rushed to answer Giuliani’s call for dirt on the Bidens, creating what Novikov called a “catalyst for disinformation.” Any documents emerging from this trade should be treated with caution, he adds, because they are “extremely hard to verify, yet very easy to fake.”</div><div>
</div><div>Since the New York Post began publishing the purported emails and photos of Hunter Biden, federal investigators have tried to determine where the emails came from and whether they are linked to a foreign effort to influence the U.S. elections, according to an NBC News report published Oct. 15.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">At the end of last year, Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the&nbsp;<b>GRU</b>, hacked into the computer systems of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company, apparently aiming to steal its internal documents and communications, a</span>ccording to a report released by cyber security experts in January. “It is significant because Burisma Holdings is publicly entangled in U.S. foreign and domestic politics,” wrote the experts from Area 1, a cyber security firm that was co-founded by a former hacker for the U.S. National Security Agency. The January report warned that the hack of Burisma could be an “early warning” of Russia’s plans to interfere in the 2020 elections using the same techniques it used in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">During a trip to Ukraine in December, Giuliani met with a Ukrainian lawmaker who has since been identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent” with longstanding ties to Russian intelligence services. The lawmaker, <b>Andrii Derkach</b>, did not respond to messages seeking comment.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a social media post on Monday, Derkach claimed that the “scandalous investigation” published in the New York Post would soon have a sequel based on a “second laptop” purportedly containing the private emails and photos of Hunter Biden. “The facts confirming international corruption are stored on a second laptop,” Derkach wrote. “These are not the last witnesses or the last laptop.”</span></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">fbi 250K$ reward for KK?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/trump-russia-campaign/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/trump-russia-campaign/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">max Boot, a Russian-American author and historian and a fellow on the&nbsp;<b>Council on Foreign Relations,&nbsp;</b>says the U.S. Intel Community's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2021/03/putin-attacked-us-2020-election-to-help-trump-says-just-released-us-intel-community-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">just-released report on Russia's attack</a>&nbsp;on the 2020 presidential election is "evidence of cooperation" – at least – between the Trump campaign and Moscow.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The report details that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Vladimir+Putin" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Russian President Vladimir Putin</strong></a>&nbsp;once again interfered in the election, again to help President Donald Trump, and to hurt now-President Joe Biden.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I would say this is certainly evidence," Boot says, "it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Boot praised the Biden administration for authorizing the release of the report, which he says Americans would not have seen under the Trump administration, while singling out Acting Trump DNI and DNI Rick Grinnell and John Ratcliffe, who "consistently tried to minimize and downplay Russian election interference."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Importantly, Boot notes the report shows "just how closely the Russian messaging during the election echoed the messaging of the Trump campaign of Fox News and this kind of whole right wing media industrial complex."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's fascinating to see the extent to which the Russians were pushing the same messages about alleged Biden corruption, about his supposedly corrupt son, about you can't trust mail-in ballots, that the Democratic Party is trying to interfere with the election. These were the things that Trump was saying, but these were also the things that the Russians were saying, and in fact, the report highlights the close ties between Russian agents of influence like&nbsp;<b>Andrii Derkach</b>&nbsp;from Ukraine. Ukraine and Rudy Giuliani the president's lawyer,&nbsp;<b>Konstantin Kilimnik</b>&nbsp;is another one, who is a former business partner of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, so these ties are a copious and disturbing and to use a word we haven't heard in a few years, I would say this is certainly evidence. If not, it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch...</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department placed sanctions on seven foreign members of Rudy Giuliani's inner circle who sought to interfere in the U.S. election and sway the results in Trump's favo</b>r.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The president has also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-isolated-impeachment/2021/01/13/0595675a-55b6-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reportedly</a>&nbsp;dropped his reliance on Giuliani for his second impeachment trial, refusing to pay Giuliani for his unsuccessful post-election campaign to overturn November's results. Meanwhile, the New York State Bar Association has moved to disbar Giuliani this week.</b>&nbsp;Needless to say, the week after he told thousands of Trump supporters to hold "<a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/01/06/rudy-giuliani-called-for-trial-by-combat-and-then-chaos-descended-on-capitol-hill/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">trial by combat</a>" before many of them violently stormed the U.S. Capitol with aims to halt the Constitutionally mandated certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for Rudy Giuliani. [twt doc]</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the&nbsp; Treasury's targets include Russian-linked Ukrainians Konstantin Kulyk, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Andriy Telizhenko, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and –– most principally –– </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker sanctioned&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/10/us-sanctions-giuliani-ally-for-involvement-in-election-meddling.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">just last year</a>, who played a key role in orchestrating the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory. It was with the help of these actors that Giuliani spearheaded a failed campaign to smear President-elect Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, with false claims of past corruption. Trump's call to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky –– in which the President pressured Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden on his behalf –– would become the impetus for the President's own&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/14/trump-says-he-was-looking-corruption-ukraine-where-president-zelensky-was-known-mocking-corruption-ukraine/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">impeachment</a>.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Since at least 2019," said the Treasury in&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1232" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a statement</a>&nbsp;on Wednesday, "Derkach and his associates have leveraged U.S. media, U.S.-based social media platforms, and influential U.S. persons to spread misleading and unsubstantiated allegations that current and former U.S. officials engaged in corruption, money laundering, and unlawful political influence in Ukraine."</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a steadfast Trump loyalist, also attempted to&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1232" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">add distance between his agency and Giuliani and his goons</a>. "Russian disinformation campaigns targeting American citizens are a threat to our democracy [...] The United States will continue to aggressively defend the integrity of our election systems and processes."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Trump has been blaming his longtime personal attorney and many others for the predicament he now finds himself in, though he has not accepted any responsibility in public or in private," CNN reported this week. "Giuliani is still expected to play a role in Trump's impeachment defense but has been left out of most conversations thus far."</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The New York State Bar Association has also made moves to disavow Giuliani in light of last Wednesday's chaos. The Bar&nbsp;<a href="https://nysba.org/new-york-state-bar-association-launches-historic-inquiry-into-removing-trump-attorney-rudy-giuliani-from-its-membership/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">announced</a>&nbsp;on Monday that it has launched an inquiry into Giuliani's role in Trump's months-long crusade to undermine the election. The group's bylaws make explicit reference to anyone "who advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States, or of any state, territory or possession thereof, or of any political subdivision therein, by force or other illegal means" and disowns anyone who has engaged in such activity.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Association stated, "Mr. Giuliani's words quite clearly were intended to encourage Trump supporters unhappy with the election's outcome to take matters into their own hands," adding, "Their subsequent attack on the Capitol was nothing short of an attempted coup, intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani, who called for "a trial by combat" in the rally</b>&nbsp;leading up the riot on Capitol Hill, now faces the threat of permanent expulsion from the Bar, which would render him unlicensed to practice law in the state of New York. 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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;=</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">trying for deal w. burisma/naftogaz?