The Left's War Against Trump's Administration

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Nolte: Democrats Caught Using Secret Focus Groups to Choose Trump’s Impeachment Crime

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

John Nolte

15 Nov 2019992

4:46

Democrats have been caught using secret focus groups to decide which impeachment crime to accuse President Trump of.

The far-left Washington Post reported on Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) latest shifting of the impeachment goal post has, at least for now, settled on the word “bribery.�

Why?

Well, as I’ll explain below, it certainly has nothing to do with the law.

No, hidden under 30 paragraphs, the Post tried to drop this bombshell hoping no one would notice [emphasis added]:

The shift came after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key House battlegrounds in recent weeks, testing messages related to impeachment. Among the questions put to participants was whether “quid pro quo,� “extortion� or “bribery� was a more compelling description of Trump’s conduct. According to two people familiar with the results, which circulated among Democrats this week, the focus groups found “bribery� to be most damning. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results have not been made public.

Here you have Pelosi running around talking about how she is always “prayerful� when it comes to impeaching Trump (whatever that means), and then she assures the American people this is not a political or partisan exercise. Meanwhile, back in the real world…

Like the Stalinist she truly is, instead of respecting this thing we call The Rule of Law, Pelosi is using secret focus groups to decide what crime to charge Trump with.

Think about this… Democrats are looking to remove a duly elected president, looking to overturn a national election through the process of impeachment, but rather than follow the facts, rather than respect the rule of law, like the coup-plotters they truly are, Democrats are focus grouping.

This proves impeachment has zero to do with tracking a known crime to a man. Instead, we now know the coup plotters are focus grouping the most effective crime to hang on the man.

Another obvious reason Democrats are going for “bribery� is because “bribery� is listed right there in the Constitution as an impeachable offense. But here’s the thing…
Even if Trump were guilty of everything Democrats are accusing him of, it does not fit the definition of bribery.

A bribe is when two or more parties willingly agree to do something illegal or unethical in exchange for some kind of payoff. In the case of “bribery,� both parties are guilty of a crime.

TRUMP: If you investigate Biden, I’ll give you some aid.

ZELENSKY: Sounds good to me.

Unless Democrats are going to accuse the Ukrainians, specifically President Zelensky, of a crime, the bribery allegation is utter nonsense. What’s more, even the Democrats own star witnesses, those petty bureaucrats looking to gay-marry “regular diplomatic channels,� are portraying Ukraine as victims of Trump’s evil machinations … because that’s what the Coup Script calls for.

What’s so desperate about this is that the script hasn’t changed, the story is the same. The only thing that’s changed is the dialogue. So now the dialogue is gibberish as it relates to the story, but Pelosi and the media don’t care because Battleground State Focus Groups, because Orange Man Bad…

Why not just accuse Trump of gang raping Ukraine? I mean, if we’re going focus group this sucker, let’s focus group this sucker.

What makes the bribery talking point even more ridiculous and desperate is that everyone, literally everyone, including the Democrats own star witnesses, admit Ukraine had no idea the aid was temporarily held up. So how can Ukraine accept a bribe when they believe the aid is on its way. They can’t. That’s how stupid this all is.

In reality, what Democrats are falsely accusing Trump of is called extortion, or “the illegal use of one’s official position or powers to obtain� something of value.

But “extortion� is not listed in the Constitution for the MAGAtards to see, so the Democrats have decided to take a flyer with bribery.

The bottom line is this…

Everyone admits Ukraine had no idea the aid was on temporary hold, and since Ukraine was oblivious of this, it is literally impossible for there to be a quid pro quo, or any form of bribery or extortion. Period. End of story.

Trump cannot even be accused of an “attempted� crime without Ukraine knowing.

Finally, even if Trump did hold up aid to muscle Ukraine into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden, that is perfectly acceptable and ethical for two undeniable reasons: 1) there is a legitimate cloud of corruption involving the Bidens, and 2) Trump wanted an actual investigation, not just the announcement of one. In other words, at the end of the day, Biden could have been exonerated, so Trump was not looking for a political boost, he was looking to have this matter resolved one way or another.

Stupidest impeachment ever.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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The 2nd impeachment hearing: Everything you need to see (8:25)

https://youtu.be/Yt8vT8aaScQ

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Jim Jordan and Elise Stefanik Lead a Republican Press Conference….

Posted on November 15, 2019 by sundance
Representatives Jim Jordan (OH) and Elise Stefanik (NY) delivered some of the most powerful congressional questioning today during day-two of the House impeachment hearings. At the conclusion of the hearing the two leaders were joined by Republican members for a press briefing. WATCH:



"THIS IS A SHAM" Jim Jordan UNLEASHED - DEMANDS Hunter Biden to TESTIFY (10:39)

https://youtu.be/EJze7IuD9uw

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Goodwin: Pelosi has gone full coup coup in Trump impeachment push

By Michael Goodwin

November 16, 2019 | 10:07pm | Updated


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday EPA


Three witnesses, 11 hours of testimony and endless squabbling between Republicans and Democrat Adam Schiff. That’s the bare-bones tally of the first two days of public impeachment hearings.

Along the way, patient viewers learned many things, some interesting but none decisive. So we don’t know the final score, but we do know the big loser.

America, in a landslide. Make that a mudslide.

With apologies to the late President Gerald Ford, we are in engaged in a new national nightmare as one party — and one party only — tries to remove the president of the United States. As distasteful as that is, it is even more remarkable that the impeachers still can’t honestly explain the reasons for their putsch.

Pressed to describe the “high crimes and misdemeanors� visible exclusively to Donald Trump haters, Dems throw words at walls, hoping something will stick. Quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, abuse of power, obstruction and witness intimidation are all getting a tryout.

The search for buzzwords proves the entire enterprise is 100% political. If impeachment were justified by facts, the right words would be obvious to the vast majority of Americans.

Quid pro quo, the battle anthem for six weeks, was ditched after focus groups told Dem pollsters that bribery was easier to understand than Latin. Presto — bribery it is.

Yet the week’s most important revelation was nothing said to or by the House intelligence panel. Rather, it was the completion of the strange evolution of Nancy Pelosi.

The speaker, who often sounds and acts as if she is cuckoo, has gone full coup coup.

For months, Pelosi made a big deal of pushing back against impeachment, calling it radical and divisive. Then she moved to accepting the possibility, saying investigators would determine where the party went next.

Those days are gone. Pelosi is now the zealot leading the charge to boot Trump from office by any means necessary, facts be damned.
Evidence that the change was complete came when she spoke to reporters a day after the first hearing.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery,� Pelosi insisted, adding that it was now certain “the president abused power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival.�

The charge itself was nothing new — it’s basically what Dems said all along while calling it a quid pro quo. But now Pelosi was calling it bribery, and declaring it already corroborated.

She then helpfully pointed out that bribery “is in the Constitution attached to the impeachment proceedings.�

Asked by a confused reporter, “So what was the bribe here?� she responded: “The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into elections. That’s bribery.�

It is? If she means Trump bribed the president of Ukraine, she’ll need another new word. Many public officials get in trouble for taking a bribe, but I’m not aware of any who were arrested for paying a bribe. Certainly no president was ever impeached for that.

She wasn’t done. Pelosi then said, “We haven’t made a decision to impeach. That’s what the inquiry is about.�

Perhaps realizing she was backtracking, she tried to explain. “What I am saying, that what is — the president has admitted to and says it’s perfect. I said it’s perfectly wrong. It’s bribery.�

So it’s bribery but they might not impeach? Trapped, she abruptly brought up Richard Nixon, saying what Trump has done “makes what Nixon did look almost small, almost small.�

Five more minutes of questions, and she would have compared Trump to Hitler. Ho-hum.

Pelosi’s absurd act would be comical if she weren’t doing such great damage to America. I’ve written before how her friends distinguish the speaker from her party’s far-left crazies, but that’s no longer possible. She’s one of them.

With her actions and ridiculous comparison to Nixon, she seals her fate as a rank partisan heedless of the national interest. Pelosi had another, better option.

Recall that after Dems took the House in 2018, Trump complimented her, saying, “I give her a lot of credit . . . She’s worked long and hard.â€�

He added: “Hopefully, we can all work together next year to continue delivering for the American people, including on economic growth, infrastructure, trade, lowering the cost of prescription drugs. These are some of things that the Democrats do want to work on, and I really believe we’ll be able to do that.�

None of that happened. Pelosi aligned her power with the resistance and rejected Trump’s offer of bipartisanship, especially on immigration, where she refused even to negotiate.

Worse, she made the fateful decision to join Schiff and others in pushing Russia, Russia, Russia. When Robert Mueller gave them nothing to work with, they instantly seized on Ukraine, which GOP Rep. Devin Nunes rightly called a “low-rent sequel.�

Yet to this day, Pelosi continues to accuse Trump of being a Russian agent, repeatedly saying recently that with him, “all roads lead to Putin.�
She includes the president’s dealing with Ukraine despite the fact that Trump gave the former Soviet republic the anti-tank Javelin missiles that Barack Obama wouldn’t. Obama, against bipartisan support for giving lethal aid to help fight off Russian invasions, limited support to socks and military rations.

His reason was shameful: He didn’t want to antagonize Putin. Obama chose appeasement which, as always, failed miserably and tragically.
The next time Pelosi cites Ukrainian battle deaths, as she did last week, she should separate out those who died because of Obama’s fecklessness and fear of Putin.

In that regard, a related development is the proof that the Obama State Department knew that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a corrupt Ukrainian company smelled to high heaven.

Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador Trump pushed aside, testified her preparation for Senate confirmation in 2016 included the topic. If it came up, she was told to refer the Senate to the office of Joe Biden, the vice president.

The Obama White House didn’t care about Biden family corruption then and Democrats are trying to hide it now. How fitting if their reckless bid to hang Trump ends up driving the final nail into Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Bloomy’s sorry state
Another sign former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is running for president: He apologized for past sexist and crude statements.
The New York Times pressured him, and he relented. All the remarks cited are more than 20 years old.
An apology only whets the left’s appetite. If Bloomy isn’t careful, he’ll be saying sorry so often his campaign won’t get out of the gate.

Hillaryous
From The AP, London — “Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she’s ‘dumbfounded’ the UK government has failed to release a report on Russian influence in British politics as the country prepares for national elections.�

For Clinton, different country, same song.

Son of House Speaker Pelosi made money in Ukraine

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:46 PM PT — Thursday, November 14, 2019

Reports have suggested the son of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have used her position to benefit financially. One America’s Kara McKinney has more.

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DC's Atlantic Council Raked In Funding From Hunter Biden's Ukrainian Employer While Courting His VP Father

Tue, 10/15/2019 - 23:35
Authored by Max Blumenthal via Consortium News,

With its relentless focus on corruption in Russia and Ukraine, the Atlantic Council has distinguished itself from other top-flight think tanks in Washington. Over the past several years, it has held innumerable conferences and panel discussions, issued a string of reports, and published literally hundreds of essays on Russia’s “kleptocracy” and the scourge of Kremlin disinformation.

At the same time, this institution has posed as a faithful partner to Ukraine’s imperiled democracy, organizing countless programs on the urgency of economic reforms to tamp down on corruption in the country.

But behind the curtain, the Atlantic Council has initiated a lucrative relationship with a corruption-tainted Ukrainian gas company, the Burisma Group, that is worth as much as $250,000 a year. The partnership has paid for lavish conferences in Monaco and helped bring Burisma’s oligarchic founder out of the cold.

This alliance has remained stable even as official Washington goes to war over allegations by President Donald Trump and his allies that former Vice President Joseph Biden fired a Ukrainian prosecutor to defend his son’s handsomely compensated position on Burisma’s board.

As Biden parries Trump’s accusations, some of the former vice president’s most ardent defenders are emerging from the halls of the Atlantic Council, which featured Biden as a star speaker at its awards ceremonies over the years. These advocates include Michael Carpenter, Biden’s longtime foreign policy advisor and specialist on Ukraine, who has taken to the national media to support his embattled boss.

Even as Burisma’s trail of influence-buying finds its way into front page headlines, the Atlantic Council’s partnership with the company is scarcely mentioned. Homing in on the partisan theater of “Ukrainegate” and tuning out the wider landscape of corruption, the Beltway press routinely runs quotes from Atlantic Council experts on the scandal without acknowledging their employer’s relationship with Hunter Biden’s former employer.

This case of obvious cronyism has not been overlooked because the Atlantic Council is a big player, but because of its success in leveraging millions from foreign governments, the arms and energy industries, and Western-friendly oligarchs to bring its influence to bear in the nation’s capital.

NATO’s Think Tank in Washington

The Atlantic Council functions as the semi-official think tank of NATO in Washington. As such, it cultivates relationships with well-established policymakers who take a hard line against Russia and support the treaty organization’s perpetual expansion.

Biden has been among the think tank’s most enthusiastic and well-placed allies.

In 2011, then-Vice President Biden delivered the keynote address at the Atlantic Council’s distinguished leadership awards. He returned to the think tank again in 2014 for another keynote at its “Toward A Europe Whole and Free” conference, which was dedicated to expanding NATO’s influence and countering “Russian aggression.” Throughout the event, speakers like Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser, sniped at President Barack Obama for his insufficiently bellicose posture toward Russia, while former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright fretted over polls showing low public support for U.S. interventionism overseas.

In his own comments, Biden emphasized the need to power Europe with non-Russian sources of natural gas. This provided a prime opportunity to Ukrainian suppliers like Burisma and U.S. energy titans. Many of these energy companies, from Chevron to Noble Energy, also happen to be top donors to the Atlantic Council.

“This would be a game-changer for Europe, in my view, and we’re ready to do everything in our power to help it happen,” Biden promised his audience.

At the time, the Atlantic Council was pushing to ramp up the proxy war against pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. In 2015, for instance, the think tank helped prepare a proposal for arming the Ukrainian military with offensive weaponry like Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Given that the Atlantic Council has been funded by the two manufacturers of the Javelin system, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, this created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. In fact, the think tank presented its Distinguished Business Leadership Award to Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson that same year.

Dubious arrangements like these are not limited to arms manufacturers. Anders Aslund, a neoliberal economist who helps oversee the Atlantic Council’s programming on Russia and Eastern Europe, was quietly paid by a consortium of Latvian banks to write an October 2017 paper highlighting the supposed progress they had made in battling corruption.

Aslund was asked to write the piece by Sally Painter, a longtime lobbyist for Latvian financial institutions who was appointed to the Atlantic Council board in 2017. At the time, one of those banks was seeking access to the U.S. market and facing allegations that it had engaged in money laundering.

Pay-for-play collaborations have helped grow the Atlantic Council’s annual revenue from $2 million to over $20 million in the past decade. In almost every case, the think tank has churned out policy prescriptions that seem suited to its donors’ interests.

Government contributors to the Atlantic Council include Gulf monarchies, the U.S. State Department and various Turkish interests.

In May 2017, Turkish President Recep Erdogan was filmed watching as his personal guards brutalized Kurdish protesters in Washington, D.C.; lost in the headlines was the fact that he was on his way into an event at the Turkish ambassador’s residence hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Amerika'nın Sesi
✔
@VOATurkish
#Erdoğan'ın korumaları kavgaya karıştı http://ow.ly/U23u30bMRLv #amerikaninsesi

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4:00 PM - May 16, 2017

Among the think tank’s top individual contributors is Victor Pinchuk, one of the wealthiest people in Ukraine and a prolific donor to the Clinton Foundation. Pinchuk donated $8.6 million to the Clintons’ non-profit throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

Asked if Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department on Ukraine, his personal foundation told The Wall Street Journal, “this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing.”

Obama’s ‘Point Person’ on Ukraine

In mainstream media reports about the Bidens, scarcely any attention is given to the critical role that Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials played in the 2013-2014 Maidan revolt that replaced a fairly elected, Russian-oriented government with a Western vassal. In a relatively sympathetic New Yorker profile of Hunter Biden, for example, the regime change operation was described by reporter Adam Entous as merely “public protests.”

During the height of the “Revolution of Dignity” that played out in Kiev’s Maidan Square, then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland boasted that the U.S. had “invested $5 billion” since 1991 into Ukrainian civil society. On a December 2013 tour of the Maidan, Nuland personally handed out cookies to protesters alongside Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.

In a phone conversation that leaked two months later, the two U.S. diplomats could be heard plotting out the future government of the country, discussing Ukrainian politicians as though they were chess pieces. “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience,” Nuland said, essentially declaring Arseniy Yatsenyuk the next prime minister. Frustrated with the European Union’s reluctance to inflame tensions with Moscow, Nuland exclaimed, “**** the EU.”

By February 2014, the Maidan revolt had succeeded in overthrowing President Viktor Yanukovich with the help of far-right ultra-nationalist street muscle. With a new, U.S.-approved government in power, Biden assumed a personal role in dictating Ukraine’s day-to-day affairs.

“No one in the U.S. government has wielded more influence over Ukraine than Vice President Joe Biden,” Foreign Policy noted. The Atlantic Council also described Biden as “the point person on Ukraine in the Obama administration.”

“Ukraine was the top, or one of the top three, foreign policy issues we were concentrating on,” said Carpenter, Biden’s foreign policy adviser. “[Biden] was front and center.”

Biden made his first visit to the post-Maidan government of Ukraine in April 2014, just as Kiev was launching its “anti-terrorist operation” against separatists who broke off from the new, NATO-oriented Ukraine and its nationalist government and formed so-called people’s republics in the Russophone Donbass region. The fragmentation of the country and its grinding proxy war flowed directly from the regime-change operation that Biden helped oversee.

Addressing the parliament in Kiev, Biden declared that “corruption can have no place in the new Ukraine,” stating that the “United States has also been a driving force behind the IMF, working to provide a multi-billion package to help Ukraine.” That same month, Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma.

Hunter Biden starred at one of Burisma’s energy conferences in Monaco, which are today sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

Burisma Recruits Hunter Biden

The ouster of Yanukovych put the founder and president of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, in a delicate spot. Zlochevsky had served as the environment minister under Yanukovych, handing out gas licenses to cronies. Having watched the president flee Ukraine for his life, currying favor with the Obama administration was paramount for Zlochevsky.

He was also desperate to get out of legal trouble. At the time, a corruption investigation in the U.K. had resulted in the freezing of $23 million of Zlochevsky’s assets. Then, in August 2014, the oligarch was forced to follow Yanukovych into exile after being accused of illegally enriching himself.

The need to refurbish Burisma’s tattered image, as well as his own, prompted Zlochevsky to resort to a tried and true tactic for shadowy foreign entities: forking over large sums of money to win friends in Washington. Hunter Biden and the Atlantic Council were soon to become two of his best friends.

Hunter Biden was no stranger to trading on his father’s name for influence. He had served on the board of Amtrak, the train line his father famously rode more than 8,000 times, earning himself the nickname “Amtrak Joe.” Somehow, he also rose to senior vice president at MBNA, the bank that was the top contributor to Joe Biden’s Senate campaigns.

Moreover, the vice president’s son reaped a board position at the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-funded “democracy promotion” organization that was heavily involved in pushing regime change in Ukraine. And then there was Burisma, which handed him a position on its board despite his total lack of experience in the energy industry and in Ukrainian affairs.

Hunter Biden tried to repay the $50,000-a-month gig Zlochevsky had handed him by enlisting a top D.C. law firm, Boies, Schiller, and Flexner, where he served as co-counsel, to help “improve [Burisma’s] corporate governance.” By the following January, Zlochevsky’s assets were unfrozen by the U.K.

Back in Washington, the arrangement between the son of the vice president and a less than scrupulous Ukrainian oligarch was raising eyebrows. During a May 13, 2014, press conference, Matt Lee of the Associated Press grilled State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki about Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board.

“Does this building diplomatically have any concerns about potential perceptions of conflict or cronyism – which is what you’ve often accused the Russians of doing?” Lee asked Psaki.

“No, he’s a private citizen,” Psaki responded, referring to Hunter Biden.

In a December 2015 op-ed, the editorial board of The New York Times took both Bidens to task for the unseemly business arrangement: “It should be plain to Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father’s efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on.”

For a paper that had firmly supported the installation of a U.S.-aligned government in Kiev, this was a striking statement.

Hunter Biden maintained that he had only a brief conversation with his father about his work at Burisma. “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do,’” Hunter recalled to The New Yorker.

Despite his constant focus on Ukraine, the elder Biden claimed this September that he never spoke to his son about his business dealings in the country.

Disaster for Ukrainians, Boon for the Bidens

On Jan. 12, 2017, the criminal probes of Zlochevsky and Burisma were officially closed under the watch of a new Ukrainian prosecutor.

Less than a week later, Biden returned to Ukraine to make his final speech as vice president. By this point, three years after the Maidan uprising overthrew Yanukovych, it was clear that the national project the vice president personally had presided over was a calamitous failure.

As even the Atlantic Council’s Aslund was willing to admit, Ukraine had become the poorest country in Europe. The country had also become the top recipient of remittances in Europe, with a staggering percentage of its population migrating abroad in search of work.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International stated: “Ukraine is descending into chaos of uncontrolled use of force by radical [far-right] groups. Under these conditions, no person in Ukraine may feel safe.” As the country’s proxy conflict with pro-Russian separatists dragged on, it transformed into a supermarket for the international arms trade.

Meanwhile, Biden’s son Hunter was making a small fortune by simply warming a seat on Burisma’s board of directors.

During his 2017 press conference in Kiev, Biden seemed oblivious to the trends that were driving Ukraine into ruin. He encouraged Ukraine’s leadership to continue on an IMF-led path of privatization and austerity.

He then urged Kiev to “press forward with energy reforms that are eliminating Ukraine’s dependence on Russian gas,” once again advancing policy that would serve as a boon to the energy firms plowing their cash into the Atlantic Council.

Burisma Recruits the Atlantic Council

Even with Hunter Biden on his company’s board, Zlochevsky was still seeking influential allies in Washington. He found them at the Atlantic Council in 2017, literally hours after he was cleared of corruption charges in Ukraine.

On Jan. 19, 2017 — just two days after the investigation of Zlochevsky ended — Burisma announced a major “cooperative agreement” with the Atlantic Council. “It became possible to sign a cooperative agreement between Burisma and the Atlantic Council after all charges against Burisma Group companies and its owner [Mykola] Zlochevskyi were withdrawn,” the Kyiv Post reported at the time.

Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council.

The deal was inked by the director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia program, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine named John Herbst.

Since then, Burisma helped bankroll Atlantic Council programming, including an energy security conference held this May in Monaco, where Zlochevsky currently lives.

“[Zlochevsky] invited them purely for whitewashing purposes, to put them on the façade and make this company look nice,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, said of the Monaco event to The Financial Times.

At one such conference in Monaco, then-Burisma board member Hunter Biden declared, “One of the reasons that I am proud to be a member of the board at Burisma is that I believe we are trying to figure out the way to create a radical change in the way we look at energy.” (Hunter Biden left Burisma with $850,000 in earnings when his father launched his presidential campaign this year).

