The Ukraine scandal timeline Democrats... don’t want America to see

[firstfloor]

I posted an article, Jim, with very little commentary on my part to see how whoever would respond. The TrumpHaters will respond one way - usually quite reactionary (like you) - while the conservatives will most likely support it. I like to see the reactions. I like to see the reasoning behind the attacks / defenses.



I don't think we know the entirety of this thing yet. I don't think you know half of what you think you know. But this I know -- you will see it in whatever light makes Trump look the absolute worst.

This is not a game, CP. I don’t think you even know what the game is.

Fiona Hill was a very interesting witness. She seemed quite supportive of Trump in his efforts to get on better with Putin. But we also know that Trump listens to Putin, while the country is being assaulted by Russian disinformation. Russia is not your friend. While Putin is trying to divide Americans, so is Trump. Your Captain is batting for the opposition.

[Watermelon]

Insisting it's been debunked. Calling it a conspiracy theory. Calling it Russian disinfo propaganda. Claiming Solomon is a discredited journalist. Threatening that Graham will "regret" the investigation. I've never seen so much smoke related to one subject that has yet to be investigated.

So why hasn’t it been investigated yet?

Is it not odd that the president is constantly talking about these allegations but no one is taking him seriously so he has to send Giuliani around the world to investigate it?

Is there any possibility that it could have already been looked into and dismissed because it couldn’t be substantiated?

[seanD]

So why hasn’t it been investigated yet?

Is it not odd that the president is constantly talking about these allegations but no one is taking him seriously so he has to send Giuliani around the world to investigate it?

Is there any possibility that it could have already been looked into and dismissed because it couldn’t be substantiated?

You have two sides arguing two different things. If the side that says Biden is corrupt is right, then all the resistance we're seeing against an investigation is clear evidence of a cover-up. Frankly, I don't think anyone in the senate was that privy to it until the Dems started the impeachment investigation. That probably opened up a lot of doors to evidence that no one knew about prior. Senators like graham started poking around, start finding suspicious activity, and here we are.

IMO the resistance is all I need to suspect a cover-up. If Biden and his crackhead son are innocent, then why get mad about it? Why make veiled threats? He should welcome an investigation, because then that would not only keep the Reps occupied with nonsense, but would make the Reps look like bullies and make him look like a martyr, thus a more favorable election candidate. Look what it's doing to Trump -- totally backfiring in his favor. It backfired in his favor in 2016 and it will likely backfire again.

[Juvenal]

What's missing from Solomon's timeline is the letter from Shokin's office given directly to Burisma, clearing him, ending the UK investigation, and adding to the extensive evidence of corruption that made Shokin's removal a priority to the US, the IMF, and the European community.

What's missing from your source checking is the fact Solomon Reports is the love child of his forced removal from the Hill's reporting ranks, his subsequent resignation, and his history at the Moonie Times.

If you'd just stick to preaching, you could avoid making Christianity look like the first choice of religions for chumps.

This has been extensively reported, but you're a goober, so you're going to keep on sucking up the stories that make ya feel good, not the stories that are good for you. And don't whine. Please, don't whine. We've tried saying this politely before, and you just blow it off.

Go ahead and queue up the counter-attacks and quote mines, your go-to defenses when you're busted dirty, but at the end of the day, we both know it's just you pushing apologetics for partisans, when you could be pushing back against them in defense of the way and the truth.

This is your life, now.

Explainer: Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn't pursue corruption cases
Courtney Subramanian
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – A whistleblower complaint centering on President Donald Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president has spurred a number of allegations and counterallegations as Republicans and Democrats jockey for position amid an impeachment inquiry.

At the heart of Congress' probe into the president's actions is his claim that former Vice President and 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden.

But sources ranging from former Obama administration officials to an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine say the official, Viktor Shokin, was ousted for the opposite reason Trump and his allies claim.

Politics
Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Colby Itkowitz
November 23, 2019 at 7:47 p.m. EST

A high-ranking House Democrat said Saturday it’s “quite likely” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) will face an ethics investigation over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukrainian official to obtain information about former vice president Joe Biden and his son.

Nunes doesn't have the majority to shield himself from an ethics probe this time. But it's his evil companions who are more relevant to this thread.

The allegation that Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor last year to discuss the Bidens came from the attorney for Lev Parnas, one of two Soviet-born associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani who were indicted on charges they broke campaign finance law.

Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, told The Washington Post that Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, informed Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in December 2018.

Bondy also said that a top aide to Nunes, Derek Harvey, sometimes joined a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Biden matter, among other topics. The group, according to Bondy, was convened by Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and included Parnas, his business associate Igor Fruman, as well as journalist John Solomon and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.

All of Solomon's primary sources on the "Biden scandal" are corrupt. Two have been indicted, one is under investigation by the FBI, and another is heading for yet another ethics investigation.

[Cow Poke]

What's missing from Solomon's timeline is the letter from Shokin's office given directly to Burisma, clearing him, ending the UK investigation, and adding to the extensive evidence of corruption that made Shokin's removal a priority to the US, the IMF, and the European community.

What's missing from your source checking is the fact Solomon Reports is the love child of his forced removal from the Hill's reporting ranks, his subsequent resignation, and his history at the Moonie Times.

If you'd just stick to preaching, you could avoid making Christianity look like the first choice of religions for chumps.

This has been extensively reported, but you're a goober, so you're going to keep on sucking up the stories that make ya feel good, not the stories that are good for you. And don't whine. Please, don't whine. We've tried saying this politely before, and you just blow it off.

Go ahead and queue up the counter-attacks and quote mines, your go-to defenses when you're busted dirty, but at the end of the day, we both know it's just you pushing apologetics for partisans, when you could be pushing back against them in defense of the way and the truth.

This is your life, now.

Explainer: Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn't pursue corruption cases
Courtney Subramanian
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – A whistleblower complaint centering on President Donald Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president has spurred a number of allegations and counterallegations as Republicans and Democrats jockey for position amid an impeachment inquiry.

At the heart of Congress' probe into the president's actions is his claim that former Vice President and 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden.

But sources ranging from former Obama administration officials to an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine say the official, Viktor Shokin, was ousted for the opposite reason Trump and his allies claim.

Politics
Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Colby Itkowitz
November 23, 2019 at 7:47 p.m. EST

A high-ranking House Democrat said Saturday it’s “quite likely” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) will face an ethics investigation over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukrainian official to obtain information about former vice president Joe Biden and his son.

Nunes doesn't have the majority to shield himself from an ethics probe this time. But it's his evil companions who are more relevant to this thread.

The allegation that Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor last year to discuss the Bidens came from the attorney for Lev Parnas, one of two Soviet-born associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani who were indicted on charges they broke campaign finance law.

Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, told The Washington Post that Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, informed Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in December 2018.

Bondy also said that a top aide to Nunes, Derek Harvey, sometimes joined a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Biden matter, among other topics. The group, according to Bondy, was convened by Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and included Parnas, his business associate Igor Fruman, as well as journalist John Solomon and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.

All of Solomon's primary sources on the "Biden scandal" are corrupt. Two have been indicted, one is under investigation by the FBI, and another is heading for yet another ethics investigation.

Wow, I read the first two paragraphs, and started to think, "hmmm, something of substance".....

Then it turned into your typical....

Thanks, Juvie, for never disappointing.

[Mountain Man]

Wow, I read the first two paragraphs, and started to think, "hmmm, something of substance".....

Then it turned into your typical....

Thanks, Juvie, for never disappointing.

There's this line from his USA Today reference:

It wasn't because Shokin was investigating a natural gas company tied to Biden's son; it was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians, according to a Ukrainian official and four former American officials who specialized in Ukraine and Europe.

Shokin's inaction prompted international calls for his ouster and ultimately resulted in his removal by Ukraine's parliament.

Which brings to mind the interview Rudy Giuliani had with George Staphylococcus where the latter repeated the same talking point, and Giuliani immediately fired back, "Where's the evidence that he was corrupt?" George, of course, didn't have an answer.

Furthermore, we know for a fact that Shokin's investigation was active as late as February 2016 (Mykola Zlochevsky is the founder of Burisma):

By early 2016 the Ukrainian investigation had advanced enough that then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin authorized a court-ordered seizure of Zlochevsky’s home and other valuables, including a luxury car. That seizure occurred on Feb. 2, 2016, according to published reports in Ukraine.

https://johnsolomonreports.com/hunte...ns-memos-show/

[seanD]

There's this line from his USA Today reference:

It wasn't because Shokin was investigating a natural gas company tied to Biden's son; it was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians, according to a Ukrainian official and four former American officials who specialized in Ukraine and Europe.

