Monday night on the radio, Levin TV host Mark Levin pointed out that, while Democrats and the legacy media continue to focus on President Trump’s July phone call with the president of the Ukraine, they’re overlooking some very suspicious facts about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son’s past business dealings.
The most recent controversy surrounding President Trump is the result of a July phone call in which he requested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky look into Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma and the past investigation into it that Joe Biden bragged about shutting down in 2018 while threatening to withhold foreign aid to the country.
During the opening segment of the radio program Monday night, Levin laid out the suspicious-looking timeline of Hunter Biden’s lucrative business endeavor in the Ukraine, including his business partner Chris Heinz (former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson) running interference at the State Department after Biden was named to the company’s board. Levin also discussed another of Hunter Biden’s business deals in China, which was cut shortly after he visited the country as part of an official U.S. delegation.
“There’s not a single Democrat on Capitol Hill who’s interested in any of this,” Levin concluded. “There’s not a single so-called journalist at CNN who’s interested in any of this. There’s not a single so-called journalist at MSNBC who’s interested in any of this, any more than they’re interested in the Obama administration’s interference with the 2016 election, putting spies in the Trump campaign, their abuse and violation of the rules with respect to the FISA court, the top levels of the FBI leaking against the president of the United States, and the list goes on and on and on.”
The following article is sponsored by Capital Research Center.
The massively funded Arabella Advisors strategy company, which uses a web of fronts to push the interests of wealthy leftist donors, has been quietly behind key activism seeking to allow the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.
Arabella Advisors is a centralized hub that runs nonprofit arms that in turn have spawned a nexus of hundreds of front organizations outwardly designed to appear grassroots but actually working against ordinary people by expanding government control in the lives of Americans.
Arabella’s vast network was unmasked in an extensive exposé by conservative watchdog Capital Research Center, which documents the shadowy system developed by, housed in and staffed by the for-profit, privately held Arabella Advisors.
The Arabella firm in turn manages four nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund. These nonprofit entities play host to hundreds of groups and projects that promote interests and political movements strategically deployed in a long-term campaign to nudge the country to the left.
Arabella’s New Venture Fund maintains a project calling itself All Above All, which advocates for Congress to overturn the Hyde Amendment, the 1976 legislative provision that bans the use of federal funds for abortions with the exception only of extreme cases.
In 2017, All Above All and the lobbying arm of Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund got behind the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (“EACH Woman”) bill, which sought to “ensure abortion coverage and care through the federal government” in Medicaid and Medicare. The bill also would have stopped state legislatures from restricting abortion coverage as part of private health plans.
The New Venture Fund also sponsors the Women’s Equality Center, which helps create strategic messaging to market pro-abortion campaigns.
The Capital Research Center report further documented, “The Center, in turn, nominally manages Keep Birth Control Copay Free (both are in reality part of New Venture Fund), which lobbies the government to force private health insurers to provide copay-free birth control coverage.”
Arabella Advisors has been quietly behind a hydra-like dark money network of pop-up groups designed to look like grassroots activist organizations, Capital Research’s report reveals. These front groups push everything from opposition to President Trump’s proposed border wall to support for Obamacare to gun control to government control of the Internet to advocating for a liberal Supreme Court and other left-wing causes.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York pumped $105 billion into the financial system Tuesday, in an effort to keep short-term funding costs near its fed funds target.
The N.Y. Fed added $75 billion in overnight funding. Banks bid for $80.2 billion, $5.2 billion more than the Fed made available.
The N.Y. Fed also added $30 billion in a two-week repo operation maturing October 8. This offer received $62 billion of bids, more than twice the offer. The Fed said this was the first of three two-week repo offerings planned for this week.
The fact that both operations were oversubscribed dashed any hopes that Monday’s smaller amount of demand signaled an easing of stress in the short-term funding market.
The Fed has been intervening in the repo market, which provides short-term funding vital to the largest Wall Street banks, ever since interest rates spiked on Monday. The cause of the interest rate spike remains a matter of speculation. The most popular theory on Wall Street is that the Fed’s earlier balance sheet reduction has left the market with too few dollars relative to Treasuries held by financial institutions.
The repo market is at the center of the U.S. financial system but it is little understood even by most people working in finance.
