Or at least, that's the story according to One America News Network:
OANN is of course a notoriously biased right-wing media source which in this case claims that former Burisma head Mykola Zlochevsky was indicted on November 14th by Ukrainian prosecutors on charges of misusing public funds which stem from his time as former Minister of Ecology for Ukraine where he allegedly funneled public funds into his own company. This is of course, the same "corruption" that Zlochevsky was previously accused of back in 2010-2012 over a year before Hunter Biden and others including former George W. Bush CIA official Cofer Black were added to the board of Burisma.
What's new in this allegation is the suggestion of a "slush fund" of $16.5 Million which was used to pay Hunter Biden and other board members. Supposedly this money did not come from the "normal" business profits of Burisma and were instead government funds. The problem here is that the source of the funds would not be Hunter Biden's fault, the responsibility falls on the person that paid the funds, which is Zlochevsky, so this appears to be an elaborate smear intended, yet again, to pull the Bidens into some type of corruption plot.
That would be some story except that it's not real.
The Daily Beast says:
Right-wing Twitter feeds in the United States claimed not only that the investigation had been opened, but that there had been an “indictment” of Burisma’s founder—until Twitter suspended one of the sites pushing that fake news, and others quickly deleted their posts.
According to Ukraine’s prosecutor general there is no such investigation into Burisma and the Bidens by his office, and there are no outstanding indictments.
But the fake story is important nonetheless. It indicates some of Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs want to curry favor with U.S. President Donald Trump in ways connected to the impeachment inquiries. They also have promoted what Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the Trump White House, testified on Thursday is a “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.
[...]
Alexander Dubinsky, a Ukrainian MP from Zelensky’s ruling Servant of the People party, claimed that Hunter Biden and his “partners” had been paid a total of $16.5 million with “money raised through criminal means and money laundering.” It is not clear what Dubinsky meant by “partners,” possibly other members of the board, which included a former president of Poland.
Ukrainians know Dubinsky as a YouTube blogger and a presenter on the 1+1 television channel which belongs to Ukraine’s most influential oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky. Importantly, he was Zelensky’s patron when Zelensky was just an actor in a sitcom about an unlikely common man who becomes Ukraine’s head of state. Kolomoisky had spent years living in Israel after fraud charges were leveled against him by the previous government in Kyiv, but he returned to Ukraine following Zelensky’s election.
K, that was something.
Naturally this was the week of Impeachment hearings in the House which included over a dozen witnesses who outlined how Rudy Giuliani led a plot inside the State Dept. including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland to demand that Ukraine investigate Crowdstrike and the Biden's involvement in Burisma in exchange for a private oval office meeting with Donald Trump and also the release of $400 Million in Security funds to Ukraine.
During that testimony the GOP Attorney solicited testimony from the witnesses that the previous investigation of Zlochevsky had been ended under the prosecutor Viktor Shokin apparently after the payment of a bribe, and that over a year later — after the investigation had already been ended — Joe Biden with the backing of the IMF and the EU lobbied to have Shokin replaced for not pursuing corruption cases. Cases like the one against Zlochevsky.
While under oath Ambassador Sondland admitted that there "Was a quid pro quo" in place with Ukraine offering the oval office meeting in exchange for Investigations.
In his explosive testimony, Sondland directly tied Trump to the scheme to withhold military aid to Ukraine in an effort to strong-arm Ukraine into announcing an investigation into 2020 candidate Joe Biden.
“As a presidential appointee, I followed the directions of the President,” Gordland said in his opening statement. “We worked with Mr. Giuliani because the President directed us to do so.”
The ambassador also explicitly confirmed there was a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Ukraine, effectively destroying Trump and his Republican allies’ refrain insisting there was absolutely no quid pro quo.
Pentagon Staffer Laura Cooper confirmed that even before the security funds were held by Mick Mulvaney the Pentagon had already performed a "corruption check" of Ukraine and cleared them for the dispersal of the funds back in May and that on June 25th — the same day as the call between Trump and Zelensky — they were contacted by Ukrainian officials asking about the security funds.
