Ukraine Was Investigating Hunter Biden Before Trump’s Phone Call
. . . A revelation alters the timeline in the Dems’ surreal 'impeachment inquiry'.
by Matthew Vadum: Officials in Ukraine reportedly opened an investigation into an energy company that employed former Vice President Joe Biden’s son long before President Donald Trump’s July 25 nothing-burger of a telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that spurred the Democrats’ haphazard, increasingly Kafkaesque impeachment inquiry.
The time element of the revelation, devastating as it is to the 2016-election-nullification push disguised as an impeachment process, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media which is overly preoccupied –as usual— attacking President Trump.
The information came last week from investigative reporter John Solomon, who recently was hired as a Fox News contributor, after Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said Oct. 4 he plans to review previous corruption investigations into Hunter Biden and his former employer, Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. Hunter got the job in 2014 while his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
Solomon’s growing prominence in the media ecosystem means that leftist journalists – when they’re not busy making excuses for the secretive un-American Star Chamber-like impeachment process initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi– now feel obligated to engage in character-assassination efforts against him.
For example, Casey Michel, who boasts about being a former Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan and supposedly a former “investigative reporter” at failed George Soros-funded media outlet ThinkProgress, launched a venomous, lie-packed Media Matters-style hit piece against Solomon as he moved to Fox.
In the sleazy, tabloid-like Daily Beast, Michel mocked the respected veteran newsman from the Washington Times and The Hill as “the self-proclaimed journalist at the heart of the unfolding scandal involving Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani, and the impending impeachment of Donald Trump.”
Solomon’s work “has underpinned the entire cascade of lies the White House and Trump in particular have pushed over the past few weeks,” and is “drenched in innuendo and mischaracterizations, all in service of attacking Trump’s political opponents,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, more information is beginning to emerge about the charmed life of ne’er-do-well Hunter Biden who throughout his adult life has kept blundering into highly lucrative job opportunities because his father was famous and politically powerful.
A handful of media outlets reminded readers of the August 2008 news story – when Joe Biden was still a U.S. senator representing Delaware— about Hunter Biden being paid “an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.”
That law, opposed by left-wing activists, made it more difficult for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the federal courts. Then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) opposed the 2005 bankruptcy legislation at the time.
The Bidens’ obvious intergenerational corruption is beginning to worry some left-wing journalists like Ryan Grim at The Intercept who argues in a paywalled article that Democrats need to come clean about the Bidens if they are to salvage the 2020 presidential election.
“The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden.”
Grim cannot resist being childish and petty, referring to presidential son Eric Trump by the awkward neologism “failson,” whatever that means.
But leftists are going to find it hard to ignore the mountain of evidence accumulating about the Bidens.
On Sean Hannity’s television show Solomon said the U.S. government knew the government of Ukraine intended to examine the activities of Burisma Holdings, which employed Hunter Biden and paid him a spectacularly generous salary even though the younger Biden lacked expertise in the energy field.
The report is important because it mothballs Trump-hating Democrats’ false talking point that the president threatened during the storied phone call to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine if its new president failed to launch a probe into Burisma and Hunter Biden’s role there.
“The U.S. government had open-source intelligence and was aware as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation,” Solomon said. “This is long before the president ever imagined having a call with President Zelensky,” he added, noting Petro Poroshenko was still the president of Ukraine at that time.
Solomon said that earlier this year NABU, the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, asked to reopen an investigation into Burisma and owner Mykola Zlochevsky, and the probe began. It led to a 15-page “Notice of Suspicion” being lodged that alleged that “illicit funds” were moving through Burisma, he said.
This information was left out of the U.S. intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint, itself a bungled report on the July 25 phone call, against President Trump that was filed in September, Solomon said.
Solomon noted this allegation of “illicit funds” partly coincides with Hunter Biden’s service on Burisma’s board, which reportedly brought him up to $1 million a year. He added that Ukrainian investigators filed the Notice of Suspicion stating they were “looking at the possibility that the $3.4 million paid to Hunter Biden’s firm may have been part of the illicit funds that were moving through the company.”
“A month later, in April, the prosecutor’s office -- open-source intelligence, again -- the U.S. government officials confirming they were aware of this -- made a request of another investigative agency in Ukraine for assistance in going through these bank records,” Solomon said.
“That is a significant change in the timeline -- it was omitted from the whistleblower’s complaint, and the question is did he not know it or did he exclude it because it didn’t fit the narrative he was trying to write,” he said.
“That’s a question for Congress to answer.”
Indeed it is.
-------------------
Matthew Vadum writes for FrontPageMag.
Tags: Matthew Vadum, FrontPage Mag, Ukraine, Was Investigating, Hunter Biden, Before Trump’s Phone Call To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
The time element of the revelation, devastating as it is to the 2016-election-nullification push disguised as an impeachment process, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media which is overly preoccupied –as usual— attacking President Trump.
The information came last week from investigative reporter John Solomon, who recently was hired as a Fox News contributor, after Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said Oct. 4 he plans to review previous corruption investigations into Hunter Biden and his former employer, Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. Hunter got the job in 2014 while his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
Solomon’s growing prominence in the media ecosystem means that leftist journalists – when they’re not busy making excuses for the secretive un-American Star Chamber-like impeachment process initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi– now feel obligated to engage in character-assassination efforts against him.
For example, Casey Michel, who boasts about being a former Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan and supposedly a former “investigative reporter” at failed George Soros-funded media outlet ThinkProgress, launched a venomous, lie-packed Media Matters-style hit piece against Solomon as he moved to Fox.
In the sleazy, tabloid-like Daily Beast, Michel mocked the respected veteran newsman from the Washington Times and The Hill as “the self-proclaimed journalist at the heart of the unfolding scandal involving Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani, and the impending impeachment of Donald Trump.”
Solomon’s work “has underpinned the entire cascade of lies the White House and Trump in particular have pushed over the past few weeks,” and is “drenched in innuendo and mischaracterizations, all in service of attacking Trump’s political opponents,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, more information is beginning to emerge about the charmed life of ne’er-do-well Hunter Biden who throughout his adult life has kept blundering into highly lucrative job opportunities because his father was famous and politically powerful.
A handful of media outlets reminded readers of the August 2008 news story – when Joe Biden was still a U.S. senator representing Delaware— about Hunter Biden being paid “an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.”
That law, opposed by left-wing activists, made it more difficult for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the federal courts. Then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) opposed the 2005 bankruptcy legislation at the time.
The Bidens’ obvious intergenerational corruption is beginning to worry some left-wing journalists like Ryan Grim at The Intercept who argues in a paywalled article that Democrats need to come clean about the Bidens if they are to salvage the 2020 presidential election.
“The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden.”
Grim cannot resist being childish and petty, referring to presidential son Eric Trump by the awkward neologism “failson,” whatever that means.
But leftists are going to find it hard to ignore the mountain of evidence accumulating about the Bidens.
On Sean Hannity’s television show Solomon said the U.S. government knew the government of Ukraine intended to examine the activities of Burisma Holdings, which employed Hunter Biden and paid him a spectacularly generous salary even though the younger Biden lacked expertise in the energy field.
The report is important because it mothballs Trump-hating Democrats’ false talking point that the president threatened during the storied phone call to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine if its new president failed to launch a probe into Burisma and Hunter Biden’s role there.
“The U.S. government had open-source intelligence and was aware as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation,” Solomon said. “This is long before the president ever imagined having a call with President Zelensky,” he added, noting Petro Poroshenko was still the president of Ukraine at that time.
Solomon said that earlier this year NABU, the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, asked to reopen an investigation into Burisma and owner Mykola Zlochevsky, and the probe began. It led to a 15-page “Notice of Suspicion” being lodged that alleged that “illicit funds” were moving through Burisma, he said.
This information was left out of the U.S. intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint, itself a bungled report on the July 25 phone call, against President Trump that was filed in September, Solomon said.
Solomon noted this allegation of “illicit funds” partly coincides with Hunter Biden’s service on Burisma’s board, which reportedly brought him up to $1 million a year. He added that Ukrainian investigators filed the Notice of Suspicion stating they were “looking at the possibility that the $3.4 million paid to Hunter Biden’s firm may have been part of the illicit funds that were moving through the company.”
“A month later, in April, the prosecutor’s office -- open-source intelligence, again -- the U.S. government officials confirming they were aware of this -- made a request of another investigative agency in Ukraine for assistance in going through these bank records,” Solomon said.
“That is a significant change in the timeline -- it was omitted from the whistleblower’s complaint, and the question is did he not know it or did he exclude it because it didn’t fit the narrative he was trying to write,” he said.
“That’s a question for Congress to answer.”
Indeed it is.
-------------------
Matthew Vadum writes for FrontPageMag.
Tags: Matthew Vadum, FrontPage Mag, Ukraine, Was Investigating, Hunter Biden, Before Trump’s Phone Call To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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