Media and guilty Democrats: NO EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED THAT 2 PLUS 2 EQUALS 4

NO EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED THAT 2 PLUS 2 EQUALS 4:

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Work Raised Concerns With Obama Officials, GOP-Led Probe Confirms

Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect a gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on

Findings don’t support…?

– Hunter Biden (The Sleepy One’s son), was recruited for its board by Burisma Holdings, a corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company.

– He was hired by Burisma May, 2014, just 2 months after being discharged from the US Navy for cocaine use.

– With no experience or special knowledge of the natural gas industry, Hunter was regarded as a Burisma asset apparently because his father led the US policy toward Ukraine; Hunter was paid $50,000/month for a 5 year period ending in April, 2019. 

– Two Obama administration officials raised concerns to the White House in 2015 about Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company while his father, then Vice President Joe Biden, led U.S. policy efforts toward the country

– Vice President Biden, in his role as the lead on U.S. Ukrainian policy was charged with investigating alleged corruption in that country.

– The elder Biden,  had publicly bragged about how he had threatened the Ukrainian government that he would withhold US aid to the country amounting to billions$ if the prosecutor was not fired. The prosecutor is alleged to have been investigating for corruption at the time, Burisma, the company with which Hunter Biden had a very lucrative arrangement.

– Yoshiko M. Herrera, a political science professor and an expert on Russia and Eurasia, spoke with The Washington Post on conflicts of interest in Hunter Biden taking the role while his father was vice president.

“I think there is a conflict of interest even if it doesn’t break any laws. It’s a big deal,” the professor said. “It’s the vice president, who is the point person of the Obama administration’s policy on Ukraine, and his son is suddenly hired to be a director on the board of Ukraine’s largest private gas producer.”

– As Business Insider reported, there are concerns in the Trump administration that Biden improperly leveraged his role as vice president to push for the ousting of a the top prosecutor in Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating corruption — this being the alleged quid pro quo incident involving Joe Biden.

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Friends, there are 39 days to go before the presidential election.

There has been an investigation by the Dept of Justice going on for well over a year to determine if there was wrongdoing on the part of Obama administration officials and the national security and law enforcement apparatus in this country. Evidence already revealed strongly indicates there was wrongdoing…of the most serious kind, and directed from the highest levels of U S government.

An Attorney General, with the reputation for the highest integrity and unassailable credentials has expressed concerns over the seriousness of the matter and the threat to the legal, governmental, and security institutions of America, and has accepted the responsibility to determine the facts of the matter and bring to justice the people responsible.

And yet, the national news media has expressed only great indifference to the matter and downplayed any evidence as it is revealed.

The favorite phrase used by the media to refute a report this week by the Senate committee about any highly plausible indication of guilt on the part of the previous administration has been, “without evidence”!

The  Senate report issued this week concerning the Biden involvement in the Ukrainian corruption scandal is  a  stark foreshadowing of how the results of the Barr-Durham investigation…if they are ever revealed…will be treated.

The Wall Street Journal, whose ‘news ‘ pages cannot be described as “pro-Trump” in any way, provide the clue to the pattern: “Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect a gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on”

“Findings don’t support…” (At the beginning of this piece, a few of the known facts and assessments of the Bidens’ behavior is presented.)

It’s true! The ‘prosecutor’ did not provide a notarized letter to the Journal admitting that he was pursuing a corruption case against the “gas firm”; Joe Biden also did not issue a confession that he fired “the prosecutor” in order to protect his son.

And until those things happen, the Journal is confident that the public cannot prove that 2 plus 2 equals 4…the allegation is, thus,  ‘without evidence”.

And so, it will go with the ‘so-called’ Barr-Durham investigation. Barr has dragged his feet on this matter since the beginning…either out of some unrealistic and exaggerated sense that there should never be an indictment or a conviction in a case of official corruption unless a band of angels delivers the message ‘it is so’ from the Lord Himself, or, that Barr, Durham, or both, really don’t want to uncover wanton wrongdoing on the part of the nation’s highest officials…for any number of reasons, including being accused of “politics”..

Either way, they’ve handled the case, in that light, spectacularly. They’ve drug it out until a revealing report at this point…39 days from the election…would receive no traction, no news coverage, only denials which could not be overcome in such a brief period of time.

And the Wall Street Journal has shown how deftly massive facts and evidence can be shelved, disregarded by a simple failure to show, “without evidence:”, that 2 plus 2 equals 4 !       dlh

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For reference, The WSJ story: 9/23/20 see below

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Work Raised Concerns With Obama Officials, GOP-Led Probe Confirms

– Two Obama administration officials raised concerns to the White House in 2015 about Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company while his father, then Vice President Joe Biden, led U.S. policy efforts toward the country, a Senate investigation by Republicans concluded.