The word repo is short for repurchase. In a repo, one party sells another a security while promising to buy it back at a later date, often the very next day. The repurchase price is a bit higher than the initial sale, creating a positive return for the cash provider. Although technically structured as sales and repurchases, essentially what’s going on here is the creation of short-term loans collateralized with Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and agency debt. The higher repurchase price is equivalent to earning interest on the loan.
Big Wall Street banks borrow cash to finance their trading activity, for themselves and for clients, by selling securities and promising to buy them back the following day. The cash comes from investors with lots of dollars looking to make a little extra interest, such as money-market funds and government-sponsored housing agencies such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan banks. Typically, the interest rate on repos falls within the Fed’s target range for the fed funds rate, the rate banks pay to borrow reserves from each other.
Here’s how it works. Each morning, traders at the big Wall Street firms put in bids to borrow cash and cash investors accept bids. The bids are promises to pay an interest rate and a pledge to post securities as collateral. Later the day, the securities get allocated to the cash investors. The following day, the repos get unwound in the morning. The cash investors get their cash back and the Wall Street banks get their securities back. Then it starts all over again.
Why do the big Wall Street banks fund themselves this way? It’s really just a more intense version of the basic model of banking: borrow short-term, lend long-term, and make your profit on the difference between the rates.
Usually, the repo process is nearly seamless. Most of the previous day’s trades just get rolled over into the next day’s repos, with a slight tinkering of the rates and slight shifts in the collateral.
But the market started to malfunction last Monday, with the implied interest rate rising far above the Fed Funds target. Every since, the Fed has intervened to hold the rate down. Many on Wall Street are now wondering if this will become a permanent feature of the market.
Surprise. Surprise. It’s looking like the Democrats overreached considerably when they suggested President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani unethically or illegally reached out to Ukrainian officials to get dirt on Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
But the story they’ve helped unleash could end up making the Democratic Party look worse than ever, especially when it comes to the 2016 election.
The Hill’s John Solomon reported last week that Giuliani was not the initiator of contact with the Ukrainians, but rather he was asked by a senior official at the State Department to make the contact.
In August, Giuliani met with attorney Andrei Yermak, an adviser to recently sworn-in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the neutral ground of Spain.
Giuliani confirmed to Solomon on Friday that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting, and he kept U.S. officials appraised every step of the way, Solomon wrote.
“I didn’t even know who he [Yermak] really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told Solomon.
“I reported back to them [the two State officials] what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”
Solomon recounted that Ukrainian officials told him that their government has been trying to “hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.”
They even hired a retired U.S. attorney to deliver the information to the Justice Department, wrote Solomon, who noted that the retired U.S. attorney had confirmed the story.
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The information involved efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 election and also related to business dealings of Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Solomon wrote.
And the allegations were explosive.
“The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me,” Solomon wrote. “The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me.”
Two weeks ago, Democrats on three committees in the House of Representatives announced they were probing Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine officials, according to a report in The Hill from Sept. 9.
Since the story broke last week of a whistleblower claiming Trump had an inappropriate call with Zelensky involving Biden, the president has stated he did nothing wrong.
On Monday at the United Nations, Trump confirmed to reporters that the topic of Biden and his son did come up.
“We had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine,” he said. “Everybody knows it. It’s just a Democrat witch hunt. Here we go again. They failed with Russia, they failed with recession, they failed with everything.”
Asked how seriously he was taking Democratic calls for his impeachment, the president replied, “Not at all.”
“The one who’s got the problem is Biden,” Trump said. “Cause you look at what Biden did. Biden did what they would like to have me do except for one problem. I didn’t do it. What Biden did is a disgrace. What his son did is a disgrace.”
He further defended his questioning about the Bidens, saying the U.S. is supporting Ukraine and “we want to make sure that country is honest.”
“If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country you think is corrupt?” Trump asked.
The “corruption” the president was discussing involves a trip Joe Biden took to Ukraine in March 2016, while still vice president.
While there, he demanded that then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin or not receive $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.
According to a Solomon report in April, “The prosecutor [Biden] got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.”
So all the frenzied reporting suggesting Trump committed an impeachable offense — with Giuliani as an accomplice — looks to be in error.
On Friday, Trump encouraged White House reporters: “Keep asking questions and build it up as big as possible, so you can have a bigger downfall.”
The Trump-Ukraine collusion story appears to be the latest attempt to smear the president and his attorney, and if reports like this keep coming, it looks destined to fail, too.