While the Atlantic Council was bringing Burisma in from the cold, the company was still too toxic for much of the business world to touch.

As The Financial Times noted, the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine had rejected Burisma’s application for membership. “We’ve never worked with them for integrity reasons. Never passed our due diligence,” a Western financial institution told the newspaper.

“The company just does not pass the smell test,” a businessman in Ukraine told The Financial Times. “Their reputation is far from squeaky clean because of their baggage, the background and attempts to whitewash by bringing in recognizable Western names on to the board.”

In fact, a year before the Atlantic Council initiated its partnership with Burisma, the think tank published a paper describing Zlochevsky as “openly on the take” and deriding board members Hunter Biden and former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski as his “trophy foreigners.” (Kwasniewski is today a member of the Atlantic Council’s international advisory board).

For Herbst, however, Burisma’s generosity seemed too hard to resist.

“If there are companies that want to support my work, if those companies are not doing anything that I know to be illegal or unethical, I’ll consider their support,” Herbst stated in reply to questions about the Burisma partnership from the Ukrainian news site, Hromadske.

“They’ve been good partners,” he added.

Men of Integrity

The Atlantic Council has provided more than just a web of influence for figures like Biden and Zlochevsky. It extended into the Trump administration, through a former employee who served as the president’s lead envoy to Ukraine.

On the sidelines of a September 2018 Atlantic Council event in New York City, Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi held a meeting with Kurt Volker, then the State Department’s special liaison to Ukraine. A former senior adviser to the Atlantic Council and national security hardliner, Volker had earned praise from Biden as a “solid guy.”

At the time, Volker also served as the executive director of the McCain Institute, named for the senator, John McCain, who authored the congressional provision requiring the U.S. to budget 20 percent of all aid to Ukraine for offensive weapons. As I reported in 2017, the McCain Institute’s financial backers included the BGR group, whose designated lobbyist, Ed Rogers, was a lobbyist for Raytheon – the company that produced the Javelin missiles that both Volker and the Atlantic Council wanted sold to Ukraine.

Following his abrupt resignation this September, Volker was called to testify before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on the so-called Ukrainegate affair. There, he defended Biden as “a man of integrity and dedication to our country” who would never be “influenced in his duties as Vice President by money for his son…”

Key Biden Adviser Joins Atlantic Council

Throughout Biden’s tenure as the “point person” on Ukraine, one figure was constantly by his side: Michael Carpenter, a former Pentagon specialist on Eastern Europe who became a key adviser to Biden on the National Security Council. When Carpenter traveled with Biden to Ukraine in 2015, he helped provide the vice president with talking points throughout his trip.

Once Trump was inaugurated, Carpenter followed fellow members of the Democratic foreign policy apparatus into the think tank world. He accepted a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, and assumed a position as senior director of newly founded Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which provided office space to Biden when he was in Washington.

At the Jan. 23, 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event where Biden made his now-notorious comments about threatening the Ukrainian government with the withdrawal of a one billion dollar loan if it did not fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin – “well son of a bitch, he got fired!” Biden exclaimed – Carpenter was by his side, rattling off tough talking points about Russian interference. [Shokin testified under oath that Biden had him fired because he was investigating Burisma.]

Max Blumenthal
✔
@MaxBlumenthal
On stage at @CFR_org right now, Joe Biden pushing a distinctly neocon line on Russia. A blunt defense of his role in pushing NATO expansion, dismissal of its role in antagonizing Russia and calls for encouraging/backing internal opposition to Putin. https://www.cfr.org/event/foreign-af...dent-joe-biden …

9:56 AM - Jan 23, 2018

Since then, Carpenter has remained engaged in Ukrainian politics, throwing his weight behind some of the country’s most hardline elements. In July 2018, for instance, he helped welcome Andriy Parubiy, the speaker of the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), to a series of meetings on Capitol Hill.

Parubiy is the founder of the Social-National Party, which The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson described as “openly neo-fascist.” In fact, Parubiy appeared in a Nazi-style uniform, packing a pistol beneath a Wolfsangel symbol on the cover of his Mein Kampf-style memoir, “A View From The Right.”

After the Senate meeting with Parubiy, I challenged Carpenter over bringing the far-right politician to Capitol Hill. “Andriy Parubiy is a conservative nationalist who is also a patriot who cares about his country,” Carpenter told me. “I don’t think he has any neo-Nazi inclinations, nor background.” He went on to dismiss the basis of my question as “mostly Russian propaganda.”

Months later, Carpenter staged a meltdown on Twitter over the incident, fabricating quotes by me, branding me as a “sleeze” [sic] and “pro-Asad and pro-Putin scumbag,” while falsely and baselessly claiming I “enlist[ed] RT,” the Russian-backed news network, “to do an exposé on him.”

Asked by The Grayzone about Carpenter’s work for a think tank funded by Burisma while simultaneously involving himself in Biden’s political machine, Atlantic Council media relations deputy director Alex Kisling stated, “Council staff and fellows are free to participate in election activity as individuals and on their own time, provided they do so in a way that could not be seen as acting as a representative of the Council or implying Council endorsement of their activity or views. Michael’s affiliations and previous service are on our website. (He is not part of our full time staff).”

The Penn Biden Center did not respond to a question on whether it supported Carpenter’s work at the Burisma-backed Atlantic Council.

Beltway Press Scrubs Burisma’s Ongoing Influence-Buying

As the scrutiny of Biden’s dealings in Ukraine intensifies, Carpenter has thrust himself into the media limelight to defend his longtime boss.

In an Oct. 7 Washington Post op-ed denouncing Trump’s “smear campaign” against Biden, Carpenter insisted that Biden had gone to great lengths to remove the Ukrainian prosecutor, Shokin, for his failure to take action against Burisma. That evening, Carpenter took to Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to reinforce the message that Biden moved against “corrupt players” in Ukraine, presumably referring to Burisma.

At no point did he mention that Burisma was funding the think tank that hosted him as a senior fellow.

In publishing an “explainer” purporting to debunk the charges against Biden, the Atlantic Council also failed to mention its ongoing relationship with Burisma. Atlantic Council media relations deputy director Kisling dismissed the non-disclosure, telling The Grayzone, “The Council discloses its funding from Burisma on its website and whenever asked.” (Ironically, the Atlantic Council has pushed for greater transparency in political advertising on Facebook, one of the top donors to the think tank).

Perhaps the most absurd omission took place in a GQ article about Ukrainegate by reporter and Russia-watcher Julia Ioffe. In painting Ukraine — the largest nation entirely located in Europe — as a “small country” drowning in corruption, Ioffe noted, “the best way to launder one’s shady reputation and shine for international investors is to hire big-name Western consultants – as Burisma did.”

In the very next paragraph, Ioffe quoted Daniel Fried, a former State Department official now serving as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “It’s a country where there’s a lot of freelance money and a lot of competing interests,” Fried remarked.

Revealingly, Ioffe failed to acknowledge that Fried was one of those “big-named Western consultants” helping to launder Zlochevsky and Burisma’s “shady reputation” through the Atlantic Council.

In fact, Fried was photographed in a one-on-one meeting with Burisma advisor Vadim Pozharskyi at a September 2018 Atlantic Council conference in New York City.

As the furor over “Ukrainegate” continues, Biden and his allies are soldiering ahead, insisting that scrutiny of his activities in Ukraine constitute nothing more than a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the Beltway press shrugs at Burisma’s buying of influence at a powerful think tank intertwined with Biden’s political operation.

Russia might be a “kleptocracy” and Ukraine might endemically corrupt, but in Washington, this is all business as usual.

* * *

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling “Republican Gomorrah,” “Goliath,” “The Fifty One Day War” and “The Management of Savagery.” He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including “Killing Gaza” and “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie.” Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

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Note The McCain Institute is a recipient of Soros Funding
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https://www.worldtribune.com/the-mcc...-five-scandal/

The McCain-Soros connection: It started after senator got caught in ‘Keating Five’ scandal

By World Tribune on June 20, 2017

An institute that launched with $9 million in unspent funds from Sen. John McCain’s failed 2008 presidential campaign has been likened to the Clinton Global Initiative and linked to billionaire leftist George Soros.

The McCain Institute for International Leadership, intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain, says it is “dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.”

Sen. John McCain and George Soros reportedly became friends after the ‘Keating Five’ scandal.

Critics from the left and right believe the institute “constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain,” chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

The organization’s exclusive “Sedona Forum” bears “an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes,” the Daily Caller report said.

The institute accepted a $100,000 contribution from Soros.

“McCain and Soros reportedly became friends after the senator was exposed as a member of the ‘Keating Five’ during the savings and loan (S&L) industry scandal during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration,” according to the report.” As the S&L bank chairman, Charles Keating paid $1.3 million to bribe five members of Congress to interfere with government regulators on behalf of the savings bank.”

The experience “so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform” and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros, the report said.

The institute also accepted a $100,000 contribution from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s “bag man.”

“Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals,” the Daily Caller report said.

Bloomberg reported in 2016 on a $1 million Saudi Arabian donation to the institute, a contribution the McCain group has refused to explain publicly.

In addition, the institute has taken at least $100,000 from a Moroccan state-run company tied to repeated charges of worker abuse and exploitation, the Daily Caller report said, adding that the group has also accepted at least $100,000 from the Pivotal Foundation, which was created by Francis Najafi who owns the Pivotal Group, a private equity and real estate firm.

The Pivotal Foundation has in the last three years given $205,000 to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), which has been a vocal advocate for the Iranian nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated.

NIAC President Trita Parsi has long been an advocate for Iran, including demanding in May 2017 that President Donald Trump and officials in his administration “cease questioning the integrity of a (nuclear) deal.”

The NIAC is “Iran’s lobbyists in Washington,” said Aresh Salih, the Washington representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. “People inside of Iran know them as their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,” Salih told the Daily Caller.

The NIAC does not file as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor does it register as a lobbyist with Congress.

Yet in May 2013, the Daily Caller noted, Parsi “spoke to a packed Capitol Hill meeting sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison to argue in favor of the nuclear deal.”

“This is a very real conflict of interest,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told the Daily Caller. “This is the similar type of pattern we received with the Clinton Foundation in which foreign governments and foreign interests were throwing a lot of money in the hopes of trying to buy influence.”

McCain recently claimed no involvement with the institute, saying “I’m proud that the institute is named after me, but I have nothing to do with it.”

Lawrence Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told the Daily Caller that accepting contributions in the name of a sitting senator like McCain raises troubling issues.

“In terms of the ethics of it, it does raise a broad question of people trying to get good will with the elected official,” he said. “From a personal standpoint, I’d rather not see these entities exist.”

Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street investment banker and philanthropy law expert, told the Daily Caller that “high government officials such as John McCain, [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama should not get involved with vehicles like these where substantial sums can be funneled over time in ways that at best, reeks of impropriety and at worse are public corruption.”

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Impeachment Witness Bill Taylor Led Ukraine Delegation for Group Advised by Hunter Biden

AARON KLEIN28 Oct 2019



Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who provided key testimony to the Democrats’ controversial impeachment inquiry last week, led an election observation delegation in Ukraine earlier this year for a George Soros-funded organization that at the time boasted Hunter Biden on its small chairman’s council.Two months before he came out of retirement to serve as the highest ranking U.S. official in Ukraine, Taylor led an election observer delegation to Ukraine’s April 21, 2019 second round presidential election for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) organization.

The delegation’s mission, according to NDI literature, was to “accurately and impartially assess various aspects of the election process, and to offer recommendations to support peaceful, credible elections and public confidence in the process.”

Taylor led the team along with former Director of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) Audrey Glover and former Minister for European Union Affairs Birgitta Ohlsson.

Hunter Biden at the time served on NDI’s ten person Chairman’s Council, which describes itself as bringing together “leaders from corporate, philanthropic, and academia sectors to provide expertise, counsel and resources to help the Institute meet these evolving challenges.”

Biden was engaged in Ukraine in his role as a board member for Burisma, the Ukranian natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden’s involvement in Ukraine policy during the Obama administration while his son was being paid by Burisma.

NDI did not immediately respond to a Breitbart News inquiry about when Hunter Biden was removed from the organization’s chairman’s council. The WayBack Internet archive shows Biden was listed on NDI’s website in that position until at least August 2019, encompassing the period when Taylor led the organization’s delegation.

Earlier this month, an attorney for Biden said the former vice president’s son had stepped down from the Burisma board and that he planned to step down from the board of BHR, a Chinese company seeking to invest Chinese funds outside China.

The NDI is not Taylor’s only seemingly conspicuous link. Last week, Breitbart News reported that Taylor has evidenced a close relationship with the Atlantic Council think tank, writing Ukraine policy pieces with the organization’s director and analysis articles published by the Council. The Atlantic Council is funded by and works in partnership with Burisma.

In addition to a direct relationship with the Atlantic Council, Taylor for the last nine years also served as a senior adviser to the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), which has co-hosted events with the Atlantic Council and has participated in events co-hosted jointly by the Atlantic Council and Burisma. USUBC events have been financially sponsored by Burisma.

Another senior adviser to the USUBC is David J. Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain. Kramer played a central role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier to the news media and Obama administration.

Taylor participated in events and initiatives organized by Kramer.

The links may be particularly instructive after Breitbart News reported that itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Burisma-funded Atlantic Council for ten Congressional aides reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Taylor. The pre-planned trip took place after the so-called whistleblower officially filed his August 12 complaint and reportedly after a Schiff aide was contacted by the so-called whistleblower.

Common funding themes

Meanwhile, NDI, where Taylor led the election observation delegation, lists partners and sponsors who “provide much-needed resources,” including Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Google Inc., the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State.

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, and the U.S. State Department. Another Atlantic Council funder is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.,

Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the so-called whistleblower’s document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower’s own claims, as Breitbart News documented.

One key section of the so-called whistleblower’s document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.”

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump’s call with Zelensky in order to discuss the “cases” mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower’s narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.

Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me” – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called whistleblower’s account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.”
Document that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”
Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.” The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.”
The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.”

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed “joint investigation” resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.

The so-called whistleblower’s document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

Taylor, Atlantic Council, Kramer

Multiple U.S. media outlets last week obtained Taylor’s full opening statement to the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees.

In the leaked pre-written full opening statement, Taylor alluded to work he said he did for a “small Ukrainian non- governmental organization” but he omitted the name of the organization.

“In the intervening 10 years, I have stayed engaged with Ukraine, visiting frequently since 2013 as a board member of a small Ukrainian non- governmental organization supporting good governance and reform,” he said.

The name of the organization is the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), where Taylor served for nine years as senior advisor. The USUBC has co-hosted or participated in scores of events with the Atlantic Council. Taylor has also authored numerous analysis pieces published by the Atlantic Council itself and has co-authored opeds written together with the Atlantic Council’s director.

Burisma is a key financial backer of the Atlantic Council. In 2017, Burisma and the Atlantic Council signed a cooperative agreement to develop transatlantic programs with Burisma’s financial support reportedly to focus “on European and international energy security.” Burisma specifically finances the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Besides funding the Atlantic Council, Burisma also routinely partners with the think tank. Only four months ago, the company co-hosted the Atlantic Council’s second Annual Kharkiv Security Conference. Burisma advertises that it committed itself to “15 key principles of rule of law and economic policy in Ukraine developed by the Atlantic Council.”

In March, three months before he became Trump’s ambassador to Ukraine, the Atlantic Council featured an oped co-authored by Taylor in which the diplomat argued Ukraine “has further to travel toward its self-proclaimed European goal” of reformation.

In 2017, Taylor wrote a piece for the Atlantic Council about a Ukrainian parliament vote on health care reform.

Last year, he participated in an online Atlantic Council Q & A on the Crimea.

In November 2011, the Atlantic Council hosted Taylor as the featured speaker at a discussion event when he was appointed that year as Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions at the State Department.

In March 2014, Taylor co-authored an analysis piece at Foreign Policy magazine written together with John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who serves as director of the Eurasia Center for the Atlantic council – the same Eurasia Center that is specifically funded by Burisma.

That same year, Taylor also co-authored a New York Times op-ed with the Atlantic Council’s Herbst on Ukraine. The duo co-authored another Times op-ed one year later on the future of Ukraine. The op-ed was reprinted on the USUBC’s website.

The USUBC, where Taylor was a senior adviser for nine years along with Kramer, has hosted Herbst for briefings and other events.

Kramer of the USUBC, infamous for his role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier, also held a November 2011 event at the Atlantic Council’s D.C. offices for a group that he heads called Freedom House. Taylor was one of six featured speakers at Kramer’s event.

The Atlantic Council published what it deemed a 24-point plan for ending the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In conjunction with the plan, Kramer, in his role as director of Freedom House, organized a letter by American and European experts and former officials urging Russia to end its conflict with Ukraine. Signatories of the letter, published on the Burisma-funded Atlantic Council’s website, include Taylor, Kramer and the Atlantic Council’s Herbst.

As late as this past March, Taylor was listed as one of nine members of the Friends of Ukraine Network Economic Security Task Force. Another member is Kramer.

When he deployed to Ukraine as Trump’s ambassador in June, the USUBC authored a piece in the Kyiv Post welcoming him.

In the USUBC piece welcoming Taylor to Ukraine, Kramer himself commented about Taylor’s ambassador position. “He’s a great choice for now,” Kramer gushed.

The USUBC’s piece noted that the “USUBC has worked closely with Ambassador Taylor for many years,” touting his role as the business group’s senior adviser.

On June 26, just nine days after arriving in Ukraine as ambassador, the USUBC already hosted Taylor for a roundtable discussion about his new position.

Vadym Pozharskyi, adviser to the board of directors at Burisma Holdings, was also previously hosted as a USUBC featured speaker.

Geysha Gonzalez is the sponsoring Atlantic Council officer listed on the Congressional disclosure form for the Schiff staffer’s trip to Ukraine in August. She is deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Gonzalez is also one of eleven members of the rapid response team for the Ukrainian Election Task Force, which says it is working to expose “foreign interference in Ukraine’s democracy.” Another member of the team is Kramer.

Kramer revealed in testimony that he held a meeting about the anti-Trump dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News, who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer’s permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.

BuzzFeed infamously published the Christopher Steele dossier on January 10, 2017, setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.

The Washington Post reported last February that Kramer received the dossier directly from Fusion GPS after McCain expressed interest in it.

In a deposition taken on December 13, 2017, and posted online earlier this year, Kramer revealed that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier was being taken seriously.

In one case, Kramer said that he personally provided a copy of the dossier to Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander.

In the deposition, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Wallander and Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department.

Taylor testimony and Burisma

In his testimony to the Democrats secretive impeachment inquiry, Taylor said that he “understood” from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “was dependent on a public announcement of the investigations.” Taylor was referring to the announcement of an investigation that included Burisma, as well as alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Taylor’s testimony was characterized by CNN as “explosive” and was similarly hyped by other news media outlets despite it not being unusual for the U.S. to condition aspects of relations on participation in ongoing American investigations involving the foreign country in question.

Still, Taylor conceded that there was no quid pro quo.

“Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not ‘clear things up’ in public, we could be at a ‘stalemate.’ I understood ‘stalemate to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance,” Taylor testified.

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Trump vs. the ‘Policy Community’

By Andrew C. McCarthy

November 12, 2019 7:51 PM



We resolve policy disputes by elections, not impeachments.

When it comes to Russia, I am with what Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman calls the American “policy community.”

Vindman, of course, is one of the House Democrats’ star impeachment witnesses. His haughtiness in proclaiming the policy community and his membership in it grates, throughout his 340-page House deposition transcript. I couldn’t agree more, though, with our experts’ apparent consensus that Moscow is bad, should be challenged on various fronts, and would best be seen as the incorrigible rival it is, not the potential strategic partner some wish it to be — the “some” here known to include the president. Ukraine, for all its deep flaws, is valuable to us as a check on Russia’s aggression, another conclusion about which the president is skeptical.

That is, on the critical matter of America’s interests in the Russia/Ukraine dynamic, I think the policy community is right, and President Trump is wrong. If I were president, while I would resist gratuitous provocations, I would not publicly associate myself with the delusion that stable friendship is possible (or, frankly, desirable) with Putin’s anti-American dictatorship, which runs its country like a Mafia family and is acting on its revanchist ambitions.

But you see, much like the policy community, I am not president. Donald Trump is.

And that’s where the policy community and I part company. It is the president, not the bureaucracy, who was elected by the American people. That puts him — not the National Security Council, the State Department, the intelligence community, the military, and their assorted subject-matter experts — in charge of making policy. If we’re to remain a constitutional republic, that’s how it has to stay.

I have abiding respect for the policy community. As a longtime assistant U.S. attorney who started out in international organized crime and ended up in international terrorism, my docket overflowed with cases steeped in foreign-relations consequences. To get through them, I needed the incredibly impressive human resources of the United States government. We have people whose depth in the history, culture, law, and politics of nations great and small is bottomless. In a matter of a few hours, they could even make a homebody lawyer from the Bronx sound like he actually knew something about the Afghan mujahideen.

Moreover, I believe Donald Trump would be a better president if, in conducting foreign relations, he relied more on the policy community and less on the self-perception of his exceptional skill in sizing up and negotiating with other heads of state.

All that said, though, Donald Trump is the president. It is he whom the American people elected to make foreign policy — a nearly plenary responsibility of the chief executive in our system.

As a candidate, Trump did not hide his inclinations. He wanted to prioritize good relations with Putin, a position to which I objected and about which I still have anxiety — not least because of the reprehensible rhetoric in which it has more than once been framed. Trump was explicitly dubious about NATO, and about our commitment to consider Russian aggression against countries in its claimed sphere of influence as aggression against us. He was determined to pull our forces out of the Middle East (while somehow also vanquishing jihadist safe havens there, and countering Iran). He doubted the value of multilateral pacts and organizations. While it was hyperbole to attach the “isolationist” label to him, he clearly wanted retrenchment, appearing convinced that foreign relations is largely a matter of America being taken for a ruinously expensive ride.

None of this was a secret.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton ran as the seasoned foreign-relations pro, the very embodiment of the policy community. She was going to be tough on Russia, work in unison with our European allies, and champion multilateralism. While no one could question her transnational-progressive leanings, Secretary Clinton’s dreadful record betrayed her pretensions to steel, scruples, and good judgment. The point, however, is that the 2016 election presented the nation with an unusually clear choice between different directions.

And the American people chose Donald Trump.

It is interesting to read the testimony of LTC Vindman (along with such other foreign-relations luminaries as this week’s impeachment witnesses: Bill Taylor, George Kent, and Marie Yovanovitch) at the same time that Nikki Haley is out with a memoir, Will All Due Respect (our Michael Brendan Dougherty reviewed it for NRO on Monday). The president’s former ambassador to the U.N. recounts being pressed by General John Kelly and Rex Tillerson — then, respectively, White House chief of staff and secretary of state — to join what she describes as their scheme to run the country, particularly its foreign policy, in accordance with what they, rather than the president, believed was in America’s interests. Trump was in over his head, as they saw it, so they needed to “save the country” from him.

