John Solomon: Hunter Biden's Ukrainian gas firm pressed the US to end corruption allegations one month before Joe Biden forced firing of prosecutor overseeing case

Reminder: Story from May claims DNC was actively working to gather dirt on Trump from Ukraine using Alexandra Chalupa

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress. ...

Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, told me he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort. ...

“She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot, from the election,” he recalled.

After the meeting, Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his country’s assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with his assignment.

Telizhenko said that as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the Democrats.

Read the whole thing from John Solomon, here.

The Hill's John Solomon drops a bomb on Alexandra Chalupa's head, reports she may be source of Trump-Russian collusion narrative even as she spearheaded DNC/Clinton-Ukraine collusion

Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016:

In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.

Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.

Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian-American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC. He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election. ...

Reached by phone last week, Chalupa said she was too busy to talk. She did not respond to email and phone messages seeking subsequent comment. ...

Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, told me he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort. ...

“She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with Putin against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot, from the election,” he recalled. ...

Though Chaly and Telizhenko disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa’s request, they confirm that a paid contractor of the DNC solicited their government’s help to find dirt on Trump that could sway the 2016 election.

John Solomon: Joe Biden in March 2016 pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor investigating company paying Hunter Biden, bragged about it to CFR audience in 2018

Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived:

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.” ...

The timing of Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s appointment to Burisma’s board has been highlighted in the past, by The New York Times in December 2015 and in a 2016 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer. ...

According to Schweizer’s book, Vice President Biden met with Archer in April 2014 right as Archer was named to the board at Burisma. A month later, Hunter Biden was named to the board, to oversee Burisma’s legal team.

But the Ukrainian investigation and Joe Biden’s effort to fire the prosecutor overseeing it has escaped without much public debate. ...

Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.

Foreign Affairs Issue Launch with Former Vice President Joe Biden

Tuesday, January 23, 2018:

I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12^th, 13^th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

 

John Solomon is also interviewed by Michael Savage today on Joe Biden's Ukraine problem

The podcast is free and can be accessed at michaelsavage.com.

Biden's son Hunter was on a Ukraine company's payroll due to Joe Biden's influence when Joe was Vice President. Solomon reports that Joe Biden is caught on tape boasting about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who was looking into possibly improper payments to Hunter Biden's company.

The Hill's John Solomon: Obama administration had January 2016 meeting in DC with Ukrainian officials to pursue Manafort

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

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. ...

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 [Manafort] 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.”

 

I reported on this, what, like in July 2017, how POLITICO already in Jan 2017 tried to spin Hillary's collusion with Ukraine

Here, where the exploits of one anti-Russian pro-Ukrainian Alexandra Chalupa may ultimately be the origin for the whole Trump-Russia collusion narrative of the last two years.

She really ought to be investigated and deposed. Maybe she knows more than she's letting on about how the New York Times got the information it published causing Manafort to resign from the Trump campaign.

In the article below John Solomon appears to be completely oblivious to this POLITICO article excerpted at the link above, which outlined how long time Clinton ally and Ukrainian-American activist Alexandra Chalupa was instrumental in siccing Democrats on Paul Manafort for his alleged Russian ties immediately after Manafort became Trump's campaign manager in 2016. The DNC and Marcy Kaptur in particular are named as very interested parties who gave Chalupa a hearing, as were Ukrainian diplomats. Chalupa also notably claims to have been a major source on Ukraine for the reporter Michael Isikoff.

The upshot is that the Hillary campaign as the pro-Ukrainian in the 2016 race (along with John McCain!) was the intended principal beneficiary of the effort to destroy Manafort for his alleged pro-Russian activities.

As Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges:

Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.

The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years.

Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign.

FBI now admits they improperly continued to solicit and receive info from Steele through Bruce Ohr

As reported here by John Solomon:

Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.

They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” (CHS) assisting in that probe.

They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit's role as an informant. ...

Steele's FBI relationship had been terminated about three months earlier. The bureau concluded on Nov. 1, 2016, that he leaked information to the news media and was “not suitable for use” as a confidential source, memos show.

The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,” those memos show.

Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.” ...

FBI officials now admit they continued to receive information from Steele through Ohr, identifying more than a half-dozen times its agents interviewed Ohr in late 2016 and 2017, to learn what Steele was saying.

That continued reliance on Steele after his termination is certain to raise interest in Congress about whether the FBI broke its own rules.

But the memos also raise questions about Ohr’s and the Justice Department’s roles in the origins of building a counterintelligence case against the Republican presidential nominee, based heavily on opposition research funded by his rival's campaign, the DNC, and the DNC’s main law firm, Perkins Coie.

John Solomon: Lisa Page testimony leads to conclusion that Strzok's bias led him to press an investigation to achieve the political outcome of impeachment of Trump

From the story here:

The only logical conclusion, then, that congressional investigators can make is that political bias led these agents to press an investigation forward to achieve the political outcome of impeachment, even though their professional training told them it had “no big there there.”

Looks like NeverTrumpers went fishing with multiple dossiers at the FBI until NeverTrumper Peter Strzok bit

Hey, we got a live one here!

John Solomon reports in "Did FBI get bamboozled by multiple versions of Trump dossier?":

Now, memos the FBI is turning over to Congress show the bureau possessed at least three versions of the dossier and its mostly unverified allegations of collusion.

Each arrived from a different messenger: McCain, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Fusion GPS founder (and Steele boss) Glenn Simpson. ...

[T]he generally same information kept walking through the FBI’s door for months — recycled each time by a new character with ties to Hillary Clinton or hatred for Trump — until someone decided they had to act.

That someone was Strzok, whose own anti-Trump bias was laid bare by his personal text messages. 

Comey's early FBI draft memos on Hillary in May 2016 called her "grossly negligent"

But by July she was just "extremely careless".

John Solomon for The Hill notes here that 

'The change is significant, since federal law states that gross negligence in handling the nation’s intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines. ... “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information,” reads the statement, one of Comey’s earliest drafts from May 2, 2016.'

Fannie and Freddie Lose Billions But Their Top Executives Still Make Millions

American citizens are on the hook for $164 billion and counting from the ongoing failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Obama cronies who run them still make big bucks:

Fannie Mae Chief Executive Michael J. Williams received a compensation package totaling $9.3 million in 2009 and 2010, according to a March report by the FHFA inspector general. That figure includes an annual salary around $900,000, a similar amount in long-term incentive awards each year, plus $2.9 million in annual deferred pay. All three types of compensation are paid in cash.

                

Fannie Mae’s chief financial officer, David M. Johnson, was paid $4.6 million in 2009 and 2010. The company’s general counsel, Timothy Mayopoulos, had a compensation package of $4.5 million for the two years, the inspector general said.

At Freddie Mac, Chief Executive Charles Haldeman had a two-year compensation package totaling $7.8 million in salary, incentive awards, and deferred pay. Freddie’s chief financial officer, Ross Kari, was paid $4 million and its general counsel, Robert Bostrom, took home $5.2 million, according to the inspector general.

It's hard work managing a disaster.

John Solomon and Julie Vorman have much more here.