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More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.
Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”
The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.
“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”
The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm,” they note. “We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”
“If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world,” they state.
In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as “unfit for their purpose.”
“Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models,” they propose. “Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.”
“We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation,” they declare.
Students, young professionals, and not-so-young Chinese have now demonstrated in Hong Kong for many weeks, despite the brutal attempts by the government to stop them.
The police have
used clubs, tear gas, and water cannons—everything but dogs—to silence them.
“If we didn’t protest,” one young woman said, “this might become just another
Chinese city.”
Why are they protesting? What is so unique about Hong Kong?
According to
Marxist doctrine, which recognizes only the material side of man, the residents
of Hong Kong should be the most contented citizens of the People’s Republic of
China.
Their per capita income is $58,322 ($1,000 higher than ours). Inflation is 2.6%, unemployment 3.4%. There are 87 billionaires in Hong Kong. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong has the freest economy in the world.
And yet, the
residents of Hong Kong are challenging the authority of their local government
and the communist leadership in Beijing—thereby risking their fortunes and
their lives.
The immediate
reason they took to the streets was to oppose a law that would allow Hong Kong
suspects to be tried under mainland China’s judicial system, which hands down
multi-year prison sentences as easily as a tap of the gavel.
But much more is at stake. Beijing is threatening the individual freedom that the people of Hong Kong enjoy more than any other “city” in China. By their bravery, the people of Hong Kong are showing that man has two sides—economic and noneconomic—and that the noneconomic side is just as important as the economic.
Protesters with U.S. flags take part in a pro-democracy march in Hong Kong’s Tuen Mun district on Sept. 21, 2019. (Photo: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images)
There is a French
saying: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”—the more things change, the
more they remain the same.
Fifty years ago,
on my first visit to Hong Kong, I interviewed a number of the young “freedom
swimmers” from mainland China who had risked their lives to make the 12-hour
swim across shark-infested Hong Kong Bay, evading armed communist patrol boats.
When I asked these
young men why they had risked their lives to come to Hong Kong, their
invariable answer was, “Freedom.” They were tired of being told what to say,
what to read, where to work. They came to Hong Kong not because its streets
were paved with gold, but to live as free men, which was impossible in communist
China.
Today, Hong Kong
residents understand how precious their freedom is and how easily it can be
lost. They are willing to risk everything to preserve it.
Protect and patronize the democratic opposition in Hong Kong and throughout China.
This is critically important because opposition, as Chinese political analyst Dimon Liu has written, “is the harbinger of the future.” The U.S. must support an effective human rights policy toward China, including the guarantee of religious freedom.
Students hold the U.S. flag and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Hong Kong University campus on Sept. 20, 2019. One sign reads, “We need the 2nd Amendment.” (Photo: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)
Democracy means
“rule by the people.” President Xi Jinping and his communist colleagues reject
such an idea and are trying to stamp it out whenever it appears.
But democracy is a
resilient ideal not easily suppressed. We see that in the Hong Kong demonstrations.
We cannot know their final outcome, but it is encouraging that Chief Executive
Carrie Lam has announced the full withdrawal (and not just suspension) of the
proposed extradition measure.
The Hong Kong
demonstrators are the tip of a giant iceberg: the Chinese people, who are no
longer satisfied with just a “full rice bowl” but seek basic human rights and
some form of democracy.
Within each and
every Chinese, whether in Hong Kong or any city in China, there is the innate
desire to be free—to be able to live your life not as the government dictates, but
as you wish. So it was with the freedom swimmers all those years ago, and so it
is today in Hong Kong and in the many other cities and towns of mainland China.
Protesters young and old descended Monday on Washington to call for immediate action on climate change, stopping rush-hour traffic and taking over city parks.
Environmental activists designed the event, called “Shut Down D.C.” or #ShutDownDC, to disrupt morning commutes for government workers and bring attention to their cause.
While world leaders attended the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York—President Donald Trump dropped by the gathering—these activists took to the streets of the nation’s capital to dance and shout their way to “climate justice.”
Here are five things that caught The Daily Signal’s eye as we walked and talked with some of the protesters in Washington:
1. Activists sought attention by bringing traffic to a standstill.
As the name suggests, #ShutDownDC protesters strategically blocked the streets throughout town. Some held banners that stretched across an entire road; others used more creative methods to make sure no one missed their demonstration.
