Ukrainians Say Obama WH Tried Getting Them To Do Hillary’s Dirty Work in Jan. 2016
By C. Douglas Golden
In another piece chronicling the shady goings-on with Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities during the run-up to the 2016 election, The Hill’s John Solomon has reported that the Barack Obama White House had tried to build the Russia “collusion” narrative with Ukrainian help as early as January of 2016.
Solomon has done previous reports regarding Ukrainian prosecutors and the country’s National Anti-corruption Bureau, or NABU. In one of them, the investigative journalist reported that, as vice president, Joe Biden may have interfered with a Ukrainian anti-corruption investigation against his son.
Now, Solomon reported, agents have told him that the former administration had asked them to take a new look at a case involving Paul Manafort, a man who would serve as Donald Trump’s campaign manager from May to August 2016, as it was becoming more likely that Trump would be taking on Hillary Clinton.
It’s worth noting, as Solomon does, that “Ukraine is riddled with corruption, Russian meddling and intense political conflicts, so one must carefully consider any Ukrainian accounts.”
However, his latest report centers on a meeting in early 2016 when Ukrainian officials were brought to Washington to meet with members of the Obama administration.
TRENDING: Trump Has Hard-Hitting Message for America’s Youth, Reveals What He Believes Is Truly Important
“The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ),” Solomon wrote in the piece, which was published Thursday.
“The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.”
Solomon intimates that the lobbying firm was run by business partners Manafort and Trump supporter Roger Stone.
“U.S. officials ‘kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,’ said Andrii Telizhenko, then a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington tasked with organizing the meeting.”
The embassy official said that the administration said “that they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions,” according to Solomon.
That investigation, which started in 2014, had focused on Manafort and whether he and others had received undeclared payments from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was decidedly pro-Kremlin, or whether they had broken laws related to lobbying for foreign powers. The FBI hadn’t charged Manafort in the case.
According to Solomon, Telizhenko said he couldn’t remember whether Manafort was mentioned during the January 2016 meeting. But he and other attendees recalled DOJ officials asking investigators from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans.
full story at https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/ukrainians-say-obama-wh-tried-getting-hillarys-dirty-work-jan-2016/