lutsenko prosec

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">congrats 2nd on BLT</font></div><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 New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=91a4cb4122de0af505cbbe73314de12ff4a01553c54fdcfce3c50363f29e427e43db487e53f170404e838b0408cc8f35c70243c7a77a7ddd" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=91a4cb4122de0af505cbbe73314de12ff4a01553c54fdcfce3c50363f29e427e43db487e53f170404e838b0408cc8f35c70243c7a77a7ddd</a></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><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; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/its-own-document-fox-news-rips-fox-news-host-sean-hannity/</a></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref $</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><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></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Opinions</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">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); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Erik Wemple&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Media critic</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Feb. 7, 2020 at 12:06 p.m. PST</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">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); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Cute, Hannity....</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</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);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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. 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="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 Kimberly Guilfoyle in June 2017: “Here are some doughnut facts from our Brain Room, so [they] must be true.”</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=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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:</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&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: </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The mechanics of the information operation that Poroshenko’s minions pulled off are obvious.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Lutsenko used Solomon to get to Hannity to get to Trump, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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?”</span></b></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&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)</span></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="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More: In an entry for Oct. 9, 2019, the Brain Room document notes that Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, had made a specific allegation regarding corruption by former vice president Joe Biden. The Kyiv Post, notes the 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).”</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); font-size: small;">
</div></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/lev-parnas-spins-wild-crazy-stories-and-most-of-them-are-true/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/lev-parnas-spins-wild-crazy-stories-and-most-of-them-are-true/</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Lev Parnas spins wild, crazy stories — and most of them are true</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon January 17, 2020</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the rules of an anachronistic 18th-century ritual, the House managers walked in formation to the Senate to deliver the articles of impeachment on Thursday. The sergeant at arms informed the senators that if they speak during the trial they could be imprisoned, and then the chief justice arrived in his robes accompanied by four senators. He then administered the constitutionally prescribed oath to deliver impartial justice to the assembled senators, after which, one by one, they signed their names to a book. The only thing missing was the white wigs.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile,&nbsp; the president was shriek-tweeting in all caps, “I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was weird. But then, what isn’t weird in this administration?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only in the Trump era would we have a bombshell witness appear on the night before the trial, loaded down with pictures and video and written evidence, much of it in Russian. I’m speaking of Lev Parnas, of course, who served as Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s bagman in the plot to extort a political smear job against Joe Biden from the Ukrainian government.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas was arrested in October for campaign finance violations, along with his partner Igor Fruman. But until federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York returned records they had seized during the arrest, and a judge cleared them to be sent to the House Intelligence Committee last week, we didn’t know specifically what he’d been up to in the Ukraine scandal.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Monday, the House released some of the documents to the public, which included text messages — lots of text messages — between Parnas, Giuliani and any number of other players. The trial starts on Tuesday so presumably, the lawyers working for the House managers are pulling all-nighters to put together the timeline based upon all the records provided by their own witnesses, FOIA requests and Parnas to both corroborate his story and present an understandable narrative of what happened in Kyiv and in Washington.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have not interviewed Parnas, as far as I know, but he’s been giving TV interviews so they should be able to determine some of what they can corroborate and what they can’t. He’s an accused criminal, but as TV prosecutors have been saying on a loop for the past few days, it’s usually criminals who give evidence against other criminals. They’re the ones who know where their fellow criminals buried the bodies.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas revealed a lot of juicy details in his interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. It’s hard to know right now what was most important. There’s a ton of color about the Trump hotel in Washington being essentially like a mobsters’ “social club” where hangers-on gather in the lobby and the bar, while insiders get invited into the inner sanctums where the real deals are made. It’s a GOP power center that just happens to put money directly into the president’s personal bank account. Imagine that.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas also claimed that the shocking texts between him and a fringe character named Robert Hyde, in which Hyde indicated that he had Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, under surveillance, were all just a joke. Apparently, both the U.S. government and the Ukrainian government weren’t entirely convinced, since the FBI “visited” Hyde on Thursday and the Ukrainians finally gave Trump his investigation, although not quite the one he wanted. They have also announced they are looking into this allegation.