Rep. Nunes: Democrats ‘Are Blind to the Blaring Signs of Corruption Surrounding Hunter Biden's Well-Paid Position’
The Bidens and Burisma
Mykola Zlochevsky is the (allegedly) corrupt owner of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas provider. Hunter Biden accepted a position on the board of directors with Burisma in April of 2014. By August of the same year, Vitaly Yurema, prosecutor general of Ukraine at the time, opened an official investigation of Zlochevsky and Burisma. By February 2015, Yurema had been replaced by a man named Viktor Shokin. Only four months later, U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt allegedly warned Shokin to "handle the Biden investigation with kid gloves."
Apparently Shokin didn't listen so good, or maybe Pyatt didn't tell him eight or nine times that he was supposed to clear Burisma and Hunter Biden of any potential wrongdoing. In either event, Joe Biden wasn't happy, because in March of 2016, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired within the next six hours. How do we know this? Why, Joe told us himself.
Biden had the audacity to brag about it during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. He boasted, "[I told the Ukrainians,] 'You're not getting the billion. I'm gonna be leaving here in six hours, and if the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a b----, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid."
Who was Shokin's "solid" replacement? Yuriy Lutsenko, who subsequently declared there was "no evidence of wrongdoing" by the Bidens and closed the investigation only ten months after taking over the job. According to Lutsenko, there isn't a law against a company paying a board member more than fifty thousand dollars a month (CNBC claims that it was $83,000 per month) to a man who knew nothing about the energy business, doesn't speak the language, and never even set foot in the country to attend a couple of board meetings in Europe each year.
The evidence is indisputably clear and incontrovertible, in the form of a videotaped confession to an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. One billion dollars in U.S. aid (quid) was offered on condition (pro) that Shokin, the prosecutor allegedly investigating Burisma, be fired (quo). The replacement clears the case.
Cui bono? Who benefits? Lutsenko gets a plum job. The Ukrainian government gets another billion dollars in U.S. foreign aid. Hunter Biden gets three million bucks for about a week's worth of work spread over five years. Joe Biden gets the benefit of having Hunter's corrupt business deal swept under the rug. Everybody wins...except the U.S. taxpayer, of course.
The American people have been asked to believe that Joe Biden demanded that Shokin be fired because he wasn't aggressively investigating Burisma. We have been told there is nothing wrong or unusual about an American citizen who happens to be the son of a powerful politician being paid millions of dollars by a foreign business with economic and political interests directly related to the United States for essentially a "do-nothing" job. We the people are expected to believe that the actions (and specific threats) of Hunter Biden's influential and politically connected father had nothing at all to do with shutting down the investigation of Burisma.
Frankly, it is ludicrous even to suggest that Joe Biden wanted Burisma investigated more thoroughly, because if that was true, why didn't he complain when Lutsenko shut down the investigation only ten months after Shokin had been fired?
How stupid do the liberal media elitists think we are? Laughably, the legal eagles at the NYU School of Law would have us believe that Biden was on an "anti-corruption" campaign against Ukraine that may have harmed his son's company. Try this thought experiment: change the name of the people involved from "Biden" to "Trump," and simply imagine what the headlines would be if Donald Trump had threatened to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine to keep Eric Trump from being investigated for corruption. Pundits wouldn't just be clamoring for Trump's impeachment; they would probably be calling for his public execution, clamoring to hang him for treason or perhaps even to burn him at the stake.
Yet the media have been working overtime to convince the American public that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Hunter Biden "earning" millions of dollars from a Ukrainian company without even setting foot in Ukraine. Reuters reported that "[Rudy] Giuliani has alleged, without providing evidence, that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine's top prosecutor to end an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky in order to protect his son." FactCheck.org, Bloomberg, and pretty much all the other lamestream media outlets all reported that there was nothing illegal, wrong, or improper about Hunter Biden getting paid $83,000 per month to do nothing by a foreign company being investigated for corruption that involves the theft of U.S. foreign aid money. Nothing to see here; move along.
