Watching the members of the House Permanent Select\nCommittee on Intelligence (HPSCI) attempting to either exonerate or crucify\nDonald Trump\u2026 depending on which side you\u2019re on\u2026 it is necessary to remind\nourselves over and over again what this is all about and what is at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early \u201890s,\nmany of the Warsaw Pact nations of eastern Europe have been used as pawns in\nthe endless post-Cold War chess game between NATO and the Russian\nFederation. While the U.S. and its NATO\nallies have attempted to nourish the seeds of freedom and democracy in\ncountries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and others, the\nRussian Federation, led by former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin, has continued to\nagitate throughout the region, hoping to one day regain its Cold War dominion\nover Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of Russia\u2019s most brazen moves has been the\ninvasion of eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in February and March\n2014. That incursion set in motion a\nseries of events that has culminated in the current attempt by Democrats to\nimpeach the president of the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Ukrainians, ill-prepared to withstand the Russian\nonslaught, appealed to the United States and its NATO allies for military\nassistance. Barack Obama, implementing\nhis preferred \u201cwhistling past the graveyard\u201d policy for dealing with\ninternational troublemakers, sent supplies of blankets and MREs (Meals Ready to\nEat). No war-fighting materiel was sent\nand for a period of three years the Ukrainians suffered heavy losses on the\nbattlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout 2016, the Ukrainians were fully aware that\nthe American people were about to elect a new leader\u2026 either former secretary\nof state Hillary Clinton or businessman Donald Trump. And although they judged either to be far\npreferable to the Obama administration, in terms of their willingness to supply\nanti-tank weapons and other lethal weaponry, they knew that if they were to\navoid returning to the smothering embrace of their Russian neighbors, they\nwould have to establish a new bilateral relationship with the U.S. Their greatest mistake was to assume the\ntruth of what they were reading in the New York Times <\/em>and the Washington\nPost<\/em>\u2026 that Hillary Clinton was destined to be the next president of the\nUnited States. Wrong!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon thereafter, when the Clinton campaign and the\nDemocratic National Committee (DNC) detected friendly signals emanating from\nUkraine, a DNC contractor, a Ukrainian American, Alexandra Chalupa, paid a\nvisit to the Ukrainian embassy in Washington. \nThe purpose of her visit was to solicit dirt on Trump\u2019s campaign\nchairman, Paul Manafort, establishing the appearance of a link between Trump\nand the Russian leadership. According to the Ukrainian ambassador, Valeriy\nChaly, the DNC contractor also sought to arrange for Ukrainian president Petro\nPoroshenko to promote the appearance of a Trump-Putin relationship by\ncommenting on Manafort\u2019s Russian consulting activities during a visit to the\nU.S. during the 2016 campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ambassador Chaly also stated that, at the time of the 2016\ncontacts, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist\nand learned only later of her ties to the DNC. As such, the embassy considered her efforts to\nbe a clear violation of a treaty between the U.S. and Ukraine signed on July\n22, 1998, a treaty that obligated both countries to root out corruption\nwhenever and wherever it was found in the bilateral relationship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So,\nhow do we make sense of all this? According\nto a Real Clear Politics<\/em> report published on October 4, 2019, it was in December 2013 and February 2014 that vice\npresident Joe Biden was assigned to serve as the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cpoint\nman\u201d for U.S. relations with China and Ukraine, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 2, 2013, Biden flew to Beijing, presumably to formalize his position as \u201cpoint man\u201d for U.S.-Chinese relations.\u00a0 Flying with him on Air Force Two was his son, 43-year-old Hunter Biden.\u00a0 According to author Peter Schweizer in his book Secret Empires \u2013 How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends<\/em>, the Bidens returned to Washington just ten days later. \u00a0On that date, it was announced that the Chinese had agreed to provide an infusion of capital in the amount of $1billion (later increased to $1.5 billion) to a small private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, which was underwritten by Christopher Kerry, the stepson of former secretary of state John Kerry, and operated by Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devin Archer. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When questioned about what appeared to be a high-dollar enrichment scheme, designed to benefit the scions of the Biden and Kerry families, and others, Biden responds, unfailingly, that his son has not received a single dollar from the Chinese.\u00a0 Biden must have learned how to parse words from the King of Parsers, Bill Clinton.\u00a0 Of course, Hunter Biden has not been paid a single dollar by the Chinese.\u00a0 But when Rosemont Seneca Partners begins to realize long term profits from their private equity lending activities, the income from those investments will be enormous. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schweizer tells us in \u201cSecret\nEmpires\u201d<\/em> that, just two months after Joe Biden was made \u201cpoint man\u201d for\nU.S.