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The new information I find most interesting at first glance is that we now know the withholding of military aid and a White House visit in exchange for the announcement of an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election was only one of three different quid-pro-quos in this plot.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s been a puzzle from the very beginning as to why the administration was so determined to push Yovanovitch out of her post. She was something of an anti-corruption crusader, but it hasn’t been clear exactly why Giuliani and his henchmen pushed so hard to get her fired.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to text messages provided by Parnas, it was just another transaction. Getting rid of Yovanovitch was the price they had to pay to obtain the cooperation of one of the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">crooked Ukrainian prosecutors, Yuri Lutsenko,</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;who agreed to investigate Biden if they delivered. Despite all their hard work getting Yovanovitch fired — and it was really hard, according to Parnas —<b> Lutsenko’s patron, then-President Petro Poroshenko, lost the election </b>and was replaced last year by Volodymyr Zelensky. (Out of office, Lutsenko later pulled a Trump and reneged on the agreement, telling the press he never found anything on Biden.)</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The other quid pro quo is more sinister. Giuliani got word that Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian gas oligarch with ties to the Kremlin, had dirt on Burisma, the firm that had Joe Biden’s son Hunter on its board</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Naturally, Giuliani was excited. Firtash was being represented by Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, two long-time GOP legal operatives who had been involved in the Ukraine plot, along with a right-wing reporter John Solomon. Firtash wanted to avoid extradition from Austria to the U.S., where he is wanted on bribery and racketeering charges. According to Parnas, Firtash agreed to share his information in exchange for having his extradition order lifted. Giuliani, Toensing and diGenova all worked together to try to make that happen.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Elements of this story were already known, but Parnas suggested in his interview with Maddow that Attorney General Bill Barr was also “on the team.</b>” He didn’t offer any direct evidence of this and the Department of Justice denies knowing anything about it. But it once more raises the question of why Trump told Zelensky during the “perfect call” to cooperate with both Giuliani and Barr.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas said he came forward because he’s afraid of Barr’s Justice Department, which is astonishing considering the lowlife elements he’s been palling around with. Since Parnas is under federal indictment that seems like a reckless thing to say. But he says everyone is running scared since Trump managed to consolidate power after naming Barr, so his only real hope lies in going public.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a crazy story but we already knew that most of it is true. As tantalizing as these new details are, they don’t entirely fill in the picture of Rudy Giuliani’s scheme and how Trump’s Washington works. What was true a month ago remains true today: The president of the United States and his personal lawyer plotted to extort the leaders of a foreign country into interfering in the presidential election by smearing his political rival. New information comes out every day and none of it will ever change that fact.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><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);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/</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">"huge" rudy</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></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>Report points to Trump, ‘-1,’ as the ringleader of a global conspiracy</b></font></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">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board December 4, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The House Intelligence Committee released its report Tuesday. In it were phone call records showing frequent contact between Rudy Giuliani and the White House. The records suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.</font></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">But the call records do more than that. They offer a teachable moment. They provide an illustration, in miniature, of what a conspiracy looks like, and why it’s morally and legally wrong for the head of the world’s oldest democracy to engage in such conduct.</font></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">The House Intelligence report does not say Giuliani called Trump. Instead, it says the president’s personal attorney called a number designated as “-1.” Adam Schiff, the panel’s chairman, said his committee is investigating whether “-1” is Trump’s phone. The timing of calls and other strong circumstantial evidence, however, point to him.</font></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">Joe Biden announced his candidacy on April 25. Leading up to that date, Giuliani, Lev Parnas and John Solomon were in frequent contact, according to the call logs. Parnas was one of Giuliani’s henchmen. He’s now under federal indictment for campaign-finance violations. Solomon was a reporter for The Hill, a Washington newspaper.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As mentioned in previous editions of the Editorial Board, </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Parnas, under Giuliani’s direction, connected Solomon to Yuriy</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Lutsenko</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> Lutsenko used to be Ukraine’s top prosecutor. He was hugely corrupt, because he was intimately linked to Vladimir Putin</b>. In interviews with Solomon, Lutsenko alleged that Joe Biden, when he was the vice president, tried to shield his son, Hunter Biden, from criminal investigation in Ukraine (a lie) and that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election (also a lie.)&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lev Parnas was deeply involved in Solomon’s “journalism.” He was present at his interviews with Yuriy Lutsenko, according to reporting in Pro Publica.</span></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);">This we knew. What didn’t know was the timing.</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);">On the same day Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign, John Solomon wrote a falsehood-laden column “alleging that Ukraine had planted Russia collusion allegations against the Trump campaign,” according to the Post. “The column also described Biden’s efforts to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor and questioned whether Biden had acted to protect his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company facing an investigation, as the fired prosecutor has alleged.”