January 15, 2020: Trump Assembles Sleaze Bag Crew to "Fight" Corruption in Ukraine

 

1/15/20: If you thought the Ukraine Affair couldn’t get worse, you were wrong. It just got worse.

 

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Trump assembles the worst corruption-fighting crew in the history of fighting corruption.

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But first, let’s reset some of the characters you need to know about, or keep in mind, if you are joining the story. 

We have one former U.S. ambassador, one personal lawyer to President Trump, and one eccentric Republican businessman. There are four felons, a Ukrainian oligarch fighting extradition in a case involving more possible felonies, and two individuals under indictment. Throw in two regular contributors to Fox News, a Ukrainian politician suspected of mishandling government money, and one U.S. president about to get his fat ass impeached.

 

 

CAST OF CHARACTERS 

Marie Yovanovitch: former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, target of Trump allies who felt she was blocking their back channel efforts to get dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden (and also maybe make some serious cash in Ukraine). Yovanovitch is the only person listed here who seems to have no criminal inclinations.

 

Rudy Giuliani: Trump’s personal lawyer; a man with no governmental or diplomatic position.

 

Lev Parnas: businessman working behind the scenes for Giuliani; currently in jail after bail was denied; indicted for laundering foreign money and passing it to Trump campaign groups and the Trump inaugural committee.

 

Igor Fruman: associate of Parnas and Giuliani; under indictment for the same reasons as Parnas. (See: 10/17/19.)

 

Robert Hyde: Republican businessman and 2020 candidate for Congress. His chances for election are not going to be enhanced by this story.

 

President Donald J. Trump: claims his only interest in getting Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden was his desire to ferret out corruption in Ukraine. That man really hates corruption!

 

Dmytro Firtash: Ukrainian oligarch, currently under indictment for bribery; has been fighting extradition to the United States for years.

 

Yuriy Lutsenko: former interior minister in Ukraine; removed from office in 2012 after being found guilty of embezzlement and abuse of power. Also convicted in a second case involving illegal surveillance.

 

Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova: lawyers who were working with Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, and others. Frequent “unbiased” guests on Fox News; a married couple.

 

Imaad Zuberi: pled guilty to multiple felonies last week, including funneling foreign money to Team Trump 2016. (See: 1/7/20.)

 

George Nader: pled guilty to multiple felonies on Monday, including sex-trafficking of a minor. Also alleged to have passed illegal foreign campaign donations to Team Trump 2016. (See: 1/14/20.)

 

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates: helped run the Trump 2016 campaign. Both have pled guilty to or been found guilty of, multiple felonies. Almost all those felonies involved corrupt activities in Ukraine.

 

* 

“You are bringing into question all my allegations. Including about B.” 

TO SAY THE LEAST, if your true intent was to fight corruption this is not the platoon you’d want to lead into battle. 

Now a trove of fresh text messages and documents provided to Congress by the lawyer for Mr. Parnas, gives fresh lie to the president’s claim that it was always corruption that was on his mind in dealing with Ukraine. We learn yet again that Parnas, Giuliani, and assorted Ukrainians of less than sterling repute, were working behind the scenes to get rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch. 

As early as March 22, 2019, we know what it was Rudy and his feloniously-inclined friends wanted. Mr. Lutsenko promised on that date that if Yovanovitch could be disposed of he would try to trash “B.” In a text to Parnas he explained the necessity for her removal. “It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam – you are bringing into question all my allegations. Including about B.”

Ambassador Yovanovitch.

 

Based on other documents released by Mr. Parnas’ lawyer, it’s clear that “B” is shorthand for either “Biden” or “Burisma,” which in this case are essentially synonymous, Burisma being the company Hunter Biden worked for – and by some freakish coincidence, the only company in the whole wide world that President Trump wanted investigated for corruption. 

In other words, Mr. Lutsenko was promising to help trash Hunter and his company, or Joe Biden, a candidate for president in the next election. 

