Patrick Buchanan: Will 'Ukraine-Gate' Imperil Biden's Bid?
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Former Vice President Joe Biden (Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images)
With the revelation by an intel community "whistleblower" that President Donald Trump, in a congratulatory call to the new president of Ukraine, pushed him repeatedly to investigate the Joe Biden family connection to Ukrainian corruption, the cry "Impeach!" is being heard anew in the land.
But revisiting how this latest scandal came about, and how it has begun to unfold, it is a good bet that the principal casualty could be the former vice president. Consider:
In May 2016, Joe Biden, as Barack Obama's designated point man on Ukraine, flew to Kiev to inform President Petro Poroshenko that a billion-dollar U.S. loan guarantee had been approved to enable Kiev to continue to service its mammoth debt.
But, said Biden, the aid was conditional. There was a quid pro quo.
If Poroshenko's regime did not fire its chief prosecutor in six hours, Biden would fly home and Ukraine would get no loan guarantee. Ukraine capitulated instantly, said Joe, reveling in his pro-consul role.
Yet, left out of Biden's drama about how he dropped the hammer on a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was this detail.
The prosecutor had been investigating Burisma Holdings, the biggest gas company in Ukraine. And right after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the pro-Russian government in Kiev, and after Joe Biden had been given the lead on foreign aid for Ukraine, Burisma had installed on its board, at $50,000 a month, Hunter Biden, the son of the vice president.
Joe Biden claims that, though he was point man in the battle on corruption in Ukraine, he was unaware his son was raking in hundreds of thousands from one of the companies being investigated.
Said Joe on Saturday, "I have never spoken to my son about his various business dealings."
Is this credible?
Trump and Rudy Giuliani suspect not, and in that July 25 phone call, Trump urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to reopen the investigation of Hunter Biden and Burisma.
The media insist there is no story here and the real scandal is that Trump pressed Zelensky to reopen the investigation to target his strongest 2020 rival. Worse, say Trump's accusers, would be if the president conditioned the transfer of $250 million in approved military aid to Kiev on the new regime's acceding to his demands.
The questions raised are several:
Is it wrong to make military aid to a friendly nation conditional on that nation's compliance with legitimate requests or demands of the United States? Is it illegitimate to ask a friendly government to look into what may be corrupt conduct by the son of a U.S. vice president?
Joe Biden has an even bigger problem: This issue has begun to dominate the news at an especially vulnerable moment for his campaign.
Biden's stumbles and gaffes have already raised alarms among his followers and been seized upon by rivals such as Cory Booker, who has publicly suggested that the 76-year-old former vice president is losing it.
Biden's lead in the polls also appears shakier with each month. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has just taken a narrow lead in a Des Moines Register poll and crusading against Beltway corruption is central to her campaign.
"Too many politicians in both parties have convinced themselves that playing the money-for-influence game is the only way to get things done," Warren told her massive rally in New York City: "No more business as usual. Let's attack the corruption head on."
Soon, it will not only be Trump and Giuliani asking Biden questions about Ukraine, Burisma and Hunter, but Democrats, too. Calls are rising for Biden's son to be called to testify before congressional committees.
With Trump airing new charges daily, Biden will be asked to respond by his traveling press. The charges and the countercharges will become what the presidential campaign is all about. Bad news for Joe Biden.
Can he afford to spend weeks, perhaps months, answering for his son's past schemes to enrich himself through connections to foreign regimes that seem less related to Hunter's talents than his being the son of a former vice president and possible future president?
"Ukraine-gate" is the latest battle in the death struggle between the "deep state" and a president empowered by Middle America to go to Washington and break that deep state's grip on the national destiny.
Another issue is raised here — the matter of whistleblowers listening in to or receiving readouts of presidential conversations with foreign leaders and having the power to decide for themselves whether the president is violating his oath and needs to be reported to Congress.
Eisenhower discussed coups in Iran and Guatemala and the use of nuclear weapons in Korea and the Taiwan Strait. JFK, through brother Bobby, cut a secret deal with Khrushchev to move U.S. missiles out of Turkey six months after the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba.