</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);">Coincidence? Unlikely.</font></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>The very same day, April 25, Giuliani received a call from “-1” (i.e., Trump). Giuliani then called Sean Hannity at Fox. A while later, Trump appeared on Hannity’s show to comment on Solomon’s report in The Hill. “That sounds like big, big stuff,” he said.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It could have been a coincidence, but again, unlikely. As I noted last week, Parnas’ attorney said he met regularly with the “BLT Team,” a name taken from the restaurant where the group convened several times a week on the second floor of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The BLT team included Parnas, Giuliani, Solomon, attorneys<b>&nbsp;Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, and US Rep. Devin Nunes’ chief aide.</b></font></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">Coincidence isn’t the right word to describe a president’s dirty lawyer getting a dirty prosecutor to tell a dirty reporter the president’s Democratic rival is dirty, and then getting a dirty TV host to ask the president to comment on the dirty reporter’s dirt.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The right word to describe all that is conspiracy.</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);">Which can be criminal. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chief, is now serving time in federal prison for defrauding the United States. Legally, conspiracy doesn’t require an underlying crime. Prosecutors were only required to show Manafort conspired to “impair or obstruct the lawful function of any part of the government.”</font></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">I don’t know if the president’s conduct meets a statutory standard. I do think it meets a political one. Trump, as “-1,” is the ringleader of a global conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to consent to his leadership. There is no such thing as legitimate consent when presidents collude with enemies foreign and domestic to obstruct the free and fair process by which all Americans exercise self-governance.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is a giant of a scandal. It dwarfs Watergate. It boggles the mind of ordinary Americans to contemplate the wide array of seedy underworld characters involved in a vast global conspiracy. (Another side of this involves another dirty former Ukrainian prosecutor who did a favor for a Ukrainian mobster fighting extradition to the US. Dmitry Firtash, the mobster, got Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, to say Biden was dirty. That won<b>&nbsp;Giuliani’s attention. His friends diGenova and Toensing went to the US Department of Justice to plead with the US attorney general to go easy on Firtash.)</b></font></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">As I said, giant.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But these call logs bring the vastness of the conspiracy down to a human scale. Donald Trump talked to Giuliani, who talked to Parnas, who talked to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Lutsenko,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> who talked to Solomon, who talked to Giuliani, who talked to Hannity, who talked to Donald Trump.</span></b></font></div></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"></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">wiki tymo</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><b style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Representatives of several countries and human rights organizations have rated the trials against Tymoshenko as "selective justice" and "political persecution</b><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">".</span><sup id="cite_ref-BBCOct2011_27-1" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-BBCOct2011-27" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[27]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-BBCQAAug2011_28-1" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-BBCQAAug2011-28" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[28]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-PMreactions_39-0" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-PMreactions-39" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[39]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-40" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-40" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[40]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-EPPstat_41-0" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-EPPstat-41" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[41]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-AmInt_42-0" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-AmInt-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[42]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-43" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-43" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[43]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-44" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-44" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[44]</a></sup><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;The European Union has shelved the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Ukraine_relations#European_Union_Association_Agreement" class="mw-redirect" title="EU-Ukraine relations" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-image="background-image" none="none" background-position="background-position" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip">European Union Association Agreement</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Ukraine_relations#Deep_and_Comprehensive_Free_Trade_Agreement_(DCFTA)" class="mw-redirect" title="EU-Ukraine relations" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-image="background-image" none="none" background-position="background-position" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip">Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;with Ukraine and EU leaders have suggested that these agreements will not be ratified unless Ukraine addresses concerns over a "stark deterioration of democracy and the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_system_of_Ukraine" class="mw-redirect" title="Judicial system of Ukraine" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-image="background-image" none="none" background-position="background-position" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip">rule of law</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">", including the</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;imprisonment of Tymoshenko and&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuriy_Lutsenko" title="Yuriy Lutsenko" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Yuriy Lutsenko</a>&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">in 2011 and 2012.