Even worse, the text messages between Parnas and Lutsenko and Parnas and Hyde (see below) soon take on a sinister complexion. At one point, Lutsenko complains, “And here you can’t even get rid of one [female] fool.” 

He even adds an emoji, a frowning face. 

Parnas replies in a pair of texts: “She’s not a simple fool trust me.” Then: “But she’s not getting away.” 

More ominously, on March 23, Parnas shares messages with Robert F. Hyde, a new actor in a sorry saga. Hyde happens to be a GOP candidate for Congress. He has donated thousands of dollars to President Trump’s campaigns, and could sometimes be found schmoosing at Mar-a-Lago with the shadiest denizens of Trumpistan. For his part, Parnas keeps sending Hyde information meant to damage Yovanovitch’s reputation. 

Hyde responds, “Fuck that bitch.” 

Later, he adds, “Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in [sic] that.” 

 

Mr. Hyde with Donald Trump Jr.

“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.” 

Then it gets weird. Hyde appears to be keeping Yovanovitch under surveillance. Later that day, Hyde texts Parnas, “She under heavy protection outside Kiev.” 

“I know crazy shit,” Parnas replies. 

“My guy thinks maybe FSB..?” Hyde texts back. That is, he seems to believe that Russian security agents are protecting the U.S. ambassador, which shows you what a conspiracy-theory nut he is. 

Or did he believe Yovanovitch was a Russian agent? 

Nuttier yet.

 

On March 25, Hyde and Parnas text at some length. Hyde knows a great deal about the ambassador’s whereabouts. “They are moving her tomorrow,” he says in his first text. 

Then this: “The guys over they [there] asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them.” 

“Wake up Yankees man,” Hyde adds. “She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off. She’s next to the embassy. Not in the embassy. Private security. Been there since Thursday.” 

Parnas replies simply, “Interesting.” 

“They know she’s a political puppet,” Hyde says. “They will let me know when she’s on the move.” 

Parnas: “Perfect.” 

Hyde: “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.” And again: “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money…what I was told.” 

Parnas: “Lol.” 

(I think he should have added an emoji.)

Hyde with Don Sr.

 

The two men text again on March 26. Hyde still has eyes in Ukraine; and those eyes are on the ambassador: “Update she will not be moved special security unit upgraded fore on the compound people are already aware of the situation my contacts are asking what is the next step because they cannot keep going to check people will start to ask questions.” 

Then he adds, “If you want her out they need to make contact with security forces. From Ukrainians.” 

As both CNN and Vox have noted, on March 27, Hyde again provided Parnas with a heads up. “Nothing has changed she is still not moving they check today again. It’s confirmed we have a person inside.”

 

On March 29, Hyde tells Parnas the ambassador has had “visitors.” He wonders, “Hey brother do we stand down [emphasis added]??? Or you still need intel be safe” Hyde then asks, “Hey broski tell me what we are doing what’s the next step?” 

Then, as far as we know, Parnas and Hyde don’t communicate again for two months. On May 20, Trump decides to remove Ambassador Yovanovitch from her post.

Just for fun, another felon in the mix, Roger Stone, left.

Having dinner with Hyde.

 

* 

AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED, CNN and other news organizations reached out to Hyde last night and today, to ask if he was threatening harm to another American citizen in these texts. 

“No effing way,” he responded. “What kind of Bull Schiff question is that?” 

According to CNN, a check of Hyde’s website shows him posing for photos with Parnas, President Trump, and others. 

The Hartford Courant further explains: 

“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” Lawrence Robbins, a lawyer for the ex-ambassador, said in a statement released to NBC News Thursday evening. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”

 

Hyde did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As the story spread across social media, he posted a tweet that said, “Thank you for your kind words and support,” and included a link to his campaign fundraising page.

 

“Please click the link to make a contribution to our campaign so we can help get the house from [Rep.] Adam Bull Schiff and find the 12 billion dollars that disappeared in Ukraine under Maria Yovanovitch,” Hyde wrote.