Protesters block a D.C. intersection with a banner. At left is Emma Myers, 21. (Photos: Jackson Elliott/The Daily Signal)
One group, called Extinction Rebellion, parked a massive pink yacht across a busy intersection, illegally interfering with traffic and dancing in the street until police arrived to tow the obstruction away.
Although some drivers honked in support of the activists, the hourslong traffic jam caused plenty of headaches for area residents as they drove to work.
2. They have a sense of urgency for legislative solutions.
The D.C. climate protest featured a wide array of groups calling for everything from the Green New Deal to Trump’s impeachment, but one message was clear: They want action now.
Protesters used blaring music and bullhorns to shout slogans demanding that politicians do something.
Protesters march with signs, umbrellas, and carts.
Others warned of impending doom within a dozen years if something isn’t done immediately to curb global warming.
3. The protest had a 1960s vibe.
When the march of banner-waving protesters arrived at Farragut Square, they set up speakers for a DJ who provided dubstep music with a pulsing beat.
The mildly psychedelic combination of individuals standing by in shining silver costumes as a 24-year-old D.C. woman danced barefoot on the grass in a simple brown dress felt like a step back in time.
Rhetorical hippie-isms added to the charm.
“We’re coming here to declare a climate emergency,”
Northern Virginia resident Nick Brana, 30, told The Daily Signal. “We’re
taking the streets, because everything we’ve tried to do by democratic means
has failed. We’ve tried voting, we’ve tried protesting, we’ve tried the phone
calls, meetings with elected officials. None of it has worked.”
“Underprivileged people feel the consequences of climate change all the time,” Brana added. “The difference is that this time, we’re here on K Street [and] the Capitol building is right over there, so we’re impacting the corporations, the politicians who are responsible for it now. That’s the difference.”
A touch of anger added a little spice to the event.
Person after person refused to speak with reporters from The Daily Signal, which is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. One emailed The Daily Signal to withdraw her consent to be quoted.
4. Participants drew inspiration from the Hong Kong protests.
Several groups imitated the use of umbrellas as a rebel symbol that was made famous by the mounting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Calling themselves “climate rebels,” the D.C. protesters spray-painted green hourglass symbols on their umbrellas by way of emulating the strategies of the Hong Kong protesters who last month clogged an airport.
Larry Spoon, 68, rests in the shade of a park after spending the morning marching.
5. This was a multigenerational crowd.
Young marchers proudly carried homemade signs and banners that served not only to spread the message of the climate protest but also to block streets.
Although most attendees appeared to be under 30, many older people also turned out.
Of those with whom The Daily Signal spoke, 68-year-old Larry Spoon, of Ashland, Ohio, was the oldest.
“I flew in from Ohio to be here, I just wanted to do something about the situation,” Spoon said. “I’ve got a flight back to Ohio tomorrow. I’m gonna be here for an hour today to see what happens.”
Emma Myers, 21, a student at George Washington University, said she wanted the protest to rouse support for the Green New Deal touted by liberals in Congress.
“We’re looking for the Green New Deal, as it will reduce carbon emissions and that is our goal overall,” Myers said. “We all made our own banners because we all have our own reasons for being out here today.”
The House is staying busy now that the August recess (such as it was) is over. One of the latest items of business was having the House Judiciary Committee approve that new red flag law everyone has been talking about. But they ran into a bit of a snag when Republicans offered an amendment that would have allowed the addition of anyone whose name appears in a law enforcement gang database to the list. Even if that might sound like common sense to you, the Democrats on the committee found reasons to object and defeated the amendment. (Washington Examiner)
House Democrats this week advanced a new measure to encourage states to pass “red flag” laws, known as extreme risk protection orders, that authorize removing guns and ammunition from dangerous individuals.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee amended the measure during a Wednesday mark-up to authorize the federal government to issue extreme risk protection orders in some instances, but they rejected an amendment that would have red-flagged anyone who law enforcement lists as a gang member.
“The majority of violent crime, including gun violence, in the United States is linked to gangs,” Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who sponsored the amendment, said Wednesday. “My amendment is quite simple. It would allow the issuance of a red flag order against anyone whose name appears in a gang database if there was probable cause to include that individual in the database.”
