State investigators to probe Biden & the firing of Victor Shokin

Please consider this by way of a PSA, as it’s hard to imagine that I’ll have the wherewithal to even read, much less respond to any comments.

From the WaPO, Feb. 28, 2020: (I won’t bold anything)

“KYIV —A court ruling in Ukraine has forced state investigators to open a probe into alleged pressure by then-vice president Joe Biden that led to the 2016 dismissal of Viktor Shokin as the country’s prosecutor general, officials said Thursday.

President Trump last year pressed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation of this kind, leading to Trump’s impeachment by the House and his eventual acquittal in a Senate trial.

Shokin’s firing, however, was not a unilateral action directed by Biden. It was prompted by a push for anti-corruption reforms developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Trump and his allies have put intense pressure on Zelensky’s administration to open investigations into Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

From late 2018 Shokin met with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, as Giuliani sought political dirt on the Bidens. Shokin has long been angered by what he sees as an unfair dismissal following foreign pressure.

Shokin has claimed he was pushed out by Biden because he tried to launch a probe into Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma. In fact, Ukrainian investigations into Burisma related to the period before Hunter Biden joined the board.” [snip]

““The fact that it was opened after a decision of the court indicates that first the SBI didn’t open this case, but the attorneys of Shokin made the SBI open this case,” she said.”

(the rest of the spin is here)

OTOH: ‘UkraineGate: MSM believed Biden’s narrative, but documentary reveals ousted prosecutor had 6 cases against Burisma’, 21 Jan, 2020, RT.com

“Joe Biden pushed to oust the top Ukrainian prosecutor who had six cases against gas firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors. A new documentary is challenging the narrative that the media failed to check.

Burisma Holdings is a major private Ukrainian gas company, with headquarters in Cyprus, which employed Biden’s son Hunter from 2014 to 2019. The firm’s name surfaced last year when it was alleged that Donald Trump pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky to open a probe into the firm – and his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

The claims snowballed into ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress’ charges, which eventually led to the impeachment of President Trump by the House of Representatives on December 18. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, with his lawyers describing the row as a “dangerous perversion of the Constitution.”

When Joe Biden lobbied Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to replace Ukraine’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin with Yuriy Lutsenko in 2015, his entourage claimed that Shokin had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption, and by pushing for his replacement “saint” Biden even acted against his family’s interests.

But the second episode of the documentary series ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient facts’ produced by French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises, shows information that undermines this narrative.”

[RT. links to the 40 minute version, and has embedded the summary version video of Part II]

The American media reported that Shokin’s case against Ukrainian energy company Burisma had gone “dormant,” and that by pressing for Lutsenko’s appointment, Biden was quashing corruption, even if that meant subjecting his own son to investigation in the process. Hunter Biden was on the company’s board from 2014 till 2019. However, documents collected by Berruyer show that Shokin’s Burisma probe was far from “dormant.” Shokin himself even told ABC News that his office had six investigations into Burisma open at the time of his resignation.

Lutsenko, he said, “stopped all those cases.”

[snip]
"ABC didn’t air this part of the interview, and the American media – including the Washington Post and the New York Times – continue to label Shokin’s investigation “dormant,” despite a number of publicly available documents showing otherwise and presented in the documentary.

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Roy Blakeley's picture

First, thanks Wendy for bringing this to our attention. Second, the notion that Trump wanted Hunter Biden investigated for corruption was always a red herring. Hunter B. was rarely in Ukraine, didn't speak the language and knew little about the business. He was not in any position to actively participate in corruption. He and others were put on the Burisma board to inoculate the company against investigations, and it worked. The owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, was a supporter of the Yanukovych regime, and when the US and its fascist supporters overthrew Yanukovych, he needed to protect himself against the investigations of the Poroshenko regime. Joe B. was corrupt for intervening in the affairs of another country to help out is wayward son. The notion that Shokin was replaced because he was corrupt ignores the fact that the person who replaced him, Lutsenko, was a convicted embezzler with no education in criminal law and little experience save his own run-ins with the law. If one is really concerned about corruption, you don't applaud the replacement of an at least moderately competent prosecutor with a convicted criminal. And yes Shokin did have six cases open in the Burisma investigation. Lutsenko did prosecute Zlochevsky, BTW, on one case but let him off with a fine that was a small fraction of the money Zlochevsky made illegally.

