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From Russiagate To Ukrainegate
26
September, 2019
With
the “Russiagate” hoax proving to be the “most fraudulent
political scandal in American history,” as Princeton Professor
Stephen Cohen puts it,
now we have emerging an alternative – “Ukrainegate”.
President
Donald Trump is being accused of abusing his White House office to
put pressure on Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to dig into
alleged corrupt dealings by Joe Biden, the top Democratic candidate
for the forthcoming presidential elections in 2020.
To
make matters worse for Trump, he is also accused of threatening to
withhold $250 million of military aid as a way to pressure the Kiev
authorities to investigate Biden’s past relations with Ukraine,
when he was serving as Vice President in the Obama administration.
That could amount to extortion by Trump, if proven.
Democratic
political opponents and the anti-Trump liberal media are
renewing demands for
his impeachment. They
are adamant that he has now crossed a clear red line of criminality
by seeking a foreign power to interfere in US elections by damaging a
presidential rival.
For
his part, Trump denies his
conversations with the Ukrainian president were improper. He said he
phoned Zelensky back in July to mainly congratulate him on his recent
election. Trump does however admit that he mentioned Biden’s name
to Zelensky in the context of Ukraine’s notorious culture of
business corruption. The American leader maintains that Joe Biden
should be investigated for possible conflict of interest and abusing
the office of vice president back in 2016 in order to enhance the
business affairs of his son, Hunter.
Trump’s
phone call to Ukraine hit the news last week when a US intelligence
officer turned whistleblower to allege that the president was
overheard in a conversation inappropriately making “a promise to a
foreign leader”. The identity of the foreign leader was not
disclosed. But immediately, the anti-Trump US media began speculating
that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin. The keenness to point
fingers at Putin showed that the Russiagate fever is still virulent
in the US political establishment, even though the long-running
narrative alleging Russian interference or collusion collapsed
earlier this year when the two-year Robert Mueller “Russia
investigation” floundered into oblivion for lack of evidence.
Turns
out now that Trump’s telephone liaison was not with Putin, but
rather Ukraine’s Zelensky. And the anti-Trump politicos and media
are getting all fired up with “Ukrainegate” – as a replacement
for the non-entity Russiagate.
Trouble
is that this alternative conspiracy could backfire badly for Trump’s
enemies.
Vice
President Joe Biden was the White House’s point man to Ukraine,
supporting the new regime in Kiev by organizing financial and
military aid. Biden even boasted how he personally warned Yanukovych
that the game was up and that he better step down during the
tumultuous CIA-backed street violence in Kiev during February 2014.
“He was a dollar short and a day late,” quipped Biden about the
ill-fated president.
The
appointment of Biden’s washed-up son to a plum job in Ukraine
should have merited intense US media scrutiny and investigation. But
it didn’t. One can only imagine their reaction if, say, it had been
Trump and one of his sons involved.
Moreover,
in 2016, when Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was
conducting a probe into allegations of corruption and sleaze at the
gas company Burisma, among other businesses, it was Vice President
Joe Biden who intervened in May 2016 to call for the state lawyer to
be sacked. Biden threatened to withhold a $1 billion financial loan
from Washington if the prosecutor was not axed. He duly was in short
order and the probe into Burisma was dropped.
Potentially,
Joe Biden, the current top Democratic candidate for the 2020
presidency, could see his chances unraveling if “Ukrainegate” is
pushed further.
The
dilemma for his supporters among the political establishment is that
the more they try to beat up on Trump over his alleged horse-trading
with Ukraine, the more the heat can be turned by him on Biden over
allegations of graft and abuse of office to further his family’s
business interests.
Senator
Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is this
week calling for
an investigation into Biden’s conduct in Ukraine.
“Joe Biden said everybody’s looked at this and found nothing. Who is everybody? Nobody has looked at the Ukraine and the Bidens,” Mr. Graham told Fox News.“There is enough smoke here,” Graham added. “Was there a relationship between the vice president’s family and the Ukraine business world that was inappropriate? I don’t know. Somebody other than me needs to look at it and I don’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it.”
Ukrainegate
could turn out to be even far more damaging to the Democrats.
Because
there is evidence that it was the US-backed Kiev regime which helped
seed political dirt on Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign
manager. Manafort is facing jail time for fraud and tax offenses
unearthed by the Mueller probe. Mueller did not find any link between
Manafort and a “Kremlin influence campaign”, as was speculated.
However, because Manafort did work previously as a political manager
for the ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovcyh, he was seen as a
liability for Trump. Was Russiagate always Ukrainegate all along?
Apart
from Biden’s potential personal conflict of interests in Ukraine,
the country may turn out to be the key to where the whole Russiagate
fiasco was first dreamt up by Democrats, Kiev regime operatives and
US intelligence enemies of Trump.
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