Day 1009 What’s Up with Rudy and Ukraine?
Friday October 11, 2019
390 Days until the 2020 election and 472 days until the Inauguration
Okay let’s review.In 1994 Ukraine elected Leonid Kuchma. He’s the old guard Communist and Soviet choice.
In 2004 his term ended and Viktor Yanokowych was elected. Also, an old Soviet hand. He was corrupt, skimming off from everywhere. He was into illegal chicken smuggling and mixing bad meat with good, very gross, like him. Putin sent lots of money to Yanokowych’s party. In the next election the Russian friendly precincts turned out for Yanokowych, like 127% turnout!
A western friendly guy named Viktor Yushchenko ran against Yanokowych and he lost by a slim margin, but when you got 127% turnout against you I guess it’s to be expected. There was a rerun and Yushchenko won biggly. Putin was pissed off.
The Kremlin hooked up with some industry and crime bosses in the Ukraine who would do Putin’s bidding. Their point man was Dimitry Firtash, a multi-bilionaire with no qualms.
After a few small business deals he got into the brokering natural gas biz. He had an aptitude for dealing with all the right kinds of people, including organized crime bosses. This included Semion Mogilevich the boss of bosses of the Russian mob, who had stuff going on around the world and was on the FBI;s Most Wanted List. There was little Mogilevich wasn’t involved in: prostitution, gun smuggling, extortion, drugs, murder … the usual. With Mogilevich’s help Firtash built a $5 billion dollar buisness.
Ukraine was buying a ton of natural gas from Russia through Gasprom, the Russian government controlled gas company. To keep Western democracy at bay, especially near the Russian border, Putin’s strategy was simple. Corrupt the local neighboring countries gas and oil folk so they were dependent on Russia. Putin allowed Firtash to skim huge amounts of money off the transfer of the gas. This had the benefit to Russia of having a corrupt guy in their corner in Ukraine and allowed organized crime to run rampant.
Firtash made $800 million in 2007. For what? He did nothing. Firtash and a few others had plenty of money to spend to keep the place corrupt, and that was the point. This included money to Yanukovych’s party.
But they needed outside help for the international outrage and condemnation – enter Paul Manafort, which cost them like $75 million for a decade. Manafort was busy setting up off shore businesses to launder money into the west via real estate deals. One of his off shore businesses was managed by an ex-con named Brad Zackson, who learned the trade at the knee of one Fred Trump.
Manafort never closed any deals, but he did help Viktor Yushchenko win a plurality in 2006. However, the prime minister at the time was a woman named Yulia Tymoshenko who won on an anti-corruption campaign. She made it her political running point in the 2010 campaign that she would end the sweatheart deal with Gasprom and RosUkrEnergo that had siphoned off $800 million in a single year.
Mannafort drove her approval ratings down to 20%. In 2010 Yanukovcych won a narrow victory. The first thing Yanukovcych did was to get a prosecutor to lock up Tuymoshenko. She had a lot of sympathy in the U.S. so Manafort cooked up a PR scheme to discredit her in the our country. He employed a fancy law firm and got a social media smear campaign going. They even managed to smear the Clintons in this!
The law firm Manafort used, known as Skadden, looked like it had done the work almost pro-bono, only $12,000 and their report was supposed to be impartail. Greg Craig worked there. He refused to say how much they were paid. Federal prosecutors said it was a bit more, $4,657,568.91 by their count. The firm also provided training to the folks going after Tuymoshenko. (Who was convicted on BS charges and was spending 7 years in jail and fined $194 million.) Somehow if you ar paid close to $5M it’s hard to say you were impartial.
Firtash was now able to continue his gas deal. In the years 2012 and 2013 he made $4B. Nice work for doing nothing.
The new prime minister and Putin’s boy, Yanukovych did what any good lackey would do, he reneged on things Putin didn’t like. You know, like that silly closer ties to the West stuff. The people revolted. Putin offered lots of money. F*ck you. Yanukovych threatened the crowds of protestors, F*ck You, the crowds grew. He threatened to shoot. They wore armor of pots and pans and the crowds grew. It got cold and the crowds grew. “Freedom is for us. We are not afraid to die.”
Oh Sh*t!
To make it even worse Ukraine was increasing it’s production of oil and gas, and looking at fracking. Soon they would not need Russian gas, and there was talk about them becoming an exporter of gas. This was a real kick to the stomach of Putin. Late in February 2014 the former chicken smuggler and current prime minister turned tail and ran back to Russia.
