Round Two of Adam Schiff’s impeachment farce is scheduled to start this morning at 10 a.m. The star witness is former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by Donald Trump on May 20, two months before the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. She is being called with the purpose of furthering smearing the president.
Yovanovitch has been accused by Ukrainian prosecutors of preventing criminal evidence from being given to AG William Barr and was exposed as lying under oath during her testimony to Adam Schiff’s double secret hearings in the congressional basement.
This past April, Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s International Legal Cooperation Department, told The Hill’s John Solomon that “he and other senior law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get visas from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to Washington.”
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Per Prosecutor Kulyk:
We were supposed to share this information during a working trip to the United States,” Kulyk told me in a wide-ranging interview. “However, the [U.S.] ambassador blocked us from obtaining a visa. She didn’t explicitly deny our visa, but also didn’t give it to us.”
One focus of Ukrainian investigators, Kulyk said, has been money spirited unlawfully out of Ukraine and moved to the United States by businessmen friendly to the prior, pro-Russia regime of Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukrainian businessmen “authorized payments for lobbying efforts directed at the U.S. government,” he told me. “In addition, these payments were made from funds that were acquired during the money-laundering operation. We have information that a U.S. company was involved in these payments.” That company is tied to one or more prominent Democrats, Ukrainian officials insist.
In another instance, he said, Ukrainian authorities gathered evidence that money paid to an American Democrat allegedly was hidden by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) during the 2016 election under pressure from U.S. officials. “In the course of this investigation, we found that there was a situation during which influence was exerted on the NABU, so that the name of [the American] would not be mentioned,” he said.
As we reported in late March, the former Ukranian Government is known for being very corrupt, and that includes the head of the NABU, Artem Sytnyk. A prosecutor other than Kulyk is investigating Sytnyk for trying to help Hillary to win the 2016 election, which was initially reported two years ago by Politico. Because of the suspected involvement by NABU, which had a close relationship with the U.S. ambassador and the FBI agents in Ukraine, Kulyk wanted to personally deliver the evidence to the Department of Justice rather than giving it to the American officials in his country.
Kulyk shared the evidence the Ukrainians had included with John Solomon:
- Sworn statements from two Ukrainian officials admitting that their agency tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The effort included leaking an alleged ledger showing payments to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort;
- Contacts between Democratic figures in Washington and Ukrainian officials that involved passing along dirt on Donald Trump;
- Financial records showing a Ukrainian natural gas company routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden, younger son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who managed U.S.-Ukrainian relations for the Obama administration. Biden’s son served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings;
- Records that Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian officials in March 2016 to fire the prosecutor who oversaw an investigation of Burisma Holdings and who planned to interview Hunter Biden about the financial transfers;
- Correspondence showing members of the State Department and U.S. embassy in Kiev interfered or applied pressure in criminal cases on Ukrainian soil;
- Disbursements of as much as $7 billion in Ukrainian funds that prosecutors believe may have been misappropriated or taken out of the country, including to the United States.
What is hard to understand is why why then-Ambassador Yovanovitch didn’t grant the prosecutor a visa in the face of reports of senior Ukraine officials trying to help Clinton win the 2016 election. Was Yovanovitch part of the deep state working to overturn the results of the 2016 election? It seems like it. And what has happened to the information since May? Is interim Ambassador Bill Taylor, who testified Wednesday, holding things up now?
During her October deposition to the House Intelligence Committee, Yovanovitch told Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) under oath about the email she received from congressional staffer, Laura Carey, adding that she never responded to it.
The emails, obtained by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson show that Yovanovitch responded to Carey’s initial Aug. 14 email, adding that she “would love to reconnect and look forward to chatting with you.”
On Aug. 14, Carey reached out to Yovanovitch before noting that Carey had resigned from the State Department to join the House Foreign Affairs Committee staff performing oversight work. Aug. 14 was two days after the whistleblower complaint was filed and a month before that complaint became public. But we also know the whistleblower went to Adam Schiff’s team before filing the claim. The question is, did Schiff’s office tell other Democrats on Capitol Hill what was in the complaint? And was that the “quite delicate” and “time-sensitive” matter that Carey shared with Yovanovitch?
Zeldin told Carlson it was “greatly concerning” that Yovanovitch may have testified incorrectly that she did not personally respond to Carey’s email. Note: “Testifying incorrectly” is a nice way of saying she lied.
I would highly suspect that this Democratic staffer’s work was connected in some way to the whistleblower’s effort, which has evolved into this impeachment charade. We do know that the whistleblower was in contact with [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff’s team before the whistleblower had even hired an attorney or filed a whistleblower complaint even though Schiff had lied to the public originally claiming that there was no contact. Additionally, while the contents of the email from this staffer to Ambassador Yovanovitch clearly state what the conversation would be regarding, Yovanovitch, when I asked her specifically what the staffer was looking to speak about, did not provide these details.
… I specifically asked her whether the Democratic staffer was responded to by Yovanovitch or the State Department. It is greatly concerning that Ambassador Yovanovitch didn’t answer my question as honestly as she should have, especially while under oath.
Yovanovitch has denied that she obstructed evidence of the Democratic Party’s and Hunter Biden’s crimes from reaching AG Barr. Is that a lie also?
Will the GOP questioners ask about either of these accusations?
It appears Ambassador Yovanovitch did not accurately answer this question I asked her during her “impeachment inquiry” deposition under oath. https://t.co/2Ju420Pkpb pic.twitter.com/WACsyksMzW
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) November 8, 2019
Cross posted at The Lid