 

Mother Jones, a left-wing news organization, also followed up on the story. Hyde’s social media pages,   

…feature a parade of photos of him posing with Trump and other notable Republicans, including Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Rep. Jim Jordan, now-convicted felon Roger Stone, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. A financial disclosure form he filed as a congressional candidate notes that he did public relations work for a mysterious Trump donor from China (whom he once introduced Trump to at Mar-a-Lago). In November, he texted a reporter for CT Insider pictures of himself with Rudy Giuliani and two Giuliani associates who have been indicted, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman. 

 

Again, you don’t have to be a sleuth to deduce that these are not the people you would pick to fight corruption if you were President of the United States and you really wanted to fight corruption. 

Left to right: Parnas, Fruman, unknown man in glasses, Giuliani and Hyde.

 

Firtash fights extradition – spends a few million. 

In fact, Parnas, Fruman and Giuliani were happy to work with Mr. Firtash, in an effort to end efforts to extradite him to the U.S. And they had help. We know that Toensing and diGenova were doing legal work for Firtash, and billed him more than $1 million. (At the same time, they were appearing regularly on Fox News to lambast the whole House impeachment inquiry. DiGenova likened the original whistleblowers to “suicide bombers.” He insisted that Democrats were committing “regicide.” 

An odd choice of words, surely, to describe an investigation into the conduct of a President of the United States. 

We also know that Toensing and diGenova were paying handsomely for the services of an interpreter: Lev Parnas!! When that story leaked, Rudy denied knowing Firtash and Firtash said he wouldn’t know Rudy from an eggplant wearing glasses. President Trump said he didn’t know Parnas of Fruman either, even though pictures soon surfaced, showing the men smiling together.

 

Once these details leaked, legal experts agreed Firtash’s chances of having extradition ever waved were probably dead. 

As for Firtash, here is how the Justice Department described the case against him, when the indictment was unsealed in April 2014: 

A federal indictment returned under seal in June 2013 and unsealed today charges six foreign nationals, including a Ukrainian businessman [that is: Firtash] and a government official in India, with participating in an alleged international racketeering conspiracy [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] involving bribes of state and central government officials in India to allow the mining of titanium minerals. Five of the six defendants are also charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), among other offenses.

 

…Beginning in 2006, the defendants allegedly conspired to pay at least $18.5 million in bribes…The mining project was expected to generate more than $500 million annually from the sale of titanium products, including sales to unnamed “Company A,” headquartered in Chicago.

One defendant, Dmitry Firtash, aka “Dmytro Firtash” and “DF,” 48, a Ukrainian national, was arrested March 12, 2014, in Vienna, Austria. Firtash was released from custody on March 21, 2014, after posting 125 million euros (approximately $174 million) bail, and he pledged to remain in Austria until the end of extradition proceedings.

Five other defendants remain at large: Andras Knopp, 75, a Hungarian businessman; Suren Gevorgyan, 40, of Ukraine; Gajendra Lal, 50, an Indian national and permanent resident of the United States who formerly resided in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Periyasamy Sunderalingam, aka “Sunder,” 60, of Sri Lanka; and K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao, aka “KVP” and “Dr. KVP,” 65, a Member of Parliament in India who was an official of the state government of Andhra Pradesh [the state where the mining was to begin] and a close advisor to the now-deceased chief minister of the State of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy.

 

Clearly, if you’re hoping to stay out of jail, it helps to have millions to spend on your defense. Firtash has now stalled out the courts for nearly seven years.

 

A federal grand jury in Chicago brought in an indictment under seal in June 2013. All six defendants were charged with one count each of racketeering conspiracy, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and two counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering. Firtash and four others got an additional charge of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. 

The Justice Department also noted, “As alleged in the indictment, the defendants used U.S. financial institutions to engage in the international transmission of millions of dollars for the purpose of bribing Indian public officials to obtain approval of the necessary licenses for the [mining] project.” 

