OPEN-SOURCES TIMELINE-ORGANIZED OUTLINE OF UKRAINE CORRUPTION INTERFERENCE CONNECTED TO HUNTER BIDEN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND 2019 ICIG ‘WHISTLEBLOWER’ ACTIVITY CONT.

PART THREE

2016 ------------------------------

‘JUST DROP IT’

The other case raised at the January 2016 meeting, Telizhenko said, involved Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company under investigation in Ukraine for improper foreign transfers of money. At the time, Burisma allegedly was paying then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter as both a board member and a consultant. More than $3 million flowed from Ukraine to an American firm tied to Hunter Biden in 2014-15, bank records show. According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. Then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016

BIDEN’S BOASTFUL CONFESSIONAL

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. “I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat. Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired. But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member. U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

‘YOU’RE FIRED’

Most of the general prosecutor’s investigative work on Burisma focused on three separate cases, and most stopped abruptly once Shokin was fired. The most prominent of the Burisma cases was transferred to a different Ukrainian agency, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, known as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), according to the case file and current General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. NABU closed that case, and a second case involving alleged improper money transfers in London was dropped when Ukrainian officials failed to file the necessary documents by the required deadline.

Steven Pifer, a career foreign service officer who was ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton, told Politifact that “”virtually everyone” he knew in the U.S. government and virtually all non-governmental experts on Ukraine “felt that Shokin was not doing his job and should be fired. As far as I can recall, they all concurred with the vice president telling Poroshenko that the U.S. government would not extend the $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine until Shokin was removed from office.”” The European Union also called for him to be fired and celebrated his removal. “This decision creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general’s office. I hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office . . . becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust,” said Jan Tombinski, the EU’s envoy to Ukraine, in a statement at the time.

MANAFORT TRIPS THE SWITCH

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016.   NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016

POLITICAL OPERATIVES INFORMATION LAUNDERING

Chalupa also passed the Black Ledger info on to Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, who passed them on to staffer Nellie Ohr. Ohr passed the info on to her husband Bruce Ohr, Epoch Times reports. On May 30, 2016, Nellie Ohr sent an email to Bruce Ohr and Justice Department staffers under the subject line “Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’”

Nellie Ohr told congressional investigators that Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, served as “a source of information” and acknowledged that she then used that information in following up and formulating her opposition research. Leshchenko, along with Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, was responsible for publicly disclosing the contents of the Ukrainian “black ledger,” which implicated Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, to the media. Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael Isikoff and DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa.

Leshchenko had adopted a strong anti-Trump stance, telling the Financial Times in August 2016 that “a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy” and that it was “important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world.” Leschenko noted that the majority of Ukrainian politicians were “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”

Nellie Ohr said she wasn’t aware how the connection between Leshchenko and Fusion was established, or if they were doing work for him, but she did agree that Leshchenko was “a source of information” and acknowledged that she then used that information in following up and formulating her opposition research. Later in Ohr’s testimony, Leshchenko was briefly mentioned once again. She appeared to be very careful with her choice of wording—especially when Manafort’s name came up.

COURT DECLARES INTERFERENCE

A Ukrainian court in December (2018) concluded NABU’s release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine’s parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The court noted the material was part of a pre-trial investigation and its release “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.”

On April 28, 2016, Chalupa and Isikoff appeared on a panel to discuss their research on Manafort with 68 Ukrainian journalists in a program called the Open World Leadership Center, sponsored by the Library of Congress, which is closely connected to the Soros Foundations.

EMBASSY UNCONCERN

“The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced,” then-embassy Charge d’ Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor’s office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent. At the time, the nation’s prosecutor general had just been fired, under pressure from the United States, and a permanent replacement had not been named.