There is a lot of that thinking going around in the policy community, such that my aversion to scandalizing it as the “deep state” is getting harder to justify.

Last week we learned that, at the start of Trump’s presidency, Mark Zaid, lawyer for the so-called whistleblower who launched the Ukraine controversy, gleefully tweeted that a “coup has started.” At the time, he was celebrating the insubordination of Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who had just been fired for defying the president’s lawful directives on immigration and border enforcement.

Yates thought Trump’s directives were bad policy. Policy is also the principal explanation for much of Vindman’s objection to Trump (as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York explains here). Policy is what created the irreconcilable differences that chased John Bolton and James Mattis from the administration. Policy — not purported extortion, quid pro quo, collusion, etc. — is the bone of contention between the president and the government that thinks it’s running him, not the other way around.
The government’s policy community has gotten so political, it has forgotten that its mission is to implement the president’s policies, not undermine them. It is vital to have a solid policy community because the responsibilities of the presidency are too varied and extensive for any single person to master everything. The president needs the experts’ knowledge and wisdom at the ready. Yet their job is to try to guide the president to good policy, not usurp his role. The president’s decisions carry the day. Bureaucrats are not free to substitute their judgments for the president’s. If they can’t accept that, the honorable thing is to resign, Ã* la Bolton and Mattis. Remaining in place to countermand the elected chief executive is not an option.

We’ve moved way beyond that, though. Democrats are now scheming with fellow progressives in the policy community to achieve their three-year longing to impeach President Trump. Note that when Mark Zaid was applauding Sally Yates, he couldn’t resist adding that a “coup” had been spawned by an internal government “rebellion,” which he took as assurance that “impeachment will follow.”

Never forget: The coup is driven by policy differences.
The Left will tell you it’s not — it’s driven by lawlessness. But the Left treats all disagreement with its policy preferences as lawlessness. And when it can’t pull that off, it slanders the dissenters as outlaws. That’s how, with a Supreme Court slot on the line, a widely admired jurist with a peerless record of mentoring his law clerks, mostly women, into high professional achievements somehow becomes a serial rapist.

We don’t have to agree with the president in order to agree that he is president. We can fight against his policies when they are wrongheaded, but we can’t fight against his authority to make policy. That fight is what elections are for . . . not impeachments. Otherwise, American self-government — the accountability of the policy maker to the voters whose lives are affected — collapses.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and an NR contributing editor. His new book, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, is available for pre-order and will be released by Encounter Books on August 13. @AndrewCMcCarthy

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David Stockman Exposes The Ukrainian Influence-Peddling Rings, Part 1

Fri, 11/15/2019 - 05:00

Authored by David Stockman via AntiWar.com,

Last night we heard some knucklehead on the War Channel (CNN) braying about Ukraine as a vitally important "ally and strategic partner". The implication, of course, was that the Donald’s attempted squeeze play on its new President was dangerously undermining national security.

What unadulterated tommyrot!

The safety and security of the American homeland has absolutely nothing to do with it. That’s because Ukraine is a no count, strategically irrelevant patch of earth that was long ago ruined by the old Soviet Union, and thereafter turned into an economic trainwreck by its own corrupt oligarchs – along with plenty of help from Washington interventionists.

The latter spent the post-Soviet years fomenting "color revolutions" and attempting to steer its politics toward the west and NATO membership. But when the Ukrainian people elected a pro-Russian president in 2010 and all efforts to bribe and bully him westward failed, Washington instigated, funded and instantaneously recognized an illegal putsch on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

That blatant, unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation, in turn, set in motion a destructive civil war internally; a dangerous and utterly unnecessary politico-military confrontation with Russia on its own doorstep; and, now, a hysterical campaign by the House Dems and their Deep State allies to impeach a duly-elected American president for the sin of wading into the very cesspool of corruption that the Washington establishment itself foisted upon this hapless, $150 billion sliver of a failed state and crippled economy.

The latest dispatch from the Wall Street Journal on the stench wafting westward from Kiev reveals more about the rotten foundation of UkraineGate than its authors probably understood.

Burisma Holdings’ campaign to clean up its image in the West reached beyond the 2014 hiring of Hunter Biden, son of the then-U.S. vice president, to include other well-connected operatives in Washington, according to officials in both countries and government records.

The Ukrainian company, owned by tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, also hired a lobbyist with close ties to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a consulting group founded by top officials in the Clinton administration that specialized in preparing former Soviet-bloc countries to join NATO (Blue Star Strategies).

Soon the efforts bore fruit. With the help of a New York-based lawyer, Mr. Zlochevsky’s U.S. consultants argued to Ukrainian prosecutors that criminal cases against the company should be closed because no laws had been broken.

Burisma later became a sponsor of a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council, whose experts are often cited on energy and security policy in the former Soviet Union.

Simple translation: Zlochevsky was an ally, officeholder (minister of ecology and natural resources) and inner-circle thief in the ousted government of Viktor Yanukovych. He therefore needed to powder the pig fast and thoroughly in order to hold onto his ill-gotten billions.



Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council

So he hired the best Washington influence peddlers that money could buy under the circumstances. First up was Hunter Biden, because his old man was running point on what amounted to the puppet government Washington had installed in Kiev, and Devon Archer, because he was a former bundler for former Senator (and then Secretary of State) John Kerry.

But so as to leave no stone unturned, Zlochevsky also had Burisma hire another Washington influence peddler just one month after Biden the Younger joined the board in April 2014. Again, according to the WSJ, the additional lobbyist firepower came from one,

David Leiter of Washington lobbying firm M.L. Strategies….. Mr. Leiter was John Kerry’s chief of staff when Mr. Kerry was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts….According to disclosure records, Mr. Leiter, who also had worked for the Energy Department, lobbied on behalf of Burisma on “promoting transparency and good corporate governances” at both chambers of Congress, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Energy Department, and US AID.

Needless to say, only in Imperial Washington would all the above named arms of the US government care a whit about "transparency and good governance" at a two-bit gas producer in Ukraine. During 2018, for example, the company produced the trivial sum of 1.3 BCF of natural gas and booked revenues of just $400 million – a rounding error in just about any energy market that matters.

But as it happened, Washington was calling the shots in Kiev, and Burisma needed its government licenses and gas concessions. So the lobbying happened on the banks of the Potomac where the real power was actually exercised.

Finally, the Clinton wing of the Washington racketeering system had to be covered, too – hence the above mentioned Blue Star Strategies. And the bolded sentence from the WSJ story quoted below tells you all you need to know about its business, which was to "….help former Soviet countries prepare for NATO consideration".

That’s right. With the Soviet Union gone, its 50,000 tanks on the central front melted-down for scrap and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, the rational order of the day was to declare "mission accomplished" for NATO and effect its own disbandment.

The great parachuter and then US president, George Bush the Elder, could have actually made a jump right into the giant Ramstein Air Base in Germany to effect its closure. At that point there was no justification for NATO’s continued existence whatsoever.

But the Clinton Administration, under the baleful influence of Washington busybodies like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright, went in just the opposite direction. In pursuit of Washington’s post-1991 quest for global hegemony as the world’s only superpower and putative keeper of the peace, they prepared the way for the entirety of the old Warsaw Pact to join NATO.

So doing, however, they also laid the planking for a revival of the cold war with the Kremlin. As the father of containment and NATO during the late 1940s, Ambassador George Kennan, observed at the time, the Clinton Administration’s policy of expanding NATO to the very doorstep of Russia was a colossal mistake.

It not only violated Bush the Elder’s pledge to Gorbachev at the time of German reunification that NATO would not be expanded "by a single inch to the east", but also set Washington on a confrontation path with the rump state of Russia that posed no threat whatsoever to America’s homeland security.

Moreover, in the case of Ukraine specifically, it had not simply been a Warsaw Pact "captive nation" like Poland or the Czech Republic. It had actually been an integral component of the old Soviet Union, and before that a vassal and sometimes province of Czarist Russia.

As the 1897 map below indicates, what is today Ukraine barely even existed as an independent state (dark yellow area) during the final centuries of the Russian Empire; and the Russian-speaking regions in what is today eastern Ukraine (yellow area on the map) had actually been known as "New Russia" owing to the Czarist policy of settling Russians there to provide a bulwark against encroachments by the Ottoman Turks.

Indeed, Crimea (orange area) had been actually purchased from them by Catherine the Great in 1783 to complete the Russification of the region north of the Black Sea. It had never been even remotely a part of Ukraine until its mainly Russian-speaking population was transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954 as a reward to his Ukrainian compatriots for their support during the post-Stalin struggle for power in Moscow.

Moreover, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, which had been largely incorporated by Moscow in 1923, had a modern bloody history that was always a civil war waiting to happen.

To wit, western Ukraine had sided with the Nazi and Hitler’s Wehrmacht as it brutally made its way through Ukraine to the siege of Stalingrad during WWII, while eastern Ukraine had lined up with the Red Army during its equally bloody campaign of destruction and revenge as it chased the defeated Nazi army back to Berlin after 1943.

So the very idea that Ukraine should be induced to join NATO was beyond the pale – and most especially after Washington had recruited modern-day political descendants of the WWII pro-Nazi brigades to replace the Yanukovych government in March 2014. Washington’s obtuseness to this history reflected pure imperial arrogance.

What is worse, of course, is that no count apparatchiks from the Clinton machine – Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano – had cashed in on this madness by setting up a practice in helping Washington to meddle in places where not an iota of homeland security was at stake.

Image result for 19th century map of the Ukraine as part of czarist Russia

As the Wall Street Journal noted, Blue Star Strategies had no compunction about using its Clinton and Biden connections in behalf of Burisma – notwithstanding the odor of oligarchical corruption which surrounded it,

Blue Star Strategies, which has been lauded in the West for its work to help former Soviet countries prepare for NATO consideration. Its founders: Sally Painter, a senior adviser to the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration, and Karen Tramontano, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

At about the time of Mr. Shokin’s dismissal, Blue Star helped Burisma hire lawyer John D. Buretta, who argued before prosecutors in Ukraine that cases against Burisma should be closed, according to one Ukrainian official and others familiar with the matter.

“I thought I was meeting someone who was going to help with the investigations, and all he wanted to talk about was why they should be closed,” said one former Ukrainian prosecutor who met with Mr. Buretta.

So that’s how the Imperial City rolls. People make policies which extend the Empire while in office – as did these Clintonistas with the NATO expansion project – and then cash-in afterwards by peddling influence in the corridors of the beltway on behalf of Washington’s newly acquired vassals and supplicants.

In this case, all roads lead to the Atlantic Council, which is the semi-official "think tank" of NATO in Washington and is infested with Russophobes and Clinton/Biden operatives. The latter, of course, make a handsome living peddling anti-Putin propaganda – the better to grease the Washington purse strings for unneeded military spending and foreign aid, security assistance and weapons sales to the "front line" states allegedly in the path of Kremlin aggression.

In fact, so-called think tanks like the Atlantic Council are thinly disguised lobbying arms for both the Empire’s foreign supplicants as well as the U.S. agencies which feed them. Thus, in the racketeering wards of the Imperial City weapons contractors and foreign purchasers make common cause. So do the dispensers and recipients of foreign aid, security assistance and the multitude of Washington propaganda programs run through the State Department, Endowment for Democracy, Board for International Broadcasting and countless more.

In fact, the network of one hand washing the other is so pervasive and massive that it is not surprising that foreign policy and national security have become one giant racket enveloped in a bipartisan consensus in favor in intervention and meddling in the fairest parts of the planet.

The entire Ukraine intervention project, for instance, has been heavily choreographed by the Atlantic Council, which in turn derives its ample funding from virtually all parties – domestic and foreign – to the Empires far flung rackets.

Thus, US government contributors include the Pentagon, the U. S. State Department, the US Air Force, the US Navy, the Air Force Academy, the US Army War College, National Endowment for Democracy and even NATO itself.

Then there is an endless litany of foreign governments and quasi-official institutions including the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and embassies, foundations and sovereign funds representing Denmark, South Korea, Australia, Japan, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Romania, Netherlands, Hong Kong and countless more.

Not surprisingly, the roster of military/industrial/intelligence contractors and international energy and financial institutions runs on for pages. It includes Chevron, HSBC Holdings, BP America Inc., Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon, United Technologies, Boeing, ExxonMobil, Textron, Statoil, Bank of America, ConocoPhillips, JPMorgan and dozens more.

Also, amply represented in its contributor lists are other foreign policy advocacy and funding institutions including The Wallenberg Foundations, the Soros Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Arabia Foundation, Center for International Strategic Studies, the Starr Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation etc.

Finally, there is an endless list of everyone and their brother who does business in Washington lead by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. The latter is the influence peddling front of Ukraine’s leading billionaire who essentially stole much of its iron and steel industry after the Soviet Union collapsed and has been a leading funder of the Clinton Foundation ($6 million) and various Russophobe think tanks in addition to the Atlantic Council.

But that additional list also includes such odds and sots as Facebook, Inc., Google, Inc., Squire Patton Boggs, Starbucks Coffee Company, Twitter, McKinsey & Company, CNN and dozens more.

So it is not surprising that Burisma quickly put its money where its spotted reputation could be cycled through a refurbishment process at the Atlantic Council. Indeed, in an extensive expose, Max Blumenthal noted exactly hour the Atlantic connection came about:

Even with Hunter Biden on his company’s board, Zlochevsky was still seeking influential allies in Washington. He found them at the Atlantic Council in 2017, literally hours after he was cleared of corruption charges in Ukraine.

On Jan. 19, 2017 – just two days after the investigation of Zlochevsky ended – Burisma announced a major “cooperative agreement” with the Atlantic Council.

The deal was inked by the director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia program, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine named John Herbst.

Since then, Burisma helped bankroll Atlantic Council programming, including an energy security conference held this May in Monaco, where Zlochevsky currently lives.

The story actually gets even more convoluted from there as we will essay in Part 2.

As it turns out, virtually the entire caste of whistleblowers and Deep State testifiers now being called before the Impeachment Tribunal were in one way or another organized, financed or sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

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Why Are We in Ukraine?

Historically and even today, Russia has much in common with Ukraine—the United States, almost nothing.

Stephen F. Cohen
• November 14, 2019
• 212 Comments

For centuries and still today, Russia and large parts of Ukraine have had much in common—a long territorial border; a shared history; ethnic, linguistic, and other cultural affinities; intimate personal relations; substantial economic trade; and more. Even after the years of escalating conflict between Kiev and Moscow since 2014, many Russians and Ukrainians still think of themselves in familial ways. The United States has almost none of these commonalities with Ukraine.

Which is also to say that Ukraine is not “a vital US national interest,� as most leaders of both parties, Republican and Democrat alike, and much of the US media now declare. On the other hand, Ukraine is a vital Russian interest by any geopolitical or simply human reckoning.

Why, then, is Washington so deeply involved in Ukraine? (The proposed nearly $400 million in US military aid to Kiev would mean, of course, even more intrusive involvement.) And why is Ukraine so deeply involved in Washington, in a different way, that it has become a pretext for attempts to impeach President Donald Trump?

The short but essential answer is Washington’s decision, taken by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to expand NATO eastward from Germany and eventually to Ukraine itself. Ever since, both Democrats and Republicans have insisted that Ukraine is a “vital US national interest.� Those of us who opposed that folly warned it would lead to dangerous conflicts with Moscow, conceivably even war. Imagine Washington’s reaction, we pointed out, if Russian military bases began to appear on Canada’s or Mexico’s borders with America. We were not wrong: An estimated 13,000 souls have already died in the Ukrainian-Russian war in the Donbass and some 2 million people have been displaced.

Things are likely to get worse. Democrats are sharply criticizing Trump for withholding large-scale military aid to Kiev (even though President Obama, despite strong pressure, wisely did so). Ukraine’s recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, having been drawn into the Washington scandal, is no longer as free to negotiate peace with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he hoped and promised during his campaign. And candidates for the 2020 US Democratic presidential nomination, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, are likely to compete for the role of Kiev’s biggest military booster. Here, as generally in US-Russian relations, Democrats are becoming a war party.

Meanwhile, as I have reported before, Russian leader Vladimir Putin continues to be accused by hard-liners in Moscow of passivity in the face of “American aggression in Ukraine.� Is it irony or tragedy that the often-maligned Trump and Putin may stand between us and something much worse—between a fragile Cold War peace and the war parties in their respective countries?


Ukraine Agrees to Give Up Its Nuclear Arsenal, Clinton Says : Summit: President hails the accord as a breakthrough



But it faces parliamentary opposition. NATO endorses the U.S. ‘Partnership for Peace’ plan to broaden alliance.

By JACK NELSON
Jan. 11, 1994
12 AM

TIMES WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
BRUSSELS —

President Clinton on Monday announced agreement with Ukraine and Russia to dismantle Ukraine’s entire nuclear arsenal, hailing the long-sought accord as “a hopeful and historic breakthrough that enhances the security of all three participants.�

The agreement, disclosed at the NATO summit here and scheduled to be signed in Moscow on Friday, must survive potentially serious opposition by nationalist factions that oppose elimination of the weapons and control the Ukrainian Parliament. But if it survives attack, the accord will represent a substantial step forward for the U.S. policy of curbing nuclear proliferation.

Ukraine, politically and economically unstable since it became an independent state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, has 176 intercontinental missiles armed with some 1,240 nuclear warheads--all aimed at the United States. It also has 592 nuclear warheads aboard bombers, which would be covered by the agreement.

The chaos in Ukraine, while possibly threatening the ability of Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk to carry out the agreement, also underscores the pact’s potential importance. It would allay Russia’s fear of a hostile nuclear neighbor and answer concerns that Ukraine’s nuclear weapons could wind up in the hands of other countries.

Under the agreement, the United States, Russia and Britain will provide security assurances for Ukraine when it gives up its weapons and becomes an adherent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ukraine also will get financial assistance in dismantling the weapons as well as compensation for surrendering the highly enriched uranium in the warheads, which can be converted into fuel for civilian nuclear reactors.

The United States has offered at least $175 million to help pay the actual cost of dismantling the nuclear weapons. The White House said the pact could also lead to a doubling of U.S. economic aid to Ukraine, from $155 million this year to $310 million.

Clinton Administration officials said the payments for uranium would be substantial. And the agreement provides that, in effect, Ukraine will receive fuel rods it needs for its power reactors from Russia now and Russia will be repaid out of the proceeds from the sale of warhead uranium later--another strong incentive for the economically desperate government in Kiev to go forward with the deal.

Meanwhile, as expected, the NATO summit, initiated by Clinton to revitalize the 45-year-old military alliance and redefine its mission in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, endorsed the President’s “Partnership for Peace� plan Monday.

The plan provides for enhanced North Atlantic Treaty Organization cooperation with former adversaries of the old Soviet Bloc and for gradually extending NATO membership to them.

The NATO leaders, in a draft of a declaration to be released today, propose that “peacekeeping field exercises� be held beginning later this year with those countries that join the plan. To coordinate joint military activities within the partnership, NATO will invite participating states to send permanent liaison officers to the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

The plan does not guarantee expanded NATO membership. Nor does it set a timetable for admitting new members. As a result, it falls far short of realizing the hopes of Poland, Hungary and some other East European countries for immediate membership.

But Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the compromise blueprint was endorsed enthusiastically by all NATO members. Based on signals from countries in East and Central Europe, he said, he expects “a very high degree of acceptance� by the former Communist countries as well.

Pointing out that NATO also had endorsed another Clinton initiative placing non-proliferation at the core of the alliance’s effort, Christopher said that sitting in the room with other summit participants “one could see and feel the re-emergence of U.S. leadership in this post-Cold War era.

This was President Clinton’s summit. He called the summit. He developed the three initiatives, which were enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed.�

While the Ukrainian Parliament has balked on nuclear arms control issues in the past, Christopher and Clinton said there are strong reasons for Ukraine to endorse the trilateral agreement. And the secretary said the United States believes Kravchuk can implement it through executive order.

Clinton said, “We have no reason to doubt the ability of the president (Kravchuk) to keep the commitment that he is prepared to make.�

Kravchuk’s press service announced Monday night that an agreement had been reached to hold a “consultative meeting� between Kravchuk and Clinton in Kiev on Wednesday and a trilateral summit with Clinton, Kravchuk and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in Moscow on Friday.

The statement said nothing about a substantive nuclear agreement, noting only that the Moscow session would focus on “the completion of recent trilateral negotiations.�

Senior officials in Ukraine suggested the final terms of the accord had yet to be determined. “From a legal standpoint, a final agreement and the end of talks are two completely different things,� said Anton Buteiko, Kravchuk’s top foreign policy adviser.

Valentyn Lemysh, head of Parliament’s military affairs commission, said Kravchuk is empowered to conduct negotiations on Parliament’s behalf. “The president is entitled to sign accords, but if there are any contradictions with the conditions imposed earlier, then the pact must be put to ratification,� he said.

The prospect of Kravchuk signing a nuclear accord with Russia and the United States immediately came under fire from Ukraine’s nationalist opposition.

“President Kravchuk has no authority to sign an international document on nuclear weapons,� opposition leader Vyacheslav Chornovil told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. “Nuclear policy is to be worked out by Parliament.�

Alexander A. Shalnev, a columnist for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, expressed doubt about Kravchuk’s ability to win parliamentary support.

“It is very unlikely that Kravchuk will succeed in lobbying for the agreement in the Ukrainian Parliament,� he said. “In his efforts to reach an understanding with the United States, he is always having to make concessions to the opposition. I am not sure this attempt will be much more successful than the previous ones.�

On another issue, Clinton reaffirmed that Washington remains ready to help NATO implement a peace settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina if one is reached by the warring parties. He expressed confidence the U.S. Congress would support such a move if the operation were clearly under NATO command, the means of carrying out the mission were equivalent to its purposes and the purposes were clear in scope and timetable.

He said he welcomed inclusion in the final declaration at the end of this summit a reaffirmation that NATO is prepared to carry out air strikes if necessary to prevent the strangulation of Sarajevo, the safe areas and other threatened areas in Bosnia. Clinton said NATO had better not be engaging in rhetoric but be prepared to take military action.

“Those of us gathered here must understand, therefore, if the situation does not improve, the alliance must be prepared to act,� he declared.

“What is at stake is not just the safety of the people in Sarajevo and any possibility of bringing this terrible conflict to an end, but the credibility of the alliance itself. And that, make no mistake about it, will have great ramifications in the future in other contexts.�

In announcing both the Partnership for Peace plan and the trilateral agreement with the Ukraine and Russia, Clinton said, “we have taken two giant steps toward greater security for the United States.�

Calling nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union the most crucial non-proliferation challenge facing the world, he pointed out that when the Soviet Union dissolved, four of its countries were left with nuclear weapons--Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

He said that by working to eliminate Ukraine’s arsenal--the world’s third largest after the United States and Russia--he was seeking to assure that the breakup of the Soviet Union does not result in the birth of new nuclear states, which could raise the chances for nuclear accident, nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Earlier, after a year of U.S. diplomacy, both Kazakhstan and Belarus agreed to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Clinton is scheduled to leave here today when the summit ends and go to the Czech capital of Prague to meet with leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to discuss the Partnership for Peace plan and other issues.