Which part of the allegation was not supported by evidence? Joe Biden claimed that he not only pushed for the firing of Shokin, but absolutely insisted upon it and threatened to withhold U.S. foreign aid unless his demands were immediately met. Biden didn't specifically give a reason for why he wanted the prosecutor fired, but is it easier to believe that he was trying to find corruption in the company paying his son millions of dollars to do nothing or that he wanted to protect his son and the income stream produced by that corrupt company? Biden's defenders have claimed that Shokin himself was corrupt and not investigating Burisma, but the fact is that Joe Biden's preferred choice, Yuriy Lutsenko, shut down the investigation and cleared everybody involved without solving the mystery of the missing foreign aid money.
Why does Burisma need to be investigated? Deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent just testified in the so-called impeachment hearings that Zlochevsky and Burisma need to be investigated because they had stolen billions of dollars and possibly bribed a prosecutor to shut down the investigation that dated back to the period when Zlochevsky served as minister of ecology and natural resources and gave his own business government licenses and contracts.
Yet, astonishingly, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of an alleged Ukrainian "Anti-Corruption Action Center," made an extraordinary claim to Radio Free Europe: "ironically, Joe Biden asked Shokin to leave because the prosecutor failed to pursue the Burisma investigation, not because Shokin was tough and active with the case."
Okay, so everybody wants us to believe that Shokin wasn't tough enough or doing the job...but who in his right mind would claim that Lutsenko is any tougher?
John Leonard writes novels, books, and the occasional article for American Thinker. John also blogs at his website southernprose.com, where he may be contacted.
Schweizer:
Biden Needs to Address Ukraine Accusations ‘Front and Center’
Report:
Joe Biden Pressured Ukraine to Fire Top Prosecutor After Burisma Lobbying
Effort
Joe Biden’s
decision to pressure Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor, who was
investigating an oil and gas conglomerate that employed the former vice
president’s son, came shortly after the company lobbied the Obama White House
to end the probe.
Trump: China,
Ukraine Should Investigate the Bidens
“Well, I would think if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that's newly formed, and all these companies – and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump said.
"So I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked. That was a crooked deal, 100 percent. He had no knowledge of energy, didn't know the first thing about it, all of a sudden he's getting $50,000 a month plus a lot of other things,” the president said.
“Nobody has any doubt, and they got rid of a prosecutor who was a very tough prosecutor. They got rid of him. Now they're trying to make it the opposite way, but they got rid. So if I were the president, I would certainly recommend that of Ukraine," he said.
As to whether he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help investigate the Bidens, Trump said, “I haven't, but it's certainly something we can start thinking about, because I'm sure that President Xi does not like being under that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy. He got kicked out of the Navy. All of a sudden he's getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff."
Asked whether the White House should comply with the subpoenas issued by Congress regarding the whistleblower complaint, Trump said, “Well, I leave that to the lawyers.”
He said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a proven “liar.”
“We've known it for three years, because they've been trying to impeach for three years. He's a stone cold liar, so I leave that to the lawyers. That's up to them to decide but the whole investigation is crumbling," the president said.
Trump said the whistleblower’s complaint was “totally inaccurate” because the phone call was “absolutely perfect, and most people that have read it say the same thing.”
“The whistleblower never saw the conversation. He got his information I guess second- or third-hand. He wrote something that was totally fiction, and now when people see that, they’re not happy,” he said.
Trump said he read Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) statement Tuesday, “and he read my phone call, and, as you know, he put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he's read, and I spoke to him about it too.”
“He read my phone call with the president of Ukraine - Mitch McConnell. He said that was the most innocent phone call that I've read. I mean, give me a break. Anybody that reads it says the same thing, and the only people that don't understand is when they look at the false, fabricated, fraudulent statement made by 'Shifty' Schiff,” the president said.
"I think Biden is going down, and I think his whole situation – because now you may very well find that there are many other countries that they scammed, just like they scammed China and Ukraine. And basically who are they really scamming? The USA, and it's not good,” Trump said.