</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>--> IMPEACH</b></span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/</a></span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">igor salon</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Republican report</a>&nbsp;aimed at raising questions about the dealings of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden&nbsp;in Ukraine<b>&nbsp;appears to have accidentally implicated former Energy Secretary&nbsp;</b><a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/10/07/energy-secretary-rick-perry-denies-pressing-ukraine-on-energy-company-says-hes-not-resigning/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rick Perry in an energy scheme in the foreign nation</a>,</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;according to the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Republicans led by&nbsp;<b>Sen. Ron Johnson</b>, R-Wis., released their&nbsp;<b><a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">much-hyped report</a>&nbsp;on Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma on Wednesday. However, it found no evidence of actual wrongdoing and relied largely on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/hunter-biden-ukraine-report-republicans" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">debunked claims</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/gop-senators-anti-biden-report-420362" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">old statements</a>&nbsp;and narratives pushed as part of a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Russian disinformation campaign</a>.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But the report did find new evidence related to Perry’s actions in Ukraine while he served in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amos Hochstein, a member of the supervisory board at the state-owned Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz, told lawmakers that&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Perry “inappropriately pressured the Ukrainian government” to place Texas oil executive Robert Bensh on the board of the company while officials at the Department of Energy pressured the government to sign a deal with a “private business entity connected to Mr. Bensh,” according to a&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1308861317076443136" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">letter Wyden</span>&nbsp;sent to Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>perry also pressured the Ukrainian government to place one of his longtime campaign supporters, Michael Bleyzer,</b>&nbsp;on the board during a trip to Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in 2019,</span>&nbsp;Wyden wrote.&nbsp;Bleyzer and his partner were later awarded a drilling contract in the country.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Bleyzer’s contract that he was awarded was despite the fact that he was not the highest bidder in the process,” Hochstein told lawmakers. “Other . . . bids were higher, and therefore, Ukraine chose a bid that paid itself less.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The heads of the state-owned Naftogaz conglomerate have since&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5750669/exclusive-lawsuit-raises-questions-about-rick-perrys-role-in-ukraine-energy-sector/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">filed a lawsuit</a>&nbsp;seeking to overturn the contract, arguing that the Ukrainian government acted “illegally and with bias” in agreeing to the deal, Wyden noted.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Witness testimony in this investigation has directly implicated former Secretary Rick Perry in alleged wrongdoing, and the department more broadly, in a scheme to undermine anti-corruption efforts that were implemented by Ukraine in partnership with the international community,” Wyden wrote.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Politico&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported last year</a>&nbsp;that Perry&nbsp;—&nbsp;who along with then-Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker were the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/11/19/even-the-republican-witnesses-make-donald-trump-look-like-a-depraved-criminal/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“three amigos” who pushed a shadow foreign policy</a>&nbsp;in Ukraine&nbsp;—</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;played an active role in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/01/17/lev-parnas-implicates-rick-perry-in-ukraine-scandal-as-he-clears-joe-biden-of-wrongdoing/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump administration’s pressure on Zelensky</a>, which ultimately led to the<b>president’s impeachment.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ProPublica&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/rick-perrys-ukrainian-dream" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported earlier this month</a>&nbsp;that Perry repeatedly pushed deals that “were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors” and could “stand to benefit” the secretary himself. Two of the deals, including one worth $20 billion, went to the Texas firm Energy Transfer. Perry served on the company’s board before and after his stint at the Energy Department and bought shares now worth about $800,000 three months after leaving his post, according to the report.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ethics experts told the outlet that Perry’s efforts were violations of federal regulations. His actions also caught the attention of federal prosecutors, though he is reportedly not the target of any investigations.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The interview with Hochstein was part of the Senate Republicans’ investigation into whether Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma affected U.S. foreign policy. The report asserted that his position was “problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” However, it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">did not include any new evidence</a>&nbsp;suggesting his role affected the Obama administration’s policy. It also&nbsp;acknowledged that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-gop-report-calls-hunter-bidens-board-position-problematic-but-offers-few-specific-examples-it-changed-obama-administration-policy/2020/09/23/4b66d41e-fd44-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said the probe pushed</a>&nbsp;“Russian disinformation.” He further described it as “an attempted political hit job facilitated by the State Department.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Finance Committee aide told&nbsp;<a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/wyden-ronjohn-stumbled-upon-evidence-of-trump-corruption-in-ukraine-probe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Talking Points Memo</a>&nbsp;that finding new evidence against the Trump administration “was certainly not Republicans’ goal.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“While Republicans’ Ukraine investigation showed Vice President Biden did nothing wrong,” the aide said, “it succeeded in implicating former Secretary Perry in a corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to change the board of Naftogaz.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/giuliani-created-2-secret-companies-amid-his-work-in-ukraine-and-we-think-he-only-had-one-client/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/giuliani-created-2-secret-companies-amid-his-work-in-ukraine-and-we-think-he-only-had-one-client/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>r<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">udy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, has&nbsp;told Salon that he created two new&nbsp;companies last year&nbsp;amid his work on Trump’s behalf trying to dig&nbsp;up damaging information&nbsp;on Joe Biden in Ukraine. The purpose of the companies, especially that of Giuliani’s brand new one-man law firm — as well as their possible connections to the president — is somewhat unclear.</span></b></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to New York&nbsp;records, one of the companies, first called Giuliani Media and now known as Giuliani Communications, was created in November, just before Giuliani traveled to Ukraine with a production crew from One America News Network (<b>OAN).</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">During that trip, Giuliani&nbsp;interviewed Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach,</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> who was recently sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent,” for material included in a documentary later aired on OAN. Giuliani released&nbsp;his interview with Derkach&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1306673051174461440" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a few months later</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Although the existence of Giuliani Communications&nbsp;has not been previously reported, its creation&nbsp;lines up with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/11/politics/rudy-giuliani-impeachment-podcast/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reports</a>&nbsp;at the time that Giuliani planned to&nbsp;create&nbsp;a podcast aimed at defending Trump from&nbsp;the impeachment narrative</b>. He eventually launched that&nbsp;podcast, which airs regularly, and has conducted video interviews as well — including the one with Derkach. For unclear reasons, Giuliani&nbsp;changed the company name to Giuliani Communications in March 2020, the same month he released his Derkach interview.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">giuliani’s other new company is his personal law firm, Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC, which was created in June 2019, according to New York records. The company was first identified in an October 2019&nbsp;</span><a href="https://rollcall.com/2019/10/31/giuliani-i-never-lobbied-or-represented-foreigners/" target="blank" rel="noopener" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">report</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;from Roll Call.&nbsp;Giuliani told Salon&nbsp;that&nbsp;he had&nbsp;<b>set up&nbsp;the firm because a client of his wanted money put in escrow.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I didn’t want Giuliani Partners to do it, because I know the ethical rules,” Giuliani said, but declined to name the client or to explain the potential ethical problems further.&nbsp;<b>“I’m just a country lawyer,” he added.