Doing a deep-dive on the Washington Post Article https://t.co/1q0I44Gk6r
The article “Tucker Carlson: U.S. should back Russia over Ukraine” by the Washington Times is from December of 2019, so we have to go back in time to when our President was Donald Trump. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine was not kinetic and diplomacy was still possible the issues brought up with Ukraine, on this broadcast highlighted by the Senator out of LA had to do with conflicts, and issues in Ukraine from the 2016 election cycle Tucker has Chuck Todds broadcast on his show to point out the deflection of investigating corruption that involved the Clintons and Ukraine before Zelensky became President of Ukraine.
I found the episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight they are referencing at the show on the internet archive. I will also break down what is discussed with information found to go deeper into accusations. The episode is at archive.org https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20191203_010000_Tucker_Carlson_Tonight/start/600/end/660
The article we are critiquing brushes over the Chuck Todd interview with Senator John Kennedy and doesn’t touch on the corruption Senator Kennedy is talking about found in Ukraine. So to counter-balance, here is some of the corruption in Ukraine worth looking into.
One of the issues mentioned tying Democrats to Corruption in Ukraine: April 18, 2014 – Hunter Biden is appointed to the Burisma board, and four days later Joe Biden addresses the Ukrainian Parliament offering support and money.
Hunter Board Seat Money and Daddy Joe
Four days later, on April 22, 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine, (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/world/europe/biden-ukraine.html ) offering his political support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government. Poroshenko, a billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.
Biden became close to both men and helped Ukraine obtain (https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/14/01/49/pr15107 ) a four-year, $17.5 billion IMF package in March 2015.
In October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, “What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe,” which described Biden’s role in the removal of Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Victor Shokin. Shokin, the choice of Poroshenko, was portrayed as fumbling a major corruption case and “hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state prosecutors arrested on corruption charges.”
I agree with Tucker on this one
Responding on his Fox News program, Mr. Carlson called Mr. Todd a “mouth-breather” and compared him to the late Sen. Joe McCarthy made infamous for accusing Americans of being communists.
July 17, 2017 – The improper association of Victor Pinchuk with Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton, and covered up by the US Media, DOJ and IMF
(Credit: John Helmer)
“Never in the field of American conflict with Russia has so much wool pulled over the eyes been owed to so few sheep. That was during the losing presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Now, in the investigations of President Donald Trump and his family, it’s a case of so many sheep producing so little wool.
The case of the $13 million paid to the Clinton family by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, in exchange for personal favours and escalation of the war against Russia, was reported in detail throughout 2014. Click to read the opener, and more.
Early this month there has been fresh investigation of Pinchuk’s money links with the Clintons, owing to the start of Ukrainian government inquiries into the theft of billions of dollars of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Ukraine – money then transferred to Ukrainian commercial banks including Pinchuk’s Credit Dnepr bank, and then loaned to offshore entities controlled by Pinchuk but apparently not repaid. Theft of the IMF money was first reported here in connection with Igor Kolomoisky’s operation of Privat Bank.
Credit Dnepr’s [Pinchuk] takings were reported here. Also on the receiving end was the IMF’s Kiev representative, Jerome Vacher. For the reporting of his relationship with Pinchuk, read this. Vacher was recently replaced in Kiev. He and the IMF management decline to explain why.
Last week, in an investigation of Pinchuk, Credit Dnepr, and the Clintons, a group known as CyberBerkut published what it says were emails hacked from the files of Pinchuk operative, Thomas Weihe. He is currently listed as head of the Pinchuk Foundation board and chief executive. Read the emails here.
Foundation business — left: Weihe with Pinchuk; right: Pinchuk with Chelsea Clinton. (Credit: John Helmer)
The BBC’s Ukrainian service reports that CyberBerkut is a “staunchly anti-Western group which takes its name from the riot police used against protesters during the unrest in Kiev that led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych. The group’s declared goal is thwarting Ukraine’s military plans and thus stopping the “genocide” that it accuses Kiev of unleashing at America’s behest. Its motto is ‘We won’t forgive or forget’, and its rhetoric closely resembles that of Russian state media.”
The Wikipedia entry for CyberBerkut calls it “a modern organized group of pro-Russian hacktivists”, with a long list of cyber operations starting in March 2014. For details, read. On July 13, Wikileaks tweeted the CyberBerkut report but qualified its conclusions, calling them “alleged”.
Russian press pick-up has yet to reach the mainstream Moscow media, or the English-language outlets run by Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press head. If it did, they might correct factual errors in the CyberBerkut report, such as the linking of Pinchuk to the Ukrainian Delta Bank. Before its collapse in March 2015, Delta was owned by Nikolai Lagun. Graham Stack’s investigation of Lagun’s looting of Delta Bank reveals plenty of crime, but no trace of Pinchuk.
The first Russian publication of the CyberBerkut report is on the Novorussian website, Colonel Cassad; this is no more than a re-publication of the original text.