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wendy davis's picture

@Roy Blakeley

and i'll read more carefully tomorrow. my eyes and brain are burning from reading too much re; the continuing pogroms in genocidaire thug modi's dehli and beyond.

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wendy davis's picture

@Roy Blakeley

but i reckon i'd have to remain agnostic (at the very least) on this:

He was not in any position to actively participate in corruption.

but i do take your point as to:

He and others were put on the Burisma board to inoculate the company against investigations, and it worked.

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CB's picture

He accuses Biden of having something to do with it and he wants it investigated. (Too bad that Biden will most likely not be mentally fit if it eventually goes to trial.)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2QhT5eTdxo&feature=emb_logo]

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wendy davis's picture

@CB

i'd booted up the duran conversation, and tried to listen while i was preparing dinner. given that they were speaking about part 4 les crises, and i was pinging part two, i wonder if i hadn't snatched enough of the waPo via msn report.

perhaps i should have snatched this as well?

"Daria Kaleniuk, director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, said that under Ukrainian law, anyone could go to court and demand that the SBI open a case. If a court approved it, the SBI was required by law to do so, even if officials did not believe there was enough evidence.

“The fact that it was opened after a decision of the court indicates that first the SBI didn’t open this case, but the attorneys of Shokin made the SBI open this case,” she said.

“Let’s say I can write a claim to the SBI that I think aliens stole my car,” she continued. “And the SBI obviously will not open [a case] as there is not evidence of a crime. But then I can go to court and make the SBI open it, through a court decision. So this case looks to me like that.”

She said it was possible for the case to lie dormant in the system for years.

“If I was (sic) a SBI investigator, I would close that case immediately,” she said.

but i hadn't understood their references to the US needing to participate in ___ investigation or something. tomorrow, then. oh, and i did look up shokin's statements about being poisoned, and they ran the gamut from scoffing to 'he didn't rule out biden', etc. but here's one, FWIW:

https://112.international/society/ukraines-ex-prosecutor-shokin-said-he-...

oh, and as they spoke i kept pinging bill gates had invested heavily in the maidan coup as well as fertile soils and 'breadbasket to europe' or close.

good night. john trudell (Rest in Power) said it right.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOZ00A1aos]

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snoopydawg's picture

hands. Good lord I wish I was kidding, but here you go...

Senate Intel chair privately warned that GOP's Biden probe could help Russia

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee has privately expressed concerns about his colleagues’ corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, further exposing divisions within the GOP over whether to continue pursuing an effort that led in part to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

In a Dec. 5 meeting, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively — that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting.
....
Democrats, too, are warning of a potential Russian disinformation effort at the heart of the Biden investigation. Lawmakers have pointed to Russia’s attempts to hack Burisma, which could indicate that the Kremlin, too, was looking for dirt on the Bidens.

I think it’s amazing that people are still potentially viewing manipulated Ukrainian information. That is not in our national security interest,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said. “There is plenty in the public domain that Russia was behind a lot of these fables and stories.

Trump’s allies have openly encouraged such an investigation, arguing that the corruption claims against Biden are legitimate.

First off ByeDone himself was the one who spilled the beer on this not someone from Russia. Unless people think that Russia made Joe open his big mouth and brag about getting the dude fired. Secondly many news sites wrote about it back when it happened. Unless those reporters were working for Russia at the time?

Again this is why I'm upset that Bernie's playing along with this. The Ukraine fiasco is wrought with corruption from people in both parties.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

that rubbish was, including timelines, he said/she said./no-I-dinnae stuff. but this:

Democrats, too, are warning of a potential Russian disinformation effort at the heart of the Biden investigation. Lawmakers have pointed to Russia’s attempts to hack Burisma, which could indicate that the Kremlin, too, was looking for dirt on the Bidens.

“I think it’s amazing that people are still potentially viewing manipulated Ukrainian information. That is not in our national security interest,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said. “There is plenty in the public domain that Russia was behind a lot of these fables and stories.”

the link at my bold goes to: NY/CIA times, jan. 13, 2020

i'm locked out there permanently it seems, but i wlll bing the cool photo of burisma:

Offices in Kyiv of a subsidiary of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Security experts suggest the hackers may have been looking for damaging information on Joe Biden.

if you mean bernie sanders buying into russians hacked our elections, i will say that he's been consistent on that, and his anti-russian FP reflects it (russia stole crimea should give it back. etc.), as does his love for NATO, and some (many?) of NATO's wars.

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