They allegedly financed the project and transferred and concealed bribe payments through a company controlled by Firtash, and “used threats and intimidation to advance the interests of the enterprise’s illegal activities.” 

So, let’s state the obvious for any Trump fans who might be reading this most excellent blog. If President Trump cared about fighting corruption in Ukraine, the team he assembled would seem akin to asking Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and Jeffrey Epstein to shield young women from sexual abuse.

BLOGGER’s NOTE (4/19/22): While updating my blog, I decided to check how Hyde did in his run for office. He didn’t win a seat in Congress in 2020; but the man does not give up. He’s entered in the GOP primary, in August 2022, and hopes to gain a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

A little more checking, and I discover that Hyde was in the “war room,” in Washington D.C., on January 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists were plotting to overturn the results of the election – and destroy democracy once and for all.

January 20, 2020: President Trump's "Crack" Corruption-Fighting Team in Ukraine

 

IN THIS POST, WE BEGIN COVERING YEAR FOUR OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY....

NADIR OF DEMOCRACY

  

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“The worse [sic] part of Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t what we learned about him, it’s what we learned about our Family & Friends.” 

“Dax Gigandet” on Twitter

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1/20/20: Year Four of the Trump Presidency begins like Year Two, and Year Three. Most Americans understand that the man in the White House is both incompetent and a threat to democracy.    

(At least the economy is strong.)

 

* 

THE GENTLEMAN below is Lev Parnas and that’s his mugshot. He’s the currently-indicted former bosom pal/business partner of Trump personal lawyer/bosom pal Rudy Giuliani. 

Rudy and Lev used to be tight.

 

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Chasing after corruption in Ukraine, like a pit bull chasing a fat mailman.

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Mug shot of Lev Parnas.

 

President Trump has said that he does not know Parnas. Vice President Jesus has hinted he wouldn’t know Parnas if Parnas passed the collection plate in church. Even Rudy is having difficulty remembering. 

“Lev, who?” 

So, let’s refresh our memories. Parnas, Igor Fruman (also a pal of Rudy’s) and two other lesser figures have been, 

charged in a four-count indictment alleging that each of the defendants conspired to violate the ban on foreign donations and contributions in connection with federal and state elections. In addition, PARNAS and FRUMAN were charged with conspiring to make contributions in connection with federal elections in the names of others, and with making false statements to and falsifying records to obstruct the administration of a matter within the jurisdiction of the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”). 

 

Have we mentioned lately that a lot of felons and alleged felons show up in stories about Team Trump? Parnas and his co-defendants were allegedly funneling foreign money into GOP and Trump campaign coffers. 

Or: Foreign policy for sale!

 

* 

YOU MAY BE ASKING yourself, “How can this be???” We have all heard President Trump insist that where Ukraine is involved, he only cares about cleaning up corruption. He wants to clean it all up! We have been told that he is all for investigating corruption in every shape, color and shoe and hat size. His defenders in Congress have told us the president really cares about Ukraine. 

He can’t stop thinking about Ukraine, even when he’s golfing. 

We know that in his famous July 25 phone call to the president of Ukraine, Trump asked the Ukrainians to get involved in his efforts to clean up corruption in their country, by investigating just one specific company. That company, by coincidence, was Burisma, which by an even more amazing coincidence happened to be the company for which Hunter Biden worked. 

What were the chances!

 

If you listened to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) shouting about all the sleazy Democrats in Congress who started investigating Trump – after a whistleblower tooted warning – you know Trump was going to be chasing after corruption in Ukraine, like a pit bull chasing a fat mailman. 

We know Acting White House Chief of Babysitting Mick Mulvaney told reporters that military aid was being withheld because the Department of Justice was participating in an investigation into corruption in Ukraine. We also know DOJ immediately offered this assessment. “If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us,” a DOJ spokesperson announced.

