Rudy Gee Holds Dirt on Biden (He thinks)
(Actually cut, paste. and slick edits)
Plus, it is unlawful: 52 U.S. Code § 30121
Major Update from
Newsweek - the original story follows below.
* Hint: This kind of pours ice water on Rudy Gee's story.
Former
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claims Russia is behind leaked
recordings of him allegedly speaking with former VP Joe Biden, who is now the
subject of a Senate probe regarding his son Hunter, his business activities in
Ukraine during Biden's time in office.
The edited
recordings appear to be of Biden and Poroshenko speaking to each other, and
were leaked by Andrii Derkach — a Ukrainian associate of Trump's lawyer Rudy
Giuliani. In the conversations, Biden reportedly demands that Poroshenko fire
former general prosecutor Viktor Shokin or miss out on $1 billion loan in aid. The
two men then apparently discuss Shokin's successor, Yuriy Lutsenko.
(All that is true, and is BTW, a matter of public record as well as Biden’s own version and statements re: the Shokin
firing, etc.)
I note: Biden's threat to withhold aid was
official U.S. and several allied partners' policy to push Ukraine to clean up its corruption act, and so there is nothing nefarious about Biden’s approach. Plus, it worked and Shokin was fired and yes, he was very corrupt.
Noteworthy: Obama
& Biden were in their second term and thus politics was not a factor not like it was when Hillary Clinton was smeared and
now Joe Biden and son and being smeared by Trump and his 2020 campaign operatives or in some cases, in Trump's own words
Finally, Poroshenko wrote via Facebook
(May 20): “The audio was fabricated and the leak was
the work of the fifth column of the Kremlin. Russia had launched a full-fledged special operation against Ukraine by
pulling us into the electoral struggle in the U.S. they are trying to undermine
the U.S. bipartisan support of Ukraine.”
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Original post starts from here:
A very long post, but needed for the public to follow: Rudy Giuliani's quest to get dirt on Joe Biden via Ukraine for Trump’s 2020 reelection.
A timeline (The Guardian).
Biden’s spokesman, Andrew Bates says: “It’s a nothing burger” (NY Post).
But, boy oh boy the GOP and Trump camp reacts, e.g., Trump Jr. posted one of the recordings on Twitter hours later and implied impropriety by Biden: “Yikes!!!! This is not a ‘perfect conversation.’”
My note: Jr. weakly compares Daddy’s July 25, 2019 phone call to President Zelensky as a quid pro quo favor for dirt on Biden or no money was really a “a perfect call” which Trump always reminds us of.
Now, nearly four years later, Jr. Trump is blasting leaked information of unknown provenance from a Ukrainian lawmaker about his father’s rival in the 2020 election. His tweet is linked to a YouTube page with a recording that was also packaged with English subtitles in that regard.
My note: The Trump/GOP mud machine is cranking into high gear and yes, this was widely expected … so duck!!!
The crust of the matter right now: The recordings, which were first played at a news conference Tuesday (May 121) in Kiev, shed relatively little new light on Biden’s role in ousting Ukraine’s prosecutor general four years ago.
But President Zelensky’s comments Wednesday (May 20) could have been aimed at appeasing Trump, discrediting a rival in Poroshenko and deflecting to investigators all in one swipe.
He said: “As to Poroshenko and Biden, yes, I have heard, I will comment. I think it's not the last sign that Ukrainians will see. The prosecutors, law enforcement bodies should react. The prosecutor general of Ukraine registered criminal proceedings at the request of Deputy Andrei Derkach yesterday. They will investigate.”
Then he added regarding the Trump impeachment: “It took American and international attention away from the issues that mattered most to Ukraine and turned our country into a story about President Trump.”
Now this Biden-Poroshenko audio appears likely to have the same effect.
The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office announced that it has opened an inquiry on counts of high treason and abuse of power or office based on lawmaker Derkach’s allegation that the tapes point to Biden’s influence on Poroshenko.
Oleksander Kachura, a member of Zelensky's Servant of the People political party, also announced that he intends to create a parliamentary “temporary investigative commission” to look into Derkach’s claims.
The recordings showed that Biden, as he has previously said publicly, linked loan guarantees for Ukraine in 2015 to the ouster of Viktor Shokin, then the country’s prosecutor general.
But Derkach, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament who previously aligned with a pro-Russian faction and has past links to Russian intelligence, used the new clips to make an array of accusations not proven by the tapes. Derkach said he received the tapes from “investigative journalists” and alleged they were made by Poroshenko.
My 2 cents and the bottom line from the main article (Washington Post):
The tapes released in Kiev offered no evidence to back Giuliani’s long-standing accusation that Biden pushed for the prosecutor general’s ouster to help his son. At the time, Hunter Biden was earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a month on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, whose owner, a former government minister, was under investigation in Ukraine. Still, the tapes gave Trump’s allies a chance to recycle that allegation closer to the 2020 election.
The Biden campaign viewed the release of the tapes as a continuation of a long-standing Russian effort to hurt the former vice president, pointing to the role that RT, the Russian state-controlled news network, played in promoting the tapes and Derkach’s ties to Russian interests.
The final key is this history of this story to counter the GOP (and I suspect Trump 2020 campaign effort) is this: This is more GOP dirty tricks against Biden just like against Hillary Clinton and all that “lock her up” crap.
The clips released in Kiev consisted of conversations that Biden had when he was Vice President and with Poroshenko, primarily about domestic Ukrainian political issues.
At the time, Biden was the face of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, demanding as a matter of policy that the government make reforms to end corruption if it wanted to continue to receive billions of dollars in Western aid and loan guarantees – the official U.S. policy position and a very rational one and NOT for any political purpose or reelection help… Obama-Biden were already in their second term.
Further, in late 2015, Biden led a coalition of Western nations and U.S. officials who sought the ouster of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin after a scandal erupted under his watch in which prosecutors were found with bags of diamonds and stashes of cash. Shokin also clashed with two young prosecutors whom Western officials hoped would clean up what has long been a corrupt office.
The vice president publicly pushed for reform of the prosecutor general’s office at the time. Biden later said that he told Poroshenko that Ukraine would not receive $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Shokin was removed and the prosecutor general’s office was reformed. Much of that is recounted on the tapes.
In one clip, Biden congratulates Poroshenko on installing a new prosecutor general, saying: “It’s going to be critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage that Shokin did. And I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee.”
At no point in the clips released does Biden mention Burisma or his son. Biden has denied discussing the gas company with his son, and his advisers have emphasized that he was pushing for Shokin’s ouster as a matter of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine, which called for anti-corruption reforms.
Finally, the evidence is clear: Biden did nothing illegal, unlawful, or unethical in his official duties as outlined above. To try and use his son against in him a smear campaign, I believe, will not fly – but Trump is not to give up smearing.
We shall see – this is round 1 of a 15-round fight to November 3 when all the marbles are in play.
Thanks for stopping by.
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