</span><sup id="cite_ref-KPHS161112_38-1" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-KPHS161112-38" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[38]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-KPshelvedEUUKRAgr20712_45-0" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-KPshelvedEUUKRAgr20712-45" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[45]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-got4year27212_46-0" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_cases_against_Yulia_Tymoshenko_since_2010#cite_note-got4year27212-46" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background: none;">[46]</a></sup><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-hills-john-solomon-undermined-journalism"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-hills-john-solomon-undermined-journalism</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>How The Hill’s John Solomon undermined journalism</b></font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau /&nbsp;<b>Washington Monthly&nbsp;</b>December 6, 2019</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);">With the release of the report from the House Intelligence Committee on their impeachment hearings, Trump’s enablers are outraged that Representative Adam Schiff got access to the phone records of key players in Giuliani’s extortion scheme. According to Byron York, of particular concern is the fact that those records include telephone calls by John Solomon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, the publication of John Solomon’s records raised still other issues, this time about freedom of the press. In the excitement over the Democratic report, there was little or no discussion about the problems that might arise from the House Intelligence Committee publishing a journalist’s phone records. But in the past, at least when President Trump was not involved, similar issues have been a concern of press advocates…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Searching media coverage Tuesday and Wednesday, there was little or no discussion on whether Schiff’s disclosure touched on Solomon’s First Amendment rights. Solomon is the target of much criticism in mainstream reporting, but he is a journalist who should enjoy the same protections as others in his profession.</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);">York isn’t the only one complaining. The guy who smeared a U.S. ambassador with a mountain of lies in order to get her fired actually had the nerve to talk about a lack of decency.</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 problem with claiming that someone like Solomon deserves the protections of the first amendment is that he wasn’t acting as a journalist. While he calls himself an “investigative journalist,” he’s not simply a conservative reporter as some would suggest. He’s been a political operative for years now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I first noticed stories by Solomon when I began tracking down the origin of the smears about the Clinton Foundation<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;He wrote volumes spreading those lies. As it turns out, one of his sources was Victoria Toensing, a pattern that has persisted to the current impeachment hearings about Ukraine. At the time, Toensing was representing an undercover FBI informant who claimed he could blow the whistle on Clinton corruption.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we eventually learned is that the Justice Department determined that they had “serious credibility concerns” with Toensing’s client and that there were inconsistencies between his testimony and the documents they had obtained as part of their investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>You might, however, notice a pattern here when I point out that, while Solomon was collaborating with Toensing, the same lies about the informant were being repeated by Trump on Twitter and by Representative Devin Nunes on Fox News. The cast of characters looks very familiar, doesn’t it?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon went on to write about the Trump-Russia investigation. He specifically focused in on the Steele dossier and often quoted anonymous sources that sounded an awful lot like members of the House Intelligence Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since March, Solomon has been writing articles related to Giuliani’s Ukrainian racket – including smears against Ambassador Marie Yavanovitch, claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, and attacks on the Bidens.&nbsp;<b>He admitted that Lev Parnas is the one who connected him to the source of much of his material—former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuri <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Lutsenko.</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Documents shared with congress by the State Department inspector general give us an inside look at how these kinds of stories were coordinated.</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);">Included in the roughly 50-page packet was an email from Solomon to Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas previewing an article he’d written that was not yet published…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After that email became public, Solomon claimed he was simply fact-checking the piece before it was published. But Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas are not mentioned in the article,&nbsp;<b>raising the possibility that the trio, who had been working to find evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine, had been working directly with Solomon on the story.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, Solomon was running the article by his handlers to get their input and/or approval prior to publication.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as we saw with the efforts to smear the Clinton Foundation, the team of Toensing and diGenova would sign on as lawyers to represent people who had dirt on Trump’s opponents to sell, usually in exchange for favorable treatment by Trump’s Justice Department. Parnas or Toensing connected those people with Solomon, who wrote the stories that were spread by Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, and a whole host of right wing news outlets.&nbsp;<b>In the midst of all of that, Solomon was also a client of Toensing and diGenova.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is in that sense that I would challenge Solomon’s claims to be a journalist. Just like Giuliani, Toensing, diGenova, Parnas, and Nunes, he was working as a political operative on Trump’s behalf. Beyond the fact that he spread lies that benefited the most corrupt individual to ever serve as a U.S. president, he contributed to the undermining of journalism, which is equally disturbing. Any time a political operative disguises themselves as a journalist, it infects the entire culture with suspicions about who we can trust.