Who deputized bureaucratic whistleblowers to pass judgment on such conversations and tattle to Congress if they were offended?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
The Real Ukraine Scandal
Once again, the mainstream media have drummed up another empty scandal against President Trump. As CNN, MSNBC and others hound the president over a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, they will continue to ignore the true crime surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
I first drew attention to the Biden Ukraine scandal on my national talk show on May 12th of 2014. During that broadcast, I said the following,
“Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has taken a position on the board of a Ukrainian energy producer. In any other time this would not have been done because people would fear that there would be an indictment or a government would fall, the FBI would investigate, there would be a press outrage, the opposition party would stop all business on the floor of Congress and demand an immediate investigation as to how the vice president’s son could take a job with a foreign power with whom were an ally with against Russia. Without seeing this for what it is, you are blind. It doesn’t matter whether Biden is a Democrat or a Republican. This is crony capitalism. This is the oligarchy. This is nepotism.”
Earlier this year, I returned to this topic in an interview on The Savage Nation with John Solomon of The Hill. In our conversation, I questioned how Ukraine became so critical to this corruption.
Solomon explained,
“It's (Ukraine) the hub. And so at that very moment where there's a transition of power and there's also that very tense moment of the invasion of Crimea by Russian forces, so a sovereign territory of Ukraine being invaded by Russia at the beginning of 2014. President Obama defers his authority and says, ‘I'm making Joe Biden my point man in Ukraine. He's going to take care of this crisis. He's going to build out the government, we're going to get this situation dealt with.’ And so Biden starts jumping across the pond and visiting Ukraine on a regular basis, meeting with the president.“Well, a funny thing happened. Not just a few weeks after Biden takes over the portfolium, a natural gas company called Burisma Holdings in Ukraine, hires Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden to join its board. And that in and of itself is a little suspicious, right? There's no evidence that Hunter Biden had any experience in Ukraine law or Ukraine natural gas, but he's suddenly added to the board. So his son cashes in and gets a great job in Ukraine and it goes on for a couple of years.”
Solomon explained that later Ukrainian authorities began investigating transfers being made to Hunter Biden:
“They have a wide ranging and criminal investigation and they determined in late fall 2015 according to the very records I've seen in Ukrainian court, that they want to interview Hunter Biden. "Why are you taking this money as a board member? What is it for and is there any chance the money is really to influence your father who is a vice president in charge of Ukraine policy?"“It is at that moment that Joe Biden steps into the picture in a different role. He has a conversation with president Poroshenko, now the Western friendly president, and tells him, ‘I want you to fire the general prosecutor in your country. I want him gone.’Poroshenko questions, ‘Why? What has he done wrong?’Biden tells him, ‘Don't worry, he's done something wrong. Just get rid of them.’Well, the president doesn't oblige and continues to leave that prosecutor general, named Viktor Shokin, in charge for several months. Multiple requests come in from both the vice president and the US embassy demanding that they fire this prosecutor. President Poroshenko doesn't have a reason to fire him.”
Viktor Shokin (YouTube screen grab via Wikipedia)
Here is where the true scandal is revealed, Solomon explained that Biden continued to pressure the Ukrainian leader. In March of 2016, four months after Joe Biden made the first request for the prosecutor to be fired, Vice President Joe Biden makes a call and says, "If you do not fire that prosecutor, I am going to withhold the next $1 billion in US loan guarantees to the Ukraine."
This is a devastating threat because Ukraine is so cash short. At that point, President Poroshenko finally obliges and fires the prosecutor.
Of course, this has largely gone unreported by the media.
Even with the recent drama attempting to use this to bring down the Trump administration, newsrooms have given Democrats a pass. If we still had reporters and editors in the leftist media they would expose the truth for the American people.
Lindsey Graham Calls On The DOJ To Investigate Joe Biden's Connections To Ukraine
Giuliani Raises Alleged 'Corruption' by Joe Biden and Son As Whistleblower Controversy Swirls
Lindsey Graham Calls On The DOJ To Investigate Joe Biden's Connections To Ukraine
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman on Sunday called on the Department of Justice to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's relationship to Ukraine.
"You are calling for a probe, by the DOJ, into all things Ukraine," Fox News' Maria Bartiromo said during an interview.
"Yeah, I want the Department of Justice to appoint someone to look at the role Ukraine played, if any, in the 2016 elections," Graham explained. "There are a lot of allegations out there about Ukraine may have fed information to the Democrats [and the] Department of Justice against Trump campaign managers and others. And I think it's fair after what the Trumps are going through regarding Russia, that somebody look at the connection with the Bidens while the vice president was a sitting vice president, the Biden connection to the Ukraine through its son."