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The question is what the client hired Giuliani to do,” Brett Kappel, top authority on lobbying and&nbsp;government ethics law, told Salon.&nbsp;If the client had hired Giuliani&nbsp;to provide legal advice, Kappel explained,&nbsp;or to&nbsp;“represent him in litigation or a negotiation where an exchange of money was contemplated,” then Giuliani would be required to place any funds&nbsp;entrusted to him by the&nbsp;client&nbsp;in an escrow account separate from the law firm’s funds. The former New York mayor’s consulting business,<b>&nbsp;Giuliani Partners, “isn’t a law firm and isn’t subject to the same ethical requirements,” Kappel said.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That raises&nbsp;the intriguing question of why Giuliani had not set up a personal law practice until he got this specific request from this specific client. Although attorneys can represent clients without forming a firm, a&nbsp;PLLC shields the owner from liability.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time&nbsp;Giuliani formed his PLLC, he had already been representing Trump as&nbsp;his personal attorney&nbsp;for more than a year. He also claims to have represented&nbsp;Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with whom he also struck up a business arrangement in 2018. Parnas and Fruman later ran political errands for Giuliani&nbsp;in Ukraine.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On the day&nbsp;Giuliani set up his personal firm, he seemed to have&nbsp;Ukraine on the brain,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1142085975230898176?s=20" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">tweeting</a>, “New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of Pres Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to&nbsp;<b>purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That same month,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-ukraine-swirl-giulianis-work-for-candidate-in-dominican-republic-caused-unease/2020/02/19/82794c22-4c21-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">according to</a>&nbsp;the Washington Post, Giuliani began doing consulting work for<b>&nbsp;Luis Abinader, a presidential candidate in the Dominican Republic.</b>&nbsp;It is not clear whether he also did legal work for Abinader.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A few days later, Giuliani he took a trip with Parnas to London that lasted several days, during which&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani met with Venezuelan financier Alejandro Betancourt, who is currently the subject of a major money laundering investigation in the U.S. Giuliani later took on Betancourt as a client, and spoke on his behalf to Justice Department prosecutors in September.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani told Salon in a previous phone conversation that Parnas was his&nbsp;client during a trip the two took to Madrid&nbsp;in July 2019, when he met with top Ukrainian foreign policy&nbsp;<b>official Andriy Yermak (who subsequently became chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky</b>). Giuliani made the&nbsp;claim about representing Parnas when he was asked about his&nbsp;meeting with Yermak, explaining that attorney-client privilege barred him&nbsp;from discussing details of their conversations.&nbsp;Parnas’ current&nbsp;attorney has denied that Giuliani was representing Parnas at that time.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani claims to have done all his work for Trump&nbsp;free of charge, though the president&nbsp;has never publicly acknowledged that. Giuliani’s work on Trump’s behalf ultimately led to the president’s impeachment.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Trump did not disclose on his financial forms, as required, that&nbsp;he was taking pro bono counsel from Giuliani,”</b>&nbsp;Jordan Libowitz, of the&nbsp;government watchdog Citizens for Ethics in Washington, told Salon. Trump has alleged that “there’s no way of assessing the value of Giuliani’s work,” Libowitz said, “even though it is his responsibility to keep track of it.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani disclosed the previously unknown companies in a conversation with Salon about&nbsp;another previously unreported&nbsp;company that he created in 2002 and which received taxpayer-backed emergency loans&nbsp;this spring.&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/16/invisible-company-owned-by-rudy-giuliani-got-taxpayer-backed-ppp-money--but-where-did-it-go/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Salon’s investigation of the company</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;offered&nbsp;new insight into Giuliani’s arcane business arrangements, which are reportedly&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-subpoenas-seek-information-on-giulianis-consulting-business-11574712722?mod=breakingnews" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the subject of subpoenas</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/rudy-giuliani-new-york-trump-997712/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">federal investigators in the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Southern District of New York</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Experts told Salon that the company’s loan application raises questions of bank fraud, a felony.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That SDNY probe is&nbsp;also reportedly investigating whether Giuliani’s activity in Ukraine violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Matt Sanderson, a top FARA law attorney, told Salon that despite reams of reports, and Giuliani’s history&nbsp;of peddling&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-repeatedly-warned-about-andriy-derkach-rudy-giulianis-russian-agent-pal?ref=home" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">known Russian disinformation about both Joe Biden and his son Hunter</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,&nbsp;there isn’t enough public information&nbsp;to determine whether&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Giuliani’s work in Ukraine would qualify&nbsp;him,&nbsp;or OAN,&nbsp;as&nbsp;foreign agents.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We would have to know if anyone acting on behalf of foreign interests, especially someone tied to the government,&nbsp;paid for&nbsp;or directed&nbsp;that work,” Sanderson said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">OAN,&nbsp;as a U.S.&nbsp;media company, is exempt from registering as an agent. Sanderson, however, pointed to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-disinfomercial-how-larry-king-got-duped-into-starring-in-chinese-propaganda" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a recent episode</a>&nbsp;involving former CNN host Larry King, who conducted a blatantly unethical&nbsp;interview with Russian journalist Anastasia Dolgova that was filmed in two parts: King’s scripted questions, and then Dolgova’s answers.</font></p><article style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">King’s exposure, Sanderson told ProPublica,&nbsp;might hinge on whether he was “acting in his capacity as a member of the news media,” or was “doing an infomercial where he’s paid specifically to do the interview.” The same might apply here to OAN, Sanderson said.</font><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump&nbsp;has often&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/04/27/trump-demands-an-alternative-to-fox-news-as-he-accuses-the-network-of-spreading-misinformation/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">spoken glowingly of OAN</a>&nbsp;—&nbsp;which has positioned itself&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/09/trump-falsely-suggests-elderly-protester-shoved-by-police-is-antifa-provocateur-who-faked-incident/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">significantly to the right</a>&nbsp;of Fox News and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/12/15/oann-alabama-moore/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">has frequently&nbsp;spread&nbsp;even more blatant&nbsp;misinformation</a>&nbsp;— as a preferred&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/17/trump-complains-that-fox-news-is-not-watchable-urges-viewers-to-switch-to-fair-and-balanced-oann/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">alternative</a>. The president promoted the network’s Ukraine coverage&nbsp;several times on Twitter, including&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1205126676906164224" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a Chanel Rion&nbsp;interview</a>&nbsp;with former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy&nbsp;<b>Lutsenko,</b>&nbsp;during which&nbsp;Giuliani was&nbsp;present at the table.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Giuliani’s interview with Andrii Derkach</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">&nbsp;is no longer available on OAN’s site, and all stories in which “Derkach”&nbsp;is tagged have been removed</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. OAN president Charles Herring previously told Salon&nbsp;that the network’s website&nbsp;automatically deletes older content, but there are indications that the Derkach material was deliberately removed.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> One story in which his name was misspelled as “Derkash,” for instance,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1306590170133794816" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">was not deleted</a>.</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani did not reply to Salon’s questions about whether he had charged or expensed any of his Ukraine-related activity on President Trump’s behalf to either Giuliani Communications or Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC.</font></p></article><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/rudy-giuliani-collaborated-on-smear-of-joe-biden-with-active-russian-agent-whos-now-under-us-treasury-sanctions">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/rudy-giuliani-collaborated-on-smear-of-joe-biden-with-active-russian-agent-whos-now-under-us-treasury-sanctions</a></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>f<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ormer LifeLock spokesperson (and New York mayor) Rudy Giuliani is now seeking to distance&nbsp;himself from a member of the Ukrainian parliament who was sanctioned last week&nbsp;by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent.”