Addressing the opening session of NATO, Clinton said: “The size of the reactionary vote in Russia’s recent elections reminds again of the strength of democracy’s opponents. The ongoing slaughter in Bosnia tallies the price when those opponents prevail. If we don’t meet our new challenge, then most assuredly we will, once again, someday down the road, face our old challenges again.�

Skeptics have viewed Clinton’s Partnership for Peace as an empty halfway step between East European leaders’ demands for full NATO membership now and the reluctance of Moscow and some European capitals to see any expansion of the old Cold War alliance.

But Clinton declared, “This must not be a gesture.�

Staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Moscow and special correspondent Mary Mycio in Kiev contributed to this report.

* RELATED STORIES: A6-7

An Atomic Arsenal Aimed at U.S.

President Clinton said Monday that Ukraine had agreed to a deal with Russia and the United States to give up its nuclear arsenal, including 176 missiles targeted on the United States. A look at Ukraine’s current arsenal:

STRIKING DISTANCE OF SS-24 AND SS-19

Distance from Kiev to Washington is about 4,500 miles, Kiev to Los Angeles just under 6,000 miles, which puts them within striking distance of both missiles.

LAND-BASED MISSILES

SS-24 (Scalpel)
Number: 46
Warheads: 10 each
Flying range: 6,214 miles
Based: At Pervomaysk
Length: about 72 feet
History: Rail version in 1987; silo version later
*
SS-19 (Stiletto)
Number: 130
Warheads: 6 each
Flying range: 6,214 miles
Based: 40 at Pervomaysk; 90 are at Derazhna
Length: About 88 feet
History: Deployed 1974-82

NATIONS WITH NUCLEAR STRIKE CAPABILITIES

1. United States
2. Russia
3. Ukraine
4. Britain
5. France
6. China
(capabilities confirmed and recognized by Pentagon)





Keep America’s Word Again—and Protect Ukraine

Clinton made assurances when Kiev gave up nukes. Then Obama broke faith. Trump can restore it.

By Robert McConnell

Jan. 9, 2017 7:17 pm ET



Does “making America great again� include living up to the country’s commitments to other nations? Senators should put that question to Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson at his confirmation hearing Wednesday—especially with regard to Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s in exchange for assurances that the U.S. has failed to meet...

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Another Major Clue: Documents Reveal Schiff Staffer Met with Key Impeachment Inquiry Witness (Amb. Taylor) on August Ukraine Trip

Posted at 7:07 am on October 18, 2019
by Elizabeth Vaughn

In March, I wrote a post in which I asked, “What is the connection between James Clapper, Victor Pinchuk, and the chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, which was the only company the DNC allowed to access their server?� This post jumped into my head the moment I saw a Breitbart article reporting that one of Adam Schiff’s staffers had met with diplomat William Taylor on a trip to Ukraine which was organized by The Atlantic Council. I had written:

Ukrainian billionaire and longtime contributor to the Clinton Foundation Victor Pinchuk, was doing his best to promote a Clinton victory. Pinchuk serves on the International Advisory Board of a Washington-based think tank called the Atlantic Council. This group is “connected to Ukrainian interests through its “Ukraine in Europe Initiative,� which is designed to galvanize international support for an independent Ukraine within secure borders whose people will determine their own future.�

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, [Dan] 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.

Please keep this in mind as you read this post.

The Atlantic Council is a super liberal think-tank which receives much of its funding from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden had served as a board member.

Breitbart’s Aaron Klein obtained a copy of travel documents which showed that, twelve days after the “whistleblower� submitted his complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, one of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s staffers, Thomas Eager, held a meeting with acting U.S. ambassador (or Charge d’Affaires) to Ukraine William Taylor. The two were on a trip to Ukraine which had been organized by The Atlantic Council. It was “billed as a bipartisan Ukraine Study Trip in which ten Congressional staffers participated.�

Eager is a member of The Atlantic Council and Taylor has a “close relationship� with the organization as well.

Klein writes that Schiff’s office has refused to respond to any of Breitbart’s questions or comment requests. Specifically, Breitbart had asked, “While in Ukraine, did Mr. Eager speak to Mr. Taylor about the issue of reports about any representatives of President Trump looking into alleged Biden corruption in Ukraine?�

The trip took place between August 24 and August 31. The “whistleblower� filed his complaint on August 12. Last week, we learned that Schiff had lied when he told MSNBC on September 17, “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.� Via the New York Times, we found out that one of Schiff’s staffers had been approached by the whistleblower before he filed his complaint and shared this information with Schiff.

Following is one of the text message exchanges between Taylor and U.S. ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. It shows Taylor’s obvious bias against President Trump, so naturally Schiff has made him a key witness in his impeachment inquiry over Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Taylor is scheduled to provide a deposition next week.

NBC News’ reported that Taylor will be “represented during the deposition by attorney John Bellinger, a prominent “Never Trump� Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration.�

Here is one of the exchanges. (Via NPR)

On September 9th, Taylor wrote: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.�

Sondland responds: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.�

Sondland adds, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.�)

To give you an idea of how deeply involved, and therefore how “anti-Trump� Taylor is, I am including the details from Klein’s article. He does go into the weeds, but it explains how interconnected, almost incestuous, all of these players are. I recommend at least a quick scan of his findings.

When we see how extensive the network’s tentacles go, we begin to understand how they were able to carry out their plot against President Trump and to avoid detection for so long. All of the actors cover for and facilitate each other. We also realize that Ukraine has been the common denominator for a large part of the conspiracy to take down the Trump administration.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whose prepared opening statement to the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry team was leaked to the press last week, said she was recalled based on “unfounded and false claims.� I found a major lie in her testimony. She had written, “As Mr. Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian Prosecutor General has recently acknowledged, the notion that I created or disseminated a “do not prosecute� list is completely false—a story that Mr. Lutsenko, himself, has since retracted.� The reality is that Lutsenko has done no such thing. I posted about this here. And you can bet this was not her only lie. She is likely up to her eyeballs in wrongdoing.

The left has perpetrated such a major fraud which has involved so many, I don’t see how it could not leave a paper trail. The bigger an operation becomes, the more difficult it is to contain. Each additional participant adds to the risk of exposure. And in an operation as vast and far-reaching as this one, someone is going to slip up.

I have confidence that Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham have already found or will find the evidence necessary to blow this giant ambush of the U.S. President wide open.

Details: VIA Breitbart

Taylor has authored numerous analysis pieces published by the Atlantic Council.

In March, three months before he became Trump’s ambassador to Ukraine, the Atlantic Council featured an oped co-authored by Taylor in which the diplomat argued Ukraine “has further to travel toward its self-proclaimed European goal� of reformation.

In 2017, Taylor wrote a piece for the Council about a Ukrainian parliament vote on health care reform.

In November 2011, the Atlantic Council hosted Taylor as the featured speaker at a discussion event when he was appointed that year as Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions at the State Department.

When he deployed to Ukraine as Trump’s ambassador in June, the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), which has co-hosted events with the Atlantic Council, authored a piece in the Kyiv Post welcoming him.

Taylor for the last nine years served as a senior adviser to the USUBC.

The USUBC’s piece noted that the “USUBC has worked closely with Ambassador Taylor for many years,� touting his role as the business group’s senior adviser.

On June 26, just nine days after arriving in Ukraine as ambassador, the USUBC already hosted Taylor for a roundtable discussion about his new position.

Vadym Pozharskyi, adviser to the board of directors at Burisma Holdings, was also previously hosted as a USUBC featured speaker.

A USUBC senior adviser is David J. Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain, who served at the McCain Institute for International Leadership as senior director for human rights and democracy. Kramer played a central role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier.

In the USUBC piece welcoming Taylor to Ukraine, Kramer himself commented about Taylor’s ambassador position.

“He’s a great choice for now,� Kramer gushed.

Geysha Gonzalez is the sponsoring Atlantic Council officer listed on the Congressional disclosure form for Schiff staffer Eager’s trip to Ukraine. She is deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Gonzalez is also one of eleven members of the rapid response team for the Ukrainian Election Task Force, which says it is working to expose “foreign interference in Ukraine’s democracy.�

Another member of the team is Kramer.

Kramer revealed in testimony that he held a meeting about the anti-Trump dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News, who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer’s permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.

BuzzFeed infamously published the Christopher Steele dossier on January 10, 2017, setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.

The Washington Post reported last February that Kramer received the dossier directly from Fusion GPS after McCain expressed interest in it.

In a deposition taken on December 13, 2017, and posted online earlier this year, Kramer revealed that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier was being taken seriously.

In one case, Kramer said that he personally provided a copy of the dossier to Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander.

In the deposition, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Wallander and Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department.

Schiff’s signature appears on the required post-travel disclosure form filed with the House Committee on Ethics documenting the visit to Ukraine. The form signed by Schiff says that Eager’s trip to Ukraine was paid for by the “Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.�

The form bearing Schiff’s signature (above) describes the visit thusly:

Series of meetings and visits with gov’t officials, party officials, civil society and private sector reps in Ukraine to learn about ongoing political and military issues, including conflict in the East.

The costs for Eager’s visit listed on the form are $2202.91 for transportation, $985.50 for lodging, and $630.15 for meal expenses.

Speaking to Breitbart News, Gonzalez confirmed that Eager started his one-year fellowship with the organization in January and that Eager is still a fellow.

Gonzalez said the pre-planned trip was part of the fellowship program, which also includes a full year of round tables and other educational events. She said it was not within her portfolio to comment on issues of funding from Burisma or other donors.

Besides funding the Atlantic Council, Burisma also routinely partners with the think tank.

Only four months ago, the company co-hosted the Council’s second Annual Kharkiv Security Conference.

Burisma further co-hosted a U.S.-Ukraine Business Council event with the Council last year in Washington, DC. David Kramer of the dossier episode is a senior adviser to the Business Council.

Burisma and the Atlantic Council also signed a cooperative agreement to develop transatlantic programs with Burisma’s financial support, reportedly to focus “on European and international energy security.�

Burisma advertises that it committed itself to “15 key principles of rule of law and economic policy in Ukraine developed by the Atlantic Council.�

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by billionaire activist George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., and the U.S. State Department.

Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called “whistleblower’s� complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country� in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the “whistleblower’s� document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called “whistleblower’s� own claims, as Breitbart News documented.

One key section of the so-called “whistleblower’s� document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.�

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump’s call with Zelensky in order to discuss the “cases� mentioned in that call, according to the so-called “whistleblower’s� narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.

Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me� – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called “whistleblower’s� account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.�

Document that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.�

Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.� The so-called “whistleblower� then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.�

The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.�

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed “joint investigation� resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.

The so-called “whistleblower’s� document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

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Gamblers Are Betting Big On Trump’s Impeachment

By Fred Dunkley - Nov 14, 2019, 6:00 PM CST

“You are fired” was a famous and somewhat trademarked catchphrase of Trump’s as the host of the Apprentice reality show. The firing trend continued once he became president, and now it’s showing signs of backfiring. And his presidential fate is now the stuff of online betting.

Currently, there is a 77 percent chance of him getting impeached, according to the latest sentiment on the popular betting website PredictIt.

Investors use prediction markets to get a real-time barometer on the likelihood of certain political or any other events. However, in the last couple of years, Trump and his presidency have been the key focus of the prediction tool.

The odds of Trump's impeachment during his first term by the US House of Representatives spiked as the Democrat's impeachment inquiry uncovered new details on the Ukraine scandal.

Bets for a "yes" outcome first soared over $0.50 on the dollar in late September after news of the Ukraine scandal first broke and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry.

Hundreds of thousands of trades are made daily in the impeachment market, up from tens of thousands per day prior to the Ukraine scandal.

Apparently, the breaking point was the Wednesday testimony of US acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor, who detailed how the Trump administration explicitly tied aid for Ukraine to investigations into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Biden family.

However, some other odds are in Trump’s favor, including the fact that only 56 percent of people think that he will be impeached by the end of the year.

In addition, traders on the platform currently see only an 18-percent chance of the Senate convicting him in his first term.

So far, PredictIt correctly anticipated several political events, including that the GOP would win the Senate and Democrats would reclaim the House in 2018 midterms, and that Boris Johnson would lead Britain’s Conservative Party.

However, the website was wrong on some other major events, including the outcome of the Brexit vote or even the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

Still, even though betting on political events can be considered purely as entertainment, quite a few big companies are using PredictIt to scope out the political landscape before making investment recommendations and decisions.
And betting houses aren’t the only ones placing odds on Trump and his administration. It was reported last year that even White House staffers had run an office game by placing odds on who would be the next one out the door.

Considering that Trump fired some 40 high-level officials, very few in person but on social media, there is a high probability that some placed bets against themselves.
Since taking over the Presidency, turnover within the most senior level of White House staff members hit 83 percent, according to nonprofit public policy organization Brookings

As a matter of fact, Trump has had more high-level Cabinet turnover than presidents Obama, Clinton, Reagan, and both President Bushs’ combined.

Currently, Trump advisors are predicting that Mick Mulvaney, acting White House Chief of Staff and nominal director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be fired as soon as the impeachment trial is over.

By Fred Dunkley for Safehaven.com

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Emails: Open Society Kept Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty

Aaron Klein

17 Nov 2019



Eric Ciaramella, whom Real Clear Investigations suggests is the likely so-called whistleblower, received emails about Ukraine policy from a top director at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.



The emails informed Ciaramella and a handful of other Obama administration foreign policy officials about Soros’s whereabouts, the contents of Soros’s private meetings about Ukraine and a future meeting the billionaire activist was holding with the prime minister of Ukraine.

A primary recipient of the Open Society emails along with Ciaramella was then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair. Nuland, with whom Ciaramella worked closely, received updates on Ukraine issues from dossier author Christopher Steele in addition to her direct role in facilitating the dossier within the Obama administration.

The emails spotlight Soros’s access to national security officials under the Obama administration on the matter of Ukraine.
In one instance, Jeff Goldstein, senior policy analyst for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, sent a June 9, 2016 email to Nuland and Ciaramella, who were the missive’s primary recipients.

CC’d were three other State Department officials involved in European affairs, including Alexander Kasanof who worked at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

The message read:

I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine.

The email revealed that “GS� – meaning Soros – “is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with PM Groyman,� referring to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The email stated that Soros told Hahn “that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future.�

Soros also “urged Hahn to advocate with member states to move ahead with visa liberalization for Ukraine,� the email related.

“I’m sure you’ve been working this issue hard; if you have any thoughts on how this is likely to play out or where particular problems lie I’d appreciate if you could let us know,� the email concluded.

Goldstein’s email text sent to Nuland and Ciaramella was not addressed to any one individual.

Nuland replied that she would be happy to discuss the issues by phone. Goldstein set up a phone call and wrote that Soros specifically asked that an employee from the billionaire’s “personal office� join the call with Nuland.

The email was released last August as part of a separate Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Citizens United.

The FOIA request was unrelated to Ciaramella.

Johannes Hahn, referenced in the emails as meeting with Soros about Ukraine, is the European Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.

In 2015, Hahn participated with Nuland in the YES Summit, which bills itself as “the leading public diplomacy platform in Eastern Europe.�

Another summit participant was Vadym Pozharskyi, a board advisor to Burisma, the Ukranian natural gas company at the center of the impeachment trial and the allegations related to Hunter and Joe Biden.

On scores of occasions, Hahn was a featured speaker at roundtables and other events produced by the Atlantic Council think tank, which is funded by and works in partnership with Burisma.

The Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations and has been in the news for ties to various actors associated with the impeachment issue.

In one of several instances, Breitbart News reported, itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, now a key witness for Democrats pursuing impeachment.

The Schiff staffer is also an Atlantic Council fellow, while Taylor has evidenced a close relationship with the Atlantic Council.
Breitbart News previously reported on other emails that show Ciaramella worked closely with Nuland.

Nuland has come under repeated fire for her various roles in the anti-Trump dossier controversy.


In their book,Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,
authors and reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that Nuland gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with Steele regarding his dossier’s claims. It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.


FBI notes cite career Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as saying that Nuland was in touch with Fusion GPS co-founder and dossier producer Glenn Simpson.

Sen. John McCain, who infamously delivered the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey, reportedly first dispatched an aide, David J. Kramer, to inquire with Nuland about the dossier claims.

Meanwhile, looped into some other email chains with Ciaramella was then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff at the State Department, John Finer.

An extensive New Yorker profile of Steele named Finer as obtaining the contents of a two-page summary of the dossier and eventually deciding to share the questionable document with Kerry.

Finer reportedly received the dossier summary from Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing and exchanging information with Steele, according to the report. Winer previously conceded that he shared the dossier summary with Nuland.

After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Post oped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.

Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer described as an “old friend.� Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.

In testimony last year, Nuland made statements about a meeting at the State Department in October 2016 between State officials and Steele, but said that she didn’t participate.

At a June 2018 hearing, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) revealed contents of the State Department’s visitor logs while he was grilling Nuland.

At the hearing, Burr asked: “I know you talked extensively with our staff relative to Mr. Steele. Based upon our review of the visitor logs of the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department briefing officials on the dossier in October of 2016. Did you have any role in that briefing?�

“I did not,� Nuland replied. “I actively chose not to be part of that briefing.�

“But were you aware of that briefing?� Burr asked.

“I was not aware of it until afterwards,� Nuland retorted.

Nuland did not explain how she can actively chose not to be part of Steele’s briefing, as she claimed, yet say she was unaware of the briefing until after it occurred. Nuland was not asked about the discrepancy during the public section of the testimony, which was reviewed in full by Breitbart News.

Nuland previously served as chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott under Bill Clinton’s administration, and then served as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs.

Nuland faced confirmation questions prior to her most recent appointment as assistant secretary of state over her reported role in revising controversial Obama administration talking points about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks. Her reported changes sought to protect Hillary Clinton’s State Department from accusations that it failed to adequately secure the woefully unprotected U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi.

Likely ‘whistleblower’

A RealClearInvestigations report by investigative journalist and author Paul Sperry named Ciaramella as best fitting the description of the so-called whistleblower.

Officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings say Ciaramella’s name has been raised in private in impeachment depositions and during at least one House open hearing that was not part of the formal impeachment proceedings.

Federal documents show Ciaramella also worked closely with Joe Biden and worked under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked with former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump advocate who has faced controversy for his role in fueling the questionable Russia collusion investigation. Rice participated in Russia collusion probe meetings and reportedly unmasked senior members of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Sperry cites former White House officials saying Ciaramella worked for Biden on Ukrainian policy issues in 2015 and 2016, encompassing the time period for which Biden has been facing possible conflict questions for leading Ukraine policy in light of Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma.

Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj, the activist attorneys representing the so-called whistleblower, refused to confirm on deny that their secretive client is indeed Ciaramella.

“We neither confirm nor deny the identity of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower,� the lawyers told the Washington Examiner in response to an inquiry about Ciaramella.

Zaid and Bakaj added, “Our client is legally entitled to anonymity. Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger. Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.�

Soros funding and ‘whistleblower’ complaint

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., and the U.S. State Department.

Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country� in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the so-called whistleblower’s document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower’s own claims, as Breitbart News documented.

One key section of the so-called whistleblower’s document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.�

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump’s call with Zelensky in order to discuss the “cases� mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower’s narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.

Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me� – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called whistleblower’s account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

• Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.â€�
• Document that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.â€�
• Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.â€� The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.â€�

The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.�

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed “joint investigation� resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.
The so-called whistleblower’s document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

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CROWDSTRIKE -In President Trump's phone call, he asked the Ukrainian President to look into Crowdstrike Why?
__________________________________________________

Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question

Michael Krieger | Posted Wednesday Mar 22, 2017 at 3:52 pm

Before I get to the meat of this post, we need to revisit a little history. The cyber security firm hired to inspect the DNC hack and determine who was responsible is a firm called Crowdstrike. Its conclusion that Russia was responsible was released last year, but several people began to call its analysis into question upon further inspection.

Jeffrey Carr was one of the most prominent cynics, and as he noted in his December post, FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report: A Fatally Flawed Effort:

The FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report (JAR) “Grizzly Steppe” was released yesterday as part of the White House’s response to alleged Russian government interference in the 2016 election process. It adds nothing to the call for evidence that the Russian government was responsible for hacking the DNC, the DCCC, the email accounts of Democratic party officials, or for delivering the content of those hacks to Wikileaks.

It merely listed every threat group ever reported on by a commercial cybersecurity company that is suspected of being Russian-made and lumped them under the heading of Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) without providing any supporting evidence that such a connection exists.

Unlike Crowdstrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone. In other words — malware deployed is malware enjoyed!

If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will.

If the White House had unclassified evidence that tied officials in the Russian government to the DNC attack, they would have presented it by now. The fact that they didn’t means either that the evidence doesn’t exist or that it is classified.

If it’s classified, an independent commission should review it because this entire assignment of blame against the Russian government is looking more and more like a domestic political operation run by the White House that relied heavily on questionable intelligence generated by a for-profit cybersecurity firm with a vested interest in selling “attribution-as-a-service”.

Nevertheless, countless people, including the entirety of the corporate media, put total faith in the analysis of Crowdstrike despite the fact that the FBI was denied access to perform its own analysis. Which makes me wonder, did the U.S. government do any real analysis of its own on the DNC hack, or did it just copy/paste Crowdstrike?

As The Hill reported in January:

The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The bureau made “multiple requests at different levels,” according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a “highly respected private company” would get access and share what it found with investigators.

“We’d always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that’s possible,” Comey said, noting that he didn’t know why the DNC rebuffed the FBI’s request.

This is nuts. Are all U.S. government agencies simply listening to what Crowdstike said in coming to their “independent” conclusions that Russia hacked the DNC? If so, that’s a huge problem. Particularly considering what Voice of America published yesterday in a piece titled, Cyber Firm at Center of Russian Hacking Charges Misread Data:

An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.

But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened.

The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering.

How is this not the biggest story in America right now?

Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA.

VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.

In a statement to VOA, the institute flatly rejected the assertion of artillery combat losses.

“The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,” the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.”

In early January, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying artillery losses from the ongoing fighting with separatists are “several times smaller than the number reported by [CrowdStrike] and are not associated with the specified cause” of Russian hacking.

But Ukraine’s denial did not get the same attention as CrowdStrike’s report. Its release was widely covered by news media reports as further evidence of Russian hacking in the U.S. election.

In interviews, Alperovitch helped foster that impression by connecting the Ukraine and Democratic campaign hacks, which CrowdStrike said involved the same Russian-linked hacking group—Fancy Bear—and versions of X-Agent malware the group was known to use.

“The fact that they would be tracking and helping the Russian military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling,” Alperovitch said in a December 22 story by The Washington Post.

