quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:

This is freaking gold!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: parabellum,

^^^^ Ha ha ha. If it's not in the Political meme thread, already, it must be. "It's gold, Jerry. Gold!"

For the last couple days there has been a story going around that the State Dept IG wanted an urgent mtg w congressional committees.

Some thought this was more whistleblower stuff but coming from State.

They held the mtg and it was a nothing burger. Nothing about President Trump. In fact some of it was John Solomon reports from last May about DEMs and the Ukraine. DEMs weren't happy.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/1...nt-meeting-old-news/

"Sources familiar with the meeting said the IG handed over a packet containing, among other old materials, news articles written this past spring by The Hill’s John Solomon about Democratic ties to Ukraine."

"The briefing was a huge blow to Democrats, who were expecting bombshell information regarding the Trump administration’s contact with Ukraine and investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden. In fact, several news outlets reported earlier in the day that the briefing would be about State Department leadership retaliating against career employees who wanted to cooperate with the Democrats’ investigation into Trump."

How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...ive-russia-collusion

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor.

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).

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.

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.

Telizhenko, who no longer works for the Ukrainian Embassy, said U.S. officials volunteered during the meetings — one of which was held in the White House’s Old Executive Office Building — that they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions.

That 2014 investigation was led by the FBI and focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal, Roger Stone.

Agents interviewed Manafort in 2014 about whether he received undeclared payments from the party of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and whether he engaged in improper foreign lobbying.

The FBI shut down the case without charging Manafort.

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 (NABU) if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans.

“It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election,” he said.

That makes the January 2016 meeting one of the earliest documented efforts to build the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative and one of the first to involve the Obama administration’s intervention.

Spokespeople for the NSC, DOJ and FBI declined to comment. A representative for former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice did not return emails seeking comment.

Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn’t remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed.

But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort — a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions — was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump’s campaign chairman: “Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious.”

Kholodnytskyy said he explicitly instructed NABU investigators who were working with American authorities not to share the ledger with the media. “Look, Manafort’s case is one of the cases that hurt me a lot,” he said.

“I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort."

“For me it was the first call that something was going wrong and that there is some external influence in this case. And there is some other interests in this case not in the interest of the investigation and a fair trial,” he added.

Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general’s international affairs office, said that, shortly after Ukrainian authorities returned from the Washington meeting, there was a clear message about helping the Americans with the Party of the Regions case.

“Yes, there was a lot of talking about needing help and then the ledger just appeared in public,” he recalled.

Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures, such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych’s party. But the Americans weren’t interested: “They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else.”

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016.

NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016.

A Ukrainian court in December concluded NABU’s release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine’s parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The other case raised at the January 2016 meeting, Telizhenko said, involved Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company under investigation in Ukraine for improper foreign transfers of money. At the time, Burisma allegedly was paying then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter as both a board member and a consultant. More than $3 million flowed from Ukraine to an American firm tied to Hunter Biden in 2014-15, bank records show.

According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions.

"Unfortunately, the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C., was not invited to join the DOJ and other law enforcement-sector meetings," it said. It said it had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings it did attend.

Ukraine is riddled with corruption, Russian meddling and intense political conflicts, so one must carefully consider any Ukrainian accounts.

But Telizhenko’s claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort probe as the 2016 election ramped up is supported by the DOJ’s own documents, including communications involving Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

Nellie Ohr and Steele worked in 2016 for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that was hired by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump. Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Nellie Ohr admitted to Congress that she routed Russia dirt on Trump from Fusion to the DOJ through her husband during the election.

DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution.

“Reported Trove of documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ Black Cashbox,” Nellie Ohr wrote to her husband and federal prosecutors Lisa Holtyn and Joseph Wheatley, attaching a news article on the announcement of NABU’s release of the documents.