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/</a></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mojo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;</font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">March 2018, Rudy Giuliani</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://tgsv.net/triglobal-strategic-ventures-announces-successful-trip-for-city-of-kharkiv-representatives-to-new-york-city/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">met</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">in Manhattan with a delegation of lawmakers from Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million in eastern Ukraine. Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team a few weeks later, was at this gathering because, Giuliani says, his security firm</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giulianis-corrupt-oligarch-ukraine-2018-11" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">agreed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">in 2017 to help the city improve its emergency services and seek foreign investment.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;">
</span></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the deal had a murkier element. Giuliani later&nbsp;<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/ukrainian-oligarch-pavel-fuks-scrutinized-by-robert-mueller-was-rudy-giuliani-client/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">conceded</a>&nbsp;that he wasn’t just working for Kharkiv and that for at least some of the work he was paid by<b>&nbsp;Pavel Fuks</b>, a Kharkiv-born business executive who became a prominent real estate developer in Moscow in the 2000s and who has said that he negotiated directly with Trump between 2004 and 2010 about building a Trump-branded<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;</span>tower in Moscow. Fuks was one of several Ukrainians with Russian ties whose attendance at Trump’s presidential inauguration was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/ukraine-donald-trump-inauguration.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">investigated</a>&nbsp;by former special counsel Robert Mueller.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;So at the start of Trump’s presidency, Giuliani was hobnobbing with at least one Ukrainian player who would be tainted by scandal.&nbsp;</span></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_1" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-4" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">exploded</a>&nbsp;into public view this month, with the revelation that Trump pressured the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to work with&nbsp;Giuliani and Attorney General&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/william-barr-ukraine-memo-1512255" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">William Barr</a>&nbsp;to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and information to discredit Mueller’s probe. A complaint filed by an intelligence community whistleblower that triggered this new Trump scandal depicted Giuliani as a Trump henchman prowling Ukraine for negative material Trump could use against Biden. But the former New York mayor’s involvement in Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries has been more extensive and even more&nbsp;sketchy than these disclosures indicate.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The New York meeting and an earlier trip Giuliani trip took to Kharkiv in November 2017 were arranged by TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, the firm&nbsp;<a href="http://tgsv.net/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">says</a>&nbsp;on its website. TriGlobal, which claims to have offices in New York, Moscow, and Kiev, sells itself as an international business consultancy that does public relations work for clients in Russia and Ukraine. The firm also brags that it has worked with Giuliani since 2004,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">arranging</a>&nbsp;trips for him to former Soviet states. Last October, Giuliani took a break from his work representing Trump to&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">speak</a>&nbsp;about cybersecurity at a conference&nbsp;<b>TriGlobal organized in Armenia to promote a Russia-led economic bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union</b>. Giuliani appeared at the event alongside a&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Russian official, Sergey Glazyev, who was&nbsp;<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/17/fact-sheet-ukraine-related-sanctions" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">sanctioned</a>&nbsp;in March 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea</b>&nbsp;and who has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/International/Putin-adviser-denies-antisemitic-conspiracy-about-Ukraines-new-president-589231" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">accused</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/07/putin-aide-says-new-ukraine-leader-could-populate-war-torn-region-with-jews-a65509" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">advancing</a>&nbsp;anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Ukraine, an accusation he’s denied. Giuliani was reportedly invited to a conference by Russian Armenian multimillionaire Ara Abramyan, a member of TriGlobal’s board, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">reportedly</a>&nbsp;suggested at the time that he expected Giuliani to deliver a message for him to Trump.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Friday, the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">reported</a>&nbsp;that Giuliani planned to participate in a panel led by Glazyev at the same conference in Armenia this year. Giuliani canceled his plans to attend after the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Post</em>‘s report. He said he decided not to attend after learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to go. “If Putin’s going it’s easy,” he said in a text.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These gigs form part of Giuliani’s lucrative post-mayoral career as a roving international security consultant and high-priced lawyer. That career has continued, even after Trump brought Giuliani onto his personal legal team with a mandate to take a combative approach against Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani provides not only pro-bono legal assistance for Trump, but, he says, political advice, and reportedly he acts as somewhat of a personal emissary for the president. All the while, Giuliani has shrugged off questions of whether clients, including foreign interests, are paying him and his firm as he functions as Trump’s consigliere. And he has refused to comprehensively identify his clients.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He claims that he does not need to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—which would require him to disclose details of his work for overseas clients—because he does no lobbying in the United States for foreign entities and instead merely provides security advice to any client he has abroad.