</span></b></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></b></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911443854/sanctions-charges-and-disclosures-whirl-in-u-s-bid-to-defend-2020-election" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">sanctions target Andrii Derkach</a>, a Ukrainian lawmaker who&nbsp;has&nbsp;ties to Russian&nbsp;intelligence that date back more than a decade. Treasury now&nbsp;accuses Derkach&nbsp;of running&nbsp;a “covert influence campaign” aimed at&nbsp;the 2020 U.S. presidential election since late 2019.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani met with Derkach last year in&nbsp;Ukraine in the former mayor’s role as Donald Trump’s attorney, during a trip aimed at digging&nbsp;up dirt&nbsp;on Joe&nbsp;Biden, then viewed as the Democratic frontrunner and now the party’s presidential nominee. Derkach and Giuliani&nbsp;discussed the much-debunked allegations about Biden in a segment on</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;One America News Network (OAN), which Giuliani replayed&nbsp;on his personal podcast this March.</span></b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Treasury Department,&nbsp;Derkach was pushing&nbsp;“false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 presidential election” into U.S. media via&nbsp;press conferences, interviews and other statements.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>His efforts include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">releasing edited audiotapes</a>&nbsp;that purport to document improprieties by Joe Biden in his dealings as vice president with the Ukrainian government.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked how he felt about his work&nbsp;with&nbsp;someone whom the Trump administration has now sanctioned as an active Russian agent, Giuliani offered no remorse, replying to Salon by text message:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Yes I am very comfortable with what I did now leave me alone I’m with my friends discussing our experience on September 11 and<b>&nbsp;keep covering up for the Biden Family making millions selling his public office.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Giuliani, who forwarded a supposed dossier of information on Biden to&nbsp;the State Department&nbsp;in the spring of 2019,&nbsp;told NPR that he had “never tried to influence the election.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Derkach, Giuliani said in comments to NPR, “had no unique information that wasn’t already known except the $5.3 billion and that is being investigated in UKRAINE.” That again promotes&nbsp;Derkach’s debunked&nbsp;claims that Biden and his family somehow enriched themselves on a grand scale from business deals in Ukraine.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Giuliani’s activity in Ukraine last year led directly to the impeachment of his client, President Trump.&nbsp;</b>Even as congressional impeachment&nbsp;hearings were proceeding,&nbsp;Giuliani&nbsp;traveled to Ukraine with an OAN news production team in an apparent attempt to justify his smears against Biden and create an alternative to the impeachment narrative.&nbsp;A few weeks after his trip, the House voted to impeach Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Giuliani also popped up in&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jonah_jill/status/1304299665702227968" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">an intriguing photograph</a>&nbsp;with Chinese journalist Ding Gang,&nbsp;an associate of e<b>xpat billionaire Guo Wengui, a&nbsp;Mar-a-Lago member</b>&nbsp;who has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article232973237.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">accused of being an&nbsp;agent of the Chinese government</a>. [twt pix of bannon]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">as Salon first reported, Bannon’s nonprofit group&nbsp;Citizens of the American Republic — subject of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/steve-bannon-guo-wengui-private-jet-campaign-finance-law" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a documentary</a>&nbsp;and now also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/20/former-trump-strategist-steve-bannon-arrested-on-charges-of-defrauding-border-wall-donors/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a federal investigation</a>&nbsp;— employed top<b>Trump campaign strategist Jason Miller</b>&nbsp;from October 2019 until&nbsp;at least February&nbsp;2020,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/01/trump-campaign-aide-was-paid-20000-a-month-by-bannon-nonprofit-linked-to-alleged-fraud/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">at a salary of $20,000 a month</a>.</font></p><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/09/giuliani-associate-sanctioned</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>the&nbsp;Treasury Department on Thursday&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">sanctioned</a>&nbsp;pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach over his alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election by planting misleading accusations of corruption against Democratic nominee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00001669" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Joe Biden</a>.&nbsp;</b></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Derkach is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-joe-biden-smear-efforts" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">linked to the Kremlin</a>&nbsp;and is the son of a former KGB officer. He worked with President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00023864" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump</a>’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to supply conservative news outlets with dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter. Derkach also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/05/johnson-and-grassley-push-back-against-accusations-theyre-spreading-russian-disinformation-391772" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">sent information</a>&nbsp;about the former vice president to Senate Republicans investigating the Bidens, prompting U.S. intelligence officials to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2139-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-election-threat-update-for-the-american-public" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">warn lawmakers</a>&nbsp;not to participate in foreign influence campaigns.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has insisted that Russia is not trying to boost his campaign, but multiple Trump administration agencies have said the opposite. The Treasury Department on Thursday labeled Derkach “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and indicated that he “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” to influence the upcoming 2020 election.&nbsp;The Treasury’s designation will freeze Derkach’s assets in the U.S.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Derkach publicly released edited tapes portraying a false narrative of conversations between Biden and former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko</b>. As vice president, Biden threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless Poroshenko&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/03/what-really-happened-when-biden-forced-out-ukraines-top-prosecutor/3785620002/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">fired the nation’s top prosecutor</a>&nbsp;whom Western nations criticized as being corrupt. Derkach also tried to spur “corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day,” according to the Treasury Department.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-labor-day-press-conference-transcript-criticizes-pentagon-leaders-for-accommodating-arms-makers" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">appeared to bring up</a>&nbsp;Derkach’s tape earlier this week at a Labor Day press conference at the White House, telling the press corps, “he’s right on tape and you don’t want to cover it. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OpenSecrets’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/search" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Foreign Lobby Watch</a>&nbsp;database sheds some light on Derkach’s foreign influence campaign. From February through July, Derkach contracted with a firm called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/registrants/G25610" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Global Management Association Corp</a>&nbsp;in an attempt to set up meetings with the White House and members of Congress.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">derkach met with Giuliani and</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/for-months-trump-allies-hunted-for-tapes-of-biden-in-ukraine-now-theyre-turning-up/2020/06/30/f3aeaba8-a67b-11ea-8681-7d471bf20207_story.html" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" max-height="max-height" e="e" px="px" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">claims</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">they “discussed available information on international corruption and the need to investigate it in the United States.” Planned activities in Justice Department records filed in April included “meeting with US officials” but the foreign agents did not disclose making any U.S. government contacts for Derkach before the contract</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/28/lobbyists-drop-ukrainian-lawmaker-404573" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" max-height="max-height" e="e" px="px" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">ended</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, according to his most recent</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/fara2.opensecrets.org/6812-Supplemental-Statement-20200815-1.pdf" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" max-height="max-height" e="e" px="px" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">FARA filing</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">on Aug. 15.&nbsp;</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, has reportedly come under scrutiny from federal prosecutors for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-15/giuliani-faces-u-s-probe-on-campaign-finance-lobbying-breaches" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">failing to register</a>&nbsp;as a foreign agent.