 

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THIS IS WHERE the crack corruption-crushing crew assembled by the president comes into view. Rudy would lead the crusade. The president hired Rudy. Rudy hired Lev and Igor and those three and several other lesser lights went to work investigating all the companies and individuals listed below. Not just Burisma, the company for which the son of a political rival had been employed. Not just Hunter Biden and maybe Joe Biden, his dad. Trump and his crusaders against corruption were coming. Look out, Ukrainian scumbags. Your days are numbered! 

Here’s the list: 

1)     Burisma

2)     Hunter Biden (and maybe Joe)

3)     ….

4)     ….

5)     ….

6)     ….

7)     ….

8)     ….

9)     ….

10)  …

 

Okay, there were no other companies or individuals. In fact, there were zero Ukrainians on the list. 

 

Paul Manafort, corruption fighter extraordinaire! 

In fact, the crusade for a clean Ukrainian government began even before Trump was elected. He began assembling a crack crusading crew in March 2016, when he hired Paul Manafort to help win the presidency. By June, Manafort was heading up the Trump campaign. He was leading the fight against crookery in all its manifold forms, like General Custer charging the Lakota and Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. 

Manafort had vast experience in the corruption-fighting field. As a young man he and Roger Stone (both of whom have been convicted on multiple felony charges in recent years) set up a Washington law firm that specialized in cleaning up the reputations of world leaders. See! Cleaning up corruption! The two partners were good at what they did, prospered, and became known for their fine work as part of “The Torturer’s Lobby.” That’s how you clean up corruption. You spray perfume on the reputations of corrupt Nigerian politicians and others. 

Who like torture!!

 

Eventually, Manafort and Stone parted ways. Manafort went to work crusading for good government – in – of all places – Ukraine! He was adept at fighting corruption. He made tens of millions fighting. When he was done, he had piles of cash stashed in secret bank accounts in Cyprus. Not just one secret account. Fifteen. Manafort also fought the good fight by setting up shell companies to handle all the money he was making fighting crime. Not just one shell company. Ten! Ten shell companies. He was like a corruption-fighting conglomerate. Manafort’s reputation for fighting crime grew. He made millions working for leading Ukrainian politicians, only some of whom had to flee to Russia to avoid arrest after stealing from their people. 

Nowadays, the “Fake News” folks like to undercut Mr. Manafort’s fine work by quoting from Department of Justice and court documents, showing that Manafort had worked for known money-launders. Reporters crank out “Fake News” stories, noting that Mr. Manafort had – since going to work for Mr. Trump – been found guilty of a whole bunch of felonies and pled guilty to a whole bunch more – including witness tampering. They add that that tampering took place in 2018; and then Konstantin Kilimnik, the tampered-with witness, fled to Russia. 

So, as any fool could see, Team Trump has always been huge when it comes to fighting corruption. 

Only cynics could fail to see it.

 

Nor dare we ignore the corruption-crushing efforts of Mr. Rudy Giuliani. Per President Trump’s instructions, he traveled to Ukraine on several occasions, always in an effort to ferret out crooks who might be related to U.S. political opponents of his boss. While Rudy was visiting, he told everyone he met that he was functioning as Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer. He wasn’t there as a representative of the President of the United States. He wasn’t representing the U.S. government. He had one client. Trump. And Rudy knew he would need help. So, he hired two famous corruption fighters, Parnas and Fruman. The trio set to work. Their first move in their crusade was to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired. 

That was the perfect place to begin! Even though no one had ever accused the ambassador of corruption.

 

* 

MEANWHILE, back in Washington, Manafort and Stone were showing up in court, as part of the crusade to clean up government, home and abroad. Manafort was cleaning up by getting indicted and convicted by a jury on eight felony counts. The same jury voted 11-1 to convict on ten more. Manafort got off on those charges. Later he agreed to cooperate with investigators. He admitted to those extra ten charges, but they did not, technically, count against him. 

Otherwise, he would be the clear leader in the felony count, regarding all the assorted felons on Team Trump. 