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>But at least one former client disputes Giuliani’s claims about his work.</b>&nbsp;“I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine—this is stated in the contract,” Fuks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/us/politics/ukraine-giuliani-foreign-work.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>&nbsp;in March. “It is very important for me that such person as Giuliani tells people that we are a good country, that people can do business with us. That’s what we would like to bring to America’s leaders.” Neither Giuliani nor Fuks has made their contract public. Giuliani has declined to say what he and his firm were paid for the work.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Seven Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.),&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FARA%20Letter%20DOJ.pdf" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">pressed</a>&nbsp;the Justice Department this week to investigate whether Giuliani is violating foreign lobbying law. “Like any other American, Mr. Giuliani has legal obligations to report his work on behalf of foreign clients,” they wrote, “and the Department of Justice should not give him preferential treatment or exempt him from his obligation just because he is the President’s personal attorney.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani conducted other business in Ukraine while working for Kharkiv and Fuks. In June 2017, Giuliani traveled to Kiev where he reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ele_schiff_cummings_letter_to_sec_pompeo_on_ukraine.pdf" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">met with</a>&nbsp;then-President Petro<b>&nbsp;Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko</b>, and other government officials.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Giuliani also&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.pinchukfund.org/en/news/20207/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">spoke</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;on “democracy” and the “rule of law” at&nbsp;a conference organized by the foundation of Ukrainian metals magnate, Victor Pinchuk—an oligarch whose 2016 payment of $150,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation drew&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/trump-mueller-ukraine-victor-pinchuk.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">scrutiny</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from Mueller. Giuliani, who in 2006&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/politics/17candidates.html?module=inline" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;receiving up to $200,000 per&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wsb.com/speakers/rudy-giuliani" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">speech</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, has declined to say how much he he was paid for that presentation. It’s unclear if these activities had any connection to Giuliani’s deal with Fuks and Kharkiv.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a text message Thursday, Giuliani said his work in Ukraine in 2017 was unrelated to his recently revealed activity. “My business in Ukraine ended in Dec. 2017,” he wrote. But Giuliani’s involvement in the country continued after he became Trump’s lawyer in April 2018.</span></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_3" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-11" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In May 2018, Ukrainian officials stopped investigating payments to Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and dropped an offer to assist with Mueller’s prosecution of him.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ukrainian officials&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/ukraine-mueller-manafort-missiles.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>&nbsp;they feared helping Mueller would anger Trump, potentially complicating their purchase from the United States of antitank weapons aimed at deterring Russian aggression. This week Giuliani insisted in a text message to me that he did “not know anything about” that move.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>At some point in 2018—the exact date is unclear—Giuliani began working on Ukraine-related matters with<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;</span>two Soviet-born American business executives, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.&nbsp;</b>Giuliani has&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1129761193755910144?s=20" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">said</a>&nbsp;they’re his clients, though his work for them appears indistinguishable from his efforts on Trump’s behalf. In a text message on Monday, Giuliani declined to comment on this work, citing attorney-client privilege. Parnas and Fruman did not respond to inquiries.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>According to a joint&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">investigation</a>&nbsp;by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>, it was Parnas and Fruman who first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikesallah/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-trump-parnas-fruman" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">encouraged</a>&nbsp;Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Biden</b>. Both Parnas and Fruman, who live in South Florida, became big GOP donors in 2018, giving at least $576,500 in combined donations over several months. They used the resulting access to powerful Republican figures to promote a plan to sell American liquified gas to Ukraine. In May 2018, the duo dined with the president at the Trump International Hotel and had breakfast in Beverly Hills with Donald Trump Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., who later became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, according Facebook posts by Parnas, which he later deleted. It is unclear if Giuliani was helped connect them with Trump.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the OCCRP/<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>&nbsp;report, Parnas and Fruman organized a late 2018 Skype call between Giuliani and&nbsp;<b>Viktor Shokin</b>, the prosecutor whose firing was pushed by Biden and many European diplomats in 2016.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Shokin was ousted for blocking anti-corruption probes, but Giuliani and Trump have asserted that Biden sought Shokin’s dismissal to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, from investigation. There is no evidence to support that claim.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But Shokin, not surprisingly, was apparently eager to help smear Biden.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Parnas claims that he and Fruman put Giuliani in touch with Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, late last year. Giuliani and Lutsenko met in New York in January 2018 and in Poland in February, according to the OCCRP/<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>&nbsp;report. Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-gambit-for-trump-giuliani-engaged-parade-of-ukrainian-prosecutors/2019/09/26/4d3dc72e-e072-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>&nbsp;that he has met with five current and former Ukrainian prosecutors overall, including Shokin and Lutsenko, since last year.&nbsp;</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shortly after&nbsp;their get-togethers,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Lutsenko</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and Giuliani began pushing allegations in the US media about Biden and claiming Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 election to help the Hillary Clinton campaign.&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Many of these claims ended up in articles written by&nbsp;</span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">Hill</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;opinion writer John Solomon, whose reports were amplified by Fox News and other conservative media and by Trump—but his reports have largely been</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-a-conservative-columnist-helped-push-a-flawed-ukraine-narrative/2019/09/26/1654026e-dee7-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">debunked</a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em>&nbsp;Ukrainian anti-corruption activists&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/10/rumors-joe-biden-scandal-ukraine-absolute-nonsense-reformer-says/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">claim</a>&nbsp;Shokin and Lutsenko were promoting phony accusations, and <b>Lutsenko later&nbsp;<a href="https://thebabel.net/texts/28898-genprokuror-yuriy-lucenko-ne-idet-v-otstavku-vot-chto-on-rasskazal-nam-o-konfliktah-s-poslom-ssha-i-glavoy-nabu-dele-burisma-plenkah-rozenblata-i-istochnikah-korrupcii-bolshoe-intervyu" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">withdrew</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/ukraine-prosecutor-says-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-bidens" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">many</a>&nbsp;of his claims.</b> Daria Kaleniuk, the head of a Ukrainian anti-corruption group,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/reporters-stop-helping-donald-trump-spread-lies-joe-biden-ukraine/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">contends</a>&nbsp;that Lutsenko issued allegations to please Trump in a bid to keep his job.&nbsp;</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee,” Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/20/trump-has-been-openly-trying-leverage-ukraine-his-political-benefit-months/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">claimed</a>&nbsp;last week on CNN. These<b>&nbsp;accusations promoted by Giuliani have been embraced by Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>&nbsp;On Wednesday, the Justice Department said that a probe initiated by Barr and run by a US attorney, John Durham, is “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”&nbsp;</b>(The nature of this probe is unclear. Ukraine was not involved in the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian attack on the 2016 election and the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia.)&nbsp;</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>, since Zelensky took office in May, Giuliani has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html?wpisrc=al_news__alert-national--alert-world--alert-politics&wpmk=1" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">sidelined</a>&nbsp;the State Department and helped force the firing of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom he accused, seemingly without evidence, of “collusion” and of “working for” liberal financier George Soros. Trump’s request that Zelensky help Giuliani unearth negative information on Biden has received lots of attention. Zelensky agreeing to do so has received less notice. According to the whistleblower’s complaint, Giuliani met with a Zelenksy adviser on August 2 in Madrid to follow up on “cases” discussed in the July 25 phone call.</span></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_5" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-10" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani’s role, particularly his work in Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, has not been fully explained. The whistleblower&nbsp;<a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6430345/20190812-Whistleblower-Complaint-Unclass.pdf" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">complaint</a>&nbsp;alleges that Giuliani has been “a central figure” in Trump’s covert effort to use his power to press Ukraine to help tilt the 2020 election in his favor. An unnamed US official quoted by the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Post</em>&nbsp;made a similar claim: “<b>Rudy—he did all of this,” the official&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">said</a>. “This shitshow that we’re in—it’s him injecting himself into the process.”</b></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Calluna, serif; font-size: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Asked about his work in Ukraine, Giuliani, in a series of texts, called the issue “bull distraction.” Not enough is publicly known yet to back up Giuliani’s this-is-a-distraction defense, or to assess whether Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine will ultimately help Trump or cause him more difficulty in a scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry.&nbsp;</p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/massive-criminal-enterprise-new-report-claims-giuliani-sought-ukraine-business-deals-as-he-dug-up-dirt-on-biden-for-trump/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/massive-criminal-enterprise-new-report-claims-giuliani-sought-ukraine-business-deals-as-he-dug-up-dirt-on-biden-for-trump/</font></a></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Massive criminal enterprise’: New report claims Giuliani sought Ukraine business deals as he dug up dirt on Biden for Trump</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Salon November 28, 2019</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public optics for Rudy Giuliani continued to get worse on Wednesday after the New York Times and Washington Post both reported that President Donald Trump’s personal attorney earlier this year sought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business opportunities in Ukraine from the same government officials he was working with to uncover dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">The Post reported that Giuliani negotiated a contract earlier this year to represent Yuri Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s top prosecutor, for at least $200,000. The negotiations came at the same time Giuliani was working with Lutsenko to dig up damaging information on Biden for the benefit of Trump.