</b> He also worked with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to allegedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/featured-datasets/25" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">funnel foreign money</a>&nbsp;to pro-Trump super PAC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cycle=2020&cmte=C00637512" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">America First Action</a>. Foreign influence laws aren’t often enforced, but in 2018 a jury&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/recent-cases" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">convicted</a>&nbsp;former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort for failing to register as a foreign agent of the Ukrainian government in 2018, among other charges.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The firm Derkach worked with, Global Management Association Corp., is little more than a rebranded shell company that served as a&nbsp;<a href="https://forensicnews.net/2019/09/13/ukrainian-politician-andrey-artemenko-funneled-polling-data-from-ukraine-to-prague-via-wyoming-shelf-company/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Russian-linked oil company’s foreign agent</a>&nbsp;to buy Ukrainian polling data in 2019. Andrii <b>Artemenko</b>, an associate of Giuliani and business partner of Erik Prince who came under scrutiny during the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/18/mueller-russia-probe-ukraine-peace-plan-white-house-trump-598034" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Mueller probe</a>, ran&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/registrants/G25610" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Global Management Association Corp</a>&nbsp;using the name “Andy Victor Kuchma.”&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Artemenko previously collaborated with Michael Cohen, Felix Sater and Michael Flynn to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-russia.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">push</a>&nbsp;for a plan to lift U.S. sanctions on Russia. </b>Artemenko’s wife, Oksana Kuchma, who is listed as an officer on records for many of his companies, incorporated what appears to be a new company in Florida called&nbsp;<a href="https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/L19000110367" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">K&D III LLC</a>&nbsp;in 2019 but it has kept a low profile and its function is not yet clear. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the officers on the new company is Sergey Knyazev, is the chairman of the Ukrainian National Police and who&nbsp;<a href="http://www.frontnews.eu/news/en/38279" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">met</a>&nbsp;with Trump in 2018.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Democrats impeached Trump late last year over charges that he solicited foreign interference from Ukrainian officials to help his reelection bid. The Senate acquitted Trump on a near party line vote.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former top Department of Homeland Security official Brian Murphy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/09/whistleblower-trump-officials-pressured-him-downplay-russia-threat/5762527002/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">filed a whistleblower complaint</a>&nbsp;Wednesday alleging that acting secretary Chad Wolf told him to stop providing assessments of Russian interference in the 2020 election. Murphy said those orders came from Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser</font></p><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Is OAN the Leading Edge of Russian Misinformation?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Biden campaign says Trump’s favorite TV network is peddling the Kremlin’s lies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>JUNE 11, 2020</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In what appears to be a signal of intensifying political warfare ahead of the November election, One America News Network, the Trump-supporting cable channel that has been promoting anti-Biden conspiracies for several months, says it has obtained several hours of secret recordings of then–Vice President Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian officials<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;If such recordings exist, they’re likely linked to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine and a Russian intelligence operation, two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and a former ambassador to Russia told me.&nbsp;<b>The OAN employee who claims to have the tapes would not say what was on them, other than suggesting that they will be revelatory.</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In the audio that has been released elsewhere so far, Biden is heard dangling the promise of financial aid to Ukraine if its government ousted a prosecutor who was seen as corrupt—which Biden has previously said publicly was his goal, as part of a push for widespread reforms.</b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conspiracists have alleged that this was intended to help his son Hunter escape charges of corruption, but an audit by Ukraine’s former top prosecutor released last week found no evidence of illegal activity by Hunter in his capacity as an energy-company board member.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[MORE STORIES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democracy Versus Kleptocracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FRANKLIN FOER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Press Is Embracing False Equivalence—Again</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JAMES FALLOWS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani: ‘You Should Be Happy for Your Country That I Uncovered This’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ELAINA PLOTT]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What is most remarkable here is that none of this is particularly surprising. Russian interference in the 2016 election has been closely studied over the past four years, and America’s vulnerabilities have only worsened in that time. As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote recently, “Russia’s interference in 2016 might be remembered as the experimental prelude that foreshadowed the attack of 2020.” That OAN is now a player in such interference suggests an escalation that the Biden campaign has been bracing for.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul—who has recalled being secretly recorded himself, among other forms of harassment, when he was posted in Moscow—told me, "There’s never been a moment like this in American history.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Read Putin is well on his way to stealing the next election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That includes 2016. McFaul said what he’s seeing now reminds him of tactics the Kremlin has used against its domestic political opponents. “It’s not to convince you of a different point of view. It’s to convince you that there is no truth,” he said. “When it feels like nobody’s telling the truth and there is no truth, the reaction to that is despondency and demobilization.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s hard not to feel some déjà vu here. In 2016, Russian intelligence agents hacked the emails of Democratic National Committee staffers and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and delivered them to WikiLeaks, as a way to get them into the American media. Some outlets learned a lesson from that episode, and have treated new Biden recordings out of Ukraine with care. Others have not.&nbsp;<b>Andriy Derkach, who released the Biden tapes that have already come out, is a former member of a pro-Russian political party who graduated from a KGB-run academy in Moscow. OAN lends his efforts a veneer, however thin, of journalistic legitimacy.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The person now claiming to have more tapes is OAN’s Chanel Rion, the on-air personality who went with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, on his December trip to Ukraine in part to find information on Biden to help Trump</span>. Rion, who has become famous for her conspiracy-inflected questions at White House briefings, emailed the Biden campaign May 29 claiming that she was working on an “in-depth report” about<b>&nbsp;recordings that appear to be of Biden speaking with&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Petro Poroshenko</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">,</span>&nbsp;then the president of Ukraine. “We have over five hours of these recordings (beyond what has been posted online by Nabu Leaks),” she wrote, referencing a Ukrainian website suspected of Russian links.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Derkach, a politician known as the “Ukrainian Putin,</span>” has been a proponent of the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was really behind the interference in the 2016 election instead of Russia<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;And he has previously been eager to provide damaging material about Biden for Trump’s sake</span>. Derkach released a batch of recordings three weeks ago, claiming that they had been made by Poroshenko and given to him by “investigative journalists.”&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">(<b>Poroshenko has said the audio is “fabricated.</b></span>”)<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Most mainstream-media outlets have decided that the recordings that have emerged so far offer “little new insight into Biden’s actions in Ukraine,” as The Washington Post’s Carol Morello wrote after the recordings were first released.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Giuliani, reached by text, did not comment on suspicions that the recordings have ties to Russian interests or intelligence, or on whether he was involved in getting any of them to OAN.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rion was until recently an illustrator. She has said she joined members of the Trump family in 2016 for the New Hampshire primary’s victory party; she has also tweeted a drawing of Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein with the hashtag #spiritcooking, which is often associated with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory</b>. On her website,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;she describes herself as “a fierce foe of anything Clinton, of everything Obama, and as a total and unrelenting enemy of academic left-liberalism and political correctness anywhere.