The same day, Alperovitch told the PBS NewsHour: “And when you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern Ukraine? Who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party? [The] Russia government comes to mind, but specifically, [it’s the] Russian military that would have operational [control] over forces in the Ukraine and would target these artillerymen.”

Alperovitch, a Russian expatriate and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council policy research center in Washington, co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011. The firm has employed two former FBI heavyweights: Shawn Henry, who oversaw global cyber investigations at the agency, and Steven Chabinsky, who was the agency’s top cyber lawyer and served on a White House cybersecurity commission. Chabinsky left CrowdStrike last year.

CrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions.

In its report last June attributing the Democratic hacks, CrowdStrike said it was long familiar with the methods used by Fancy Bear and another group with ties to Russian intelligence nicknamed Cozy Bear. Soon after, U.S. cybersecurity firms Fidelis and Mandiant endorsed CrowdStrike’s conclusions. The FBI and Homeland Security report reached the same conclusion about the two groups.

If the company’s analysis was “delusional” when it came to Ukraine, why should we have any confidence that its analysis on Russia and the DNC is more sound?

Answer: We shouldn’t.
__________________________________________________

What Is CrowdStrike? Firm Hired By DNC Has Ties To Hillary Clinton, A Ukrainian Billionaire, And Google

Fri, 03/24/2017 - 19:00

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

As usual, the rabbit hole gets much deeper the more you look.

In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. Here’s some of what we learned:

An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.

But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened.

The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering.

Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA.

VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.

CrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions.

Seems like pretty extraordinary incompetence. Either that, or something else was potentially at play; namely, a desire to push the narrative that Russia hacked the DNC, irrespective of the facts.

The whole things gets even more disturbing the more you look.

For example, Counterpunch put out a very important article earlier today on the topic, adding several crucial nuggets of information.

First there’s this:

The investigation methods used to come to the conclusion that the Russian Government led the hacks of the DNC, Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, and the DCCC were further called into question by a recent BuzzFeed report by Jason Leopold, who has developed a notable reputation from leading several non-partisan Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for investigative journalism purposes. On March 15 that the Department of Homeland Security released just two heavily redacted pages of unclassified information in response to an FOIA request for definitive evidence of Russian election interference allegations. Leopold wrote, “what the agency turned over to us and Ryan Shapiro, a PhD candidate at MIT and a research affiliate at Harvard University, is truly bizarre: a two-page intelligence assessment of the incident, dated Aug. 22, 2016, that contains information DHS culled from the internet. It’s all unclassified — yet DHS covered nearly everything in wide swaths of black ink. Why? Not because it would threaten national security, but because it would reveal the methods DHS uses to gather intelligence, methods that may amount to little more than using Google.”

That’s weird enough, but it gets far stranger. For example:

In lieu of substantive evidence provided to the public that the alleged hacks which led to Wikileaks releases of DNC and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta’s emails were orchestrated by the Russian Government, CrowdStrike’s bias has been cited as undependable in its own assessment, in addition to its skeptical methods and conclusions. The firm’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

In 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton it’s Distinguished International Leadership Award. In 2014, the Atlantic Council hosted one of several events with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took over after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in early 2014, who now lives in exile in Russia.

Recall that the FBI was denied access to the DNC servers by the DNC itself, and simply agreed to rely on the results provided by CrowdStrike, which as you can see has ties to all sorts of anti-Russia organizations and individuals. I find it absolutely remarkable that James Comey head of the FBI outsourced his job to CrowdStrike.

There remains zero evidence that Russia hacked the DNC. I repeat, there remains zero evidence that Russia hacked the DNC.

As cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr noted:

Jeffrey Carr called the FBI/Department of Homeland Security Report, the only alleged evidence released by intelligence officials, released in late December 2016 a “fatally flawed effort” that provided no evidence to substantiate the claims that the Russian government conducted the hacks, though that’s what it was purported to do.

Absolutely remarkable, but there’s more. As TechCrunch reported back in 2015:

If you need proof that security is a red hot market these days, how about this morning’s announcement that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike landed a $100 million Series C investment round?

The round was led by Google Capital with Rackspace, which happens to be one of the company’s customers also investing. Existing investors Accel and Warburg Pincus also participated. Today’s investment brings the total to-date to $156 million.

Why do I find it interesting that Google was a major investor in CrowdStrike? Well for one, we know that Chairman of Alphabet, Inc. (Google’s parent company), Eric Schmidt, was actively working to help the Hillary campaign. As I highlighted in the 2015 post,Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President:

An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology vendor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley and Democratic politics.

The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts by Schmidt—the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter blocs.

There is also another gap in play: The shrinking distance between Google and the Democratic Party. Former Google executive Stephanie Hannon is the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, and a host of ex-Googlers are currently employed as high-ranking technical staff at the Obama White House. Schmidt, for his part, is one of the most powerful donors in the Democratic Party—and his influence does not stem only from his wealth, estimated by Forbes at more than $10 billion.

According to campaign finance disclosures, Clinton’s campaign is the Groundwork’s only political client. Its employees are mostly back-end software developers with experience at blue-chip tech firms like Netflix, Dreamhost, and Google.

Since Democrats seem so obsessed with the saying these days, “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” and there’s plenty of smoke here.

https://dailycaller.com/2017/06/24/c...sia-dnc-story/

CrowdStrike: Five Things Everyone Is Ignoring About The Russia-DNC Story

June 24, 2017

The Democratic Party and mainstream media have become increasingly consumed with the narrative that Donald Trump’s election win is largely influenced by Russian hacking.

The narrative is centered around two hacks–the hack of a DNC server that led to the release of embarrassing emails during the Democratic National Convention, and the hack of John Podesta’s email which led to several embarrassing moments for the Clinton campaign in October 2016. Both are supposedly the result of the Russians.

The Russia story is back in the headlines once again after reports surrounding former President Barack Obama’s attempts to “punish” Russia for its interference.

However, there is still a cloud of doubt hanging over the DNC’s Russia narrative on the breach of the DNC servers.

The analysis that alleged that Russia was behind the DNC server breach was carried out not by the U.S. government, but by the private security group CrowdStrike.

CrowdStrike is the sole source of this claim, with their June 2016 report, “Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee” being the basis of the DNC’s Russian hacking allegations.

Here are five key points about CrowdStrike that the mainstream media is ignoring:

1. Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC

In April 2016, two months before the June report that alleged a Russian conspiracy, former President Barack Obama appointed Steven Chabinsky, the general counsel and chief risk officer for CrowdStrike, to the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

CrowdStrike co-founder George Kurtz said at the time, “We wish Steve and the rest of the Commissioners every success in this important effort. Their dedicated and thoughtful leadership on these issues holds great potential for promoting innovation and the benefits of technology, while lowering the very real security risks we are facing today.”

2. The FBI Never Looked At The DNC’s Servers — Only CrowdStrike Did

As far as we know, the FBI still has not examined the DNC server that Russia allegedly hacked.

There has been no corroboration or second opinion on who may have hacked the server. The only source for this claim is CrowdStrike, who began monitoring the DNC system on May 5th, 2016, according to DailyMail.com.

The DNC also reportedly paid $168,000 to CrowdStrike.

3. Comey Contradicted The DNC’s Story On The FBI Asking To See The Server

The DNC claimed in January that the reason the FBI never examined their hacked server was simple–the FBI never requested to do so. Yet, DNC deputy communications director Eric Walker gave told BuzzFeed News in an email, “The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers.”

However, this claim was contradicted by then-FBI director James Comey, who said in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in January that there were “multiple requests at different levels” to look at the DNC’s servers. Instead, Comey said a “highly respected private company” got access to the servers–meaning CrowdStrike.

A senior FBI official told WIRED in January, “The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated.”

“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

As Josephine Wolff of Slate pointed out, “…whether because they were denied access or simply never asked for it, the FBI instead used the analysis of the DNC breach conducted by security firm CrowdStrike as the basis for its investigation. Regardless of who is telling the truth about what really happened, perhaps the most astonishing thing about this probe is that a private firm’s investigation and attribution was deemed sufficient by both the DNC and the FBI.”


Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
...Why did the DNC REFUSE to turn over its Server to the FBI, and still hasn't? It's all a big Dem scam and excuse for losing the election!

82.5K
6:08 AM - Jun 22, 2017
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4. CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire

Co-Founder and CTO of CrowdStrike Dmitri Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow on the Atlantic Council.

The Atlantic Council is hawkish on Russia, previously publishing reports about topics like how the West can “get tougher” on Russia, how to “fight back Against Russian political warfare,” how to respond “to Russia’s Anti-Western Aggression.”

Other articles are titled, “From Russia with Hate: The Kremlin’s Support for Violent Extremism in Central Europe” and “Here’s Why You Should Worry About Russian Propaganda.”

In one article published by the Atlantic Council, writer Stephen Blank claims that Russia is a more urgent security threat than terrorism.

Further, the Atlantic Council is funded by NATO, enhancing the hawkish view on Russia.

The Atlantic Council is also funded by the “Open Society Initiative for Europe,” a program of leftist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

The Open Society Initiative for Europe has written that they support, “initiatives that strengthen the protection of migrants and the politics of inclusion, giving the leading role and voice in advocating policies and social change to migrants and refugees, their descendants, and their allies in civil society.”

The Atlantic Council is also funded by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

Pinchuk is a Ukrainian billionaire who reportedly gave $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, and was invited to Clinton’s home for a dinner in 2012 while she was secretary of state, despite an earlier denial from a Clinton spokesperson that “never on her schedule” during her time as Secretary.

5. CrowdStrike Is Funded By Clinton-Loving Google $$

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015.

CapitalG is owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet’s chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the campaign.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Schmidt “sent a Clinton campaign official a lengthy memo with advice on running the campaign. He told campaign officials he was ‘ready to fund, advise recruit talent,’ and ‘clearly wants to be head outside advisor,’ according to a 2014 email from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta to campaign manager Robby Mook.”

And Politico reported in November 2016 that Schmidt “served in a personal capacity as an adviser to the Clinton operation,” and wore a “staff” badge at her election night party.

Schmidt also funded a startup called, “The Groundwork.” An article in Quartz titled, “The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that’s working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House,” details its operations.

“The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts by Schmidt—the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election,” the article says.

“And it is one of a series of quiet investments by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter blocs.”

The post also calls Schmidt “one of the most powerful donors in the Democratic Party.”

There are other connections between Google money and the Democratic Party.

Stephanie Hannon, former Director of Product Management for Google, left in 2015 to become Hillary Clinton’s Chief Technology Officer for her 2016 campaign.



https://brassballs.blog/home/cia-and...ce-information

brassballs.blog

CIA, FBI, and Hillary Clinton use CrowdStrike software to tap, collect, and sell surveillance information
May 29

The CIA and FBI use CrowdStrike software as a back door into the nation's cyber systems.

brassballs.blog

May 29

CrowdStrike software is installed in nearly every federal agency and department including Congress, the FBI, the Defense Department, and the White House.

Stuart McClure, a founder of CrowdStrike, said their software "doesn't do anything around prevention", "only ... detection". And CrowdStrike software doesn't "do it all that well." McClure was quoted in Forbes, a global business PR network.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb.../#3fe40fd7303f

To prove McClure's point, Google has never used CrowdStrike software.

Three out of four federal agencies are at significant risk of being hacked, according to a May 2018 report from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The report is called "Federal Cybersecurity Risk Determination Report and Action Plan". It was released today. It is 22 pages and is linked here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-conten...18-Release.pdf

The OMB found 71 out of 96 federal agencies have computer information security programs that were either "at risk" or at "high risk". Only 25 agencies were reported to be managing risk using recommended tools and policies.

The Office of Management and Budget is part of the Executive Office of President Donald J. Trump.

https://fcw.com/articles/2018/05/29/...cwdaily_300518

Yet as an FBI contractor, CrowdStrike still has top secret clearance.

According to a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) ruling, CrowdStrike has "unrestricted illegal access" to the nation's surveillance data.

https://brassballs.blog/home/fisa-co...ecret-spy-data

Homeland Security's first head, Tom Ridge, routinely called the FBI "a propaganda machine". If alive today, Ridge would say the FBI has upped its game. That FBI public relations (PR) fiasco is compounded at CrowdStrike by its President, Shawn Henry, who retired from the FBI.

A search of "CrowdStrike" on Reuters, a global PR service for businesses, shows 240 posts since 2012.

CrowdStrike was part of the Department of Defense's cyber program that granted top secret clearances to non-government employees and corporations. The program was designed by the Obama Administration in 2011 to fill the gaps in the nation's cyber defense programs.

http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/Art...s.aspx?id=6312

Pictured above is Shawn "Uncle Fester" Henry. He retired from the FBI to become President of CrowdStrike. Henry's real picture will appear later in this post. Uncle Fester was a character on the "Addams Family" television show. A light bulb would turn on whenever it was inserted into his mouth.

According to George Webb Sweigert, Henry is one of Hillary Clinton's "Three Henchmen" with FBI connections. The other two are former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey.

Deleting the back door in CrowdStrike software may be impossible. It may require a new non-CrowdStrike system, an act of Congress, or an Executive Order to plug CrowdStrike's back door.

Pulling CrowdStrike's troika is the CIA, FBI, and Michael Alpernovitch or "Papa Bear". According to George Webb Sweigert, "Papa Bear" heads "Hillary's Hackers" (Clinton).

CrowdStrike and its top executives have a history of fiascoes and hacks.

CrowdStrike is the cyber world's Clinton Foundation without the charity.

CrowdStrike has a real Russian connection. The key players, the Alpernovitch family, were born in Moscow. They are known as "Mueller's Moscow Mules" by the FBI after their former director, Robert Mueller.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/weird-...or-indictments

What is worse than being exiled to Siberia? Being "assigned" to the Chernobyl clean-up team. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in 1986. Chernobyl is 65 miles north of Kiev, in the Soviet Ukraine.

Michael was to be sent to Chernobyl as part of a rescue mission. Many of Michael's close friends and colleagues died of radiation poisoning within months of the mission.

After 30 years, the Russians are still cleaning up the nuclear radiation mess in Chernobyl.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...saster/476748/

The CIA made "Papa Bear" Michael Alpernovitch an offer he "couldn't refuse".

Come to America and work for the CIA. Or stay in Russia.

America! America!

To get him out of Russia, Canada approved a visa in 1994 for "Papa Bear". Once in Canada, the CIA made Michael an American citizen. He was granted top security clearance to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Chattanooga office.

https://www.tva.gov/About-TVA/Contact-Us

Alpernovitch may have found the work boring.

He was reputed to be one of Russia's top hackers.

His academic background was in mathematics. Only his son, Dmitri, said his father was a nuclear scientist.

The CIA has used the Canadian embassy before to get CIA assets out of foreign countries and into America.

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-mu...deception.html

Dmitri was 15 years old when his family moved in America.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tennessee, claimed it was hacked on Dec. 10th, 2007.

Oak Ridge is home to the world's five largest super computer. Oak Ridge is part of the Department of Energy. Its lab is 18 square miles. It is 111 miles from Oak Ridge to Chattanooga.

It has a Chattanooga office.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-...-cyber-attack/

Dmitri's citizenship papers were approved Oct. 25th, 2010. The public record of his citizenship application is blocked from public records by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. His file is marked, "Withheld pursuant to (b)(6) COW2010000515".

https://search.uscis.gov/search?utf8...y=alpernovitch

Baby Bear earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2001 and a master’s in information security in 2003, both at Georgia Tech

https://gvu.gatech.edu/news/georgia-...nnovators-list

There is no "Mama Bear" unless it is Hillary Clinton.

Margarita Alpernovitch is Papa Bear's sister. She retired from the FBI. She has no official connection to CrowdStrike.

Alperovich, Margarita CONTRACTOR 203-777-6311 US Margarita.Alperovich@ic.fbi.gov.
https://archive.org/stream/TOPSECRET...CTORY_djvu.txt

J. Keith Mularski sold furniture for five years before working for the FBI.

"But I've kind of always liked computers," said Mularski. "It kind of looked like cyber was the wave of the future."

The FBI transferred Mularski to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the FBI's Silicon Valley. He helped start the FBI's Cyber Division in 1999 with seven other agents.

"The majority of all my computer training was just on-the-job training at the bureau," said Mularski.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...worldwide.html

In 2005, the FBI named Mularski to lead in an undercover operation believed to be a Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. He admitted to Esquire Magazine that he had no Internet experience.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...otect-america/

Keith relied on "Baby Bear" Dmitri Alperovitch, "a good guy and a friend," to teach him. For the FBI sting, Dmitri posed as a “Russian gangster” on spam discussion forums.

The sting started in November, 2006 and was called "Dark Market".

Mularski told Esquire he was working 24 hours a day for two years. His wife "didn't like it."

Mularski admitted to Esquire that he blew the operation by logging in from an FBI computer in Pittsburgh.

That's when a real cyber criminal found the location. The hacker was "The Iceman", "Max Ray Vision".

An FBI press release had his name as Max Ray Butler.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/pi.../pt021210b.htm

Even after the FBI sting was exposed, Mularski kept the Dark Market operation open.

Based on Butler's warning though, the real criminals stopped using the FBI's site. Only the posers, the non-criminals, many operating out of unsecure coffee shops, stayed on the site. These were the ones arrested.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-trial-wembley

The hacker impostors never stole a thing, but craved the attention of acting like a sly cyber thief.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/1...kmarket_sting/

When a German radio network reported the Dark Market operation from court documents, the FBI shut down its sting.

One hacker offered 3.7 million records from a compromised online dating site for $110.

Eight of the 56 arrests were made in the U.S. Five were in Pittsburgh, two in Wisconsin, and one in Louisiana.

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8...sburgh-darkode

It resulted in "preventing $70 million in losses", according to an FBI press release linked here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...kmarket_102008

The FBI's press release about Mularski's role in Dark Market was approved by the FBI's Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry. (In 2012, Henry became CrowdStrike's President.)

The taxpayers paid a lot of FBI overtime for nothing.

No one was convicted. No money was stolen. Therefore, the Justice Department was unable to charge anyone with a crime.

Regardless of the results, the FBI still promoted themselves as super cyber sleuths.

To the FBI, Mularski was like a national hero. He saved a lot of jobs.

He received an Award for Excellence in the field of Public Policy. He spoke at a convention for security cyber specialists.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...yber_rsa050509

It is unknown who referred "Baby Bear" to the FBI.

Dmitri was V.P. of Threat Research at McAfee in 2008.

Prior to that, he worked for CipherTrust. They were bought by Secure Computing (SC) in 2006.

Before Baby Bear started working for McAfee, on April 21st, 2008, the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President received a unique gift from an admirer.

The website for Barack Obama's Campaign for President received no traffic. Blocked? No. They were transferred to Hillary's web site.

Who was showing off?

https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2...lintoncom.html

https://www.zdnet.com/article/obama-...llary-clinton/

George Webb Steiger worked with "Baby Bear" at McAfee.

According to George, their job was to hire a dozen "Russian hackers to write viruses to stimulate software sales".

"That was a common practice that we ran at the end of every quarter. (to write viruses to spike sales)

"You are most likely to buy the software when something like that happens", said Webb.

Like what happens? Like when your company's entire computer network freezes.

One of the hacker groups McAfee hired were "The Dukes". A 30-page report of One of the hacker groups McAfee hired were "The Dukes". A 30-page report of the Dukes is linked here:

https://www.f-secure.com/documents/9...whitepaper.pdf

Webb's comments are in the video below. He has over a dozen videos on the Russian hacking groups, the Alpernovitch family, and CrowdStrike. They are on the internet's YouTube channel.

Google's Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, said his company suspected that a selected group of email accounts in China were hacked by an unknown source or sources.

His press release was dated Jan. 12th, 2010 and appears here on Google's site:

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010...-to-china.html

Baby Bear led the investigation into Operation Aurora. Out of all the people in the world, Google chose Dmitri to lead the investigation.

https://www.wired.com/2010/01/operation-aurora/

David-Drummond-010 Chief Legal Officer of Google.jpg
David Drummond, Chief Legal Counsel of Google

Three years later on April 22nd, 2013, Google discovered Dmitri's China email investigation was incomplete and its focus misguided.

What was stolen?

The data base of current spy surveillance warrants from the FISA Court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), according to Dave Aucsmith.

He is Senior Director of Microsoft's Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

"What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on", said Aucsmith.

https://www.cio.com/article/2386547/...elligence.html

Aucsmith was brought to protect Microsoft from being blamed for Google's loss.

Ongoing FBI investigations were compromised. No numbers were given. Warrants include names of targets, spies, terrorists, government employees with surveillance data and contact information.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.5b11d12b7a99

Aucsmith was Chief Security Architect for Intel Corporation from 1994 to 2002.

According to President Donald J. Trump, Intel is the world's largest defense ontractor.

Intel is another company created by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/about-darpa

Like Baby Bear, Aucsmith was graduated from Georgia Tech.

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/dav...ucsmith-ics-84

David Aucsmith.jpg
David Aucsmith, Sr. Principal Research Scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington

Unlike Dmitri, Aucsmith is on the faculty of the Intelligence Academy. It consists of former senior executives from several national security agencies, including the major intelligence agencies: CIA, DIA, NSA, NGA, NRO, State/INR, and Dept. of Defense.

Dmitri Alpernovitch is no where on the Intelligence Academy's faculty listing.

https://www.theintelligenceacademy.n.../faculty-bios/

Why did Baby Bear come to a different conclusion than Aucsmith?

Why did Aucsmith come to a different conclusion than Dmitri?

Was the Google suspected "hack" really a leak?

https://www.theintelligenceacademy.net/about/

Intel bought McAfee on Aug. 21st, 2010. Intel reported record quarterly profit of $2.9 billion. Baby Bear kept his job at McAfee. For now.

The name McAfee is kept and operates as a separate company under Intel.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS372474677420100821

At a corporate publicity event for McAfee, Alperovitch admitted to a reporter that his personal information, his phone number, was hacked.

“They (N.Y. Times, CNN, Reuters, PBS) started calling me on my personal phone,” Dmitri told Joris Evers, McAfee's Director of Public Relations.

“How did they get my phone number?”, said Dmitri.

Evers said, “Maybe you should change it.”

https://venturebeat.com/2011/08/04/b...-cyber-spying/

Joris Evers.jpg
Joris Evers

Alperovitch wrote a 14-page report called "Operation Shady Rat" for McAfee. It was a five-year review of cyber attacks around the world. Baby Bear said he found "the “biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in human history.”

No one else in the world found it. Just him.

https://www.scribd.com/document/7545...hadyrat-Report

While being interviewed by Esquire Magazine, Renee James, President of Intel, called Baby Bear.

"Dmitri, Intel has a lot of business in China. You cannot call out China in this report", said James.

Baby Bear told Esquire that Intel was "terrified of losing their ability to market products in China."

https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...otect-america/

Alperovitch removed the word "China" from his report. He renamed it "Shady Rat". The date of Dmitri's report was deleted.