Rick Gates, his corruption-fighting sidekick, who worked with him in Ukraine, pled guilty to multiple felonies also. Gates began cooperating with prosecutors. 

There were other hiccups along the way. Manafort violated his cooperation agreement. The feds slapped him with new charges. He went to court again. He got thumped in court again. He got more felonies added to his record. Currently, he’s serving seven-and-half years in prison. 

This makes fighting corruption kind of hard.

 

Stone happened to bump into a Russian in the spring of 2106. The Russian said he had dirt on Hillary Clinton. If Stone wanted to fight corruption, he would have to pay $2 million to get his hands on the dirt. Stone told the Russian that his boss, Mr. Trump, was cheap. He would never pay that much. 

Later, Stone told a congressional committee that he had never met with any Russians during the campaign. Not even anyone who sounded Russian. His corruption-fighting career came to a halt, however, when a jury convicted him on seven felony counts, including lying under oath and witness tampering. 

With a good chunk of his corruption-fighting team suddenly jailed, or awaiting sentencing, the President of the United States turned to Rudy, and Rudy turned to Lev and Igor to lead the fight.

 

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“Protecting the integrity of our elections – and protecting our elections from unlawful foreign influence – are core functions of our campaign finance laws.”  

Notice of arrest, Southern District of New York

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At first, the trio did some excellent work for Mr. Trump. As noted, they started cleanup on Aisle 1, by getting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired. You can see how committed Lev and Igor were to cleaning up Ukraine when you read the notice of their arrest: 

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “As alleged in the Indictment, the defendants broke the law to gain political influence while avoiding disclosure of who was actually making the donations and where the money was coming from. They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official – a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Protecting the integrity of our elections – and protecting our elections from unlawful foreign influence – are core functions of our campaign finance laws. And as this Office has made clear, we will not hesitate to investigate and prosecute those who engage in criminal conduct that draws into question the integrity of our political process.”

 

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “Campaign finance laws exist for a reason. The American people expect and deserve an election process that hasn’t been corrupted by the influence of foreign interests, and the public has the right to know the true source of campaign contributions. These allegations aren’t about some technicality, a civil violation, or an error on a form. This investigation is about corrupt behavior and deliberate law breaking. The FBI takes the obligation to tackle corruption [ironic emphasis] seriously – there are no exceptions to this rule.”

 

In other words, the F.B.I. had joined the fight for clean government in Ukraine by arresting Rudy’s pals.

 

Amnesia spread throughout the Trump administration, like that Chinese coronavirus. Attorney General William Barr said he wouldn’t know Parnas or Fruman if they jumped out of a tree and landed on him while he was out walking his poodle. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed. He had never laid eyes on those characters. He wasn’t sure he could pick them out of a police lineup. Interesting – since they had been instrumental in getting a U.S. ambassador fired. 

The fact that all his friends now seemed to be turning their backs on him, just because he was under arrest, made Mr. Parnas sad. He started posting videos and pictures to remind his pals of happier times, when they were in the fight to clean up Ukraine together. He posted pictures showing him with Rudy. He had another – with Rudy – and Igor. We saw Lev sitting down for breakfast with Donald Trump Jr. We saw Lev in a video, taken at Mar-a-Lago. Here we could watch him introduce other Ukrainians to the president, but only the non-corrupt kind of Ukrainians. (We hope.) We saw Lev and Igor and Rudy standing with President Trump and Vice President Pence in another photo. All five gentlemen were smiling. 

When asked by reporters about Parnas, Vice President Jesus, responded, “I don’t know the guy.” Any claim that Pence knew about the scheme to delay military aid to Ukraine, as Parnas said he did, was, according to a spokesperson for the vice president, “completely false.” Parnas released another video. In it he could be seen holding Mrs. Pence’s hand. It was a 23-second clip, to be fair. It might not prove much. We do know Parnas ran in high Trump circles.

VP Pence, Fruman, Parnas, President Trump, Rudy Giuliani in happier times.

 

* 

He might have stolen a few pennies from the Ukrainian people. 