“And that's probably why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the USA because they deal with people like Biden where they give the son a billion and a half dollars, and that's probably why China has such a sweetheart deal that for so many years they've been ripping off our country," he said.
Trump
tries out new defenses as damaging Ukraine evidence piles up
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer
has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he
exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the
STOCK Act. In Extortion,
he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And
in Clinton Cash,
he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI
investigation.
Now he explains
how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever
before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into
multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank
opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family
members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America
can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of
American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald
Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey
transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made
by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and
lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of
the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and
profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because
people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively
new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent
political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies
public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more
accountable government.
Schweizer:
Biden Needs to Address Ukraine Accusations ‘Front and Center’
11 Oct 201910
1:18
Breitbart
News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides
Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” on Friday
stressed the importance of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden
addressing the Ukraine issue involving him and his son, Hunter.
Schweizer said the former vice
president needs to address his family’s dealings in Ukraine “front and center”
rather than ignoring because polling indicates most people believe it needs
further investigation.
“[Hunter Biden] has been radio
silent, and I think if you look at the way the Bidens have handled this issue,
it’s been to not answer any questions, which I think just raises further
suspicions,” Schweizer told Fox News Channel’s “America’s
Newsroom.” “Hunter Biden is somewhere, allegedly in California hiding out,
and Joe Biden won’t answer any questions on this. He gets angry.”
“I think at some point they’re going
to have to address these issues front and center because as it stands right
now, polls indicate that most people believe this needs further investigation
and needs to be looked at,” he added.
Report:
Joe Biden Pressured Ukraine to Fire Top Prosecutor After Burisma Lobbying
Effort
ABC News
4 Nov 20191,661
4:09
Joe Biden’s
decision to pressure Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor, who was
investigating an oil and gas conglomerate that employed the former vice
president’s son, came shortly after the company lobbied the Obama White House
to end the probe.
A series of documents from the Obama-Biden
administration released on Monday reveal that representatives for Burisma
Holdings sought a meeting with the State Department in February 2016 to discuss
allegations of corruption against the company.
At the time, Burisma and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, were
under suspicion for money laundering and public corruption. The allegations
stem from Zlochevsky’s tenure as Ukraine’s minister of ecology and natural
resources in the early 2010s, where it is purported he used his position to
approve oil and gas licenses for Burisma.
In order to get the meeting with the
State Dept., Burisma’s representatives specifically invoked the former vice
president’s youngest son, Hunter, who sat on the company’s board of directors.
The documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by
John Solomon, do not indicate if the meeting ever took place. Solomon has
indicated that there are more records forthcoming, subject to an ongoing FOIA
lawsuit.
Although the records can not confirm if an actual meeting took
place, the timeline of events that transpired shortly afterwards were directly
to Burisma’s benefit.
In March 2016, Biden issued an ultimatum to then-Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko: either the government fire its top prosecutor,
Viktor Shokin, or the U.S. would rescind upwards of $1 billion in aid.
According to Biden’s official recollection of the incident, he
issued the ultimatum on behalf of then-President Barack Obama, who had lost
faith in Shokin’s ability to root out corruption. Unofficially, though, it was
well known that that Shokin was ramping up his investigation into both Burisma
and Zlochvesky.
Shokin’s probe had progressed far enough that he was able to
convince the Ukrainian courts in early 2016 to seize Zlochvesky’s remaining
assets in the country. The oligarch only evaded arrest because he was already
hiding abroad after having fled Ukraine in 2014 when a pro-western uprising
toppled his allies in the country’s then-pro-Russian government.
Adding to the appearance of
conflicting interests behind the former vice president’s decision to oust
Shokin is that the prosecutor has claimed he was
preparing to interview Hunter Biden about his Burisma tenure when he was fired.
The revelations come into the
spotlight as questions mount as to how Hunter Biden was able to secure an
appointment to Burisma’s board in the first place. As Peter Schweizer, senior
contributor at Breitbart News, detailed in his book Secret
Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family
and Friends, Hunter Biden secured the position, which paid as much as $83,000
per month, despite no having background in energy or Ukraine.