Shokin's inaction prompted international calls for his ouster and ultimately resulted in his removal by Ukraine's parliament.

Which brings to mind the interview Rudy Giuliani had with George Staphylococcus where the latter repeated the same talking point, and Giuliani immediately fired back, "Where's the evidence that he was corrupt?" George, of course, didn't have an answer.

Furthermore, we know for a fact that Shokin's investigation was active as late as February 2016 (Mykola Zlochevsky is the founder of Burisma):

By early 2016 the Ukrainian investigation had advanced enough that then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin authorized a court-ordered seizure of Zlochevsky’s home and other valuables, including a luxury car. That seizure occurred on Feb. 2, 2016, according to published reports in Ukraine.

https://johnsolomonreports.com/hunte...ns-memos-show/

So if Shokin was inactive, who then was behind the seizure of Zlochevsky's assets? Or was that article written by a Russian bot!

[oxmixmudd]

I posted an article, Jim, with very little commentary on my part to see how whoever would respond. The TrumpHaters will respond one way - usually quite reactionary (like you) - while the conservatives will most likely support it. I like to see the reactions. I like to see the reasoning behind the attacks / defenses.

Uh huh ... let's look at that title again ...

"The Ukraine Scandal timeline the democrats ... don't want Americans to see"

And you're only comment is supportive:

And he lays it all out with extensive backup.

Nah. You may not want to own your implicit support of the article - but you are supporting the ideas in it by how you are posting it and commenting on it. By how you opened the dialogue on it. If you don't support what's in it, you need to present some evidence of that fact.

I don't think we know the entirety of this thing yet. I don't think you know half of what you think you know. But this I know -- you will see it in whatever light makes Trump look the absolute worst.

Trump almost always looks bad because he IS bad. When someone IS bad, you can expect a lot of people to be opposed to him and to say bad things about him. Because he has done lots of bad things and to comment on what he has done is to say bad things about him.

You need to get off the fence CP. Trump is bad. And you can't pretend to think he is bad and then continue to post articles that support him and continuously argue for him and deride those that oppose him for legitimate reasons.

Your constant derision of those that criticize Trump for legitimate reasons is what tells the the only real story about what you think of Donald Tump. The rest of your claims have no objective support.

[Cow Poke]

Uh huh ... let's look at that title again ...

"The Ukraine Scandal timeline the democrats ... don't want Americans to see"

And you're only comment is supportive:

You mean where I say he lays it out with extensive backup, because he laid it out with extensive backup?

Nah. You may not want to own how your implicit support of the article - but you are supporting the ideas in it by how you are posting it and commenting on it. By how you opened the dialogue on it. If you don't support what's in it, you need to present some evidence of that fact.

It's there for discussion, Jim. Nobody is forcing you to be in this thread. There are plenty of "I HATE TRUMP" threads in which you can pontificate.

[firstfloor]

For some of Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic backers, the chief villain of the Ukraine scandal is not Adam Schiff or Hunter Biden. It’s George Soros. The liberal billionaire has long been a favorite bogeyman on the right due to his support for progressive causes at home and political reforms abroad. But attacks on Soros—including conspiracy theories with anti-Semitic overtones—have grown even more prominent since the start of the House impeachment inquiry.

Last week, during an appearance on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show, Republican lawyer Joseph diGenova accused Soros of controlling parts of the State Department and FBI and of using “every lever of the United States government” to take over Ukraine. His bizarre rant came weeks after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani—who once retweeted a post calling Soros the “anti-Christ”—appeared on several TV news programs to falsely claim that a Ukrainian nonprofit partly funded by Soros’ foundation had fabricated evidence against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.


DiGenova’s comments were widely condemned; Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt for blasted the lawyer for “trafficking in some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes.” But casting Soros—a US citizen who was born in Hungary and survived the Holocaust—as the Big Bad in some nefarious plot is not a new conservative tactic. In October 2018, Fox News even banned one of its regular guests, Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, for falsely suggesting that Soros had funded a migrant caravan traveling through Central America.

DiGenova’s recent rant, however bizarre and conspiratorial, has its roots in the same material that turbocharged Trump’s interest in Ukraine in the first place—specifically, the work of John Solomon, a former columnist for the Hill. Solomon, who is a longtime client of diGenova’s law firm, has authored a series disputed articles about Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and Soros’ interactions with Obama administration officials.

