eYe political commentary (surreal political/mob backstory unraveling before us) 11/25/19
As the release date of the final Star Wars movie approaches, one sees the will of The Force ripping off the layers of the onion of this global #trumprussia conspiracy. Since the Thursday impeachment hearing, we’ve learned a lot about Rudy Giuliani, Devin Nunes, and Mike Pompeo’s nefarious roles and activities. So much info it's hard to know where to start, but I guess it's the NYT article that unravels Rudy’s scheme to bribe UKR oligarchs with legal vulnerabilities in exchange for manufactured Biden dirt.
Rudy worked 3 tracks, 2 of which the NYT covers, and the last they leave open.
Track 1 - Dmitry Firtash
It's well established Firtash is/was the front for the Russian mob and Kremlin in Ukraine. Firtash is under indictment in Fed court in Chicago for bribery (bribed some Indian pols in global scheme with ties in the US). He is in Austria and is fighting extradition.
Rudy offered Firtash a deal: give Rudy dirt on Biden, Rudy will provide well connected lawyers (Fox's Toensing/DiGenova) who will work the case and get it dismissed (or at least get some key evidence invalidated to give Firtash a shot). Parnas/Fruman worked that deal and Firtash bought in. One of the things Toensing/DiGenova did is raid Firtash’s files for Biden dirt and got a statement from the sleazy former UKR prosecutor and John Solomon confidant Viktor Shokin (whom Biden removed and resident conspiracy loon krs97a exalts) which got released to Rudy and others pushing this angle. Toensing/DiGenova did meet with Barr, but it doesn’t look like Barr did much other than to refer them to the prosecutors running the case.
Track 2 - Ihor Kolomoisky
IK is one of the richest oligarchs in UKR and backer of Zelensky. Zelensky’s win came as a shock to Team Trump and they had no connections to him (which is why Trump/Rudy were skeptical and put the squeeze on from the start). Rudy dispatched Parnas/Fruman to meet with Kolomoisky but it didn’t go well. In a scene worthy of a movie, this is how IK describes it going down:
Mr. Kolomoisky said the two men came “under the made-up pretext of dealing liquefied natural gas,” but as soon as it became clear that what they really wanted was a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Zelensky, he abruptly sent them on their way. The exchange, he said, went like this:
“I say, ‘Did you see a sign on the door that says, ‘Meetings with Zelensky arranged here’?
“They said, ‘No.’
At this point, Rudy trashes Kolomoisky and Zelensky in the press. This is why Trump/Rudy put the hard squeeze on Zelensky. They didn’t trust him because he wasn’t responsively corrupt. An extortion plot would be needed to force Zelensky to do what they wanted.
Track 3 - The Poroshenko gov
The NYT article’s big gap is regarding the deal Trump/Rudy had in place with the prior Poroshenko gov. Per the NYT:
Mr. Giuliani spoke with Ukrainian officials like Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor general who suggested, falsely, that Mr. Biden had had him fired for looking into Burisma, as well as with Mr. Shokin’s successor, Yuriy Lutsenko. And he enlisted Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova, trusted colleagues since their days together in the Reagan Justice Department, to help interview and potentially represent anyone willing to come forward with dirt. Mr. Parnas acted as translator and fixer, crisscrossing the Atlantic with stops at the Manhattan cigar bar that was Mr. Giuliani’s hangout, a strip club in Kyiv and even a Hanukkah reception at the White House.
The campaign seemed to be paying off, with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, poised to announce the investigations Mr. Giuliani sought, when the political situation changed. On April 21, Mr. Poroshenko was unseated by Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political novice, sending Mr. Giuliani scrambling to establish a conduit.
The NYT never explains why Poroshenko would announce a deal to investigate Biden given how bad that would be for Ukraine’s standing in Congress. What they missed is Trump/Rudy leaned on Poroshenko in 2018 to stop cooperating with the Mueller probe on the Manafort investigation and made a threat of holding up javelin missiles. It was widely reported at the time Poroshenko obliged and abruptly ceased cooperation.
Rudy made connections to Yuriy Lutsenko, a close Poroshenko ally, (and probably the guy who pushed Poroshenko to stop cooperating with Mueller). Lutsenko picked up Shokin’s accusations and tried to persuade Poroshenko to announce investigations as a way to please Trump, which in turn might help their relations with Moscow.
What's now apparent is Rudy worked with Manafort’s lawyers to get him to stop cooperating with Mueller and go to jail, on promise that Rudy would work UKR angle to undermine the entire Mueller probe findings, frame Biden and the DNC, and create the basis to pardon Manafort, lift sanctions and win re-election. [cont] share