WE ALSO KNOW that Lev, Igor and Rudy and a number of other dedicated corruption fighters did some of their best work in trying to get a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash out of a jam. 

The crusaders quickly went to work to save Firtash, who was being targeted unfairly under U.S. law. These efforts made Firtash happy. After Parnas got arrested, Dmitry sent Lev $1 million. But he thought the safest way to fight corruption was to break up the money into five equal installments and deposit it in Lev’s wife’s bank account. Lev and his lovely wife promptly forgot they had that extra money when listing assets at Lev’s first bail hearing. When you are busy battling crooks it’s easy to forget a million dollars. In that situation, you know you would. You would be balancing the checkbook. You would see that your wife had a million more in her account than expected. “Honey,” you would yell to your spouse in the kitchen, “Do you know anything about these five installments of $200,000 that have showed up in your account?” 

Then you would go back to fighting corrupt oligarchs and politicians in Ukraine. All of them named Biden. 

Because that is your mission!

 

This is why you work for President Donald J. Trump. You are not in it for the money. You would fight corruption for free, with your bare hands, and stand there smiling, in a picture, by Trump’s side. But if someone wanted to give you a million dollars…well, you would take it to be polite. So Lev and Igor and Rudy kept up the fight to help Firtash avoid extradition to the United States, just because he’s under federal indictment for bribery and money-laundering. Also, because he might have stolen a few pennies from the Ukrainian people. 

Firtash? He too wanted to fight the corruption – not be the corruption. For that reason he paid another $1 million to two American lawyers, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. Joe and Victoria are married, and one way they like to help drain the Ukrainian swamp is to show up on Fox News, and talk about corruption problems in Ukraine, none of which involve Firtash. 

You have probably already guessed it. Joe and Victoria want to clean up corruption by focusing on Hunter Biden. 

And Hunter’s dad.

 

The happy couple had a plan. They would pay Lev Parnas to be their interpreter, so they could fight corruption in more than one language. Parnas would receive $400,000 for his services, leading him to joke at one point, “I’m the best paid interpreter in the world.” Rudy pitched in and asked Yuri Lutshenko, former prosecutor general of Ukraine, if he would like to fight corruption by handing over $200,000, and asked a second group of Ukrainians to chip in $300,000. That way, he and the boys would have the cash they needed to battle the criminals. 

 

Can you guess who gave Yanukovych an “extreme makeover?” 

At this point, the story takes a few more twists and turns. Lutshenko is a famous corruption fighter in his own right – and it was a shame back in 2012, when he was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to spend time in prison. Then it sucked when he got sentenced to spend time behind bars again on other charges. Then Victor Yanukovych, the President of Ukraine, pardoned him in 2013. Then the president decided shortly after that he might need to go after corruption by fleeing to Russia. Then Reuters described Mr. Yanukovych as a “toppled ‘mafia’ president,” which was mean, and reported that he had been fighting corruption by absconding with billions of dollars, which only technically belonged to the Ukrainian people. 

Now, for just a moment, we must back up a little. Can you guess who – according to a U.S. State Department cable in 2006 – helped give Yanukovych an “extreme makeover” when he was running to be president in Ukraine?  

 

You will never guess. So, I will tell you. It was Paul Manafort! Did we already mention Manafort’s lobbying firm, and its fine reputation?  Manafort was the perfect man for this clean-up job. 

As Time explained, in those days, Yanukovych was head of the Party of Regions, which the U.S. State Department described as, 

“a haven” for “mobsters and oligarchs.”

 

Making things harder for Manafort were the candidate’s rough manners and criminal past, which had dimmed his chances of winning elections. Oafish and inarticulate, Yanukovych had served jail time in his youth for theft and battery. He also had a hard time speaking Ukrainian – the national language – as he had grown up in the Russian-speaking province of Donetsk. Yet Manafort accepted the challenge of trying to make Yanukovych electable. The man paying the exorbitant bills for these efforts was an early backer of the Party of Regions, the coal and metals magnate Rinat Akhmetov, who soon began calling Manafort his friend.