Bruce Ohr and Steele worked on their own effort to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who had a soured business relationship with him. Deripaska was “almost ready to talk” to U.S. government officials regarding the money that “Manafort stole,” Bruce Ohr wrote in notes from his conversations with Steele.

The efforts eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could help prove Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia. Deripaska laughed off the notion as preposterous.

Previously, Politico reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington assisted Clinton’s campaign through a DNC contractor. The Ukrainian Embassy acknowledges it got requests for assistance from the DNC staffer to find dirt on Manafort but denies it provided any improper assistance.

Now we have more concrete evidence that the larger Ukrainian government also was being pressed by the Obama administration to help build the Russia collusion narrative. And that onion is only beginning to be peeled.

But what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report.

According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

Congressional Dems are as excited as a teenager (back in the day) waiting for the new issue of Playboy to come out.

ok, I'm playing catch up here but I can't figure out how an anonymous leaker can get a death threat...

quote:

IC Inspector General Didn’t Review Ukraine Call Before Forwarding Whistleblower Complaint

Can we say "swamp dweller"?

Or, perhaps "hildacrat"?

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:

quote:

We have also confirmed that the form was definitely changed in August.

bama,

The "whistleblower" signed the old form with the language that hearsay could not be used in the complaint.

So the "new" form came out after the complaint.

The Intl IG argued that the current law did not prohibit hearsay, but the formal Intel IG form did. So the IG just rewrote the form.

Check this nugget that just dropped...The ICIG did not even review the actual transcript of the call before determining that the complaint was 'credible'

IC Inspector General Didn’t Review Ukraine Call Before Forwarding Whistleblower Complaint

Time for some more Trump swamp cleaning!

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^
I think I'd be just as satisfied to hear the slamming of prison cell doors in the fat faces of these Demotarded sumbitches.

To the rumors about Hitlery the Hag entering the Demotard race...the Albatross of leaking Intel and Top Secret data from her private servers and computers, the Uranium 1 deal, et.al., still hangs around her neck and it's beginning to rot into a maggot-infested carcass that carries with it a heinous odor. Ain't no way on God's green earth President Trump would let her get away with any of her bullshit. RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!! It would be a blood-bath...and EVERYONE knows it.

I disagree. No sending her and her minions to life in jail. They should be decorating the lamp posts in DC!

I remember that the first time I used the word "coup"-- a couple of years ago-- to describe the effort to bring down President Trump, I had second thoughts. Whoa. Wait. This is the United States of America. Coup? Really?

Yesterday the president himself used that word, and it has long been in use among those of us who have followed the corruption of the Democrat Party. Events quickly catch up and surpass what we initially thought might be exaggeration.

So, I'll tell you now what might seem like exaggeration, but will come to light clear as day: We have been witnessing the attempted takeover of America by communist totalitarians.

It's nothing less than that.

New PJW. He closes by asking for donations for a new channel, but his message is hard hitting. He’s more American that most Republican leadership.

^^^ All I can say is yes, exactly. PJW perfectly describes what we see around us. You can also read The Gulag Archipelago and right from the outset see parallels with what we are experiencing.

I will support PJW. Also Judicial Watch. And, needless to say, our president. Money is always needed, and it is something we can do directly to combat the totalitarians.

If you want to know what it would be like here if they were to win-- which they will not-- listen to the account PJW provides in that video. Or read about Mao's China and the Red Guard.

It is impossible to exaggerate what is at stake in our country right now. Think of some positive, actual thing you can DO-- like contributing to those who are fighting against the totalitarians-- and DO IT.

One other thing: in the excerpt from the former Soviet citizen, he says something very important about propaganda, which we all need to be aware of. The purpose of communist propaganda is not to convince you to believe something. Keep this in mind when you think we need to provide "information" or make counter arguments. It's just all about power. The purpose of communist propaganda is to so intimidate you that you will not dare say you do not believe something.

