Stop The Tape! How Has Joe Biden’s Scandal Suddenly Become President Trump’s Scandal?

Like sharks who’ve discovered fresh chum, members of the mainstream media have worked themselves into a frenzy over a Washington Post article about a whistleblower’s complaint to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General, Michael Atkinson. The whistleblower was “alarmed” over a promise President Trump had made to a foreign leader during a phone call. Atkinson submitted the complaint to the acting DNI Chief who has refused to notify Congress. Atkinson then took it upon himself to notify Congress. Hence, the firestorm. I posted on the details and the sequence of events here on Thursday.

Overnight, some of the blanks have been filled in. According to The Washington Post, the whistleblower’s complaint allegedly involved a July 25th phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.          .

The Post obtained the Ukrainian government’s “readout” of that call which said Trump was “convinced the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve [the] image of Ukraine, [and] complete [the] investigation of corruption cases, which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA.”

The Post strongly suggests that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden (to help Trump defeat him) and, in return, he would release $250 million in aid to the country. In other words, the media is calling this extortion.

Both Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, have some serious questions of their own to answer when it comes to Ukraine. In February 2014, Biden became the Obama administration’s “point man” on Ukraine. Within months, Hunter’s business, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, was receiving large monthly deposits from Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company. These payments began in the spring of 2014 and continued through the fall of 2015. According to writer Peter Schweitzer, both Hunter and his business partner were named to Burisma’s board in the spring of 2014 as well. Hunter was tasked with overseeing Burisma’s legal team.

While speaking to a group of foreign policy strategists, Biden boasted about threatening to hold back $1 billion in U.S. aid if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did not fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was about to question Hunter. Biden told the group:

I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’

Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

The Hill’s John Solomon reported in April that rather than pressuring Poroshenko for six hours, Biden had been pressuring him for “several months in late 2015 and early 2016.”

Shokin’s probe was composed of three separate cases. Solomon interviewed the current Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in March 2019 which I wrote about here. Lutsenko confirmed that after Shokin was fired, the primary case was “transferred to a different Ukrainian agency, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, known as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).” You may recall that many Embassy officials, and their actions as well, were pro-Hillary Clinton.

It should come as no surprise that NABU closed the case. Solomon reported:

A second case involving alleged improper money transfers in London was dropped when Ukrainian officials failed to file the necessary documents by the required deadline. The general prosecutor’s office successfully secured a multimillion-dollar judgment in a tax evasion case, Lutsenko said. He did not say who was the actual defendant in that case.

So, for a period of time, it looked like the Bidens had escaped scrutiny.

Unfortunately for Biden, Lutsenko started a review of the case NABU had closed.

Lutsenko told Solomon that he “discovered members of the Board obtained funds as well as another U.S.-based legal entity, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, for consulting services.”

He also said he would like to show some of the evidence to US Attorney General William Barr, “particularly the vice president’s intervention.” He added, “Unfortunately, Mr. Biden had correlated and connected this aid with some of the HR (personnel) issues and changes in the prosecutor’s office.”

Solomon spoke to the lead prosecutor in Lutsenko’s office who confirmed that this portion of the Burma investigation was reopened following Biden’s speech, but explained that a separate agency has been slow in working on the case and told Solomon, “We don’t see any result from this case one year after the reopening because of some external influence.”
(The US Embassy in Kiev and several agencies associated with it were in cahoots with the DNC.) The Ukrainian government is known for being especially corrupt. However, Solomon explains:

But what makes Lutsenko’s account compelling is that federal authorities in America, in an entirely different case, uncovered financial records showing just how much Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s company received from Burisma while Joe Biden acted as Obama’s point man on Ukraine.

Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.

The bank records show that, on most months when Burisma money flowed, two wire transfers of $83,333.33 each were sent to the Rosemont Seneca–connected account on the same day. The same Rosemont Seneca–linked account typically then would pay Hunter Biden one or more payments ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 each. Prosecutors reviewed internal company documents and wanted to interview Hunter Biden and [his business partner Devon] Archer about why they had received such payments, according to interviews.

Lutsenko said Ukrainian company board members legally can pay themselves for work they do if it benefits the company’s bottom line, but prosecutors never got to determine the merits of the payments to Rosemont because of the way the investigation was shut down.

Although it’s too soon to accuse Hunter Biden of financial wrongdoing, it is entirely appropriate to question him. What work did he and Archer perform for the money they received from Burisma?

And it is also reasonable to ask questions of Joe Biden starting with why did he try to get Shokin fired while he was investigating Burisma? Does he think it was appropriate for Hunter and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while he served as point man for Ukraine policy? Did Biden know about the Burisma probe? (Of course he did.) And does he believe it was ethical of him to use his position to have the prosecutor fired?

Rather than allowing Democrats to attack President Trump and the acting DNI Chief, who are all acting within their constitutional authority, let’s look at the real Ukrainian scandal. At the very least, Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden acted unethically. At worst, Biden acted corruptly and Hunter may have violated the law.

Running out of reasons to investigate Trump, Democrats are trying to turn this complaint from an Obama administration holdover into a second Russia collusion case. They must be stopped.

If they’re not sure how to do that, Corey Lewandowski will be happy to show them how it’s done.

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Note: There is another ongoing Ukrainian investigation underway. Back in March, Lutsenko announced a new investigation into an alleged attempt by Ukrainian officials to interfere in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The plan involved the leaking of the “black ledger files,” which contained incriminating information about payments to Paul Manafort, to the U.S. media. This would have been done to help Hillary Clinton win the election.

It is well-known that the DNC and many pro-Hillary Clinton staffers inside the American Embassy were in cahoots. However, this is way beyond the scope of this post.

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