Joe Biden had been to the Ukarian many times giving them support from the Obama administration. Putin took Crimea, then eastern Ukraine. Obama froze the assets of a lot of the Ukrainian oligarchs. The oligarchs were people who when Ukraine got free of the Soviets, seized the country’s assets for themselves, not for the people.
Now Rex Tillerson got involved. Remember, he was president of Exxon/Mobil and had concluded a huge deal with Russia at the tune of $500B. He and his company routinely ignored the United States government requests. He and the rest of big oil were famous for going into a country, cutting a deal and giving a ton of money to the leaders of that country. That money never found its way to the people. The result being that when a country has its gas and oil extracted they, the people, get poorer, while their leaders become obscenely wealthy. Exxon/Mobil would call upon the U.S. government to help them if they couldn’t persuade a country or group to go along with whatever deal they were trying to finalize, but if the U.S. government asked them not to do something they ignored it.
So now we get to Hunter Biden. He was hired by a gas company, named Burisma, with questionable business dealings, which included money laundering. They were trying to clean up their image and hiring the son of a well known politician was part of that attempt. They also hired a former president of Poland and Cofer Black. Cofer was in the Clinton administration and had a group tasked with going after terrorists in Afghanistan and that area of the world. He kept getting bigger and bigger budgets, but that money seemed to go into layers of management and not finding terrorists. Later he went to work fo Blackwater founded by Erik Prince, Betsy De Vos’ brother. Then we was part of W’s administration and famously warned them about bin Laden. He said he bring ‘em home in body bags and there would be “flies on their eyeballs.” He was nicknamed “Mr. Flies on Their Eyeballs” by W. Recently, he was on Mitt Romney’s presidential team.
Burisma in trying to clean up their image was casting a wide net to do so: Republican, Democratic, and international figures were pulled in. All the reporting and evidence on Hunter says that he did nothing wrong. It might have been a bit questionable to take the money, but a lot of folks close to well connected people get such gigs. You know like Jared, Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr.
Is there or was there corruption in Ukraine? You bet. In fact, there are two types of prosecutors in the Ukraine. One type, drums up phony charges on someone and offers to forget about them for a fee, and the others are real prosecutors that are trying to catch bad guys, root out corruption and do their jobs – legitimately. Of the first group of prosecutors, they also have another side, they just don’t do anything about the corruption.
Joe Biden was Obama’s point man on the Ukraine. He made numerous trips to help the legitimate folks trying to make their democracy work. One prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, wasn’t prosecuting anyone for corruption. Joe Biden added his name to the international group of people calling for Shokin’s ouster. The person who followed, Yuriy Lutsenko was no better.
All this was before Hunter Biden was hired. Rudy Giuliani is jumping up and down saying that the Bidens are corrupt and that Joe got rid of the prosecutor who was investigating the gas company that Hunter was working for. Well, yeah, prosecutors have investigated Burisma, but for things before Hunter was on board. The prosecutors did nothing with the investigation and brought no convictions, not for Burisma or anyone else. Because of that Joe Biden along with many others called for their replacement.
If you are a reporter and you land in the Ukraine and try to run down Rudy’s claims; it takes less than 30 minutes to discover that Rudy’s claims are crap and that Rudy is dealing with the folks that are the ones that drum up fake charges on people. So yes, there is still corruption and Rudy is working with those that are fostering it.
Rudy got leads to three of these crooked prosecutors from two other individuals with shady and criminal pasts. Whether they are the same two who got arrested at Dulles airport I’m not sure, but they are of that type of character.
I have to wonder how two thugs like that managed to get involved with Rudy and the Trump folks. They have no visible means of support, ie they have no jobs. Yet, they were able to funnel at least $325,000 to the Trump Campaign – illegally. They also got multiple pictures taken with Trump, Rudy, and Don Jr. yet, Trump says he doesn’t know them.
When they were caught at Dulles they had one-way tickets to Vienna. Why Vienna? Well, that’s where Dimitry Firtash lives. Rudy was going to go to Vienna too. So is it possible that Rudy and these two were going to meet with Putin’s bag man from Ukraine? Turning over the Magic 8 Ball it says, “Signs Point to Yes.”
390 Days until the 2020 election and 472 days until the Inauguration
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