The McAfee name remains on Baby Bear's 14-page report and is linked here:

http://www.cmi-inc.ca/downloads/miti...RAT_Report.pdf

https://www.scribd.com/document/7545...hadyrat-Report

Baby Bear told Esquire that James' phone call "accelerated" his plans to leave Intel. Alpernovitch said he was "being censored because I'm working for a company that's not really an American company."

James told Esquire she had "no comment".

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-fo...tel_presi.html

Baby Bear's report was timed to be released the day of the Black Hat USA convention in Las Vegas, July 31st, 2011.

The Black Hat event is for information security specialists. Black Hat also has conventions every year in Europe and Asia.

According to Black Hat, "All presentations are vetted thoroughly by the Black Hat Review Board. Each submission is reviewed for uniqueness, overall content expertise and accuracy before any selections are made."

https://web.archive.org/web/20171120...iew-board.html

The Review Board never approved Alperovitch's report for presentation at their convention.

A District of Columbia based media source posted a story about McAfee's report the day before the convention.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...=.40f49f63e61a

The week before the convention, Alperovitch made confidential briefings on Shady Rat to Senior White House officials. He also met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011...hacking-201109

After the convention, the fallout began over the "Operation Shady Rat" report. How big of a fiasco was it?

McAfee deleted Dmitri's report from its website.

It took the smile right off his face.

Five weeks after the Black Hat Convention, Baby Bear was no longer working for McAfee. Neither were his friends and co-workers, George Kurtz and Stuart McClure.

Dmitri punked.jpg
Dmitri "Baby Bear" Alpernovitch, smiling for the cameras at the Black Hat Convention

George Kurtz and Stuart McClure are to business ethics as Dmitri Alpernovitch is to cyber skills.

Kurtz and McClure started a company called Foundstone in 1992. They were accused of copying computer hacking prevention classes from Ernst & Young.

In 2003, Kurtz and McClure stole other companies software and sold it as theirs, according to Saumil Shah, a former employee. Shad called it "piracy".

https://www.blackhat.com/asia-17/spe...umil-Shah.html

In 2006, Kurtz and McClure increased their pay by backdating stock. The practice is illegal. It happened for ten years. It increased their pay when they sold the company to McAfee. As a result, Foundstone lost $150 million. Foundstone's new President said he was fired because "it happened on my watch."

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines...4587/index.htm

Kurtz has top secret clearance as an FBI contractor. McClure no longer works for CrowdStrike. It is unknown whether he also has top secret clearance as an FBI contractor for Cylance software. McClure's company has an office in Australia.

Now Kurtz and McClure are competitors.

Gregg Marston was CrowdStrike’s other co-founder. He worked as chief financial officer of Foundstone.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...81M21Q20120223

CrowdStrike started with $14,842.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/d...rimary_doc.xml

New business filings were made on Sept. 12th, 2011 by CrowdStrike. It was incorporated in California the next day.

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/Detail

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/Do...11768-14202551

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CB...ubType=Keyword

Kurtz started working for Warburg Pincus two months after he left Intel/McAfee.

The Warburg Pincus firm invested $26 million into CrowdStrike on Feb. 24th, 2012. With it, CrowdStrike hired 20 employees and set up offices in San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

Kurtz said CrowdStrike was "developing technology" and promised their first software product by June.

https://www.networkworld.com/article...t-threats.html

Why would private investors dump $26 million into a new company with no existing, pending, or developing products or services?

The only background check this troika of CrowdStrike co-founders could pass was with the FBI. Yet their top security clearance has never been revoked.

Would money laundering crime syndicates trust CrowdStrike with $26 million? They would if there was no risk and exponential reward.

Is the reward intelligence data? What else could it be?

Alperovitch told Reuters that the company hopes to release its first products in late 2012.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...81M21Q20120223

Denis O’Leary was named to CrowdStrike's Board of Directors on May 7th, 2012. In his 25-year career at JP Morgan, O'Leary was Chief Information Officer, Director of Finance, Head of Branch Banking and a member of its nine-member executive committee.

O’Leary is currently managing partner of Encore Financial Partners Inc, a company that acquires and manages U.S.-based banks.

https://www.reuters.com/article/crow...8G7P5220120507

Warburg Pincus history dates back to 1913. The Federal Reserve System was Paul Warburg's idea. He represented the U.S. at the Treaty of Versailles conference that ended World War I.

Who was sitting across the table from Paul in Versailles? His brother, Max, who represented Germany.

Warburg Pincus was the first one to begin venture capital associations in China. Warburg Pincus has a vested interest, like Intel, of never accusing the Chinese of hacking into anything American.

When Warburg Pincus invests, it is always as majority owner.

Tim Geithner is President of Warburg Pincus.

http://www.warburgpincus.com/people/timothy-f-geithner/

Tim Geithner.jpg
Tim Geithner, President of Warburg Pincus and Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama

Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010. He headed the committee that approved Hillary Clinton's Uranium One deal. In it, Russians were sold 25 per cent of America's uranium resources.

https://www.treasury.gov/about/histo...tgeithner.aspx

President Obama credited Geithner with the plan to prop up Obamacare with $260 billion. The plan caused the 2008 market meltdown of the housing market. Federal mortgage investors were the victims of this theft.

https://brassballs.blog/home/2017/8/...arket-meltdown

Before he joined the Obama administration, Geithner was President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson designed the bailout program. It saved the banks from bankruptcy during the 2008 subprime lending fiasco. The crisis was caused by the federal government.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...reet/80057762/

Google Capital invested $100 million in CrowdStrike on July 13th, 2015. Google knows better than to use CrowdStrike software. When asked directly by Fortune Magazine whether Google was a customer, CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz said, "No comment."

What was the first thing CrowdStrike executives Kurtz and President Shawn Henry did after the check for $100 million cleared? They posed with their race cars for Fortune Magazine. It is unknown what country CrowdStrike's party was in.

http://fortune.com/2015/07/13/google...c-crowdstrike/

CrowdStrike execs and their sports cars Henry and Kurtz.png
CrowdStrike's President Shawn Henry (left top in black) with his CEO, George Kurtz.

Shawn Uncle Fester Henry.jpg
Shawn Henry (above). The Patriots' in the FBI continue to call him "Uncle Fester" even after he retired in 2012.

While working at the FBI, Fester was the bureaucrat in charge of all the FBI's investigations around the world.

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller promoted "Uncle Fester" more times than anyone else in the FBI.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...ervices-branch

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...cyber-division

Five private equity firms invested $256 million into CrowdStrike. Google was good for $100 million of it.

https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07...ty-investment/

Four other firms invested $156 million. They were Warburg Pincus LLC, Accel Partners, March Capital Partners and Telstra, a telecommunications provider in Australia.

CrowdStrike has never earned or reported a profit.

It has never reported annual sales higher than $43.7 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/b...nvestment.html

President Barack Obama has direct ties to CrowdStrike too.

President Obama appointed Steven Chabinsky to his cabinet on April 13th, 2016. Chabinsky became a member of the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. At the time, Chabinsky was General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer for CrowdStrike.

Also named to President Obama's commission was General Keith "Get it All" Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA). The General was dubbed "Get it All" because of his policies of collecting every email and phone call in American.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov...stration-posts

Chabinsky was Chief of the FBI's Cyber Intelligence Section before quitting to join CrowdStrike in 2012. He also served as the Senior Cyber Advisor to James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov...stration-posts

https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/1...mastercard-nsa

Chabinsky's job at the FBI was protect the country from cyber attacks and espionage, online child exploitation, and internet fraud.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/postl...=.d5edfa0e7065

Chabinsky worked for CrowdStrike as General Counsel, Senior V.P., and Chief Risk Officer from Sept. 20th, 2012 to Dec. 1st, 2016.

Chabinsky quit CrowdStrike to become a partner in a law firm on Dec. 1st, 2016. Donald J. Trump was elected President Nov. 9th, 2016.

https://www.whitecase.com/news/white...y-capabilities

If President Donald J. Trump has failed to fire him, Chabinsky has retained his top security clearance.

Chabinsky.jpg
Dmitri Alpernovitch is a "good fella" for the Atlantic Council. He is listed under "Cyber Statecraft Initiative".

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/staff

George Soros has given the Atlantic Council $181 million for Ukrainian military action against neighboring Russia. Soros routinely says that "Russia is a greater danger to the U.S. than ISIS."

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/compo...ank-you-george

http://www.irf.ua/about/25-years/infografika/irf_gen/

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/publi...04-21_4408.pdf

George Soros and Ukranian Pres Petro Poroshenko.jpg
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (left) awarded philanthropist George Soros the Order of Freedom.

CrowdStrike's full report dated June 15, 2016 regarding Russia hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is linked here:

http://archive.is/hv1eM

A test conducted by NSS Labs concluded that CrowdStrike software was 70 per cent effective on identifying cyber threats. Their competitors were over 90 per cent.

At $1500, CrowdStrike software was also the most expensive. The best brands in the study cost between $400 and $500.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4ovtorUYAEhw91.jpg:large

https://medium.com/@bontchev/some-th...e-19bc15d01a2b

NSS Labs' original publication date for their study was February 14, 2017. The authors were Thomas Skybakmoen and Morgan Dhanraj. It was published April 13, 2007 because CrowdStrike filed a law suit to prevent its release.

CrowdStrike never said an upgrade of their software was necessary to reach and surpass industry standards. They never announced their budget for research and development.

Who makes their software?

https://research.nsslabs.com/reporta...-413/Marketing

https://www.zdnet.com/article/crowds...sive-nss-labs/

A federal court issued a 12-page ruling against CrowdStrike on Feb. 13th, 2017 in "Case 1:17-cv-00146-GMS". It is linked here:

https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/crowdstrike_tro.pdf

https://www.nsslabs.com/blog/company...-announcement/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/0...falcon_vs_nss/

John Carlin headed the FBI's National Security Department.

https://brassballs.blog/home/john-p-...llusion-fiasco

Carlin worked with Shawn Henry, Steven Chabinsky, and "Baby Bear" Dmitri Alpernovitch. Carlin was asked by CrowdStrike to moderate a panel discussion at an April convention of security professionals with Henry and Alpernovitch.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/cro...e-now-matters/

Carlin was called "a trusted adviser" by Loretta Lynch, Attorney General, for President Obama.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/state...neral-national

When Robert Mueller directed the FBI, he named Carlin his right hand man.

Carlin's official title was Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Robert Mueller. Carlin's job was to advise him on legal and policy matters and to manage the FBI.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...rector-mueller

The dots connected in this post are:

CIA, FBI, CrowdStrike, Michael "Papa Bear" Alpernovitch, Keith Mularski, Robert "Moscow Mule" Mueller, Canadian Embassy, Tennessee Valley Authority, Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Georgia Tech, Dark Market, Max Ray "The Iceman" Butler, Shawn Henry, President Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Steven Chabinsky, James Clapper, CipherTrust, TrustedSource, SecureComputing, McAfee, Intel, Operation Aurora, Google, John Carlin, Loretta Lynch, George Soros, "The Dukes".

https://brassballs.blog/home/john-p-...llusion-fiasco

Updated Sept. 26th, 2019

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DNC ‘Russian Hacking’ Conclusion Comes from Google-Linked Firm

AARON KLEIN6 Jan 2017984




CrowdStrike, the third-party company relied upon by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was financed to the tune of $100 million from a funding drive last year led by Google Capital.

Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.

On Thursday, a senior law enforcement official told CNN that the DNC “rebuffed” the agency’s request to physically examine its computer servers after the alleged hacking. Instead, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s assessment that the servers had most likely been hacked by Russian agents.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,” CNN quoted the senior law enforcement official as saying. “This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

The news network was following up on a BuzzFeed report that first broke the story that the FBI did not examine the DNC’s servers before issuing a joint report with the DHS last week accusing Russian civilian and military intelligence services of compromising networks and infrastructure associated with the 2016 presidential election.

Contrary to the claim from the FBI about being rebuffed, Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed that the FBI never requested access to the servers.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Walker wrote in the email.

BuzzFeed further reported on the FBI’s reliance on CrowdStrike’s assessment about the alleged Russian hacking:

The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks.

The CNN report also affirmed that the FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s findings.

CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by experts George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch. The company’s website explains the firm was founded because Alperovitch and Kurtz “realized that a brand new approach was needed — one that combines the most advanced endpoint protection with expert intelligence to pinpoint the adversaries perpetrating the attacks, not just the malware.”

In an Esquire profile, Alperovitch, a Russian expat, recalls he first discovered that Russia allegedly hacked into the DNC when one of his analysts installed a proprietary software package into the DNC’s system and immediately discovered the alleged Russian breach.

“Are we sure it’s Russia?” Alperovitch says he asked the analyst.

Esquire reported:

The analyst said there was no doubt. Falcon had detected malicious software, or malware, that was stealing data and sending it to the same servers that had been used in a 2015 attack on the German Bundestag. The code and techniques used against the DNC resembled those from earlier attacks on the White House and the State Department. The analyst, a former intelligence officer, told Alperovitch that Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike’s experts believed was affiliated with the FSB, Russia’s answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.

Alperovitch then called Shawn Henry, a tall, bald fifty-four-year-old former executive assistant director at the FBI who is now CrowdStrike’s president of services. Henry led a forensics team that retraced the hackers’ steps and pieced together the pathology of the breach. Over the next two weeks, they learned that Cozy Bear had been stealing emails from the DNC for more than a year. Fancy Bear, on the other hand, had been in the network for only a few weeks. Its target was the DNC research department, specifically the material that the committee was compiling on Donald Trump and other Republicans. Meanwhile, a CrowdStrike group called the Overwatch team used Falcon to monitor the hackers, a process known as shoulder-surfing.

According to the Esquire story, Alperovitch was surprised when the DNC, which had contracted CrowdStrike for cybersecurity, wanted to go public about the alleged Russia hack, which took place at around the same time Donald Trump was being accused of having a relationship with Russia.

Esquire documented:

Hacking, like domestic abuse, is a crime that tends to induce shame. Companies such as Yahoo usually publicize their breaches only when the law requires it. For this reason, Alperovitch says, he expected that the DNC, too, would want to keep quiet.

By the time of the hack, however, Donald Trump’s relationship to Russia had become an issue in the election. The DNC wanted to go public. At the committee’s request, Alperovitch and Henry briefed a reporter from The Washington Post about the attack. On June 14, soon after the Post story publicly linked Fancy Bear with the Russian GRU and Cozy Bear with the FSB for the first time, Alperovitch published a detailed blog post about the attacks.

Google financing

CrowdStrike advertises on its website that it is “proud to have received major funding from some of the world’s most prestigious technology providers and investment firms” – most prominently Google Capital, which “led (a) $100M investment in CrowdStrike.”

“It’s extremely gratifying to bring in a high-caliber investor like Google Capital which shares our passion for innovation and sees the opportunity to completely transform the security industry,” CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer Kurtz said after the completion of the financing in July 2015. “As we continue to experience hyper-growth, this capital injection will help us firmly establish our SaaS-based endpoint protection platform as the leading solution to address today’s sophisticated attacks and will allow CrowdStrike to further accelerate our domestic and international expansion.”

In November, Google Capital re-branded itself and now goes by the name of CapitalG. It is a venture capital arm of Alphabet Inc.

CapitalG explained: “Founded in 2013 in Mountain View, California, we began as Google Capital, a growth equity investment fund. We changed our name to CapitalG in 2016, after Google created Alphabet to serve as its parent company. Though our name has changed, our goal remains the same: to make return-driven investments in leading companies around the world and help entrepreneurs rapidly grow their businesses.”

CapitalG’s website documents its close links to Google:

“Our Google connection is our key asset. We call on experts from Google’s offices around the world to help our portfolio companies grow… CapitalG works with Google experts to advise on product, engineering, marketing, sales, operations, and other essential areas to help companies scale effectively. The Googlers draw upon knowledge from their day to day roles to offer valuable technical advice—from scaling architecture, to making the transition to the cloud, to mobile development, to cybersecurity, and much more.”

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, which owns CapitalG, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton.

In November, the Wall Street Journal reported on an email released that month claiming Schmidt was “ready to fund, advise recruit talent” for Clinton’s campaign and that he “clearly wants to be head outside advisor.”

The Journal reported:

Mr. Schmidt in April 2014 backed a startup dubbed Timshel that helped develop some of the technology behind Mrs. Clinton’s campaign website, including functions to sign up supporters and accept donations, according to the emails.

Around that time, Mr. Schmidt sent a Clinton campaign official a lengthy memo with advice on running the campaign. He told campaign officials he was “ready to fund, advise recruit talent,” and “clearly wants to be head outside advisor,” according to a 2014 email from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta to campaign manager Robby Mook. Mr. Schmidt’s memo to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills is included in the leaked emails.

Schmidt drew up a plan for Clinton’s campaign a year before she announced her White House bid, released emails showed. He sent the memo to top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to Clinton when she was secretary of state.

The Daily Mail reported:

The Google titan outlined a number of things, including one Clinton definitely listened to – where she should base her campaign headquarters. ‘Its important to have a very large hiring pool (such as Chicago or NYC) from which to choose enthusiastic, smart and low paid permanent employees,’ Schmidt argued.

He also nixed Washington, D.C., as an idea, even though it’s a thriving city for millennials. ‘DC is a poor choice as its full of distractions and interruptions,’ he wrote in the memo, emailed to Mills.

She then passed it along to John Podesta, whose emails were hacked and made public by Wikileaks.

Schmidt was spotted at Clinton’s nixed election night party wearing a “staff” badge.

Meanwhile, Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike Services and CSO of the firm, is a retired executive assistant director of the FBI.

“Henry, who served in three FBI field offices and at the bureau’s headquarters, is credited with boosting the FBI’s computer crime and cybersecurity investigative capabilities,” his CrowdStrike bio says.

Last April, CrowdStrike General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer Steven Chabinsky was appointed to President Obama’s White House Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

A CrowdStrike press release explained:

Under the Commission, Chabinsky and 11 other industry leaders have been directed by the White House to recommend “bold, actionable steps that the government, private sector, and the nation as a whole can take to bolster cybersecurity in today’s digital world.”

President Obama, in an official statement, commended the members for bringing ”a wealth of experience and talent to this important role,” and charged the Commission with “the critically-important task of identifying the steps that our nation must take to ensure our cybersecurity in an increasingly digital world.”

CrowdStrike co-founder Alperovitch, meanwhile, has a bad taste for Russia, according to the Esquire profile:

Alperovitch knows a thing or two about what the Russians call “active measures,” in which propaganda is used to undermine a target country’s political systems. He was born in 1980 in Moscow, in an era when people were afraid to discuss politics even inside their homes. His father, Michael, was a nuclear physicist who barely escaped being sent to Chernobyl as part of a rescue mission in 1986. Many of Michael’s close friends and colleagues died of radiation poisoning within months of flying to the burning power plant. The takeaway for Dmitri was that “life is cheap in the Soviet Union.”

Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. The Council takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression.

The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc, the U.S. State Department, and NATO ACT.

Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which in turn has received financing from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

In an interview with PBS, host Judy Woodruff asked Alpervotich whether he had a conflict of interest in the alleged Russia hacking case since his firm, which was helping to publicize the Russia claims, was employed by the DNC.

Here is a transcript of that section of the interview:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, Dmitri Alperovitch, we want to point out and we said earlier, you were — your company was the one that uncovered this in the first place. You were working for the Democratic National Committee. Are you still working — doing work for them?

DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: We’re protecting them going forward. The investigation is closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we’ve seen the campaigns, political organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology to protect themselves.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I ask you that because if there’s a question of conflict of interest, how do you answer that?

DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we’ve already uncovered from the DNC, linking the two together.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

• With research by Joshua Klein.

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-eas...acking-claims/

Clinton Campaign’s Law Firm Brought In Both Fusion GPS and CrowdStrike — the Lone Sources of ‘Russian Hookers’ and ‘Russian Hacking’ Claims

AARON KLEIN27 Oct 20171997

NEW YORK – Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), reportedly helped draft

CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC’s allegedly hacked servers.

CrowdStrike is the third-party company ultimately relied upon by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the DNC. The DNC reportedly did not allow the FBI to gain access to servers that were suspected of being hacked, instead coming to an arrangement with the federal agency in which CrowdStrike carried out forensics on the servers and shared details with the FBI.

The information about Perkins Coie’s reported role in bringing in CrowdStrike, first documented by the Washington Post last June, is newly relevant as attention in the Russia probe shifts to the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that in April 2016, attorney Marc E. Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained Fusion GPS to conduct the questionable research on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the DNC that ultimately resulted in the now infamous, largely discredited dossier claiming that President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.

Through Perkins Coie, Clinton’s campaign and the DNC continued to fund Fusion GPS until October 2016, days before Election Day, the Post reported.

Adding more intrigue upon reassessment, the Post in June cited DNC officials claiming that “hackers” into the DNC servers had “gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

That characterization may require further investigation following the revelation that it was Perkin Coie, reportedly acting on behalf of the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, that paid for Fusion GPS’s opposition research into Trump.

CNN reported that in private interviews with Congressional investigators prior to the Post’s report revealing Perkins Coie’s reported payment to Fusion GPS, former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz both denied that they were aware of any arrangement to fund Fusion GPS’s opposition research. CNN reported that Elias was seated next to Podesta during the private interview.

That report prompted former CIA Director Leon Panetta to advocate for the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate both the Clinton campaign and the DNC about whether they had any knowledge of the payment to Fusion GPS to produce the dossier.

“Well, it certainly makes the situation very awkward,” Panetta said of Elias’s alleged involvement. “If you’re testifying and saying you have no knowledge, and the attorney sitting next to you is one of those that knew what was involved here, I think it does raise an issue that the committee is going to have to look at and determine just exactly who knew what.”

Perkins Coie, however, was reportedly more involved in matters related to the Russia probe beyond hiring Fusion GPS.

In a report that may take on renewed significance, the Washington Post last June documented how Michael Sussmann, a partner with Perkins Coie who also represented the DNC, was involved in bringing in Crowdstrike after the DNC suspected its servers had been hacked. CrowdStrike then identified hacker groups allegedly tied to Russia.

The Post reported that Sussman called in Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike.

The Post reported:

DNC leaders were tipped to the hack in late April. Chief executive Amy Dacey got a call from her operations chief saying that their information technology team had noticed some unusual network activity. “It’s never a call any executive wants to get, but the IT team knew something was awry,” Dacey said. And they knew it was serious enough that they wanted experts to investigate.

That evening, she spoke with Michael Sussmann, a DNC lawyer who is a partner with Perkins Coie in Washington. Soon after, Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who handled computer crime cases, called Henry, whom he has known for many years.

Within 24 hours, CrowdStrike had installed software on the DNC’s computers so that it could analyze data that could indicate who had gained access, when and how.

According to the Post, citing DNC officials, the “hackers” had “gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

In January testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the FBI registered “multiple requests at different levels,” to review the DNC’s hacked servers. Ultimately, the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a “highly respected private company”—a reference to CrowdStrike—would carry out forensics on the servers and share any information that it discovered with the FBI, Comey testified.