"Now you can't have it one way and look at one family and not the other. And I don't trust the media to do this and I'm hoping somebody that the Department of Justice will appoint an investigator to look at all things Ukraine, like we looked at all things Russia," Graham said.
Graham's call for an investigation comes after reports of President Donald Trump's calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Zelenski to work with Rudy Giuliani to investigate Biden over widely discredited allegations of impropriety, the Wall Street Journal reported. Giuliani has suggested that the vice president used his power to shied a Ukrainian gas company from an investigation. Biden's son, Hunter, is on the gas company's board of directors.
Giuliani Raises Alleged 'Corruption' by Joe Biden and Son As Whistleblower Controversy Swirls
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters on Thursday he does not know the "specifics" of the "urgent" whistleblower complaint that Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has so far withheld from Congress.
"I don't know what the complaint has to say in terms of its specifics," Schiff told a news conference on Thursday after a four-hour, closed-door hearing with Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who deemed the whistleblower complaint "urgent."
"But I can tell you that the speculation about whether this involves a presidential communication -- even if it involved a presidential communication, and I don't know at this point -- that doesn't mean that the (executive) privilege covers it, if that communication is about a crime or fraud," Schiff said.
Schiff has said he will go to court, if necessary, to force the release of the complaint to Congress.
The Washington Post, which broke the story, said the whistleblower complaint made by someone in the intelligence community involves a "promise" President Trump supposedly made to Ukraine. Trump held a July telephone call with the new president of Ukraine, a few weeks before the whistleblower complaint was filed.
By Friday morning, speculation swirled that this has something to do with the Trump administration urging the new president of Ukraine to look into alleged corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden, now one of Trump's potential Democrat rivals in the 2020 election.
(CNN's Alisyn Camerota framed it this way Friday morning: "So did President Trump threaten to withhold billions in aid from Ukraine for political gain?" Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, speaking hypothetically, told CNN on Friday morning: “[I]t is unprecedented for an American president to contact a foreign government for the purpose of initiating an investigation of a political rival.” And Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told CNN Friday morning: "What we know is zero. So if in fact what is being reported is true, that means that the president of the United States is using taxpayer money to try and have opposition research for his 2020 campaign determined by how much money he gives to a foreign country.")
Enter Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who went on several cable news shows Thursday night to make the case against Biden:
Giuliani noted that for two years, "there have been allegations from Joe Biden's own mouth," and Giuliani quoted Biden as saying, 'I told the president of the Ukraine you're not going to get your $1.2 billion loan guarantee unless you fire the prosecutor." The Ukrainian prosecutor in question was investigating Biden's son Hunter for corruption.
Giuliani told "Fox News," "What I was urging the Ukrainian government to do was not to do something embarrassing to Joe Biden. I was urging the government of the Ukraine to investigate extraordinarily serious allegations of corruption."
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe set the speculation swirling Thursday night in an interview with CNN's "Anderson Cooper."
McCabe was discussing why the Acting Director of National Intelligence did not refer the whistleblower complaint to Congress, which normally happens, but instead involved the Justice Department:
So for instance, we don't know this, this is speculation. But if the department and the dni made the conclusion that the president's conduct was potentially criminal conduct, they could then argue that's not an intelligence matter and therefore not under the purview of the DNI.
Now a scenario in which that might take place could be if, for instance, the president had a conversation with a foreign leader in which he promised some sort of assistance to that country for, let's say, return of assistance in his re-election campaign. That, of course, would likely be criminal activity and could be qualified by the Department of Justice as not an intelligence matter.
"Right," Anderson Cooper replied. "We should just point out again, we do not know the nature of this."
"We do not," McCabe agreed.
Schiff is particularly annoyed that the whistleblower complaint was withheld from Congress, as he told PBS Thursday night:
We got answers to the fact that this is, for example, the first time that a director of national intelligence has ever withheld a complaint from Congress. Whether the inspector general finds it credible or not credible, the practice has always been to provide it to Congress.
Here, it was found to be credible, it was found to be urgent. And it is unprecedented to be deprived this way.
It was also clear from the testimony that the Department of Justice has weighed in, in a way that it never has before in a whistle-blower complaint. It's also clear, I think, that the issue is not the classification of the intelligence. Many people have said, well, other presidents have asserted that they have the right to declassify intelligence or provide classified information to the Congress.
That's apparently not the issue either. And so the question is, why is this being withheld from Congress? Is this an effort to cover up impropriety? Who does the complaint involve?