A conspiracy theory about Soros and Paul Manafort

To anyone not following the wider network of Trump-adjacent misinformation, it’s probably not obvious what Giuliani and his allies are talking about when they invoke Soros’ work in Ukraine. Let’s take a closer look at Dobbs’ exchange with diGenova to see how this latest barrage against Soros connects with Solomon’s work and the far-right’s defense of Trump:

DOBBS: John Solomon reported back in March and I want to get this right that [former US embassy official] George Kent had pressured Ukrainian prosecutors to back off an investigation into AntAC, the anti-corruption action center that George Soros group sponsored. This is a complicated deal here. And it seems that he wanted to keep an investigation of Ukrainian corruption with limits on it, even as he answered questions today. Your thoughts, Joe?

DIGENOVA: Well, there’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career Foreign Service at the United States State Department. He also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGOs, work with NGOs. That was very evident in Ukraine. Kent was part of that. He was a very big protector of Soros. His testimony today showed this kind of stern, sort of discomfort with not being included in certain discussions. But the truth is George Soros had a daily opportunity to tell the State Department through [former State Department official] Victoria Nuland what to do in the Ukraine. And he ran it, Soros ran it. He corrupted FBI officials, he corrupted Foreign Service officers. And the bottom line is this: George Soros wants to run Ukraine, and he’s doing everything he can, to use every lever of the United States government to make that happen—for business interests, not for good government…
The argument here hinges on AntAC, the anti-corruption group Dobbs invoked in his question, which received roughly 17 percent of its funding through 2018 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. In March, then-Ukrainian prosecutor-general Yuri Lutsenko told Solomon that he was handed a list by then-US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch of several individuals that Ukraine should not prosecute, including a founder of AntAC and two lawmakers supportive of its anti-corruption efforts. Shortly before Lutsenko took office, the prosecutor-general’s office was investigating whether $4.4 million in US aid had been misused by various recipients, including AntAC. As Solomon detailed it in the Hill, the supposed do-not-prosecute list looked like an Obama administration effort to shield Soros.

Kent, in his capacity as the US embassy’s deputy chief of mission, told the prosecutor-general’s office in a letter that the United States had no concerns that its grant money had been misused and did not see any grounds for the investigation of AntAC. Solomon portrayed Kent’s letter as the US embassy meddling in Ukrainian law enforcement matters, but Kent dismissed this view in closed-door testimony last month. “The accusations were completely without merit,” Kent said, adding that his critics in the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office “fundamentally misunderstood how our assistance is administered.”

The probe into AntAC was later dropped due to a lack of evidence. More importantly, the central conceit of the story—that Yovanovitch instructed Lutsenko not to prosecute various individuals—was retracted. Lutsenko eventually acknowledged to a Ukrainian news outlet that she never gave him a list of names.

On Tuesday, Kurt Volker, who until recently was the Trump administration’s special representative for Ukraine negotiations, testified that he told Giuliani in July that Lutsenko “was not credible and was acting in a self-serving capacity.” According to Volker, Giuliani replied that “he had already come to the same conclusion.” Lutsenko’s claims have nevertheless taken on a life of their own and are frequently invoked in the right-wing media as an example of Soros’ influence over the State Department and intelligence agencies.

In public, Giuliani would go on to embellish the tale further, suggesting in late September on several news shows that Soros somehow masterminded the federal investigation into Manafort’s illicit lobbying for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Manafort was convicted in August 2018 of tax and bank fraud related to this lobbying and sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

In his media appearances, Giuliani has described AntAC as “Soros’ NGO” and falsely claimed it “developed all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate Manafort.” The document Giuliani seems to be referencing is the so-called “black ledger,” which listed secret payments to Manafort for off-the-books consulting work related to Ukraine. But AntAC did not produce that information and wasn’t responsible for publicizing the document. Artem Sytnyk, director of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, and Serhiy Leshchenko, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, first disclosed the information, parts of which have since been verified by the Associated Press and other outlets. “My desire to expose Manafort’s doings was motivated by the desire for justice,” Leshchenko wrote in a September op-ed in the Washington Post. “Neither Hillary Clinton, nor Joe Biden, nor John Podesta, nor George Soros asked me to publish the information from the black ledger.”

In September, as Giuliani was promoting the baseless view that Soros was steering a plot to bring down Trump, Soros’ camp issued a denial. “Short answer is no, Soros was not somehow involved in cooking up charges against Trump in Ukraine,” spokesperson Michael Vachon told the Daily Beast.