</span>”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;In March, she cited a “monitored source” on air who’d said that the coronavirus had been linked to a lab in North Carolina; that source turned out to be a person who’d tweeted at her.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">She has asked wild questions at White House briefings, including one about whether Trump would pardon Barack Obama for unspecified crimes, and another about whether Trump’s lawyers would like to depose Joe Scarborough, after Trump floated a baseless accusation that he’d murdered an aide.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rion’s email, which the Biden campaign forwarded to me, suggests that <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">OAN is “producing an in-depth report on these recordings for OAN's Special Investigates series</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">.”</span>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a phone call on Sunday, she told me that she now expects to acquire much more than the five hours of recordings she mentioned in her email. Rion said that Derkach was just one of the people who have been giving her material. She said she has verified, with the help of “a couple of sources on the ground,” and with sources in the U.S. as well, that the recordings have no ties to Russian intelligence or interests. She would not explain her verification process, saying, “I don't want to tip off anybody.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was once unusual for the public to gain access to top-secret government documents, let alone private conversations between the American vice president and a foreign leader. But as countries around the world increase their cyberwar capabilities and their willingness to interfere in one another’s domestic politics, and as the democratization of publishing allows for the rapid spread of misinformation, media leaks of hard-to-verify and potentially doctored documents and recordings of government officials are becoming commonplace.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“It is common practice for Russian intelligence to help put out information in skewed forms in Ukraine, and forensic experts have seen that this information is doctored,</span>” said John Herbst, a former career Foreign Service officer who served as the American ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.<b>&nbsp;“The Kremlin is a master at this sort of practice, and the sources in Ukraine providing this sort of information are known to be well connected in Moscow.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Herbst was one of seven former ambassadors to Ukraine who wrote an open letter to Ukrainians two weeks ago, prompted by the already-public recordings. They said they are “disheartened by efforts to involve Ukraine in America’s domestic politics as the 2020 US presidential election approaches.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This all just confirms what we knew,” said Steven Pifer, another former ambassador to Ukraine, who signed the letter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David A. Graham: What happened in Ukraine?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Russia would love to “somehow inject Ukraine back into American politics,” Pifer said. “There will be people on the American side who play into it—OAN is one.</b>”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Biden campaign says OAN’s willingness to play along is exactly why the network received the recordings. “In 2016 and ever since, hostile foreign actors have perpetrated insidious efforts to disfigure and poison American democracy. Yesterday’s hacked emails are today’s bugged phones and deepfakes,” Andrew Bates, a campaign spokesperson, told me.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An OAN spokesperson, Krista McClelland, did not respond to a request for comment about the suggestion that the recordings have links to Russian intelligence. Nor did she respond to the Biden campaign’s charges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Other countries are stepping up their own efforts to get involved in this year’s elections; Iran and China, for example, have been linked to attempts to hack Biden and Trump campaign computers</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;But Russia continues to lead the misinformation game. The day after Rion reached out to Biden’s team, Sputnik—the Kremlin-owned propaganda service, which American intelligence has accused of being involved in the 2016 misinformation efforts—ran an interview with a former Poroshenko aide who claimed that he was the one who’d made the recordings, and that he’d given them to his lawyers to give the Trump administration. “Because of the coronavirus,” he said,” they are waiting. But in September, closer to elections, they will begin to use them more.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s no evidence to support this. But the Trump campaign doesn’t seem to have much interest in dampening ideas like it: The communications director, Tim Murtaugh,&nbsp;<b>didn’t respond to multiple emails&nbsp;</b>I sent about whether the campaign has more materials from Ukraine featuring Biden, and neither did White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Election Day is in five months. And the people best positioned to knock down the Russian misinformation apparatus seem most interested instead in propping it up</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">
</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">=</span></font></div></div></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=91a4cb4122de0af505cbbe73314de12ff4a01553c54fdcfce3c50363f29e427e43db487e53f170404e838b0408cc8f35c70243c7a77a7ddd" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=91a4cb4122de0af505cbbe73314de12ff4a01553c54fdcfce3c50363f29e427e43db487e53f170404e838b0408cc8f35c70243c7a77a7ddd</font></a></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/its-own-document-fox-news-rips-fox-news-host-sean-hannity/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/its-own-document-fox-news-rips-fox-news-host-sean-hannity/</font></a></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" small="small" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref $</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" small="small" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Opinions</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sean Hannity on the set of his show on Aug. 7, 2019. (Frank Franklin II/AP)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Erik Wemple&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Media critic</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Feb. 7, 2020 at 12:06 p.m. PST</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Each night, Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity engage in some shallow blather during the “handoff” between their ratings-killing programs. In Thursday night’s version, Hannity told Carlson, “You know the deep-state story is even getting bigger. There’s a whole new one developing. I’ll tell you about it privately.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cute, Hannity....</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Democracy Dies in Darkness</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Opinions</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sean Hannity on the set of his show on Aug. 7, 2019. (Frank Franklin II/AP)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Erik Wemple&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Media critic</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">February 7, 2020 at 3:06 PM EST</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Each night, Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity engage in some shallow blather during the “handoff” between their ratings-killing programs. In Thursday night’s version, Hannity told Carlson, “You know the deep-state story is even getting bigger. There’s a whole new one developing. I’ll tell you about it privately.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cute, Hannity.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Just what could this “new” deep-state story be? A clue emerged from a strange sequence of events on Twitter. Marcus DiPaola, who formerly worked at Fox News, posted some tweets about his experience with the network, as well as the front page of an interesting internal document:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; &nbsp; Here's the front page of the internal Fox News Trump-Ukraine timeline. I'll start tweeting some of the highlights shortly. pic.twitter.com/HWGX5sZUh8</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; &nbsp; — Marcus J. DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) February 6, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>That’s the title page of a dossier from the so-called Brain Room of Fox News, a long-standing research hive at the network.</b> The full Ukrainian report, obtained by the Erik Wemple Blog, is a document of great candor and thoroughness, 162 pages of events and statements and indictments and hearings that detail every last wrinkle in the Trump-Ukraine story. Its timeline starts in February 2014 — when former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv for Russia — and concludes in December 2019 — when Trump declared that his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, would write up a report about the findings of his Ukrainian investigation. “I hear he has found plenty,” said the president.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Brain Room report bears the name of Bryan Murphy, a senior political affairs specialist at Fox News. It also bears this withering assessment of John Solomon, former opinion contributor for the Hill who is responsible for setting in motion faulty story lines regarding Ukraine: “John Solomon played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign.” Another part of the document provides this assessment of Solomon: “Focus on stories from disinformation campaign, non-disclosure of conflicts, use of unreliable sources, publishing false and misleading stories, misrepresentation of sources, and opaque coordination with involved parties.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That says it all. Even as it levels that critique, the Brain Room document discloses that Solomon is a “Fox News contributor.” Indeed, though Solomon appeared as a guest frequently on “Hannity” throughout the Ukraine story, he left the Hill in fall 2019 and was hired as a contributor at Fox News in October.