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The agreements were never executed, and there is no indication that Giuliani was ultimately paid by Lutsenko or other Ukrainian officials,” the Post noted. “But the negotiations proceeded far enough that legal agreements were drafted under which Giuliani’s company would have received more than $200,000 to work for the Ukrainians.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Times, Giuliani and lawyers close to him were engaged in a months-long effort to take on “various Ukrainian officials or their agencies as clients.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Times reviewed “a proposal signed in February by Mr. Giuliani,” which “called for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to pay his firm $300,000.”</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In return, Mr. Giuliani would help the government recover money it believed had been stolen and stashed overseas,” the Times reported. “The Times could not determine whether the documents it reviewed comprise the entirety of the efforts by Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers to represent Ukrainian government officials.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani downplayed the talks in an interview with the Times and said he “never received a penny” from Ukrainian officials.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new reporting was viewed by progressives and analysts as further evidence that Giuliani and Trump were pursuing corrupt ends in Ukraine while publicly claiming to be fighting corruption.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is getting so bad for @RudyGiuliani that he’s now getting embroiled in a set of side scandals all his own. @paulwaldman1 on the latest Rudy revelations:https://t.co/PnW9dWa9fz</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 27, 2019</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani sought a payments of $200,000 from the recently dismissed prosecutor general of Ukraine earlier this year.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, Mr. President, about that corruption in Ukraine you said you were so worried about… https://t.co/tOQMu56ue4</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) November 27, 2019</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reflecting on the new revelations, Post columnist Paul Waldman wrote:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would Giuliani be simultaneously pursuing what former national security official Fiona Hill called a “domestic political errand” on Trump’s behalf — pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation that would smear former vice president Joe Biden — while simultaneously looking to cash in himself?</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The better question is, why wouldn’t he?</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Trumplandia is just a massive criminal enterprise,” tweeted Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How the firing of Marie Yovanovitch exposed a second layer to Trump’s Ukraine racket</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PBS NewsHour</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly November 15, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans have made a big deal out of the fact that a president has the right to fire an ambassador. During her testimony on Friday, Marie Yovanovitch agreed. She said,”I have always understood that I served at the pleasure of the President.” The issue under review is not the fact that Trump fired Yovanovitch. Rather, it is the reason he did so. As Yovanovitch’s testimony made clear, she became an obstacle to the president’s attempt to exploit corruption in Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here is how Yovanovitch described the situation in Ukraine.</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">It was— and remains—a top U.S. priority to help Ukraine fight corruption. Significant progress has been made since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Unfortunately, as the past couple of months have underlined, not all Ukrainians embraced our anti-corruption work. Thus, perhaps, it was not surprising, that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of a desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me. What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As George Kent said during Wednesday’s hearing, “You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.” It’s clear that Ambassador Yovanovitch pissed off some corrupt people and they launched a smear campaign in order to get her fired.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>We know that on the Ukrainian end, those people included two corrupt former prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> It appears that the role of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman was to connect people like that to Rudy Giuliani, as well as reporters like John Solomon. That’s the nexus between Yovanovitch and Trump’s attempt to bribe the Ukrainian government in order to get dirt on his political opponent. There were actually three groups of actors in this drama.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump wanted dirt on Joe Biden, as well as affirmation of his conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election to help Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zelensky wanted U.S. support, both in the form of a White House meeting and military aid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corrupt Ukranians wanted to upend the anti-corruption efforts of career professionals like Yovanovitch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Ukrainians fed dirt on Yovanovitch to both Giuliani and Solomon, which eventually got her fired.</b> At the same time, they dished out lies about the Bidens and the 2016 election, which Giuliani took back to Trump and Solomon published in his articles. Trump used those lies to pressure Zelensky into making a public statement about opening investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election—holding out a White House meeting and military aid as the payoff. Everyone was going to get what they wanted, until the whistleblower exposed the whole racket.</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">That is why I nearly jumped out of my seat on Wednesday when Representative Jim Himes said that “President Trump wasn’t trying to end corruption in Ukraine, I think he was trying to aim corruption in Ukraine at Vice-President Biden and at the 2020 election.” There were actually two quid pro quos that were part of this whole deal. In addition to the one Trump was using against Zelensky, <b>the corrupt prosecutors were willing to dish up dirt on the president’s political opponents in exchange for an end to U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is where Bill Taylor’s testimony about the two diplomatic channels that were at work in Ukraine—the regular and the irregular—comes into play. Amidst their efforts to get dirt on Trump’s political opponents, the irregular channel, led by Rudy Giuliani, was working to undermine the anti-corruption efforts of the regular channel. The smears against Yovanovich and her eventual firing were part of that effort.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div></div></div></div>