This is how CyberBerkut charts the relationship between the Pinchuk outlays and Clinton receipts:
The evidence of the movement of IMF money through Credit Dnepr into the offshores, and from Pinchuk pockets into Clinton pockets, has yet to be corroborated. What is revealed for the first time are emails between Clinton and Pinchuk operatives during the second half of 2014. These confirm the investigations, reported here three years ago, of what Pinchuk was doing to promote his steel-pipe trade with the US and his anti-Russian agenda, with the Clintons and the Obama Administration. At the same time, Pinchuk was using the demonstration of support he was procuring from them in order to boost his political power in Kiev and financial favour from the National Bank of Ukraine.
Read the emails, commencing in July of 2014:
Douglas Schoen, Pinchuk’s lobbyist in the US, does not respond to queries. Nor does Weihe, the Pinchuk Foundation apparatchik. They have made no statement challenging the authenticity of these emails. Nor have the Clinton Foundation officials who sent or received the emails, and who have been working to manage Clinton’s relationship with Pinchuk and satisfy his requests.
The three Clinton operatives, who remain at work at the foundation, are Amitabh Desai (pictured below, left), Robert Harrison (centre), and Craig Minassian (right).
Desai, according to the Clinton website, “has been with the Clinton Foundation for more than 10 years. As foreign policy adviser, Ami guides international strategy and relationships and plays a central role in shaping and executing President Clinton’s vision. This includes managing relationships with heads of state, business leaders, philanthropists, and NGOs around the globe” Before taking his job at the foundation, Desai worked for Clinton when she was a US senator, and before that, for Senator Edward Kennedy.
Last week’s report isn’t the first disclosure that in Desai’s emails he was selling access to Clinton for foreign money. More of them can be found here. Among the excerpts already published by US investigators, mainly from Freedom of Information Act pursuit of State Department files, there is no reference to Pinchuk or Ukraine. The US archive on reports of fraud at the Clinton Foundation is very large and can be combed through here. Fraud involving Pinchuk isn’t reported in this database.
(…) On November 3, the week before the election, AP broke the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been pursuing an investigation of Clinton’s government favours for foundation donations, but that the Justice Department stopped it. “Though agents believed they had grounds to move forward with an investigation, Justice Department lawyers were more skeptical. The lawyers did not direct the FBI to stop looking into the matter during the meeting, but public-corruption prosecutors in Washington expressed disinterest in a Clinton Foundation-related investigation based on the information presented.”
In all the email evidence which US media investigations pursued to expose Clinton’s foreign favour trading, there was no focus on the Pinchuk emails and the flow of Pinchuk money. Conflict of interest was the Clinton offence the US investigators were after. But in the Pinchuk case, there was another potential offence, and that was reported on February 17, 2014. Pinchuk had looted his Moscow-based Rossiya Insurance Company of up to $200 million, according to investigations by Russian insurance regulators and prosecutors, before the company’s licence was cancelled in October 2013.
The subsequent question was: did that money find its way through Pinchuk’s foundation into Clinton’s foundation, to be traded for political and personal favours?
The release of the CyberBerkut emails last week provides fresh evidence of this trading, but CyperBerkut doesn’t mention the Rossiya Insurance Company crime. As well-known as the crime was in 2013 and 2014, no US media investigator, nor any Russian government investigation has reported pursuing the Rossiya money-trail through Pinchuk’s accounts into Clinton’s. So the big question for the FBI and the Department of Justice — what check did the Clinton Foundation carry out of the legality of the money it took from Pinchuk? – has never been asked. Or if the US Government did ask the question, the Clinton answer has been concealed.
Note: Thomas Weihe comments: “First, it is obviously a lie that I don’t respond to queries. Every more or less professional and honest journalist gets an answer from me quickly, and I reply honestly. Second, the whole story is completely wrong. It is so wrong that individual corrections cannot improve it. Everything is invented. There is no truth to anything you say. The so-called evidence proves absolutely none of the claims you make. You should be ashamed of publishing such crap.” (Read more: John Helmer, 7/17/2017)
(Timeline editor’s note: We are excited to have received permission to republish some of Mr Helmer’s well-sourced work on Ukraine, the Clintons and Victor Pinchuk. Please be sure to read his entire article at the link provided. According to Mr. Helmer’s bio, he is the “longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties.”)
Hillary Clinton / DNC Ukrainian connection is a question worth exploring
“The latest news headlines indicate that the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation is ramping up. Connected with this probe is the now-infamous meeting President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had with Russian officials last June. While we are still trying to ascertain who all was in that meeting and what, if any, information was shared that could have helped Trump’s presidential campaign, we cannot ignore another meeting with a foreign government — one where we have proof serious campaign violations were committed.
Back in January of this year, Politico reported that Democratic officials met with Ukrainian officials to get information on the Trump campaign in an effort to boost Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. While it didn’t get nearly the mainstream media scrutiny that Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting is getting, it did prompt President Trump to correctly ask why it was being swept under the rug.
First, according to federal law, an in-kind contribution consists of “anything of value, including information and leads, the fruits of paid research, or similar investigatory activity, to a political committee.” Second, federal law also prohibits accepting or receiving anything of value from foreign nationals and the Ukrainian government officials are foreign nationals.