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Not only does the research paper pummel Solomon, it cites a statistic that Solomon, over six months in 2019, “published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine." Where did that statistic come from?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Media Matters for America! Yes, Media Matters for America, the organization essentially built to take down Fox News. Media Matters for America, the organization routinely slammed on Fox News’s air. Media Matters for America, the organization that essentially forced Glenn Beck from Fox News.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It’s a stunning juxtaposition — one that speaks to the integrity of the Brain Room report. Other faces of the Ukraine issue that surface in the report include Giuliani, the ringleader of Trump’s effort to secure an announcement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of an investigation into the Bidens, who is described as having: “High susceptibility to disinformation” from key Ukrainian actors, according to the document. Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a Trump-supporting husband-and-wife legal team, receive this evaluation: “Non-disclosure of financial motives and representation of [Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro] Firtash while spreading false and misleading stories.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Note: Giuliani, diGenova and Toensing appeared on “Hannity” with regularity to take the president’s side on Ukraine. All that explains, perhaps, why Hannity is making noises about a “new” deep state.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Though Fox News isn’t exactly forthcoming about its internal operations, the Brain Room isn’t a state secret. Occasionally network hosts will reference its work, as did Jesse Watters last fall, when he saw a Washington Post headline that he didn’t believe was real: “When I saw the headline afterwards, I forwarded it to our Brain Room because I thought it was an Onion” story, said Watters. There’s a great reverence among employees for the work of the room, as reflected in this comment from former host </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kimberly Guilfoyle </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">in June 2017: </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Here are some doughnut facts from our Brain Room, so [they] must be true.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A 2011 story in Rolling Stone quoted a network insider as alleging that the Brain Room was where "the evil resides.” And a former network executive told Gabriel Sherman — for his biography of late Fox News chief Roger Ailes — that the room had a “Nixonian” air. That said, Sherman wrote that the “mystique” of the Brain Room faded over time as staffers realized that it was a professional operation designed to fact-check the news. It’s the Brain Room, for example, that feeds all those contextual facts that viewers see on their screens during congressional hearings and other political events.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There’s no absence of context in the Brain Room’s Ukraine magnum opus. It has everything, including key revelations and charges against Hannity. Here’s the timeline’s entry for March 26, 2019:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; &nbsp; Melinda Haring, the editor of the UkraineAlert blog at the Atlantic Council and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes in the Washington Post: “The mechanics of the information operation that <b>Poroshenko’s minions pulled off are obvious. Lutsenko used Solomon to get to Hannity to get to Trump,</b> whose Twitter feed set thousands chattering about nonexistent collusion… If a bunch of obscure foreigners few Americans have ever heard of can play Trump so easily, and so obviously, what’s to stop others from doing the same?”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; &nbsp; (387) David Holmes, Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, later said, “The barrage of allegations directed at Ambassador Yovanovitch, a career ambassador, is unlike any anything I have seen in my professional career.” (388)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here’s another, absolutely devastating entry:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp; &nbsp; September 26, 2019: John Solomon, Toensing, and diGenova all appear on Hannity again to discuss Shokin’s affidavit, filed at the request of Firtash’s attorneys. At no time during the program does Hannity, Toensing, and diGenova mention who requested the statement nor do they discuss that they are Firtash’s attorneys. Solomon also doesn’t mention that he shares attorneys with Firtash. diGenova says “we’ve known from the very beginning that Mr. Shokin was not a corrupt prosecutor.” (856) Later that night, President Trump tweets a clip of diGenova from Hannity.</span>&nbsp;(857)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More: In an entry for Oct. 9, 2019, the Brain Room document notes that</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> <b>Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, had made a specific allegation regarding corruption by former vice president Joe Biden. </b>The Kyiv Post, notes the<b> Brain Room report, called the charge “dubious.” “Hours later, Giuliani appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News and parroted Derkach’s claim. (897).”</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In an entry that footnotes reporting from the Erik Wemple Blog, the document even tosses shade on how Hannity introduces Solomon on his program:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; &nbsp; May 14, 2018: The Hill’s editor-in-chief sent out a memo to staff stating that “effective immediately” John Solomon would no longer publish stories under the banner of news but instead would be an “opinion contributor.” (218) Solomon said that the choice to have his writing classified as opinion was his. During his TV appearances, Hannity has often continued to announce Solomon as an “investigative reporter” at The Hill.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What we have here is a journalistic blowout. It is a trouncing of Hannity and his treasured contributor, Solomon — written not by some mainstream media outlet or Media Matters for America, but by Fox News itself. Turns out the network is keeping its best reporting to itself.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a statement to the Erik Wemple Blog, Mitchell Kweit, senior vice president of the Brain Room, said: “The research division of FOX News produces a briefing book for all major stories, which serves as a standing collection of extensive data on major topics for internal use by all those in editorial functions. The Ukraine briefing book is nothing more than a comprehensive chronological account of what every person involved in the Ukraine controversy was doing at any identifiable point in time, including tracking media appearances of major players who appeared on FOX News and in many other outlets. The 200 page document has thousands of data points and the vast majority have no relation to FOX News – instead it’s now being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog, DiPaola commended Fox News for the separation between opinion shows and the so-called straight-news side, where he worked as a freelancer for a few months. “It did feel a lot like church and state,” he says. “They separate news from opinion pretty well.” As for the Brain Room timeline, DiPaola says, “I mean, it’s a Brain Room product, it’s meant to be unbiased. It’s evidence that Fox News Channel isn’t all bad. It’s evidence that there are honorable people working at Fox News all day.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And it’s evidence that those honorable people understand the threat “Hannity” poses to any news organization.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Read more from Erik Wemple:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sean Hannity and Fox News have normalized media corruption</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The comical hypocrisy of Sean Hannity</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Impeachment report hammers the Hill and John Solomon</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">John Solomon leaves behind lasting damage at the Hill</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani goes full conspiracy theory in insane ‘Fox & Friends’ appearance</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers</font></a><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>as&nbsp;&nbsp;testimony was underway during the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, far-right defenders of the president rapidly spread false and unsubstantiated information in an attempt to bolster a Republican-backed conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden and Burisma,</b>&nbsp;a Ukrainian gas company that previously had Biden on its board of directors.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On November 20, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee and provided further support for the central premise of the impeachment inquiry. Sondland&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/20/gordon-sondland-impeachment-testimony-071708" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">confirmed</a>&nbsp;that he believed Trump directed an effort to hold up security assistance to Ukraine unless the country announced an investigation into his political adversaries. Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and others close to the president have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">repeatedly</a>&nbsp;pushed the evidence-free claim that, as vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor because that prosecutor was investigating Burisma, where his son worked at the time. (In fact, the prosecutor in question was corrupt, and no Burisma investigation was being carried out at the time when Biden was tasked with advancing the broadly held Western foreign policy goal of pressuring Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the hearing was underway,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/facebook-promoting-conspiracy-theory-website-zero-hedge-trending-topics" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">conspiracy theory website</a>&nbsp;ZeroHedge&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">published an article claiming that Burisma founder Nikolai Zlochevsky had been indicted by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and that evidence indicated that Hunter Biden and other Burisma board members had received money embezzled by Burisma from Ukrainian citizens.