The reason the Democrats gave for objecting to this was that the lists in those gang databases have been found to be inaccurate at times. On the surface, there is a valid complaint about these databases. The one used in Chicago, for example, has been widely criticized for having errors of all sorts. But Republican Congressman Ken Buck, the amendment’s author, pointed out that being in one of those databases wouldn’t automatically trigger the red flag law. It would only apply if there was probable cause.
Republicans also pointed out some of the hypocrisy on display. You may recall that many of these same Democrats held a sit-in to shut down Congress because the GOP didn’t want to pass a “no-fly, no buy” law that would forbid gun ownership for anyone on the terrorist no-fly list. The reason the GOP gave at the time? There were errors in that list as well.
The Democrats countered by saying they would like to add “individuals affiliated with white nationalism.” How precisely are you going to define who is affiliated with “white nationalism?” People show up on gang databases because they commit gang-related crimes. You can be accused of being affiliated with “white nationalism” for writing an op-ed.
Let’s keep in mind the fact that all of this activity is little more than political posturing. Congress isn’t considering a national red-flag law. Even if this measure makes it into law, all it does is allow and encourage the states to pass their own red flag laws. Whether the states choose to do so and how they structure such laws is still entirely up to them.
Further, the gang database amendment is kind of pointless as well. Most of the people who wind up on those lists (not counting those incorrectly added) are there because they’ve already committed crimes. They’re already not supposed to be able to purchase or possess firearms. The problem is they somehow manage to ignore laws like that and carry weapons anyway. (Yes. Shocking, I know.)
Here’s the part of the story that nobody was saying out loud on the House Judiciary Committee, however. Democrats are reluctant to do anything that might be seen as taking harsh action against gang members. The reason is that many in their caucus are still fighting for criminal justice reform, bemoaning the crime bill from the nineties and claiming racism. Many, though not all urban gangs are primarily composed of minorities, so liberals are reluctant to touch the subject even though the vast majority of violent crime in the country is related to gang activity.
But even that is rather weak tea. There are white gangs running meth operations in the south and biker gangs all over the country with few or no minorities. They could have been added as well. That might have pleased the Democrats.
As I said, this entire exercise is a dog and pony show designed to get representatives on the record as to how they voted regarding red flag laws. There’s an election next year, after all.
Writing in The Hill, John Solomon demonstrates that it is Democrats who first sought to intimidate Ukraine for their own political ends and who continue to do so.
Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.
Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election-meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.
“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.
The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.
As with Joe Biden’s public boast to the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars unless Ukraine fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin who was investigating the company that employed his son as a board member for $50,000 a month, Democrats believe that they have immunity for the vert acts they now accuse President Trump of carrying out (though there is no public evidence of any such Trump acts).
Solomon goes on to show that “since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.”
For instance:
Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.
The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.
Read the whole thing.
The accusations against Trump are based on hearsay, evidence that no court in the United States would accept.
This going to blow up in Democrats’ faces even bigger than I believed yesterday.
Writing in The Hill, John Solomon demonstrates that it is Democrats who first sought to intimidate Ukraine for their own political ends and who continue to do so.
Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.
Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election-meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.
“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.
The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.
As with Joe Biden’s public boast to the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars unless Ukraine fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin who was investigating the company that employed his son as a board member for $50,000 a month, Democrats believe that they have immunity for the vert acts they now accuse President Trump of carrying out (though there is no public evidence of any such Trump acts).
Solomon goes on to show that “since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.”
For instance:
Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.
The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.
Read the whole thing.
The accusations against Trump are based on hearsay, evidence that no court in the United States would accept.
This going to blow up in Democrats’ faces even bigger than I believed yesterday.
President Obama, his Vice President Biden and his son, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Mueller, the Podestas, the IMF and others all pillaged the Ukraine and then delayed loans to the country before forcing Ukrainians to pay grossly inflated natural gas prices. Now these vultures claim they are innocent.
More than a year ago we reported that Robert Mueller was charging Paul Manafort for actions that Mueller committed himself.
The Gateway Pundit reported in August last year that Paul Manafort sits in solitary confinement for crimes he allegedly committed stemming from his work as a lobbyist in Ukraine years ago before Donald Trump ran for president.
For a little back story, Yulia Tymoshenko runs for reelection in Ukraine, she loses, and just like Hillary, Tymoshenko fails to lose gracefully and promises to #Resist. Her victorious opponent, Viktor Yanukovytch, throws her in jail for what many claim to be bogus charges.