– officials working on U.S.-Ukraine relations saw Hunter Biden’s position as creating the perception of a conflict of interest with his father’s work

– a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said before the report’s release that Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee who led the probe, was using committee resources to “subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars—an attack founded on a long-disproven, hard-core right-wing conspiracy theory.”

– Republicans have accused Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that he sought the removal of the country’s top prosecutor to protect the gas company, Burisma Holdings, from investigation.    dlh

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WASHINGTON—Two Obama administration officials raised concerns to the White House in 2015 about Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company while his father, then Vice President Joe Biden, led U.S. policy efforts toward the country, a Senate investigation by Republicans concluded.

The GOP-led probe shows that officials working on U.S.-Ukraine relations saw Hunter Biden’s position as creating the perception of a conflict of interest with his father’s work, a concern that had previously been made public during last year’s impeachment proceedings. The findings, outlined in an 87-page report, don’t support a central accusation President Trump and other Republicans have made about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s duties in Ukraine: that he sought the removal of the country’s top prosecutor to protect the gas company, Burisma Holdings, from investigation.

“Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board cast a shadow over the work of those advancing anticorruption reforms in Ukraine,” the report says, calling the arrangement “problematic.”

Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said before the report’s release that Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee who led the probe, was using committee resources to “subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars—an attack founded on a long-disproven, hard-core right-wing conspiracy theory.” 

An attorney for Hunter Biden didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

With the report, Republicans on the Homeland Security and Finance committees sought to return a spotlight to the work the Bidens did in Ukraine, renewing a partisan battle over an issue that was central to Mr. Trump’s impeachment weeks before the presidential election. Mr. Trump’s attempt last year to press the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens led to his impeachment in the Democrat-led House, which ended with acquittal in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, left, with Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, center, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 16.

Republicans have long said Hunter Biden’s service on the Burisma board represented a conflict of interest with Joe Biden’s policy role in Ukraine. 

In their own report released Wednesday in response to the Republican probe, Democratic Sens. Gary Peters and Ron Wyden, the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Finance panels, said there remained no evidence that Joe Biden distorted policy to favor his son. They also charged Republicans with knowingly mirroring Kremlin-backed disinformation about the Bidens, saying the investigation relied on witnesses that have promoted Russian disinformation narratives. 

“It is unconscionable that the chairmen are continuing to advance false information intended to undermine our democratic process at the expense of the bipartisan work we should be doing to protect our national security,” Mr. Peters said.

Republicans said they relied largely on U.S. documents and testimony from U.S. officials.

The Republican investigation plumbed Hunter Biden’s financials, including payments he received from foreign entities and transactions that the report said were flagged for potential criminal activity. The committees requested information from the Treasury Department, which collects millions of suspicious activity reports from banks and financial institutions each year, as part of their probe.

Democrats wrote in their report that the information in the financial documents the committees obtained hasn’t been verified.

The Republican report contained few revelations about the Bidens’ work in Ukraine that haven’t previously emerged publicly. Republicans identified as a central finding the efforts of a State Department official, George Kent, to raise concerns in 2015 with unidentified officials at the White House working for Mr. Biden about his son’s position at Burisma. Mr. Kent served as the acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Mr. Kent previously told congressional investigators in testimony during last year’s impeachment inquiry of his concern about Hunter Biden’s board position and the potential optics of a conflict of interest, which he said at the time he had raised with the Obama White House.

“The presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine,” Mr. Kent wrote in a September 2016 email to other senior State Department officials.

In testimony to the Senate committees for their investigation, the report says Mr. Kent explained he was concerned Hunter Biden’s position could send the wrong message at a time when U.S. officials were pressing Ukraine to root out corruption. He said he believed that Hunter Biden should have stepped down from his position at Burisma. Hunter Biden took the board position with Burisma in May 2014 and stepped down in April 2019 and was paid roughly $50,000 a month for his work.

Mr. Kent also said that the U.S. government never made a decision about Burisma that was affected by Hunter Biden’s presence on the company’s board.

“So there was no time, as I’ve testified, that the U.S. government, the U.S. Embassy ever made a decision about Zlochevsky or Burisma where we took the presence of a private citizen on the board into account. We made the decision on the merits,” Mr. Kent told Senate investigators.

In addition to Mr. Kent, the Senate committees also found that Amos Hochstein, a U.S. special envoy for international energy affairs, raised concerns directly to Joe Biden about his son serving on the Burisma board. Mr. Hochstein testified that he informed the vice president in October 2015 that media outlets tied to Russia were highlighting Hunter’s position to undermine his anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden has said that being on Burisma’s board while his father worked on the U.S. relationship with Ukraine showed poor judgment.