EVIDENCE-SHARING AGREEMENT

In June 2016, the FBI signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine

KLEPTOCRACY ASSET SEIZURES COMES FULL CIRCLE

After the U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced on July 20, 2016 that the Justice Department filed lawsuits to seize assets that it said were the result of US$3.5 billion that was misappropriated from 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Bhd), there hasn’t been any meaningful progress ever since, probably because the DOJ was told to drag their feet until the presidential election is over... But the 1MDB lawsuit, already the U.S. largest single action ever brought under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, didn’t only corrupt US$3.5 billion of the U.S. financial system, real-estate and Hollywood...

According to the Wall Street Journal, businessman Frank White Jr., has benefited from money stolen from 1MDB, a pet project of PM Najib Razak which turned out to be a “Ponzi Scheme” designed to fleece taxpayers’ money to the tune of US$6 billion.

In return for the easy profits, Frank White Jr., founder and CEO of investment firm DuSable Capital Management, used his connection and ultimately escorted Najib’s son, stepson Riza Aziz and Leonardo DiCaprio to the Oval Office where they met President Barack Obama in December 2013. They presented a copy of “The Wolf of Wall Street” – produced using stolen money – to the president...

MANAFORT STEPS DOWN

Documentation regarding the Party of Regions’ Black Ledger “has now seemingly found its way to NABU, the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau,” the e-mail stated, citing the source for the Black Ledger documents as former First Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Viktor Trepak.

Isikoff broke the story on Yahoo on Aug. 18, 2016, one of the first public mentions of purported “collusion with Russia” by the Trump team. Manafort had to step down as Trump’s campaign manager the next day.

“Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.” Manafort’s name was reportedly listed in the 400-page ledger 22 times, although his actual signature wasn’t authenticated and any payments made to him remain unverified. The documents implicating Manafort had been released by Serhiy Leshchenko. On March 20, 2017, Leshchenko released another set of documents, this time alleging to show that Manafort took steps to hide payments related to his work for former Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych. Leshchenko’s documents “included an invoice that appeared to show $750,000 funneled through an offshore account and disguised as payment for computers.”

‘IT’S A FAKE’

Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake. Manafort “could not have possibly taken large amounts of cash across three borders. It was always a different arrangement — payments were in wire transfers to his companies, which is not a violation,” Kilimnik wrote in an email to a senior U.S. official on Aug. 22, 2016. He added: “I have some questions about this black cash stuff, because those published records do not make sense. The timeframe doesn’t match anything related to payments made to Manafort. … It does not match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash.”

THERE IS ANOTHER

Bruce Ohr and Steele worked on their own effort to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who had a soured business relationship with him. Deripaska was “almost ready to talk” to U.S. government officials regarding the money that “Manafort stole,” Bruce Ohr wrote in notes from his conversations with Steele. The efforts eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could help prove Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia. Deripaska laughed off the notion as preposterous...

STATE DEPT LIES ABOUT PRESSURING PROSECUTORS TO BACK OFF

In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today. Nonetheless, the anecdote is taking on new significance. First, it conflicts with the State Department’s official statement last week after Lutsenko first mentioned the do-not-prosecute list. The embassy responded that the claim was a fabrication and a sign that corruption is alive and well inside Ukraine.

But Kent’s letter unequivocally shows the embassy did press Ukrainian prosecutors to back off what normally would be considered an internal law enforcement matter inside a sovereign country. And more than a half-dozen U.S. and Ukrainian sources confirmed to me the AntAC case wasn’t the only one in which American officials exerted pressure on Ukrainian investigators in 2016.

2017 ------------------------------

Ukraine has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko’s regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin’s regime.

WORRIED THEY BACKED THE WRONG HORSE

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials “to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations.”

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Ukrainian Representative Serhiy Leshenko and Artem Sytnyk, director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), presented these ‘Black Ledger’ documents to the public on March 21, 2017 in the Soros-funded Ukraine Crisis Media Center, linking Manafort to illegal kickbacks totaling $12.7 million and even seeking to blame him for the deaths of protestors on Maidan Square 2014. The Ukrainian “anti-corruption” investigators even went so far as to hack the phones and text messages of Paul Manafort‘s daughters.

CONTINUES