We continued:
Anyway, due to all the negative publicity stemming from the Tymoshenko debacle, Yanukovytch tried to repair his image before the public, so he hired the lobbyist, Paul Manafort, who then hires John Podesta’s lobbying outfit. Their job was to make Yanukovytch seem like a really likable guy to the Ukrainian public, so Podesta gets both Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry’s State Department to do photo ops with Yanukovytch because, you know, the DNC coffers needed to be filled during election time, so they had to sell Yanukovytch as a real class act to the adoring public. Obama even went so far as to declare the Ukrainian election to be free and fair.
But guess who else did photo ops with Yanukovytch? Bob Mueller, the same Mueller that’s now prosecuting these very people. Rod Rosenstein’s memo said Mueller was specifically authorized to investigate allegations that Manafort “[c]ommitted a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”
Of course Mueller never recused himself from the Trump-Russia sham investigation due to his activities in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Manafort rots in prison for his actions in the Ukraine working with Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager John Podesta. Mueller even gave Podesta’s brother Tony immunity during his corrupt ‘witch hunt’.
But this was just a small part of the corruption and pillaging of the Ukraine by the Democrat Party leaders.
Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the [Clinton] foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton’s star-studded 65th birthday celebration.
We also reported that Oligarch Victor Pinchuk may have helped divert IMF funds to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In addition to being a Clinton Foundation donor, Pinchuk is also on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Counsel
The Atlantic Counsel has been historically active in Ukraine through their Ukraine in Europe Initiative. More recently, on January 19, 2017, the Atlantic Counsel announced a partnership with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Group.
Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s son, sits on Burisma’s board.
Also serving on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council is James Clapper, who served as Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. Funnily enough, Bongino discovered that the Chief Technology Officer of “the only company that investigated the hacking of the DNC’s servers and quickly determined it was the Russians, is a nonresident senior fellow in cybersecurity” at the Atlantic Council. His name is Dmitri Alperovitch (owner of CrowdStrike).”
So the Clintons, Obama, the Bidens, Mueller, the Podestas and the Atlantic Council all were involved in the Ukraine. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The IMF also had shady dealings with the Ukraine related to these same Democrats.
On 28 July 2010, the IMF approved a 29-month $15.15 billion loan to Ukraine.[7] Among others this led to a 50 percent increase on household natural gas utility prices in July 2010 for Ukrainian consumers (a key demand of the IMF in exchange of the loan).[8][9]
By December 2013, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, stated “the extremely harsh conditions” of a renewed IMF loan (presented by the IMF on 20 November 2013), which included big budget cuts and a 40% increase in natural gas bills, had been the last argument in favor of the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend preparations for signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement on 21 November 2013.[11][12][13] The decision to put off signing this EU-Ukraine Association Agreement lead [sic] to massive protests in Ukraine.[14][nb 1]
Then on December 10, 2013, President Yanukovych stated “We will certainly resume the IMF negotiations. If there are conditions that suit us, we will take that path”.[22] However, Yanukovych also (once again) stated that the conditions put forward by the IMF were unacceptable “I had a conversation with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who told me that the issue of the IMF loan has almost been solved, but I told him that if the conditions remained… we did not need such loans”.[22]
In March 2014 the IMF required the Ukraine to reform natural gas price subsidies in order to provide it with an aid package worth about $15 billion.[25] One of the expected effects was a 50% price hike on natural gas sold to domestic Ukrainian consumers.[25]
The Markets Work reported that Hunter Biden was placed on Burisma’s board after Obama’s State Department employee Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt held a phone conversation regarding installation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place of then-President Yanukovych. This call occurred on or before February 4, 2014.
On February 22, 2014, Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine and on February 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. (Yatsenyuk would resign in April 2016 amidst corruption accusations.)
On April 18 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the Board of Directors for Burisma – one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine. Then on April 22, 2014, Obama’s Vice President Biden traveled to the Ukraine and offered support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government.
As a result of all this activity, the Bidens got a place on the Board of one of the largest natural gas companies in the Ukraine, the Clintons received millions from a Ukrainian Oligarch, the IMF got billions in loans with the Ukraine, and the people of the Ukraine were burdened with excessive natural gas prices.