Mr. Trump and allies have said that Joe Biden’s call for the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016 while vice president was to protect his son as Ukrainian officials probed Burisma, though they never brought charges. During Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, Republicans highlighted a video from 2018 of Joe Biden discussing with a U.S. think tank his earlier threat to withhold loan guarantees from Ukraine if the country didn’t fire the prosecutor.

Joe Biden’s actions at the time had the support of the Obama administration, Republicans in Congress and U.S. allies, and were aimed at a prosecutor accused of corruption at a time the Burisma probe was dormant. The report states that witnesses said Joe Biden was executing the U.S. policy consensus by pushing for the removal of the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.

Mr. Shokin has denied any misconduct, calling his firing illegal.

The owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, a minister of natural resources in Ukraine until 2012, was accused by anticorruption activists in Ukraine of improperly granting gas-extraction licenses to firms affiliated with him, and was investigated for alleged abuse of power, illegal enrichment and money laundering. Mr. Zlochevsky was never formally charged with any crimes and has denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Kent told Senate investigators that he viewed Mr. Zlochevksy as corrupt.

President Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, have set off an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday lays out a timeline of interactions between the president’s inner circle and Ukrainian officials. Photo Composite: Laura Kammermann/The Wall Street Journal (Originally Published October 4, 2019)

The prosecutor Joe Biden sought to have removed had dragged his feet on those investigations, Western diplomats have said, and effectively quashed one in London by failing to cooperate with U.K. authorities, who had frozen $23.5 million of Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets.

Mr. Johnson said last year in a radio interview the “whole world” thought Mr. Shokin wasn’t doing a good job. Witnesses in the Senate probe said the U.S. wanted Mr. Shokin removed in 2016 in part so the country would investigate Mr. Zlochevsky more rigorously, according to the report.

The report includes emails provided by Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who has accused the Ukrainian government of actively working against Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. Democrats have questioned the Republican interest in Mr. Telizhenko amid concerns from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia is seeking to spread disinformation about Mr. Biden to harm his presidential candidacy. In May, Mr. Johnson called off a planned vote on a subpoena for Mr. Telizhenko, after a classified FBI briefing.

Republicans said that Obama administration officials had previously been in frequent contact with Mr. Telizhenko when he worked in Washington.

Mr. Telizhenko, who has worked closely with Trump personal attorney Rudi Giuliani in his efforts to gather information in Ukraine, said: “I’m glad that all the facts about Biden that were in the press before and dismissed as conspiracy theories have now been put out by the Senate.”

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(Joe Biden Politifact “fact checks”

Biden said:

“Here’s the deal: 3 plus 3 equals 7…no joke!”

GOP says he’s lying”

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Politifact: Biden did say that ; At the time, however, there were many Democrats who held the similar belief regarding 3 plus 3; therefore Biden didn’t lie; the charge is wrong!

Donald Trump ad misleads about Joe Biden, Ukraine and the prosecutor

A campaign ad from President Donald Trump claims it has “facts” about the Bidens and Ukraine, but instead mashes ideas together to create a highly misleading 30-second tale.

“Fact: Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor,” the narrator says, and then cuts to a clip of a Biden statement: “if the prosecutor is not fired you’re not getting the money. Well son of a bitch, he got fired.”

The ad then continues:

“Fact: the prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden’s company. Fact: Democrats want to impeach President Trump for discussing this investigation with Ukraine’s President. Fact: Donald Trump won but Democrats want to overturn the election.”

The ad distorts the known facts about Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, where Biden’s son Hunter Biden served on the board.

The Trump campaign announced the TV ad on Oct. 9. It has also been visible on social media.

Key takeaways:

• Biden did want Shokin fired, but western leaders had widely criticized the prosecutor general as corrupt and ineffective. Biden was leading a widespread consensus in asking for removal.

• A former Ukrainian official said the investigation into Burisma was dormant under Shokin.

• Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry for Trump’s statements suggesting he wanted Ukraine to investigate a political rival in exchange for political favors.

“Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor.”

Biden did call for Ukraine to fire Shokin, but the ad fails to note that there were widespread calls for his ouster.

Biden assumed a lead role in U.S. diplomacy toward Ukraine after a popular revolution in early 2014 that led to pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country. Shokin became top prosecutor in 2015, after Yanukovych went into exile. A frustrated Biden in Dec. 2015 threatened to withhold $1 billion unless Shokin was fired, in hopes that a new prosecutor would do more to enforce the law. According to Biden, it worked. 

The Trump campaign ad includes a clip of Biden’s partial reports at a Jan. 23, 2018, event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Biden spoke about getting a commitment from then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and from then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours,” Biden recounted. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b—-. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

In spite of the spin that Politifact dutifully uses to shield Biden, read carefully Trump distorted nothing about “the known facts”.  Politifact is incredibly impervious to any implications of the Biden connections and benefit from Ukraine corruption.