This phenomenon is all around us. "Climate change" is one example. Open borders is another. Hate crimes. On and on.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn says that in meetings in small towns in the Soviet Union, some apparatchik would give a rote, moronic speech and then everyone would rise and applaud. And the applause would go on and on, 15, 20, 30 minutes-- because everyone was afraid to be the first to stop applauding.

May 11th 2019.

The troubling reason why Biden is so soft on China

https://nypost.com/2019/05/11/...is-so-soft-on-china/

Why is Joe Biden so warm toward China?

Last week, Biden raised eyebrows when he shrugged off concerns over the China threat. “Come on, man,” Biden said. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”

Perhaps Biden’s insouciant attitude toward the Chinese government has to do with the fact that his family does not consider them competitors but business partners.

In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.

If it sounds shocking that a vice president would shape US-China policy as his son — who has scant experience in private equity — clinched a coveted billion-dollar deal with an arm of the Chinese government, that’s because it is.

Until the publication of my book, “Secret Empires,” no one knew the deal took place. Indeed, it took me and a team of seasoned investigators nearly two years to unearth and report the facts.

Without the aid of subpoena power, here’s what we know. The businesses of Hunter Biden and his partners created a series of LLCs involved in multibillion-dollar private equity deals with companies owned by the Chinese government.

The centerpiece of these deals is Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm controlled by Hunter Biden and his associates: Chris Heinz, who is John Kerry’s stepson, and Heinz’s longtime associate Devon Archer. The trio founded Rosemont Seneca in 2009 and quickly began making deals through a series of overlapping entities under the Rosemont name.
Enlarge Image
"Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends Hardcover "“Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends Hardcover “

Less than a year after opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter Biden and Archer were in China meeting with top Chinese officials. To assist in their new venture, they partnered with a Massachusetts-based consultancy called the Thornton Group, headed by James Bulger, son of former Massachusetts state Sen. Billy Bulger. James Bulger has the dubious honor of being named after his uncle, the notorious mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger.

The Thornton Group’s account of the meeting on their Chinese-language Web site is telling: Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden).”

The purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity.” Curiously, details about the meeting did not appear on their English-language Web site.

The timing of this meeting was also notable. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit.

Twelve days after Hunter stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing, his company signed a historic deal with the Bank of China, the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government. The Bank of China had created a first-of-its-kind investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, one of its founding partners was none other than Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.

It was an unprecedented arrangement: the government of one of America’s fiercest competitors going into business with the son of one of America’s most powerful decisionmakers.

Chris Heinz claims neither he nor Rosemont Seneca Partners, the firm he had part ownership of, had any role in the deal with Bohai Harvest. Nonetheless, Biden, Archer and the Rosemont name became increasingly involved with China. Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest, helping oversee some of the fund’s investments.

Troublingly, some of those investments had major implications for national security.

In December 2014, BHR became an “anchor investor” in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Corp. (CGN), a state-owned energy company involved in the construction of nuclear reactors. In April 2016, the US Justice Department would charge CGN with stealing nuclear secrets from the United States — actions prosecutors said could cause “significant damage to our national security.”


Of particular interest to CGN were sensitive, American-made components that, according to experts, resembled components used by the US on its nuclear submarines.

That Hunter Biden had no experience in China, and little in private equity, didn’t dissuade the Chinese government from giving his company a business opportunity in place of established global financial brands like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. In fact, the Chinese government wasn’t done funding deals with Hunter Biden.

Also in December 2014, a Chinese state-backed conglomerate called Gemini Investments Limited was negotiating and sealing deals with Hunter Biden’s Rosemont on several fronts. That month, it made a $34 million investment into a fund managed by Rosemont.

The following August, Rosemont Realty, another sister company of Rosemont Seneca, announced that Gemini Investments was buying a 75 percent stake in the company. The terms of the deal included a $3 billion commitment from the Chinese, who were eager to purchase new US properties. Shortly after the sale, Rosemont Realty was rechristened Gemini Rosemont.

Chinese executives lauded the deal.