A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance of the FBI gaining direct access to the servers, a request that was denied by the DNC.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,” the official was quoted by the news media as saying.

“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier,” the official continued.

Comey’s statement about a “highly respected private company” gaining access to the DNC servers was a reference to CrowdStrike, the third-party company ultimately relied upon by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the DNC.

As this reporter documented, CrowdStrike was financed to the tune of $100 million from a funding drive by Google Capital.

Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.

CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by experts George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch.

Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. The Council takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression.

The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., the U.S. State Department, and NATO ACT.

Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which in turn has received financing from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Meanwhile, after the Perkins Coie funding for opposition research, Fusion GPS went on to hire former intelligence agent Christopher Steele to do the purported research. Steele later conceded in court documents that part of his work still needed to be verified.

The dossier contains wild and unproven claims that the Russians had information regarding Trump and sordid sexual acts, including the widely mocked claim that Trump hired prostitutes and had them urinate on a hotel room bed. It also claimed there was an exchange of information between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.

Those allegations remain unsubstantiated following numerous public hearings. Indeed, former CIA Director John Brennan made clear in testimony last May that after viewing all of the evidence that was available to him on the Russia probe he is not aware of any collusion between Russia and members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

According to the BBC, the dossier served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into claims of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign during the Obama administration.

In April, CNN reported that the dossier served as part of the FBI’s justification for seeking the FISA court’s reported approval to clandestinely monitor the communications of Carter Page, the American oil industry investor who was tangentially and briefly associated with Trump’s presidential campaign.

Senior Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have reportedly requested that the FBI and Department of Justice turn over applications for any warrants to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens associated with the investigation into alleged Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In June testimony to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey admitted he pushed back against a request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

This article was written with additional research by Joshua Klein.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...omment-7110219

DOJ Admits FBI Never Saw Crowdstrike Report on DNC Russian Hacking Claim…

Posted on June 15, 2019 by sundance

The foundation for the Russian election interference narrative is built on the claim of Russians hacking the servers of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), and subsequently releasing damaging emails that showed the DNC worked to help Hillary Clinton and eliminate Bernie Sanders.

Despite the Russian ‘hacking’ claim the DOJ previously admitted the DNC would not let FBI investigators review the DNC server. Instead the DNC provided the FBI with analysis of a technical review done through a cyber-security contract with Crowdstrike.



The narrative around the DNC hack claim was always sketchy; many people believe the DNC email data was downloaded onto a flash drive and leaked. In a court filing (full pdf below) the scale of sketchy has increased exponentially.

Suspecting they could prove the Russian hacking claim was false, lawyers representing Roger Stone requested the full Crowdstrike report on the DNC hack. When the DOJ responded to the Stone motion they made a rather significant admission. Not only did the FBI not review the DNC server, the FBI/DOJ never even saw the Crowdstrike report.



Yes, that is correct. The FBI and DOJ were only allowed to see a “draft” report prepared by Crowdstrike, and that report was redacted… and that redacted draft is the “last version of the report produced”; meaning, there are no unredacted & final versions.

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!

This means the FBI and DOJ, and all of the downstream claims by the intelligence apparatus; including the December 2016 Joint Analysis Report and January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, all the way to the Weissmann/Mueller report and the continued claims therein; were based on the official intelligence agencies of the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of Justice taking the word of a hired contractor for the Democrat party….. despite their inability to examine the server and/or actually see an unredacted technical forensic report from the investigating contractor.

The entire apparatus of the U.S. government just took their word for it…

…and used the claim therein as an official position….

…which led to a subsequent government claim, in court, of absolute certainty that Russia hacked the DNC.

Think about that for a few minutes.

The full intelligence apparatus of the United States government is relying on a report they have never even been allowed to see or confirm; that was created by a paid contractor for a political victim that would not allow the FBI to investigate their claim.

The DNC server issue is foundation, and cornerstone, of the U.S. government’s position on “Russia hacking” and the election interference narrative; and that narrative is based on zero factual evidence to affirm the U.S. government’s position.

…”the government does not need to prove at the defendant’s trial that the Russians hacked the DNC”… (pg 3)

Ridiculous.

You couldn’t make this nonsense up if you tried…

Here’s the full filing (h/t Techno Fog) :

Stone - De 123 DOJ Response... by Techno Fog on Scribd

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
• Google partnering with the Left
  
• Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for a Uranium Company

Adam Schiff’s Congressional Career Aided by Soros-Financed Groups




byAaron Klein

10 Apr 2017

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was previously financially aided by the George Soros-financed MoveOn.org to win his Congressional seat.

Schiff was also awarded the Toll Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Council of State Governments, a nonprofit that monitors federal government activities and is heavily financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

The Open Society and Soros-funded groups have additionally supported a number of Schiff’s legislative efforts.

Schiff has been helping to lead the Democrats’ unsubstantiated charges of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump and Moscow.

Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff’s charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source.

In largely forgotten history, Schiff’s 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org.

On January 1, 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the radical group’s fundraising efforts for Schiff. The Congressional seat was particularly important since Rogan had gained fame after he was selected to be one of thirteen House Managers in the 1998 impeachment case of Bill Clinton. Rogan was supportive of Clinton’s impeachment and became a hero in the Republican Party.

The Journal reported:

If MoveOn were to achieve its ambitious goals, it just might have a big impact on this year’s struggle to control Congress, especially the House. Republicans hold only a slim five-vote majority there, and the outcome will “likely be determined in no more than three dozen congressional districts,” says Thomas Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

And of course, most congressional impeachment proponents were Republicans. One of the most prominent among them, House impeachment manager James Rogan of California, faces a challenge this year from Democratic State Senator Adam Schiff, for whom MoveOn to date has raised $106,000, Mr. Boyd says.

CNN reported on the MoveOn.org money for Schiff’s 2000 campaign: “By 2000, MoveOn.org was raising $2 million for Democratic candidates, including more than $100,000 to help California’s Adam Schiff beat Congressman James Rogan, one of the House managers during Clinton’s impeachment trial.”

MoveOn.org also sponsored a January 2010 rally in favor of health care reform outside Schiff’s office in Pasadena, California.

Schiff’s 2000 campaign bio, meanwhile, relates that he was “awarded the prestigious Toll Fellowship, sponsored by The Council of State Governments.”

The bio continues:

Nominated and endorsed by his peers in the Legislature, Schiff was selected from many outstanding applicants across the nation by a committee of state elected and appointed officials as one of the most promising new leaders of state government. In 1998, the California League of High Schools named Schiff Legislator of the Year.

Schiff later said that the Toll Fellowship “helped me identify my own leadership strengths, work more effectively with my colleagues and strengthen my relationship with the media.”

The Council of State Governments, which sponsors the Toll Fellowship, is heavily financed by Soros. The Open Society provided the group with $320,000 in 2003; $1 million in 2004; and another $100,000 that year alone.

In 2009, Schiff introduced the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act. The bill was described by the Justice Center at the Soros-funded Council of State Governments – which gave Schiff the Toll Fellowship award – as providing “grants to state and local governments to design and advance data-driven, consensus-based strategies to reduce corrections spending and increase public safety.”

A press release from the Council of State Governments said that Schiff’s bill “builds on the justice reinvestment work done by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in Texas, Kansas, Vermont, Rhode Island and seven other states.”

The Justice Center’s justice reinvestment initiative was itself directly supported by Soros’s Open Society, the press release documents.

In 2014, the Open Society released a statement publicly supporting legislation by Schiff “requiring the president to provide an annual public report on the total number of persons killed or injured in drone strikes.” The Open Society further signed a joint statement with other leftwing groups, including organizations financed by Soros, supporting Schiff’s Targeted Lethal Force Transparency Act.

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Companion Threads:

• Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
• Google partnering with the Left
  
• Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for a Uranium Company

Adam Schiff Witness Cancels Speaking Gig to Burisma-Funded Think Tank



byAaron Klein
24 Oct 2019

Ambassador Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs who is set to testify to the Democrats secretive impeachment inquiry this weekend, cancelled a speaking gig earlier this week at the Atlantic Council think tank.

The Atlantic Council is funded by and works in partnership with Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

The Atlantic Council has been coming under the microscope for its ties to other individuals associated with the controversial inquiry being led by Rep. Adam Schiff.

Now it has emerged that Reeker’s participation was nixed for a previously advertised Atlantic Council event in D.C. two days ago titled, “Revitalizing NATO’s Southern Strategy for an Era of Great Power Competition.�

Join us on Oct. 22 at 3pm to hear Gen. Jim Jones, @StateDept’s Phil Reeker, @ARVershbow & @ItalyinUS discuss why NATO urgently needs to do #MoreintheMed even as we face great challenges to the east.
RSVP here: https://t.co/gn3I0nSGlC
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) October 19, 2019

Reeker’s name was removed from an event promotion on the Atlantic Council’s website.

The event took place as scheduled on Tuesday but without Reeker.

“The Atlantic Council was informed late last week that Acting Assistant Secretary Philip Reeker would be unable to participate in our event on October 22 due to scheduling conflicts,� Alex Kisling, the Atlantic Council’s deputy director for media relations, told Breitbart News.

“Mr. Reeker was just one of several scheduled speakers, and the event went forward with an important focus on international security issues,� Kisling said.

The cancellation in part prompted a letter to Reeker from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) the top-ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, asking for an explanation as to why Reeker’s name was removed as a panelist for the Atlantic Council event.

In his letter, which was obtained by Breitbart News, Jordan noted that the Atlantic Council is financed by Burisma.

Jordan also highlighted a New York Times article that reported details about Biden’s involvement in Burisma showed “Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration.�

Jordan asked Reeker why he rescheduled his impeachment testimony to the weekend, noting that less House members would be able to attend. Jordan asked the diplomat to reschedule for a weekday when more House members could be there.

Jordan explained he wrote directly to Reeker because the lawmaker had “no confidence� that Schiff is “operating fairly or in good faith.�
This is not the first time Reeker was invited to speak at an Atlantic Council event.

On July 17, he was a panelist at an Atlantic Council flagship conference titled “The United States and Central Europe: Celebrating Europe Whole and Free.�

Reeker also spoke at a September conference organized by the McCain Institute and the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC).

Others associated with Schiff or his impeachment inquiry have evidenced ties to the Burisma-financed Atlantic Council.

Yesterday, Breitbart News first reported that acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who provided key testimony to the Democrats’ controversial impeachment inquiry, has evidenced a close relationship with the Atlantic Council think tank, even writing Ukraine policy pieces with the organization’s director and analysis articles published by the Council.

In addition to a direct relationship with the Atlantic Council, Taylor for the last nine years also served as a senior adviser to the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), which has co-hosted events with the Atlantic Council and has participated in events co-hosted jointly by the Atlantic Council and Burisma.

Another senior adviser to the USUBC is David J. Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain and employee at the McCain Institute. Kramer played a central role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier to the news media and Obama administration. Taylor participated in events and initiatives organized by Kramer.

The links may be particularly instructive after Breitbart News reported that itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council for ten Congressional aides reveals that a staffer on Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Taylor. The pre-planned trip took place after the so-called whistleblower officially filed his August 12 complaint and reportedly after a Schiff aide was contacted by the so-called whistleblower.

Thomas Eager, a staffer on Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee, took the trip in question to Ukraine in August billed as a bipartisan “Ukraine Study Trip� in which ten Congressional staffers participated.

Eager is also currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Congressional Fellowship, a bipartisan program that says it “educates congressional staff on current events in the Eurasia region.� The pre-planned Ukraine trip was part of the fellowship program.

A closer look at the itinerary for the August 24 to August 31 trip shows that the delegation’s first meeting upon arrival in Ukraine was with Taylor.

Spokespeople for Schiff’s office did not reply to multiple Breitbart News requests for comment on Eager’s meeting with Taylor.

When Breitbart News first reported on Eager’s visit to Ukraine, Schiff’s office quickly replied to several comment requests, denying any impropriety related to Eager’s association with the Atlantic Council or the trip.

The unanswered Breitbart email requests to Schiff’s office about Taylor’s meeting with Eager posed the following question:

While in Ukraine, did Mr. Eager speak to Mr. Taylor about the issue of reports about any representatives of President Trump looking into alleged Biden corruption in Ukraine?

The dates of the pre-planned trip are instructive. Eager’s visit to Ukraine sponsored by the Burisma-funded Atlantic Council began 12 days after the so-called whistleblower officially filed his August 12 complaint.

Schiff and his office have offered seemingly conflicting statements on the timeline of the California Congressman’s initial contact with the so-called whistleblower.

Speaking on September 17, Schiff told MSNBC, “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.�

Schiff’s spokesperson, Patrick Boland, was quoted on October 2 saying, “At no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance.� Boland said Schiff’s committee received the complaint the night before it publicly released the document.

On October 2, however, the New York Times reported that Schiff received some of the contents of the complaint through an unnamed House Intelligence Committee aide initially contacted by the so-called whistleblower, described as a CIA officer.

The Times reported the aide “shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff.� The referenced officer refers to the so-called whistleblower.

The newspaper also reported:

By the time the whistle-blower filed his complaint, Mr. Schiff and his staff knew at least vaguely what it contained.

Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Schiff conceded that he was not clear enough about his contact with the so-called whistleblower.

“I should have been much more clear,� Schiff said.

Burisma is a key financial backer of the Atlantic Council. In 2017, Burisma and the Atlantic Council signed a cooperative agreement to develop transatlantic programs with Burisma’s financial support reportedly to focus “on European and international energy security.� Burisma specifically finances the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, which sent the Schiff staffer to Ukraine.

Besides funding the Atlantic Council, Burisma also routinely partners with the think tank. Only four months ago, the company co-hosted the Atlantic Council’s second Annual Kharkiv Security Conference. Burisma advertises that it committed itself to “15 key principles of rule of law and economic policy in Ukraine developed by the Atlantic Council.�

Common funding themes

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by billionaire activist George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., and the U.S. State Department.

Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country� in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the so-called whistleblower’s document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower’s own claims, as Breitbart News documented.

One key section of the so-called whistleblower’s document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.�

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump’s call with Zelensky in order to discuss the “cases� mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower’s narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.
Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me� – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called whistleblower’s account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

• Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.â€�
• Document that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.â€�
• Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.â€� The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.â€�

The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.�

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed “joint investigation� resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.

The so-called whistleblower’s document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

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HUGE! After Removing Ukrainian Prosecutor Shokin, Obama’s State Department Plotted with Whistleblower Eric Ciaramella in White House – Then Pushed Steele Dossier to FBI

by Joe Hoft November 17, 2019 308 Comments



The Obama Administration coerced the Ukrainian government into removing the prosecutor investigating Ukrainian firm Burisma and its ties to Obama’s Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. Next they plotted with whistleblower Eric Ciaramella in the White House and then pushed the Steele dossier to the FBI.

We know that Obama State Department Victoria Nuland was involved in numerous activities in the Obama White House while working for John Kerry. Nuland first was noted when she was caught lying to reporters about Obama’s Benghazi talking points. Nuland then came to light in 2014 when she was caught on tape saying “F**k the EU�.

We also know that Obama’s State and Justice Departments assisted billionaire and Democrat donor George Soros in an attempt to control Ukraine’s oil and gas industry.

In late 2015 Nuland was connected to a coup that the Deep State was involved in. Obama officials including Nuland and the Ukrainian Ambassador discussed toppling the Ukrainian Government and replacing officials, with then VP Joe Biden’s approval.

The world renowned Oliver Stone had a piece about this in a documentary about the Ukraine –

Be a shame if anyone shared this clip about Joe Biden from Oliver Stone's 2016 Ukraine documentary. Please do not RT. In Chuck Todd we trust. pic.twitter.com/5giGl5EweL
— ✌🏻Jack Posobiec✌🏻 (@JackPosobiec) October 6, 2019

This was also about the same time that VP Joe Biden coerced the Ukrainian government to remove prosecutor Shokin from the case where he was investigating Biden’s son at Burisma noted in President Trump’s tweet below –

This is the real and only story! pic.twitter.com/4z8eOcm6PA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2019

The Epoch Times had an excellent piece on this time period in the Obama White House –

State Department Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland worked with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in late 2015 to create a plan to force the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, according to Kent. Nuland was also among a network of Obama administration officials involved in the distribution and recirculation of the infamous Steele dossier, the document used by the FBI to secure a maximally intrusive spy warrant to surveil a Trump-campaign associate.

“My understanding is that the conversations that were near-daily between Ambassador Pyatt and Toria Nuland regarding what to do on the way forward then included pitching the office of the Vice President to push President Poroshenko to remove Shokin,� Kent told lawmakers on Oct. 15.

Biden ultimately carried out Nuland’s plan during a visit to Ukraine in December 2015 and has since bragged, on at least two occasions, about forcing Shokin’s firing by threatening to cut off the loan guarantees. At the time Biden exerted pressure on Ukraine, Shokin was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian gas giant that was paying Biden’s son Hunter Biden to serve on its board of directors. The Ukrainian president asked for Shokin’s resignation two months after Biden’s overture. The Ukrainian Parliament approved the resignation on March 29, 2016.

During this time we’ve discovered a number of suspicious events with the State Department’s Victoria Nuland. According to records from ObamaWhitehouse.archives.gov Nuland was involved in the following White House meetings:

Oct 7, 2015 Nuland meets Biden at the White House
Nov 5, 2015 Amb Geoffrey Pyatt meets Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines (former CIA) at the White House
March 29, 2016 Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin was formally dismissed in a parliamentary vote
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March 30, 2016 Nuland meets Biden at the White House
April 4, 2016 Nuland meets Obama at the White House
April 13, 2016 Nuland meets Susan Rice at the White House

April 14, 2016 Nuland meets Biden at the White House
June 15, 2016 Nuland, Pyatt and Volodymyr Omelyan meet Biden at the White House
June 17, 2016 Pyatt meets Eric Ciaramella at the White House with Nuland present as well

Within a month of Nuland and Pyatt’s visit with Ciaramella in the White House, Nuland shared the Russia collusion Steele dossier with the FBI –

Nuland’s involvement in the controversy about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine may raise new questions about the motivations of the officials involved in the circulation of the Steele dossier, the document which for three years fueled the debunked narrative that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 to influence the 2016 presidential election. Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, compiled the dossier by paying second- and thirdhand sources with ties to the Kremlin. The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee ultimately funded Steele’s work.

Nuland told CBS that she received a copy of the Steele dossier in July 2016 and forwarded it to the FBI. She has argued that she did right to forward the dossier to the bureau, but in doing so became one of many Obama administration officials who helped, wittingly or unwittingly, to launder Steele’s allegations by adding credibility to the unverified document in acting as a highly-placed conduit.

“He [Steele] passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, ‘This is not in our purview,’� Nuland told CBS. “‘This needs to go to the FBI, if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate.’�

Between Sept. 26, 2016, and Dec. 10, 2016, Nuland received Russia-related information from Steele via State Department official Jonathan Winer, according to documents released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. During these three months, the FBI obtained the secret court warrant to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The Steele dossier served as the core of the evidence used in the Obama administration’s application for the warrant.

In December 2016, Nuland received a briefing about the Steele dossier from David Kramer, a longtime associate of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), according to Kramer’s deposition (pdf). McCain specifically directed Kramer to brief Nuland about the dossier. The extent of Kramer’s outreach lay bare a coordinated plan to widely disseminate the dossier among highly placed officials, lawmakers, and the media. In addition to briefing Nuland, Kramer briefed 17 members of the media, Senior Director for Russian Affairs at the National Security Council Celeste Wallander, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks.

So Nuland and the State Department shared the Steele dossier in July and again in December of 2016. This is right after attempting a coup in the Ukraine and having a prosecutor looking into their misdeeds with the Ukrainian government and corporation Burisma. Also, this is just after meeting with whistleblower Eric Ciaramella!

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FOIA Emails: Eric Ciaramella, Victoria Nuland Received Regular Updates From Top Official at Soros’ Open Society Foundations

Posted at 7:23 am on November 18, 2019 by Elizabeth Vaughn




Emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by conservative group Citizens United show that Jeff Goldstein, a senior policy analyst for Eurasia at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, kept CIA officer Eric Ciaramella and former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, Victoria Nuland, regularly informed on Ukraine policy.

These emails were obtained in 2018 by Citizens United as part of an investigation into Victoria Nuland. But, lo and behold, it turns out the alleged whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, was also included in the communications loop between Soros’ organization and the State Department. I am aware that Ciaramella has not been formally confirmed to be the whistleblower, but if he does turn out to be the one who filed the complaint, here is some pretty devastating evidence of his involvement with the deep state.

Breitbart’s Aaron Klein reported:

The emails informed Ciaramella and a handful of other Obama administration foreign policy officials about Soros’s whereabouts, the contents of Soros’s private meetings about Ukraine and a future meeting the billionaire activist was holding with the prime minister of Ukraine.

A primary recipient of the Open Society emails along with Ciaramella was then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair. Nuland, with whom Ciaramella worked closely, received updates on Ukraine issues from dossier author Christopher Steele in addition to her direct role in facilitating the dossier within the Obama administration.

The emails spotlight Soros’s access to national security officials under the Obama administration on the matter of Ukraine.

On June 9, 2016, Goldstein sent an email to Nuland and Ciaramella which said:

I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine. GS is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with [Ukrainian] PM [Volodymyr] Groyman.

He [Soros] told Hahn that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future.

He urged Hahn to advocate with member states to move ahead with visa liberalization for Ukraine.

I’m sure you’ve been working this issue hard; if you have any thoughts on how this is likely to play out or where particular problems lie I’d appreciate if you could let us know.

Nuland returned the email saying she would prefer to speak by phone and they scheduled a time.

Klein explains who these individuals are. Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, “participated with Nuland in the YES Summit, which bills itself as “the leading public diplomacy platform in Eastern Europe.” Hahn is deeply involved with the Atlantic Council.

I once wrote a post in which I asked, what do former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk and the Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike (which was the only company the DNC allowed to access their server) all have in common? The answer? They are all involved in the Atlantic Council.

The Atlantic Council is a super liberal think-tank which receives much of its funding from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden had served as a board member.

Vadym Pozharskyi is a board advisor to Burisma. Hmmm.

The Atlantic Council organized a trip to Ukraine for the last week of August. I posted about this here. During the trip, one of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s staffers, Thomas Eager, held a meeting with acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, one of Schiff’s star witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. Eager is a member of The Atlantic Council and Taylor has a “close relationship” with the organization as well.

Several weeks ago, watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained records of the White House visitor’s log showing who had met with Ciaramella during his time at the National Security Council. According to Judicial Watch, the logs show that DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa, who actively worked to dig up dirt on Trump and his then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, visited the White House 27 times. Here is their list.

Daria Kaleniuk: Co-founder and executive director of the Soros-funded Anticorruption Action Center (AntAC) in Ukraine. She visited on December 9, 2015

The Hill reported that in April 2016, during the U.S. presidential race, the U.S. Embassy under Obama in Kiev, “took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and (AntAC).”