Adding to the appearance of
impropriety is the fact that Hunter Biden joined Burisma at a time the
company was seen as actively courting western leaders to prevent further
scrutiny of its business practices. The same month the younger’s Biden
appointment was announced, the government of Great Britain froze accounts
belonging to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky under suspicion of money
laundering. Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian minister of natural resources, would
later be accused of corruption for using his office to approve oil and gas licenses to
Burisma.
A Ukrainian official with strong
ties to Zlochevsky admitted in October the only reason that Hunter Biden
secured the appointment was to “protect” the
company from foreign scrutiny. The claim has credence given that at the time
Joe Biden, as the sitting vice president, was tasked with leading the Obama
administration’s policy towards Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion of
Crimea.
Hunter Biden, himself, admitted his father’s political influence was the likely reason for
his appointment to Burisma’s board during a recent ABC News interview.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” the
younger Biden said when asked if he would have been tapped for the lucrative
job had his father not been the sitting vice president. He quickly added,
though, that his family’s political prominence had always played a large
role in his dealings. “But that’s—you know—I don’t think that there’s a lot of
things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”
Trump: China,
Ukraine Should Investigate the Bidens
Listen to the Article!
(CNSNews.com) – China and Ukraine should
investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, President
Donald Trump said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters prior to heading to Florida, the president was asked what he hoped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would do about the Bidens after his phone call with Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters prior to heading to Florida, the president was asked what he hoped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would do about the Bidens after his phone call with Ukraine.
“Well, I would think if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that's newly formed, and all these companies – and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump said.
"So I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked. That was a crooked deal, 100 percent. He had no knowledge of energy, didn't know the first thing about it, all of a sudden he's getting $50,000 a month plus a lot of other things,” the president said.
“Nobody has any doubt, and they got rid of a prosecutor who was a very tough prosecutor. They got rid of him. Now they're trying to make it the opposite way, but they got rid. So if I were the president, I would certainly recommend that of Ukraine," he said.
As to whether he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help investigate the Bidens, Trump said, “I haven't, but it's certainly something we can start thinking about, because I'm sure that President Xi does not like being under that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy. He got kicked out of the Navy. All of a sudden he's getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff."
Asked whether the White House should comply with the subpoenas issued by Congress regarding the whistleblower complaint, Trump said, “Well, I leave that to the lawyers.”
He said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a proven “liar.”
“We've known it for three years, because they've been trying to impeach for three years. He's a stone cold liar, so I leave that to the lawyers. That's up to them to decide but the whole investigation is crumbling," the president said.
Trump said the whistleblower’s complaint was “totally inaccurate” because the phone call was “absolutely perfect, and most people that have read it say the same thing.”
“The whistleblower never saw the conversation. He got his information I guess second- or third-hand. He wrote something that was totally fiction, and now when people see that, they’re not happy,” he said.
Trump said he read Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) statement Tuesday, “and he read my phone call, and, as you know, he put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he's read, and I spoke to him about it too.”
“He read my phone call with the president of Ukraine - Mitch McConnell. He said that was the most innocent phone call that I've read. I mean, give me a break. Anybody that reads it says the same thing, and the only people that don't understand is when they look at the false, fabricated, fraudulent statement made by 'Shifty' Schiff,” the president said.
"I think Biden is going down, and I think his whole situation – because now you may very well find that there are many other countries that they scammed, just like they scammed China and Ukraine. And basically who are they really scamming? The USA, and it's not good,” Trump said.
“And that's probably why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the USA because they deal with people like Biden where they give the son a billion and a half dollars, and that's probably why China has such a sweetheart deal that for so many years they've been ripping off our country," he said.
Trump
tries out new defenses as damaging Ukraine evidence piles up
By Quint Forgey
President Donald Trump on Friday defended his
brazen call for foreign governments to interfere in the 2020 election by
launching investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son,
claiming his outspoken desire for such probes is not politically motivated.