“Rosemont, with its comprehensive real-estate platform and superior performance history, was precisely the investment opportunity Gemini Investments was looking for in order to invest in the US real estate market,” declared Li Ming, Sino-Ocean Land Holdings Limited and Gemini Investments chairman. “We look forward to a strong and successful partnership.”

The plan was to use Chinese money to acquire more properties in the United States. “We see great opportunities to continue acquiring high-quality real estate in the US market,” one company executive said. “The possibilities for this venture are tremendous.”
see also
Joe Biden's China policy is stuck in the last century

Finally, in 2015, BHR joined forces with a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned military aviation contractor Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to buy American precision-parts manufacturer Henniges. Because Henniges manufactured technology with possible military applications, the transaction required approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. CFIUS reviews are required for business transactions that have potential national security implications.

The Biden-Bank of China fact-pattern is arresting in its bravura and scale. Moreover, it turns out that the Biden dealings didn’t just take place in China, but in Ukraine, as well.

Consider the facts. On April 16, 2014, White House records show that Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner in the Rosemont Seneca deals, made a private visit to the White House for a meeting with Vice President Biden. Five days later, on April 21, Joe Biden landed in Kiev for a series of high-level meetings with Ukrainian officials. The vice president was bringing with him highly welcomed terms of a United States Agency for International Development program to assist the Ukrainian natural-gas industry and promises of more US financial assistance and loans. Soon the United States and the International Monetary Fund would be pumping more than $1 billion into the Ukrainian economy.

The next day, there was a public announcement that Archer had been asked to join the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural-gas company. Three weeks after that, on May 13, it was announced that Hunter Biden would join, too. Neither Biden nor Archer had any background or experience in the energy sector.

The younger Biden, for his part, tried to put the best possible face on the deal. He claimed that by joining the board of the natural-gas producer, he would “contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”

The choice of Hunter Biden to handle transparency and corporate governance for Burisma is curious, because Biden had little if any experience in Ukrainian law, or professional legal counsel, period. But that didn’t stop Burisma from paying the younger Biden what The New York Times has reported was as much as $50,000 a month while the company was under investigation by officials in both Ukraine and abroad.

Joe Biden’s trip to Kiev in March 2016, and his threats to withhold $1 billion in foreign aid if Ukrainian officials didn’t dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, Victor Shokin, take on added meaning when you consider that Shokin’s office had been leading an investigation into Burisma’s owner.

According to a recent New York Times report, Biden helped recruit an American consulting firm as well as former Deputy Attorney General John Buretta to help Burisma fight corruption charges. In an interview with the Kyiv Post, Buretta described his negotiations with Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko became Ukraine’s general prosecutor after Joe Biden had lobbied for his predecessor’s removal. Apparently, the negotiations worked as the case was dismissed in the fall of 2016.

Joe Biden later bragged about his efforts to get Shokin removed, though he claims Shokin’s removal was needed due to his mishandling of a number of cases in Ukraine. Hunter Biden insists he never spoke to his father about the investigation into Burisma.

Will the Senate investigate Joe and Hunter Biden’s actions in China and Ukraine? We don’t know, but they should. If a two-year investigation of President Trump, Russia and the Trump family was justified to ensure the president isn’t compromised, an investigation into Joe Biden, China, Ukraine and the Biden family is imperative.

Ha The President just called on China to investigate the Bidens. I wonder if the Dems will impeach him again

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Ha The President just called on China to investigate the Bidens. I wonder if the Dems will impeach him again

Man he beat the Bidens like the proverbial rented mule.

Peter Schweizer, author of Secret Empires and of the article posted above, was on Mark Levin last Sunday. We recorded it and finally finished watching last night. Schweitzer has the goods on the Bidens and the Chinese purchase of them. Levin asked if anyone in the MSM was interested in what he, Schweitzer, knew. Other than a WSJ reporter interviewing him for a book review, NOONE in the MSM was interested enough to talk to him.

Why do I feel like we’re living through the tribulation of the United States?