FOX 1st Source to Spew Lies, Conspiracies, and Nonsense
(2nd is Tweeting)
Story
introduction
(Shortened to 7-minute rant)
Very long post but good record to date:
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 shenanigans to head off his impeachment – which is about to swing into high
gear.
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 all
that? Short answer: None.
NOTE: 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. To date, no known
evidence that any of the investigations ever involved Hunter Biden.
Plus, Ukraine’s
former prosecutor general, Lutsenko, told Bloomberg News in May that
there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
A lot has
been written in recent months about Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, and
Hunter Biden, who sat on the company’s board of directors when his father, Joe
Biden, was vice president. Not all of it has been accurate.
NOTE:
Erroneous posts circulating on social media and
viral headlines falsely claim that the head of
Burisma has been “indicted” by Ukraine’s prosecutor general. No such
announcement has been made.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka did announce last month that his office would
review a number of previous cases involving senior officials who worked under former
President Viktor Yanukovych, including some cases related to former Minister of Ecology and Natural
Resources Mykola
Zlochevsky.
Zlochevsky
is the founder of Burisma, which had been the focus
of previous
investigations.
(Hunter Biden’s relationship to Burisma was alluded to in the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian
President Zelensky, which has spurred the House impeachment inquiry into
Trump.)
On November
20, the same day the falsehood about the “indictment” began to
circulate, Reuters reported that Ryaboshapka announced his
office had expanded the existing probe to investigate suspicions of Zlochevsky
“embezzling state funds” on “an especially large scale,” but few details were
provided and the probe was “effectively on hold” because Zlochevsky’s
whereabouts were unknown.
NOTE: False word of an “indictment”
evidently was a misrepresentation of a separate press
conference earlier
the same day, in which two Ukrainian members of Parliament floated a number of
claims relating to Zlochevsky and corruption in Ukraine. Among the claims was
an unconfirmed allegation that the company paid Hunter Biden
and three other board members — his investment company partner
Devon Archer, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, and investment
banker Alan Apter — about $16.5 million.
The previous
investigations into Zlochevsky concerned “tax
violations, money-laundering and licenses given to Burisma during the period
where Zlochevsky was a minister,” according to Reuters.
Zlochevsky served as minister of ecology and natural
resources from 2010 until 2012; he was also a deputy
secretary for the
country’s National Security and Defense Council from 2012 to 2014.
NOTE: The time period of the new
allegations of embezzlement isn’t clear, so we can’t say if the expanded probe
includes the time when Biden served on the board.
As we’ve previously
written, Hunter
Biden served on Burisma’s board from 2014 to
2019. Biden reportedly made up to $50,000 per month for his
role — which therefore could have amounted to $3 million during his time on the
board from April 2014 to April 2019.
In an
interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden was asked about reports that he made $50,000
per month at Burisma. He said that, as a private citizen, he did not have to
answer questions about how much money he earned and added: “But, it’s all been reported.”
NOTE: Finally, in October, when Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka announced
this new review of previous investigations relating to Zlochevsky, he told Reuters that: “He was not aware of any evidence of
wrongdoing by Hunter Biden,” according to Reuters reporting.
So… What does Trump say all that?
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.
NOTE: 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.
NOTE: That also isn’t supported by the available facts, and
China said no to any investigations that Trump wants.
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.
NOTE: Trump Ad for 2020 now says: “Joe Biden promised
Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son’s company.”
So, what evidence suggests that was Joe
Biden’s motive?
Again, pretty much none. The problem with Shokin, in the eyes
of many U.S. leaders, most of our Western allies, the IMF, and many Ukrainians,
wasn’t that Shokin 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.
NOTE: 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.
So, where did all these allegations
come from?
The notion
that Hunter Biden and father Joe Biden 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.
However, even in his book, Schweizer doesn’t allege
that any laws were broken by either of the Bidens.
The Hunter 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 W/H 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.
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 rotten campaign name-calling, insults, and degrading
of Joe Biden and his son as outlined above.
That is how Trump is wired: He says something, anything, and he
expects it to be believed no matter what the facts and truth show otherwise.
Trump pretty much stays in a nasty, evil, personal
attack mode 24/7.
So, stay tuned – it’s gonna be ugly right to the end.
Thanks for stopping by.
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