President Donald Trump
speaks to the media on the South Lawn of the White House on Oct. 4, 2019,
before his departure to nearby Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in
Bethesda, Md.
“As President I have an obligation to end
CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or
countries. It is done all the time,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This
has NOTHING to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens. This
does have to do with their corruption!”
Trump had declared Thursday from the
White House lawn that the Chinese and Ukrainian governments should investigate
unfounded accusations of corruption by the Bidens — despite facing an
impeachment inquiry for pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do
just that during a phone call in July.
Trump previously asserted Thursday night that
he was justified in asking for the investigations into one of his chief
opponents in the 2020 White House race. “As the President of the United States,
I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have
investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other
Countries to help us out!” he tweeted.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff
(D-Calif.) responded to that post Friday, imploring his Republican colleagues
to break with the president.
“It comes down to this. We’ve cut through the
denials. The deflections. The nonsense,” Schiff tweeted. “Donald Trump
believes he can pressure a foreign nation to help him politically. It’s his
‘right.’ Every Republican in Congress has to decide: Is he right?”
The president’s morning missive on social media
came as Washington awoke to news of damaging text messages exchanged in recent
months among top American diplomats. Those communications — which Kurt Volker,
the former special envoy to Ukraine, provided Thursday to
congressional Democrats — detailed efforts by the administration to pressure
Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and alleged meddling by the Eastern European
nation in the 2016 election.
Rep. Nunes: Democrats ‘Are Blind to the Blaring Signs of Corruption Surrounding Hunter Biden's Well-Paid Position’
By Susan Jones | November 15, 2019 | 10:38am EST
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden at a Georgetown v. Duke basketball game, Jan. 30, 2010. (Getty Images/Mitchell Layton)
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Devin Nunes (R.-Calif.), the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said at the start of today's impeachment inquiry hearing that committee Democrats "are blind to the blaring signs of corruption surrounding Hunter Biden's well-paid position on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father served as vice president and point man for Ukraine issues in the Obama administration."
In his opening statement before the House intelligence committee, Nunes, the ranking member, said:
After touting the Steele dossier and defending the FBI's Russia investigation, which are now being investigated by Inspector General Horowitz and Attorney General Barr, Democrats on this committee ignore Ukrainian election meddling, even though (DNC operative Alexandra) Chalupa publicly admitted to the Democrats' scheme.Likewise, they are blind to the blaring signs of corruption surrounding Hunter Biden's well-paid position on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father served as vice president and point man for Ukraine issues in the Obama administration.But the Democrats' media hacks only cared about that issue briefly when they were trying to stop Joe Biden from running against Hillary Clinton in 2015.
Nunes said the impeachment hearings "should not be occurring at all" until Republicans get answers to "three crucial questions," which Democrats refuse to ask:
He listed the three questions:
First, what is the full extent of the Democrats' prior coordination with the whistle-blower and who else did the whistle-blower coordinate this effort with?Second, what is the full extent of Ukraine's election meddling against the Trump Campaign?And third, why did Burisma hire Hunter Biden? What did he do for them? And did his position affect any government actions under the Obama administration?
Nunes noted that five Democrats on the intelligence committee had already voted to impeach Trump before his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky.
In fact, Democrats have been vowing to oust President Trump since the day he was elected. So Americans can rightly suspect that his phone call with President Zelensky was used as an excuse for the Democrats to fulfill their Watergate fantasies.But I'm glad that on Wednesday, after the Democrats staged six weeks of secret depositions in the basement of the Capitol, like some kind of strange cult, the American people finally got to see this farce for themselves.They saw us sit through hours of hearsay testimony about conversations that two diplomats who had never spoken to the president heard second-hand, third-hand and fourth hand from other people. In other words, rumors.The problem of trying to overthrow a president based on this type of evidence is obvious. But that's what their whole case relies on, beginning with second-hand and third-hand information, cited by the whistle-blower. That's why on Wednesday, the Democrats were forced to make the absurd argument that hearsay can be much better evidence than direct evidence...
No comments:
Post a Comment