"...we’re more determined than ever to drain the swamp, and that’s what we’re doing with these crazy people. A lot of bad things happened, and a lot of bad things I think are going to be revealed because there’s no way we can allow them to get away with what they would have with a normal person gotten away with. Let’s face it. These are bad people."
But it's Trump, not the Bidens, who, throughout his Ukraine intrigue, has been teaming up with "bad people"--criminals, con-men, corrupt officials, at least one high-level Russian Mafia figure. The deranged Rudy Giuliani--currently facing multiple investigations as a consequence of his shady work for foreign entities--and his buddies Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman--both currently under indictment for a criminal scheme to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign sources into Republican coffers--were Trump's point-men in this sordid affair. They were running a racketeering operation that, on Trump's behalf, was carrying out a shadow foreign policy--fabricating conspiracies, planting disinformation in the press, pursuing illicit moneymaking schemes, smearing any who stood in their way. It's a shady cast of characters.
Follow this: Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, the slimy husband-and-wife team of shit-merchants who constantly appear on Fox to cover for Trump in this impeachment business and rage against Democrats, were also working with Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Giuliani's efforts to smear Trump's political rivals. Dmytro Firtash is an Ukrainian oligarch and high-level Russian Mafia figure who has been stuck in Vienna for the past 5 years battling extradition to the U.S., where he's wanted for numerous crimes. His lawyers representing him in that effort? Toensing and diGoenova.
Firtash is connected with Trump henchmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Their scheme to replace the reformist CEO of Naftogaz, the Ukranian state gas company, with a crony that would steer contracts toward Trump-friendly businesses (especially their own)--a scheme assisted by multiple Trump administration officials--was aimed at benefiting Firtash, who controls most of the gas distribution network in Ukraine. To the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Parnas/Fruman also pitched to some American businessmen a scheme to buy gas from Qatar on a line of credit provided by Firtash, who would then buy the gas at a mark-up. Parnas' lavish lifestyle of late has been financed by Firtash. Firtash reportedly hired diGenova and Toensing at the suggestion of Parnas.
At the behest of the U.S. government, Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian Prosecutor General, was removed from his job in 2016 for corruption--he was refusing to pursue corruption investigations, actively stymying those who tried to pursue such cases and was implicated in criminal activity himself.. Then-Vice President Joe Biden arranged for Shokin's dismissal. Later, when Trump was digging for something with which to smear his potential rival Biden, Firtash facilitated the creation of an affidavit in which Shokin, in defending Firtash, alleged he was fired because he was investigating Burisma Holdings, on whose board Biden's son Hunter sat. That's the same affidavit Rudy Giuliani has waved around all over television in recent weeks. Parnas and Fruman are the ones who hooked up Giuliani with Shokin and the other corrupt former officials that have formed the basis of Giuliani's--and Trump's--conspiracy claims about Ukraine.
Toensing and diGenova also represent right-wing hack "journalist" John Solomon, who has acted as essentially part of the propaganda arm of the Team Trump racket, writing a string of articles in the Hill laying the groundwork for all of the Ukrainian conspiracy garbage in which Trump has been wallowing. Solomon ran Shokin's story. He ran with Team Trump's effort to smear Marie Yovanovitch, printing the allegations by Yuri Lutsenko, another corrupt Prosecutor General, that the ambassador interfered in his efforts to prosecute corruption and had, on their first meeting, provided him with a list of people he was not to prosecute (Lutsenko later admitted he made this up). Solomon's articles, in turn, have been cited by Trump, his son, Giuliani and all the rest as rationale for what they've been doing, but as ProPublica recently uncovered, Solomon wrote those conspiracy pieces in undisclosed partnership with Lev Parnas (who also worked with Toensing and diGenova). Behind the scenes, Team Trump had been generating its own self-justifying propaganda.
Shortly before Parnas and Fruman were arrested for their campaign finance scheme, they'd had lunch with Giuliani. They then decided to flee the U.S. When they were apprehended, they were at the airport with one-way tickets to Vienna. Where Firtash is. And Rudy Giuliani was scheduled to fly to Vienna less than 24 hours after they were to depart.
This is who and what Republicans are currently defending. Pro-Trump rightists reflexively lie, misrepresent, smear, repeat Trump's chronic lies--do anything that pops into their heads--to defend this without any concern whatsoever for either basic human decency or, perhaps more importantly, the precedent being set if they get their way. A "president" establishing a racketeering enterprise and using the full weight of the U.S. government to lean on a foreign nation to manufacture baseless "investigations" of American citizens in the hopes it will be politically beneficial to himself, and facing no consequences at all for it.
While Trump professes concern with "corruption" in Ukraine, it's a concern he extends to nothing more than his own fantasies about his political rivals. In reality, he was actively taking the side of the old Ukraine, the profoundly corrupt Ukraine run by oligarchs, gangsters and corrupt officials. Trump's sources and operatives here--Viktor Shokin, Yuri Lutsenko, Dmytro Firtash, Nazar Kholodnytskyi--are exactly the kind of criminals--"bad people"--the Ukraine is desperately trying to consign to the past. Trump parrots their stories and takes their side over the likes of AntAC--the big Ukrainian anti-corruption org that Trump's people, in an effort to rile up anti-Semites, falsely describe as controlled by an evil Jewish puppet-master--and pro-reform Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch--who, when she was perceived as an obstacles to Team Trump's corrupt schemes, was smeared and removed from her post--and the reformist CEO of Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas company--whom Team Trump was trying to replace for their own benefit--and all the rest who are trying to make Ukraine a decent place to live. A long line of corrupt Ukrainian prosecutors going back through the bad old days of the Soviet Union stand condemned by history for manufacturing investigations of their political rivals--the very thing Trump was demanding of Zelensky.
Throughout this affair, Trump has, indeed, been very concerned with corruption: he's concerned with practicing, encouraging and elevating it.
--j.
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UPDATE (20 Nov., 2019) - Robert Mackey, writing in the Intercept yesterday, has caught on:
"Behind all these lies there is an ugly truth. Under the guise of fighting corruption, the Trump administration and its Republican allies have thrown the full force of the United States government, and Fox News, into supporting what amounts to a counter-revolution in Ukraine. In a stunning reversal, Trump and his supporters have taken the side of the corrupt oligarchs and former officials ousted in 2014, as they seek to claw back power by undermining the reformers and anti-corruption activists supported by the Obama administration, under the leadership of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden."
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