As CNN’s Manu Raju cited in a Twitter thread, Laura Cooper claimed her staff was asked by an official at the Ukraine embassy “what was going on with the security assistance in July and were aware in August of a hold on aid. Her staff couldn’t find documentation detailing that concern raised in August.”
Ukrainians knew “there was some kind of issue” with the aid on July 25, when President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump spoke, Cooper said. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) noted that Cooper is the first witness to acknowledge awareness of the delay stemmed that far back.
“The Ukraine emails to Cooper’s staff asking about the aid came the same day as Trump’s call with Zelensky – and just hours after the call. The GOP has been arguing Ukraine didn’t know about the hold until several weeks later in a Politico article – and therefore wasn’t pressured,” Ranju explained.
There was also the testimony of Fiona Hill who described how Sondland pushed the issue of investigations with the Ukrainian National Security Advisor during a June 10th meeting at the White House. This was the point where John Bolton left the meeting and later told Hill "I'm not part of whatever Drug Deal that Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up." Hill also debunked theories that Ukraine was involved in influencing the 2016 election, pointing at that this was a narrative that has been push by the Kremlin to redirect attention away from them.
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” she will say at her hearing Thursday. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” she added, sounding the alarm on Russia’s plans to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections as well.
After Trump stated that maybe Ukraine should give Crimea to the Russia, there were several Ukrainian politicians who criticized him and pushed back on that idea. That was not election meddilng — hacking the DNC, DCCC and John Podesta, using Wikileaks to distribute their emails then setting up a troll farm to push out bogus disinformation messages for 187 Million Americans in order to influence their vote — was. election. meddling.
State Dept. staffer David Holmes testified that he had overheard a phone call between Sondand and Trump which took place the day after the June 25th White House phone call where Trump asked if Zelenky was going to "do the investigations." Sondland said "He'll do anything for you, he loves your ass." Later Sondland stated that Trump didn't really care about Ukraine, he just cared about "big stuff" like investigating Biden. Holmes also pushed back on a Nunes conspiracy theory that the Black Ledger, which documented a slush fund of under the table cash payments by former Ukrainian President Yanakovych to Paul Manafort, was in fact — a credible document and not a forgery that was concocted by the Ukrainian to hurt Donald Trump campaign.
Nunes asked David Holmes, who is the State Dept.’s counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine about the “black ledger.”
That line of questioning did not go well for Nunes.
Nunes asked if Holmes had “ever heard of the black ledger.”
“I have,” Holmes replied.
“The black ledger – is that seen as ‘credible’ information?” Nunes asked.
“Yes,” Holmes responded without hesitation.
Surprised, Nunes repeated his question.
“The black ledger is credible?”
“Yes,” Holmes again replied.
Every GOP talking point, that the witnesses were "second hand", that Ukraine should be investigated because of the "meddling" in 2016 and that Hunter Biden should be investigated because of "corruption" — which again, was really Zlochevsky's self-dealing years before Hunter Biden was even around — and that Trump was just trying to address "corruption" even though he didn't say that word during his call with Zelensky, he mentioned "Crowdstrike"and "The Bidens" were systematically shot down, crashed and burned beyond recognition.
This is little doubt that that House will Impeach Donald Trump.
But they may not be doing it right away, next week there will be a district court decision on the subpoena for Don McGahn who is a key witness in one of the 10 Mueller obstruction of Justice cases against Trump. That decision will have to go through the appeals court and the SCOTUS before being finally resolved but the House is likely to request the case be fast-tracked due to pending Impeachment Hearings for the Judiciary committee which seemed to be part of the next steps.
Having a series of Impeachment Articles that go beyond the Ukraie incident is exactly what I suggested some weeks ago. The case needs to be made that Trump's behavior and his criminality is a pattern, it's a trend, it's a habit. IT's not just a one-off event, and that he needs to be removed not just because of what he has done in the past, but to protect the nation from what he is likely to do in the future.
The man needs to be removed, period.
Here are the details of events for this edition of the Trump Corruption Timeline for this past week:
November 16th --
November 17th —
November 18th —
November 19th —
November 20th —
November 21th —
November 22nd —