-Ukrainian relations, Hunter Biden and his business associate, Devin Archer,\nwere appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings Ltd, a notoriously\ncorrupt Ukrainian energy company. \nAccording to court documents obtained by Peter Schweizer, both men were\ncompensated at the rate of $53,300 per month, even though neither man had any\nbackground or experience in the energy industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost immediately, Hunter Biden\u2019s\nrole at Burisma raised eyebrows in Ukraine and in the Washington\u2019s foreign\npolicy community. However, nothing was\ndone to mitigate the appearance of a major conflict of interest. Schweizer tells us that, \u201cInterviews with more than a dozen people, including\nexecutives and former prosecutors in Ukraine, paint a picture of a director who\nprovided advice on legal issues, corporate finance, and strategy during a\nfive-year board term which ended in April of this year.\u201d Those interviewed also said that Hunter\nBiden\u2019s presence on the Burisma board didn\u2019t protect the company from charges\nlodged against its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, a multimillionaire former minister\nof ecology and natural resources\u2026 charges of tax violations, money-laundering,\nand license fraud during the period in which Zlochevsky served as a cabinet\nminister. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, on April 21, 2019,\nPresident Zlochevsky was defeated for reelection by Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular Ukrainian actor and TV personality,\nprompting a congratulatory telephone call from Donald Trump on July 25, 2019. This was followed by a letter from an\nanonymous \u201cwhistleblower\u201d who charged that, in that July 25 conversation, Trump used the threat of losing $400 million in U.S. military\naid to pressure Zelensky to open a probe into possible corruption involving Joe\nBiden and his son, Hunter. However, true to his reputation for\ndoing the unexpected or the unconventional, Trump was quick to release a\ntranscript produced by two separate simultaneous translators who listened in as\nTrump and Zelensky spoke. The operative portion\nof the transcriptions quote Trump as saying, in part: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.\u00a0 I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. \u00a0There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation\u2026 \u00a0I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. \u00a0As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. \u00a0Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No reasonable person\nwould describe Trump\u2019s words as being extortionary, threatening, or in any way\nan attempt at a quid pro quo. <\/em>But\nthat is how the implacable Democratic opposition sees it, prompting Democrats to\nvote overwhelmingly in favor of a series of impeachment hearings, on the basis\nthat Trump had threatened to withhold $400 million in U.S. military aide from\nUkraine if they failed to investigate official corruption by a political rival,\nJoe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the contrary, and the\nargument that congressional Republicans fail to make, is what any reasonable\nperson would conclude. When a U.S.\npresident speaks with a foreign leader, he speaks first and foremost as\npresident of the United States. The fact\nthat he also happened to be a candidate for reelection, and that the investigation\nhe requested might damage the political fortunes of a major rival for the U.S.\npresidency, was merely coincidental. In\nrequesting an investigation of the Ukrainian business activities of a U.S.\ncitizen, or citizens, Trump was simply doing his job; he was following the\ndictates of the July 1998 anti-corruption treaty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another aspect of the\nTrump impeachment farce that Republicans totally fail to exploit is the\nquestion of the existence of an anonymous \u201cwhistleblower.\u201d Instead of proceeding from the assumption\nthat the Democrats are speaking the truth when they claim that there is, in\nfact, a \u201cwhistleblower,\u201d Republicans should be going on the offense by\nquestioning whether or not there is, in fact, such a person\u2026 or was the\nwhistleblower letter produced by Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of HPSCI, and his\nstaff of anti-Trump radicals? <\/p>\n\n\n\n If there is systematic\ncorruption in U.S.-Ukrainian affairs, it is not corruption with the Trump\nfamily name on it; it is corruption with the Biden family name written all over\nit. In fact, members of Congress and the\nmainstream media are in possession of a videotape in which Joe Biden boasted at\na 2018 Council on Foreign Relations conference that he had once threatened to\nwithhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine failed to fire a federal\nprosecutor who was getting close to unearthing Hunter Biden\u2019s Ukrainian\nbusiness activities\u2026 a clear quid pro quo<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, just one year later, Democrats are\nattempting to throw Trump out of office because they support the notion that\nthe Ukrainians should be in a position to receive $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees,\nwhether or not they agree to investigate corruption in a Ukrainian energy\ncorporation with close ties to the Biden family. It appears that Trump is now in a position to\nremind corrupt Democrats and self-serving Ukrainians of the old adage that,\n\u201cBeggars can\u2019t be choosers!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Watching the members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) attempting to either exonerate or crucify Donald Trump\u2026 depending on which side you\u2019re on\u2026 it is necessary to remind ourselves over and over again what this is all … Continue reading
\nPaul\nR. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of\nthe U.S. Electoral College. He currently\nlives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green\nCountry.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"