And, most seriously, if this is urgent, and they're not allowing Congress to deal with it, and they're not allowing the inspector general to deal with it, then it's going unaddressed and we're at risk.
"Forget Biden," Giuliani told Fox News's Laura Ingraham Thursday night.
"The vice president of the United States bribed a foreign official, isn't that a matter of grave concern to this country? Whether it's Joe Biden or not? I will tell you what Joe Biden did out of his own mouth.
"Joe Biden said to the president of the Ukraine, you're not going to get your $1.2 billion loan guarantee unless you fire the prosecutor. The crime of bribery is defined in the Ukraine, as well as all of the world, as the following: You cannot offer something of value in exchange for official action. The something of value is the $1.2 billion loan guarantee. The official action is telling him he's got to fire the prosecutor. That's a crime. Prima fascia," Giuliani said.
"We have a motive. The prosecutor was investigating Joe Biden's son for over two years, taking $5 million in money that went from Ukraine to Latvia, to Cyprus, to Joe Biden's little crazy company that he had. Which follows $1.5 billion that went into that same company from China. The partners of the company are Joe Biden's son, John Kerry's son, and "Whitey" Bulger's nephew. I didn't make that up, Laura."
Appearing with CNN's Chris Cuomo Thursday night, an angry Giuliani said this all began as he investigated "a tremendous amount of collusion" between the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC and Ukraine: In the course of that investigation, "I found out this incredible story about Joe Biden, that he bribed the president of the Ukraine in order to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.
"That is an astounding scandal of major proportions which all of you have covered up for about five or six months," Giuliani told Cuomo. "You've also covered up the fact that Biden and his son took $1.5 billion out of China. And that's why the president thinks you're a corrupt media, because if this were President Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and they took millions of dollars from a corrupt oligarch in the Ukraine and they took $1.5 billion out of China while the president was negotiating with China, you would be screaming and yelling and going crazy about how corrupt it is.
"And because it's Joe Biden and he's a protected Democrat, you don't cover it. This scandal is a scandal of major proportions," Giuliani said.
Cuomo accused Giuliani of "going after political opponents of Mr. Trump."
"I'm the president's attorney," Giuliani explained. "Joe Biden is presumed innocent. But somebody has got to investigate him..."
"Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?" Cuomo asked.
"No, actually I didn't," Giuliani said. "I asked Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton for which there already--"
"You never asked anything about Hunter Biden?" Cuomo interrupted. "You never asked anything about Joe Biden to the prosecutor?"
"The only thing I asked is to get to the bottom of how it was that the guy (Ukrainian prosecutor) who was appointed dismissed the case against Antac (a George Soros group).
"So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden," Cuomo said.
"Of course I did," Giuliani said.
"You just said you didn't," Cuomo noted.
"No, I asked them to look into the allegations which related to my client, which tangentially involved Joe Biden in a massive bribery scheme. Not unlike what he did in China. Explain how the kid (Hunter) got $1.5 billion from China."
The two men argued about whether Giuliani had contradicted himself, and Giuliani tried to clarify: "What I said is this. I asked them to investigate the allegations that relate to the false charges against the president of the United States. Those allegations tangentially involve Biden --" Giuliani started to say.
After some insults back and forth, Giuliani continued: "These are crimes of major proportions, and because they're Democrats, you won't cover it...And you were standing up for two systems of justice. Joe Biden can be involved in bribery. Joe Biden's son can get $1.5 billion from China and you won't cover it. And you want to cover some ridiculous charge that I urged the Ukrainian government to investigate corruption. Well, I did and I'm proud of it."
"Did the president (Trump) ask the president of Ukraine to do the same thing?" Cuomo asked.
Biden's eventual answer was this: "I have no idea. I never asked him that. I don't know if he did, and I wouldn't care if he did. He had every right to do it if he was the president of the United States. He had every right to say to the Ukrainian president, we have two outstanding allegations of massive corruption--"
"Did he (Trump) ask you to do what you were doing?" Cuomo cut in.
"No," Giuliani said. "I did what I did on my own. I told him (Trump) about it afterwards because I'm his lawyer and know how to investigate."
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) discouraged people from jumping to conclusions on Thursday:
"Look, I know the media always wants to rush when they think something sensationalist, and 9 times out of 10 we find out a lot of that is not true. I think the New York Times has experienced that just in the last week. This is not something I'd ever see the president doing, and I--I would instead of jumping to conclusions, actually get the facts first," he told a news conference
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