Since Chalupa allegedly engaged in both activities as a DNC staffer, this collusion would constitute an illegal, in-kind contribution. And, even though the DNC claimed it “did not incorporate [Chalupa’s] findings in its dossiers on the subjects,” that would be irrelevant as the DNC solicited and received valuable opposition research.
March 20, 2019 – As Russia collusion fades, a Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges
“After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election — this time, in favor of the Democrats.
Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years.
Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian’s release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton’s campaign.
The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to “an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign,” Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administration’s U.S. Embassy in Kiev at the time.
January 29, 2020 – Former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin files a criminal complaint naming Biden for “interference with the activities of a law enforcement officer”
“Former top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin has filed a criminal complaint with the state authorities, claiming former US Vice President Joe Biden strong-armed Kiev into firing him in order to stop the Burisma investigation.
In the complaint Shokin sent to the Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) on Tuesday, the former prosecutor requests that Biden be charged with “interference with the activities of a law enforcement officer.” The document was obtained by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Shokin urged the SBI to kick-start a pre-trial investigation into the alleged crime committed by Biden, who he claims was illegally pressuring Ukrainian officials into ousting him from office while using a $1 billion loan guarantee as leverage. https://www.rt.com/news/479535-biden-burisma-shokin-criminal-probe/
The real enemy is China
Washington Times did this hit piece on Tucker Carlson, and I watched the whole episode the part that was most important to me personally was what he said here about China. Where are the investigations into the fentanyl being pumped into our country from China?
Section of the episode where Tucker says America should support Russia over Ukraine if your picking sides. This article was in 2019, Trump was President and there was no war.
The invasion by Russia is wrong, war and loss of life are terrible and ugly, but Ukraine has serious issues and if we are going to figure out a way forward we need to look at what is actually happening and allow for other opinions.
Zelensky the Dictator?
The presidency of Zelensky has all the hallmarks of a dictatorship. Snap elections to the Ukrainian parliament were held on 21 July 2019.[1] Originally scheduled to be held at the end of October, these elections were brought forward after newly inaugurated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who literally dissolved parliament on 21 May 2019, during his inauguration.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-constitutional-court-oks-parliament-s-dissolution-early-poll/30010735.html
The election result was the one-party majority, a novelty in Ukraine, for President Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party with 254 seats.
https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/79905
The United States pushed for Shokin’s removal, and Biden led the effort by personally threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview with The Atlantic, Biden recalled telling Poroshenko: “Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars. It’s OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.” Shokin was removed by Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.
But according to reporting by The Hill, at the time of his firing, Shokin had been investigating Burisma. Shokin’s investigation into Burisma had previously been disclosed in June 2017, by Front News International.
Burisma is owned by Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola Zlochevsky), the former minister of ecology for Ukraine. According to Front News, Zlochevsky issued a “special permit for the extraction of a third of the gas produced in Ukraine” to his own company, Burisma.
“Heavy-handed?” How about calling it what it is: dictatorial?
‘The most democratic president of modern Ukraine has taken another step towards the western ideals of democracy.
‘By decision of the Council for National Defence and Security, he completely banned any activity of opposition parties in Ukraine.
‘They are not needed! Well done! Keep it up.’
“The move comes on the tail of a decision by Zelensky to enact what he called a ‘unified information policy’ during the period of martial law, which will give his government a monopoly on the news.”
No one in the media is calling Zelensky’s latest move what it is, getting rid of the enemy, suppressing the truth.
“Any activity of politicians aimed at splitting or collaborating will not succeed,” he said.”(Daily Mail)
Unless, of course, it’s television star Volodymyr Zelensky!
When will the world wake up to the fact that Zelensky is nothing more than a self-made dictator disguised as a television celebrity and comedian?
“The government sanctioned Viktor Medvedchuk, a personal friend of Putin, soon after polls started to show that his party may have more public support than Zelenskyy’s “People’s Servant” party and could overtake him in a future election. Sanctions against Medvedchuk were also endorsed by the US Embassy in Ukraine.”
Ukraine the one-party state
Other parties on Zelenskyy’s suspension list were of left-wing orientation. Some of them played an important role in Ukrainian politics in the 1990-2000s, such as the Socialist and Progressive Socialist parties, but by now they are all completely marginalised. Indeed, there is no political party in Ukraine today with “left” or “socialist” in its name that could secure any considerable portion of the general vote now or for the foreseeable future. Ukraine had already suspended in 2015 all of the country’s communist parties under the “decommunisation” law, which was strongly criticised by the Venice Commission. The latest round of suspensions may not be necessarily motivated by the wish to erase the left from Ukraine’s political sphere, but it certainly contributes to such an agenda.
The irony is that the suspension of these parties is completely meaningless for Ukraine’s security. It is true that some of the suspended parties, like the “progressive socialists,” were strongly and genuinely pro-Russian for many years. However, practically every leader and sponsor of these parties with any real influence in Ukraine condemned Russia’s invasion, and are now contributing to Ukraine’s defence.