Gina Lentine: Now a senior program officer at Freedom House, she was formerly the Eurasia program coordinator at Soros funded Open Society Foundations. She visited on March 16, 2016.

Rachel Goldbrenner: Now an NYU law professor, she was at that time an advisor to then-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She visited on both January 15, 2016 and August 8, 2016.

Orly Keiner: A foreign affairs officer at the State Department who is a Russia specialist. She is also the wife of State Department Legal Advisor James P. Bair. She visited on both March 4, 2016 and June 20, 2015.

Nazar Kholodnitzky: The lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine. He visited on January 19, 2016.
On March 7, 2019, The Associated Press reported that the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch called for him to be fired.

Michael Kimmage: Professor of History at Catholic University of America, at the time was with the State Department’s policy planning staff where specialized in Russia and Ukraine issues. He is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He was also one of the signatories to the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group Statement of Principles. He visited on October 26, 2015.

James Melville: Then-recently confirmed as Obama’s Ambassador to Estonia, visited on September 9, 2015.
On June 29, 2018, Foreign Policy reported that Melville resigned in protest of Trump.

Victoria Nuland: who at the time was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs met with Ciaramella on June 17, 2016.
(Judicial Watch has previously uncovered documents revealing Nuland had an extensive involvement with Clinton-funded dossier. Judicial Watch also released documents revealing that Nuland was involved in the Obama State Department’s “urgent” gathering of classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Trump taking office.)

Artem Sytnyk: the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau director visited on January 19, 2016.

On October 7, 2019, the Daily Wire reported leaked tapes show Sytnyk confirming that the Ukrainians helped the Clinton campaign.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Alexandra Chalupa, then a DNC contractor:

Charles Kupchan: From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Barack Obama administration. That meeting was on November 9, 2015.

Alexandra Sopko: who at the time was a special assistant and policy advisor to the director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, which was run by Valerie Jarrett. Also listed for that meeting is Alexa Kissinger, a special assistant to Jarrett. That meeting was on June 2, 2015.

Asher Mayerson: who at the time was a policy advisor to the Office of Public Engagement under Jarrett had five visits with Chalupa including December 18, 2015, January 11, 2016, February 22, 2016, May 13, 2016, and June 14, 2016.

Mayerson was previously an intern at the Center for American Progress. After leaving the Obama administration, he went to work for the City of Chicago Treasurer’s office.

Mayerson met with Chalupa and Amanda Stone, who was the White House deputy director of technology, on January 11, 2016.

On May 4, 2016, Chalupa emailed DNC official Luis Miranda to inform him that she had spoken to investigative journalists about Paul Manafort in Ukraine.

The remarkable thing is that these people are all connected. They all know each other. It’s almost incestuous. Many of the people involved in the Russia hoax are now involved in the Ukraine hoax. And all of them seem to have a direct line to George Soros.

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Outs Himself as Source for CIA Whistleblower Complaint (Video)….

Posted on November 19, 2019 by sundance

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes questioned NSC official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman about whether he had shared the contents of the phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky with anyone outside the White House.

In responding Vindman stated “two people”, and then named State Dept George Kent, and a person from the intelligence community. Then things get interesting. Vindman refused to name the intelligence agency because it would likely expose the CIA “whistle-blower”.

This non-answer makes Alexander Vindman the source for the CIA “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella.
http://youtu.be/Iyd9MuzFQHk 3:52 min
https://youtu.be/Iyd9MuzFQHk


______________________________________________

https://www.theepochtimes.com/questi...n_3136887.html

Questions for Lt. Col. Vindman

Diana West
CONTRIBUTOR
November 6, 2019 Updated: November 7, 2019Share

Commentary

Halloween is over, but Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s mask is still on. That’s because his media and political patrons are doing everything they can to keep it from slipping.

They hold up his uniform, his ranger tab, his Purple Heart, his immigrant status, to create a facade that isn’t only impervious to questions but withering to them. How dare anyone question Vindman’s commitment, his loyalty to this country? Look at his uniform, his ranger tab, his Purple Heart, his immigrant status.

It’s a thin disguise. There are grave reasons to scrutinize and question Vindman’s behavior, regardless of whether he’s a decorated veteran, an openly partisan Obama holdover, an immigrant from the old USSR, or all of the above.

The questions begin with Vindman’s activities as a staffer on the president’s National Security Council. Alarming reports indicate Vindman served as a source for the Ukrainian government inside the White House. This news may be padded by his protectors and muted by our general ignorance of the intelligence wars waged against this country, typically masterminded by the Kremlin, but it’s nonetheless deeply concerning.

Further, given the sophisticated penetration talents of the Russian intelligence services, it’s the height of foolhardiness to assume that Vindman’s Ukrainian connections end in Kyiv.

The New York Times first reported the news about Vindman’s Ukrainian communications by rationalizing them:

“Because [Vindman] emigrated from Ukraine along with his family when he was a child and is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian officials sought advice from him about how to deal with Mr. Giuliani, though they typically communicated in English.”

I’m sorry. “Because” the Ukrainian- and Russian-fluent Vindman and family (including twin brother Yevgeny, also an Army lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council) emigrated from Ukraine in 1979 isn’t sufficient reason for Ukrainian officials to tap Vindman as their source for “advice” about the interests of the U.S. president.

We need more information about Vindman, his relationship to the Ukrainian government, and whatever “advice” he may have offered it, whether “typically communicated” in English or any other language. That’s because, if The New York Times is accurate, Vindman’s loyalties are divided between two governments. At a minimum, this disqualifies Vindman from serving the American people in the sensitive field of national security ever again.

Doubtless, such an attitude is shocking to the “Old Gray Lady.” A globally oriented organization like The New York Times—ironically, while reporting on Vindman, also explaining to readers the potential for controversy in playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on TV—is institutionally incapable of perceiving anything negative about a White House staffer with divided loyalties, so long as one of them is anti-Trump.

Indeed, a second New York Times report on Vindman further rationalized the Vindman–Ukrainian communications as being a logical result of his “heritage” (see “unique insight,” also “Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign”):

“His heritage gave Colonel Vindman, who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian, unique insight into Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign; on numerous occasions, Ukrainian officials sought him out for advice about how to deal with Mr. Giuliani.”

On “numerous” occasions? But the uniform, the Ranger tab, the Purple Heart, Vindman’s protectors will chant. Yes, indeed, I would reply. Wearing the uniform of the United States compounds the gravity of the security scandal unfolding as the unasked questions mount.

We are told that on these “numerous occasions,” Ukrainian officials sought Vindman’s advice. What, pray tell, was his response? Did the White House staffer and U.S. Army officer on these “numerous occasions” tell these Ukrainian officials (names, please) that, as a member of the president’s national security team and an officer of the U.S. Army, he offered advice only to the president of the United States?

If that wasn’t his reply, Lt. Col. Vindman should be fired ASAP.

I am going to be very clear in case any #FakeNewsies are listening: It isn’t the role of any White House adviser to strategize with officials of a foreign government against the president of the United States. Foreign governments have their own nationals for that.

This isn’t to say that foreign governments don’t go to great trouble to acquire sources such as National Security Council staffers to advance their interests. This comes under the rubric of espionage.

Espionage and ‘Agents of Influence’

In the context of espionage, as the New York Times reports imply, this officer may well have strategized with a foreign power against his commander-in-chief. That would make Vindman, in the most generous reading of events, a patsy or “dupe.” Depending on what else he did, he may also be some type of a foreign intelligence asset.

Categories vary widely. Many are familiar with paid agents, such as former Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Walker, who supplied the Soviets with military secrets, but there are other types of agents, including “agents of influence,” whose mission is to influence policy-making on behalf of foreign interests.

Top FDR adviser Harry Hopkins, for example, appears to have been one such agent of influence (my book “American Betrayal” sets forth the evidence for consideration). The Russians have a category they call “special, unofficial contact” into which, according to defector Sergei Tretyakov, they placed Bill Clinton’s top Russia adviser Strobe Talbott (also Raul Castro).

The terrible fact is, the history of our government, including our White House, is jam-packed with these various, rampaging national security threats, even if our history books fail to make note of them.

In consideration of the obstacles currently being thrown up against any questioning of Vindman, it becomes relevant to note that such bad actors in our past include decorated Army officers, brothers, and immigrants.

Take Gen. Philip Faymonville, known in military circles as “the Red colonel” for his communist sympathies at the time of World War II. That’s when Harry Hopkins, over the objections of Army intelligence among others, placed Faymonville into a key position at the sluice-gate of Soviet military aid under the program of Lend Lease.

About Faymonville and Gen. James Burns, the other Army officer Hopkins elevated to oversee Lend Lease in Moscow, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Adm. William H. Standley would write, “General Burns is of the same beliefs as Faymonville; Russian interests come first, last and all the time.”

Standley was more right than perhaps he knew. Fifty years later, documentary evidence from Soviet archives indicate that in 1942, the same year the pro-Soviet Faymonville was promoted to become a U.S. Army general, he became a recruited agent of Soviet intelligence.

It’s surely an odd detail of the Vindman case that Alexander’s twin, Yevgeny, also works on the National Security Council. History tells us of brothers-in-espionage, too. There was the infamous duo of Alger and Donald Hiss, both State Department officials in the 1940s while working on behalf of the Kremlin. As for immigrant-spies, among the many Kremlin agents secretly embedded inside the Roosevelt White House were Canadian-born Lauchlin Currie, who had immense powers as a special assistant to the president, and Currie’s British-born assistant Michael Greenberg.

In other words, it—the infiltration of the U.S. government by secret agents—can and did happen here, through the covert exertions of many Americans who, on the surface, appeared to be patriots. The incalculable damage they caused to this country and the wider world cannot be relegated to historical footnotes. This is what makes the reflexive taboo against even questioning Alexander Vindman so dangerous.

When it comes to the loyalty of government officials entrusted with our national security, in uniform or not, the stakes can’t be higher. The American people are not only entitled to ask questions, they are bound to do so. Our nation’s survival depends on it.

_______________________________

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...ber-29th-2019/

The “Coup” Against a Sitting U.S. President Became Official on October 29th, 2019…

Posted on November 9, 2019 by sundance

The word “coup” shifted to a new level of formalized meaning last week when members of the political resistance showed up to remove President Trump wearing military uniforms.

Not only did U.S. military leadership remain silent to the optics and purpose, but in the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman he admits to giving instructions to ignore the instructions from a sitting United States President.

In the absence of push-back from the Joint Chiefs, from this moment forth, the impression is tacit U.S. military support for the Vindman objective.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, testified before congressional committees conducting an impeachment inquiry on October 29, wearing a full military uniform.

To date there has been no visible comment from U.S. military sanctioning Lt. Col. Vindman for his decision; or correcting the impression represented by Vindman’s military appearance. The willful blindness is concerning, but it gets much worse.

Beyond the debate about the optics of the “coup“, within the testimony of Lt. Col Vindman, the witness readily admits to understanding the officially established policy of the President of The United States (an agreement between President Trump and President Zelenskyy), and stunningly admits that two weeks later he was giving countermanding instructions to his Ukrainian counterpart to ignore President Trump’s policies.

The coup against President Donald Trump went from soft, to hard. Consider…

The testimony from Lt. Col. Vindman is available here. https://t.co/N2UMBCA3nl?amp=1

Borrowing from Roscoe B Davis, here are some highlights: (posted on site)

Representative John Ratcliffe begins deconstructing Lt. Col Vindman, while his arrogant attorneys begin trying to interfere with the questioning.

This next section is very interesting, and very important.

Congressman John Ratcliffe begins questioning Vindman from the perspective of an Article 92 violation, coupled with an Article 88 violation. President Trump, is Lt. Col Vindman’s superior. President Trump sets the foreign policy.

Two weeks after President Trump has established an agreement with Ukraine President Zelenskyy, and established the policy direction therein, Lt. Col. Vindman is now giving contrary instructions to the Ukranian government. Vindman’s lawyer recognizes where the questioning is going and goes absolutely bananas:


______________________________
https://www.floppingaces.net/most-wa...esident-trump/

Senator Ron Johnson Outlines Concerns With Lt. Col. Vindman Running Rogue Policy Group Against President Trump…

Senator Ron Johnson, in a letter to Devin Nunes, has provided a lengthy outline of his contacts, discussions and perspectives surrounding U.S-Ukraine foreign policy as it relates to the current democrat impeachment narrative. [Cloud Link to Johnson letter] https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...dan-Nunes.html

Senator Johnson, attended the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky along with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and shared his concerns that National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was running a rogue and independent foreign policy toward Ukraine expressly against the intents of President Trump.

https://mobile.twitter.com/HNIJohnMi...40535240056832

1) So. Everyone. I had a bit of a realization on my end, and double checked and gathered some facts to make sure I knew WTF I was talking about.

I think I know why the State Department is trying so goddamn hard to get rid of Trump.
— Comrade Fudge (@HNIJohnMiller) November 18, 2019

2) First, this letter from the Trump OMB from I believe July asking for an accounting from the State Department and US AID for 13 programs, including (under the foreign military aid program, third from the bottom) the Ukraine military aid. pic.twitter.com/a2PaqKDCvN
— Comrade Fudge (@HNIJohnMiller) November 18, 2019

3) IE, they're asking what specifically the cash was used for.

Iiiiinteresting��

ALLEGEDLY, it was the Ukraine aid that got them up in arms, but in reality, it was a LOT of aid money that the Trump administration was looking for. That's 10s of billions of dollars there.
— Comrade Fudge (@HNIJohnMiller) November 18, 2019

4) Now, let's look at transcript of the July Zelensky call. https://t.co/hsQZ0o7VxQ

I realized something interesting that MAYYYYY have been missed.

— Comrade Fudge (@HNIJohnMiller) November 18, 2019

5) Z-Money: "I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information... it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the US from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich."

— Comrade Fudge (@HNIJohnMiller) November 18, 2019

https://gab.com/Shepherd/posts/103166398197361761


Posted in Politics Edited
Tuesday, November 19
Hearing TODAY scheduled to appear
This #ShifShow isnt #hearings only #overheardings
#TimMorrison NSC ( Patriot? )
#AlexanderVindman NSC
#KurtVolker (McCain Institute dir)

#JenniferWilliams Pence aide from State
#MollyMontgomery a #deepstate Plant with connections to Eric 'Charlie' #Ciaramella and #GeorgeSoros
more
https://gab.com/Shepherd/posts/103154414457750658
Martial law soon?

#EnjoytheShow #Qanon #Qarmy #QPlus #Patriots #GabFam #GabVets #Trump2020 #MAGA2020 #WWG1WGA #COUP #insurrection









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Shepherd @ShepherdPosted in Politics
#AlexanderVindman NSC Nov 19, 2019
He is a TRAITOR - he is obeying some authority NOT POTUS - #Brennan?
RUSH said Vindman loyalty should be to Trump but he is trying to protect Ukraine President

Vindman is a guilty nasty SOB who discredits the uniform!

Vindman is scared to death his crimes in #Ukraine are being exposed! He hates #RudyG - so did the Nov 13 witnesses
Peeps I only unmuted to hear GOP so this is a 1 sided report!

10.30 and the Scifites have monopolized ALL the time except for a few minutes for Devin Nunes to read a statement and enter to record.

Vindman sounds TERRIFIED. why? He's a wreck - in his military uniform! how odd. what crimes has he commited that he fears uncovered? My suspicion is the word that terrified Vindman was #CROWDSTRIKE

10:30 am Devin Nunes finally gets time to question

Williams appears hostile, Asks about Burisma, she knew nothing

Asked Williams re: phone call - did you discuss call with ANYone? No.

He questions Vindman re: phone call - did you discuss call with ANYone?

Vindman deflected the question. That jackass Vindman ran straight to the HUB of the coup, Ciaramella who ran to Brennan. The blower is the HUB of how the coup communicaate with each other. one might say he knows where all the bodies are buried
#Perjury
#DevinNunes Catches #Vindman Contradicting Closed-Door Testimony About blower, had said he wouldn’t Expose blower. Previously Said He Didn’t Even Know Whistleblower’s Identity

11.45 am Jim Jordan questioning .... Vindman doesnt want to answer WHO he spoke to
B00M! Vinman spoke to Kent and ... GAVEL! so I presume Ciaramella

- YES even RUSH picked up Vindman blabbed to Ciaramella the blower
Morrison was concerned about call leaking

12 noon - Ratcliffe questions
Bribery only appears ONCE - and its connted to Biden not Trump

12.07 Turner questions

NO - No one needs Vindman's approval on policy - lol - cute line of questioning

12:30 OMG! Vindman was just asked - is President Trump in the #military - Vindman said no. STUPID FOOL! POTUS is

COMMANDER in CHIEF of the military! Vindman is obeying ANOTHER CiC - who? Brennan!

Devin Nunes questioning is STOPPED by demon Schiff

Nov 19
https://youtu.be/UyvAasE_Kis

Ukraine info totally repudiates Impeachment Narrative.

Ukraine chats how they want to help Hellary.
https://youtu.be/0TFh1YJynGA
#WeAreNEWSnow #Qanon #Qarmy #QPlus #Patriots #DrainTheSwamp #GabFam #GabVets #Trump2020 #MAGA2020 #WWG1WGA #SpyGate #coup #Treason @VortexQ @BovineX @RentonMagaUK @ISA-BELLA @IntoLight @Knight-of-the-Republic @QueenNymph @Spacecowboy777 @AltruisticEnigma @poorPoetaster @betsytn @BlueGood @NineteenEighty4 @PatriotKAG @HitNRun253 @Red_White_and_Blonde @MilspecOpsMonkey







Nov 19, 2019, 14:11 · Web · 14 · 15


2hIsaac Gold@qsupport
Posted in Politics Edited
@Shepherd @VortexQ @BovineX @RentonMagaUK @ISA-BELLA @IntoLight @Knight-of-the-Republic @QueenNymph @Spacecowboy777 @AltruisticEnigma @poorPoetaster @betsytn @BlueGood @NineteenEighty4 @PatriotKAG @HitNRun253 @Red_White_and_Blonde @MilspecOpsMonkey
Vindman was in the White House to spy on President Trump. His first loyalty is to his Ukraine homeland.
Why are they even listening to him?
The "whistleblower" story teller is Eric Ciaramella







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[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
• Google partnering with the Left
• The Left's War Against Trump's Administration

Smoking Gun? Glenn Beck Releases Audio of Ukrainian Official Admitting He Interfered In U.S. Election to Help ‘Hillary’

Posted at 12:30 pm on October 6, 2019
by Elizabeth Vaughn



Glenn Beck has just released an audiotape of the former Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, admitting he “helped� Hillary during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Sytnyk was convicted for election interference in December 2018 in Kiev. The court ruled that the publication of the “black ledger� documents “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.�

On the tape, he tells his friends, “Kolya� and “Ivan,� that “I was in charge of the investigation of their “black accounting� records. We made the [sic] Manafort’s data available to general public.�

Note: On Aug. 19, 2016, Serhiy Leshchenko, then the acting Ukrainian Prosecutor General, held a press conference in Kiev where he revealed the “black ledger� of the Party of Regions. Leshchenko said it contained “previously secret records of payments made by the former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych� to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Yanukovych’s government was overthrown during the Ukrainian Revolution and he fled the country in February 2014. Leshchenko told reporters that “the information was obtained by an anonymous source in the burned-out ruins of the headquarters of Yanukoych’s party.� It’s unknown if the ledger was authentic or forged. Either way, it showed that large cash payments had been made to Paul Manafort. The revelation forced him to resign from the Trump campaign and signaled the start of his legal problems.

Beck said this tape has been floating around Ukraine for a while, but it was only recently translated into English.
Here is a transcript of the tape. Scroll down for the audiotape (Sytnyk’s conversation begins at 4:00).

Kolya: Did they, those Russians, help Trump? Your people?

Sytnyk: I think they did. Yeah. I helped him, too. Not him, but Hillary. I helped her.

Kolya: Yeah. Right. Then her position tottered, right?

Sytnyk: Well, this is how they write about it, right.

Ivan: Hillary’s humanitarian aid … [indiscernible.]

Kolya: Well, I’m about … the commentaries. At the time, we were not [indiscernible.]

Sytnyk: Trump … his purely inner problem … issue … they dominate over the external matters. While Hillary, she is — how shall I put it? She belongs to the cohort of politicians who comprise the hegemony in the US. Both in the US and the entire world, right? For us, it’s … sort of … better. For Americans … what Trump is doing is better for them.

Kolya: Well, we have lots of those American experts here now … [indiscernible.]

Sytnyk: Well, there, you see why Hillary lost the elections? I was in charge of the investigation of their “black accounting� records. We made the Manafort’s data available to general public.

Kolya: So what?

Sytnyk: He was imprisoned. Manafort then was the head of the Supreme Headquarter of Trump, right? Then he was dismissed, too, including due to the “black accounting.� After that, he was sentenced to 80 years of imprisonment term. How about Trump? Did he not give a s***. They have their system working there and it works smoothly.

Kolya: Everybody worked smoothly there.

Sytnyk: And when they carried out the elections, a week before the elections, the FBI reopened the investigation in respect of Hillary. So her rating dropped for 7 percent and that’s why Trump managed to win the elections at a pinch.

I’m still unable to understand why he’s fighting with the FBI. They try to catch him on the hand. If it were not the FBI, he would not have won the elections. They torpedoed Hillary’s ratings for 7 percent.

Glenn says, “So here he is. He is admitting to tampering with our elections. Admitted working with the Hillary Clinton campaign. He is actually convicted in the highest court in the land in Ukraine. This is all front page news, in Ukraine, while we are saying, ‘Was there anyone tampering with the election?'�

At the beginning of the podcast, Glenn reads an email written by Alexandra Chalupa , a Ukrainian-American lawyer and DNC contractor, sent to Louise Miranda at the DNC. Chalupa had been working feverishly to bring down Paul Manafort in 2016. This email is not new. Dan Bongino wrote about it in his book, “Spygate,� which was published last fall. I have posted about it. Chalupa writes:

Hey, a lot coming down the pipe. I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last night at the Library of Congress, the Open World Society forum. They put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort. I invited Michael Isikoff, who I’ve been working with for the past few weeks, and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow, since there was a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in the next few weeks. Something I’m working on that you should be aware of.

Note: Glenn tells an interesting story about the day Manafort was arrested. He said on that very day, Clinton pal Tony Podesta shut down his lobbying firm which was one of the largest in Washington and had been operating for 30 years. He says: “This is why Tony Podesta shut down the Podesta Group, like on the day that Paul Manafort was arrested. Okay?

As soon as they arrested him, the biggest lobbying firm, the Clinton lobbying firm, millions of dollars, [Podesta] walks into the office in one day, and says, ‘close the doors.’ Not like, ‘Hey, at the end of the week, or at the end of the month, we’re going to wrap things up,’ [he said ] ‘Close the doors.’ And he shut his firm down. Well, why? Because he’s working with the same group of people, that Manafort [was.]