</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;NBC News&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/sondland-testified-misleading-ukraine-story-spread-among-conservatives-social-media-n1087511" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a>&nbsp;that the claims in the ZeroHedge article were “incorrect,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky has not been indicted, but that “didn’t stop allies of President Donald Trump from widely disseminating the false account of an indictment, seizing on some truthful elements while wildly extrapolating others.” According to&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-burisma/ukraine-widens-probe-against-burisma-founder-to-embezzlement-of-state-funds-idUSKBN1XU2N7" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">a report</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from Reuters, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, did announce on November 20 an escalation into his investigation of Zlochevsky to include suspicion of embezzlement, but he “did not provide evidence or details” or mention Biden. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Reuters added that the investigation is “is effectively on hold” because “the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.”</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to NBC News, the claim that Burisma’s founder had been indicted was shared by tens of thousands of users on<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;</span>during the first hour after it was published.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Social media analysis tool CrowdTangle showed that by the morning of November 21, the ZeroHedge story had been shared on Facebook pages with a total of nearly 5.5 million followers. The story als</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">o&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/DivestTrump/status/1197186730115207168" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">began to trend</a>&nbsp;on Reddit’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddit-full-calls-violence-support-oregon-republicans" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">toxic</a>&nbsp;“r/The_Donald” subreddit</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. In particular, the story was&nbsp;</span><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20191120180956/https:/twitter.com/BreakingNLive/status/1197208699183480834" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">initially popularized</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;on Twitter by an account purporting to be a news organization, @BreakingNLive, that was&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/AlKapDC/status/1197239596779741185" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">suspended</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from the platform later in the day.&nbsp;</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The false story reached Trump’s inner circle on Twitter, with </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Donald Trump Jr.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> liking a tweet promoting the ZeroHedge article&nbsp;</span><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20191120173737/https:/twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1197207357635387397" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">sent</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">(Posobiec appears to have subsequently deleted the tweet.)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> On <b>YouTube, the indictment claim is being promoted by Red Pill News, a</b> channel verified by YouTube that has&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/votezaktaylor/about" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">176,000 subscribers</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, and</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> a channel belonging to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/right-side-broadcasting/right-side-broadcasting-unofficial-version-trump-tv-hires-racist-youtube" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">far-right</a>&nbsp;congressional candidate Joey Saladino, which has 252,000&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbJg2U82-8ucpaiS-41jK3g" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">subscribers</a>.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Beyond Posobiec, the ZeroHedge claims were pushed on social media by other prominent far-right conspiracy theorists including<b> Jerome Corsi</b>, Bill Mitchell, and cartoonist Ben Garrison.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Proponents of the far-right pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory were also behind the social media push. As NBC News reported, “One minute before the ZeroHedge article was published, the anonymous account that inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory — generally known as 'Q'&nbsp;— linked to the same” article that formed the basis of the claims promoted at ZeroHedge. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Major QAnon accounts, including @Jordan_Sather and @EyesOnQ subsequently promoted the ZeroHedge article.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> NBC’s Ben Collins&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore/status/1197269272889827328?s=19" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that “Q” later made a post complaining about the suspension of @BreakingNLive.</span></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--twitter-tweet paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="field field--name-field-twitter-tweet field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Beyond social media, the claims first popularized by ZeroHedge were also featured on disreputable right-wing conspiracy theory websites <b>Infowars and The Gateway Pundit as well as smaller such platforms including The Federalist Papers, WayneDupree.com,</b> [your]News, The Daily Coin, and MAGA Daily Report. <b>(<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3840911" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hannity</em></a>&nbsp;and Fox “straight news” program&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3840901" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Fox News @ Night</em></a>&nbsp;later covered the Reuters report as well, </b>while featuring pictures and a discussion&nbsp;of Hunter Biden.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The source of ZeroHedge’s story appears to be&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/625831.html" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">an article</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from Interfax-Ukraine that repeated unsubstantiated claims about illegal payments from Burisma to Biden made by Ukrainian Members of Parliament&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Andriy Derkach and Oleksandr Dubinsky </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">at a press conference they held at the news agency, where they&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-burisma/ukraine-widens-probe-against-burisma-founder-to-embezzlement-of-state-funds-idUSKBN1XU2N7" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">did not offer</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;evidence to back their claims.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b>Interfax-Ukraine’s&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/rothschildmd/status/1197224946977521664" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">parent company</a>&nbsp;is a Russian business, Interfax,</b> that was recently&nbsp;<a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61672" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">praised</a>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<b>Vladmir Putin</b>&nbsp;as making “a major contribution to strengthening the authority and prestige of journalism.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”&nbsp;</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Derkach’s claim about the payments isn’t new. As Time&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5731852/ukraine-politicians-donald-trump-investigations/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a>, in recent months Derkach has&nbsp;<a href="https://nypost.com/2019/10/10/giuliani-claims-ukrainian-company-paid-joe-biden-900000-in-lobbying-fees/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">repeatedly</a>&nbsp;made&nbsp;<a href="https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/623992.html" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">public statements</a>&nbsp;alleging improper payments from Burisma to Biden. Those statements failed to catch on in the way the statements made at the press conference on Wednesday did</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Other Ukrainian lawmakers have accused Derkach -- who does not belong to a political party and, according to Time, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“studied in the early 1990s at Russia’s top intelligence academy” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">-- of advancing the interests of Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. According&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/3-ukrainian-lawmakers-doing-trumps-dirty-work-in-scandal.html" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">to Kyiv Post</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Derkach has made separate accusations about Biden receiving improper payments in an offshore account while providing <b>“no evidence</b> to support these accusations.”<b> According to Ukraine experts&nbsp;</b></span><b><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/sondland-testified-misleading-ukraine-story-spread-among-conservatives-social-media-n1087511" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">interviewed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;by NBC News, Derkach and Dubinsky are “not credible” and likely held the press conference to boost Trump.</span></b></font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="">==</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>