Public
images can sometimes be rather confusing
(Says Ukraine President V. Zelensky)
Based on
this story today from Bloomberg News (Oct 13), the
following is a good review of current events vis-à-vis Trump and his Ukraine mess and tons of shenanigans with several administration names tied to him as he works hard to head off impeachment – which is about to swing into high gear.
Likely to bail out or swing with him
Hunter Biden and Trump’s unfounded attacks – a lot to
unpack here from the NY
Times (via MSN) – the main highlights that I gleaned follow this short
reminder of how we got here in the first place:
What landed
Trump in so much hot water is his phone call on July 25 with Ukrainian
President Zelensky, as he then steered the conversation toward what Trump
depicts as a scandal that could bring down Biden (a 2020 rival) by saying: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son.”
However, there’s little to back up the suspicions.
Hunter Biden as a civilian worked
with Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine that had come under corruption scrutiny
– why?
Its founder,
Mykola Zlochevsky, served as Ukraine’s minister of ecology and natural
resources under former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was swept from office by mass protests
in 2014.
Following
that uprising, Western governments pressed Ukraine’s new leaders to investigate
corruption. One of the initial subjects was Zlochevsky, who was accused of
money laundering and abuse of power.
Zlochevsky has denied any wrongdoing.
What criminal charges came out of
this? Short answer: None.
Burisma
issued a statement in 2017 saying that “all legal proceedings and pending
criminal allegations” against it and Zlochevsky were closed and that it paid an
extra 180 million hryvnias ($7 million) in taxes.
There’s also
no known evidence that any of the investigations ever involved Hunter Biden.
Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg
News in May that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
What does Trump say?
Without substantiation, he said and tweeted (as usual) that the Biden family: “Was paid off, pure and simple” and
accused “the family of corruption,
extortion and pillaging foreign countries.”
He’s called
them “stone-cold crooked” and publicly
urged Ukraine and China to open criminal investigations of them.
Trump’s
contention is that Hunter Biden flew to Beijing aboard the vice president’s
aircraft and left a billionaire – the episode he wants China to investigate – isn’t
supported by the available facts, either and China said no.
Where does Joe Biden fit in?
Biden, as
the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, pressed successfully for
the ouster of Viktor Shokin as Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2016.
At the heart
of the allegation by Trump and his
attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is that Biden did so to derail an investigation
into Burisma.
Trump Ad for 2020 now says: “Joe
Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating
his son’s company.”
NOTE: That TV commercial is now running in states
holding early presidential primary elections.
What evidence suggests that was
Biden’s motive?
Again, pretty much none. The problem with Shokin, in the eyes
of U.S. leaders, their Western allies, the IMF, many Ukrainians, it wasn’t that
he was being too aggressive about corruption, but that he was being far too
lax.
Bloomberg reported that
prosecutors in Ukraine had shelved the investigation into Zlochevsky by 2015,
meaning Hunter didn’t stand to benefit from the prosecutor’s ouster.
Vitaliy Kasko, who pursued the case against Burisma’s
owner as deputy prosecutor and is now first deputy prosecutor in the new government,
told Bloomberg News that there had been no U.S. pressure to close that case.
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also told Bloomberg News that Biden
never asked him to close any cases.
Where did all these allegations come
from?
The notion that
Hunter Biden and his father could be complicit in Ukrainian corruption was
first aired in a 2018 book by conspiracy writer and editor at Breitbart news, Peter
Schweizer. The book is called: “Secret
Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family
and Friends.”
Schweizer,
is also president of the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit group
founded by former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon. The group’s board
chairwoman is Rebekah Mercer, a prominent Trump supporter. Trump has cited Schweizer by name in some of his
Twitter attacks on the Bidens.
However, Schweizer’s book doesn’t allege that any laws were broken by the Bidens.
That Biden China connection – mostly
in Trump’s mind and again without an ounce of evidence.
Trump
suggested (October 3) that China
showered $1.5 billion on Hunter Biden in order to influence his father and win
favorable trade deals with the U.S. saying on the South Lawn: “That’s probably
why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the
U.S.A.
because they deal with people like Biden where they give the son a
billion and a half dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a
payoff.”
Detailed background: Companies associated with Hunter
Biden or his business partners have struck several deals involving China over
the past decade. In fact, so
has offers been made with Trump’s own relatives (Ivanka and Jared Kushner to
name two big ones) which is something Trump never mentions in his now
almost-daily accusations against Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
But, while the extent of Hunter Biden’s business
dealings with China is not entirely clear, no evidence has emerged of how much
money the younger Biden may have earned or not.
In fact, his lawyer says he earned nothing from the
venture that the president is apparently citing.
Nor is there any evidence that his father traded
favors with the Chinese government to help his son.
Those Trump attacks follow weeks in which he has
accused Hunter Biden of improperly profiting in Ukraine from his father’s
position.
Trump’s attacks
also come after a string of controversies involving members
of Trump’s family and China, most of them unfolding after he was elected that
he never mentions as I said, for example:
1. Daughter Ivanka’s company was awarded several
potentially valuable trademarks by the Chinese government, including
one for voting machines.
2. Jared Kushner’s real estate company tried to
sell its troubled
investment in a Manhattan skyscraper to a prominent Chinese firm.
3. Nicole
Meyer, Jared Kushner’s sister and family executive, used her
connections to Trump when she pitched Chinese investors in Beijing to buy into
a development in New Jersey with a promises of visas for $500,000 and path to a
“Green Card.”
FYI from Hunter Biden’s lawyer: “Hunter
Biden has not been compensated for being on the board of directors, nor has he
received any return on his investment to date. And, although BHR has been
involved in a number of business deals, there have been no distributions to the
shareholders since Hunter has been an equity owner, now over two years.”
All this is directly
related to Trump’s pressure on Ukraine’s president to find dirt on Joe Biden
for the arms deal that Trump was holding up and Javelin anti-tank weapons that
Ukraine wanted to buy – here from the Washington Post (via MSN) and
especially from former Special Envoy, Kurt Volker.
Volker then told House investigators
on that he had warned Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani that Giuliani
was receiving untrustworthy information about Joe and Hunter Biden.
My 2
cents: This will
get much uglier through 2020 and mostly from Trump and his skillful (he thinks)
campaign to name-call, insult, and degrade Joe Biden via his son and all that
outlined above.
That is
how Trump is wired: Stay
on his good side — no problems; cross him, quickly get tossed under the nearest
passing bus.
Trump is
always in a nasty, evil, and personal attack mode. He demands loyalty but only gives it to family members and seldom to others.
Stay
tuned – it’s not gonna be pretty – not one bit.
Thanks
for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment