by Debra Heine
Media reports based on a deep state “whistleblower” promised us that an obvious “quid pro quo” would be evident in the transcript of a telephone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, but that was not to be. The transcript shows a cordial conversation in which the president mentioned Biden and his son once late in the call, and at no point promised financial assistance to prompt an investigation into corruption related to Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy business.
According to the whistleblower’s allegations, Trump delayed financial assistance to the Ukrainian government so he could use it as a bargaining chip to secure Zelensky’s cooperation. But New York Times reporter Ken Vogel pointed out on Twitter that the Ukrainians weren’t even aware that the assistance was being delayed until over a month after the call.
The Ukrainians weren't made aware that the assistance was being delayed/reviewed until more than one month after the call. https://t.co/qDJ3FT261a
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) September 25, 2019
Additional bombshell revelations were supposed to be found in the whistleblower Complaint publicized late Wednesday night, but that report was even worse for Dems than the nothingburger transcript. It was “riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods,” the Federalist’s Sean Davis noted. Davis compared the deep state’s “whistleblower” complaint to the Steele Dossier in another article Thursday at the New York Post.
National intelligence expert Fred Fleitz wrote in the Post that the complaint appeared to be “written by a law professor” and indicated that the “so-called whistleblower was pursuing a political agenda.”
But what was that political agenda? And was there a real quid pro quo?
The whistleblower is represented by deep state lawyers Andrew P. Bakaj, a former CIA officer, and Mark S. Zaid, a prominent national security lawyer in Washington.
Bakaj is an anti-Trump partisan who once did counseling work on Capitol Hill for Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, and Zaid is a frequent Trump critic on Twitter who has a history of sleazy deep state shenanigans.
Both anti-Trump lawyers run a group that pays off deep state officials who leak about the president, according to the Washington Examiner.
Biden, the current Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 presidential race, is accused of strong-arming Ukraine in an effort to oust Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in the spring of 2016, while Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company that employed Hunter Biden.
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.
MUST WATCH: Here's Joe Biden in 2018 bragging about using his power to hold up $1 BILLION in U.S. loans unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma – a corrupt Ukrainian oil company paying his son $50,000 a month.
Biden needs to explain his conflict of interest! pic.twitter.com/bDhaKjFNZN
— Ronna McDaniel (@RonnaMcDaniel) September 25, 2019
Biden, the Beltway media, Democrats, and assorted never-Trumpers have insisted that the firing was completely warranted because the official was corrupt and incompetent and the vice president was only following Obama’s wishes. When conservatives tried to ring alarm bells about what looked like appalling corruption, they were said to be “coo-coo for cocoa puffs” and “conspiracy theorists.”
But documents gathered by the Hill’s John Solomon greatly contradict Biden and his defenders’ narrative about the firing.
Solomon revealed Thursday evening on Fox News that he has gathered over 450 pages of never-released memos and documents from Burisma’s American legal representatives, the State Department, the Ukraine Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Ukraine Embassy in Washington DC.
“There is an enormous body of documents—on the record statements from Ukraine authorities—that these issues occurred,” Solomon told Fox News Host Sean Hannity.
According to one Ukrainian government official memo, a few days after Biden forced Shokin’s ouster, Burisma’s American legal team met with Ukrainian officials and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors.
“The effort to secure that meeting began the very same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced,” Solomon reported.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump during the July phone call, adding that his new chief prosecutor would be looking into it to “restore honesty” in government. “The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case,” he assured Trump.
Solomon obtained documents that reveal that the Obama State Department helped the Bidens “change the narrative” after the New York Times covered the Biden and Burisma controversy in a December of 2015 article.
Two days after the Times story broke, Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague about a strategy to counter the ‘new wave of scrutiny,’” with the help of the State Department, according to documents.
The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”
Shokin told Solomon that before he was fired, his office was investigating Burisma, and he was making plans to ask Hunter Biden “about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm.”
Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma’s owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General’s office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
After I first reported it in a column, the New York Times and ABC News published similar stories confirming my reporting.
Joe Biden has since responded that he forced Shokin’s firing over concerns about corruption and ineptitude, which he claims were widely shared by Western allies, and that it had nothing to do with the Burisma investigation.
Some of the new documents obtained by Solomon dispute these claims.
According to a sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin said that he was told in March of 2016 that the reason he was fired was because Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.
Solomon concedes that Shokin “certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing” and thus point the finger at Biden, but his testimony “is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America.”
There are additional details at the Hill, raising questions about the legality of Biden’s intervention in the Burisma case and the credibility of Biden and his defenders’ claims.
“These are real documents. Where are Joe Biden’s documents?” Solomon asked Hannity.
“Either Joe Biden’s not telling the truth, or the prosecutors, and these memos, and Hunter Biden’s legal team are not telling the truth,” he added. “We need to find out which one is because it matters to American sovereignty.”
🚨BOMBSHELL🚨
Ukrainian Prosecutor SWORE UNDER OATH that he was FIRED for not dropping the investigation into Burisma where Biden’s son was a board member.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 27, 2019
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Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.