The implication, moreover, that AntAC is simply a tool for Soros to accrue power or wage political war on Trump is absurd. Soros was far from AntAC’s only donor. According to Daria Kaleniuk, the group’s cofounder, it has also received funding from the European Union, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and more than 500 Ukrainians, among others.

Deep-state conspiracy theories

Ukraine, of course, is not the only country where Soros has engaged in philanthropy. For decades, he has sponsored anti-corruption efforts across Central and Eastern Europe, including in his homeland of Hungary and in Russia, before his foundation was banned there in 2015. Soros’ Ukraine work is “consistent with work he’s done elsewhere in the region,” Emily Tamkin, a freelance reporter who is writing a book about Soros, told me.

Soros’ name has become so toxic in Republican circles that lobbyists—representing clients from Guatemala, Albania, and other countries—have taken to linking US diplomats they dislike to Soros. The Daily Beast reported last week that the attacks are “tailor-made to Trump’s idiosyncratic sensibilities.” Fiona Hill, formerly a senior official on Trump’s National Security Council, was accused by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone of being a “Soros mole.” During her public testimony on Thursday, Hill called the anti-Soros conspiracy theories an “absolute outrage” and compared them to the notorious, anti-Semitic propaganda known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Tamkin told me that for decades, critics have impugned Soros’ efforts to promote democracy in Europe, but that these more recent criticisms have entered the realm of “deeply anti-Semtic make-believe.”

“He has funded work throughout the world. He does know different world leaders. All of that is true,” she said. “That’s different from him running the State Department, which is he is not doing.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...raine-scandal/

[Cow Poke]

You need to get off the fence CP.

I'm not on any fence, Jim. Trump is not my hero, my role model, my favorite or my first choice. But he's who we have.

There are legitimate processes for his removal, and it's ultimately up to the American people. If he is impeached and removed, I'm ready for President Pence.

I trust the Lord my God. Trump could not be President without God allowing it.

For whatever reason, HE has allowed Trump to be in power at this time in history.

You are not wiser or smarter than God, Jim. Rant and rave and stomp and holler however much you want, but you are accomplishing NOTHING.

All you're doing is allowing Satan to drive a wedge between you and your fellow Christians. On this issue, you are in league with the anti-Christian bigots, atheists, agnostics....

Until God removes Trump - either by impeachment, national election, or by His own mysterious ways - I will continue to pray for him.

But, please, do rage on! Just be sure to take your high blood pressure meds, OK?

[oxmixmudd]

I'm not on any fence, Jim. Trump is not my hero, my role model, my favorite or my first choice. But he's who we have.

There are legitimate processes for his removal, and it's ultimately up to the American people. If he is impeached and removed, I'm ready for President Pence.

I trust the Lord my God. Trump could not be President without God allowing it.

For whatever reason, HE has allowed Trump to be in power at this time in history.

You are not wiser or smarter than God, Jim. Rant and rave and stomp and holler however much you want, but you are accomplishing NOTHING.

All you're doing is allowing Satan to drive a wedge between you and your fellow Christians. On this issue, you are in league with the anti-Christian bigots, atheists, agnostics....

Until God removes Trump - either by impeachment, national election, or by His own mysterious ways - I will continue to pray for him.

But, please, do rage on! Just be sure to take your high blood pressure meds, OK?

Like I said, your constant derision of those that oppose Trump for legitimate reasons tells the only real story about where you actually stand on these issues.

[Mountain Man]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...raine-scandal/

Thank you for posting that. It was a helpful reminder of why I don't bother reading Mother Jones.

[Cow Poke]

Like I said, your constant derision of those that oppose Trump for legitimate reasons tells the only real story about where you actually stand on these issues.

I told you were I stand, Jim - you can be obstinate and not believe me, or call me a liar, or just continue to spew forth your attacks - it doesn't really bother me at all. Hate on, brother!

[seanD]

Thank you for posting that. It was a helpful reminder of why I don't bother reading Mother Jones.

Just more of the same smear and deflection away from the obvious question: If Shokin was lax about the investigation, which is being claimed by the "Biden extorted Ukraine to get Shokin fired because he was lax" crowd, then why was Zlochevsky's assets seized just before Shokin was ousted. It's "don't look over there, look here!" -- Giuliani, Soros, Manafort, far right conspiracy theorists...