 

And the man who really hoped Yanukovych would win? Time to guess again! 

Putin.

 

Manafort and Akhmetov were now corruption-busting pals, even though Akhmetov had to flee to Monaco to avoid arrest by Ukrainian authorities. Then he returned once Yanukovych took charge. And he prospered. By 2014 his estimated wealth was $11.2 billion. But when Yanukovych fled, Akhmetov took a few financial lumps of his own, and decided he’d rather live in England. 

By the way, we haven’t forgotten Firtash. Back to him shortly. 

Akhmetov (sometimes spelled “Akhmedov”) settled in England. He and his wife began fighting. Divorce resulted, followed by a battle over assets. The courts ordered Mr. Akhmetov to turn over the couple’s yacht, named Luna, to his ex-wife, as part of the settlement. It’s a nice little pleasure craft, worth half a billion dollars. (See 7/24/18.) 

Anyway, you start digging into this story and pretty soon you turn up all kinds of elite corruption fighters. Many have interesting connections to that paragon of clean government, Mr. Manafort. If you look at a list of billionaires drawn up by the U.S. Treasury Department for sanction, you notice names that pop up here and there in the Mueller Report. The now-yachtless Mr. Akhmetov made the sanction list. So did Aras Agalarov, who helped broker the famous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.

 

Who was in that meeting?

 

Manafort.

 

Don Jr.

 

Jared Kushner.

 

Also making an appearance on the list of fantastically rich people, now under U.S. sanction, but people you just knew really wanted to end corruption: Sergei Gorkov, a banker with whom Kushner met secretly in early 2017. There was Dmitry Rybolovlev, who bought, at a highly-inflated price, a Palm Beach mansion from Donald J. Trump some years back. And you had Viktor Vekselberg, who met in secret with Michael Cohen in January 2017.

 

Nor should we forget Oleg Deripaska, who had worked on all kinds of projects in tandem with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates. True, the Russian oligarch’s reputation as a crime fighter took a hit when he was accused of bribery, money laundering, extortion, and ordering the murder of a business rival.

 

But these guys couldn’t be stopped. The fight to drain the international swamp continued apace.

 

*

 

NOW, TO PROVE our point, that President Trump wants to tear up corruption, root, branch, leaf, and even birds in the tree, we return to Mr. Firtash. In April 2018, a U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, sent the Justice Department a letter. He was curious why Firtash had not yet been extradited, since he had been out on bail, living in luxury in Austria, and fighting to stay out of reach of U.S. authorities for four years. In October 2019, Sen. Wicker got tired of waiting for response and pointed out to reporters that his letter had not been answered. That seemed pretty weak on the part of DOJ since Wicker had also pointed out that Firtash was piling up “hundreds of millions” in additional “illicit profits” while hanging out with the other corruption-clobbering crusaders. You know who we mean: Rudy and Lev and Igor and the married couple lawyers who always enjoyed showing up to talk to Lou Dobbs at Fox News.

 

In any case, we should probably note again that bail for Firtash had been set in 2014 at $174 million.

 

Plus, he was forced to surrender his passports – which kind of cramped all the good work he might have done to clean up Ukraine, if, for example, he could only flee, I mean “travel,” to Russia.

 

Speaking of Russia, it would be remiss to fail to mention the greatest-corruption fighter of them all. This would be the man who invaded Ukraine to stomp out corruption, and maybe kill a few thousand Ukrainians while he was at it. We are talking about that not-such-a bad killer fellow, as Trump once described him. This would be the very man who Trump cronies – I mean “corruption-fighting friends” – like Felix Sater thought should be given a penthouse worth $50 million for free to seal the Trump Tower Moscow deal. You might be saying to yourself that this sounds like a bribe. And you might be thinking it would be a huge conflict of interest if Candidate Trump were trying to land a lucrative deal. In Russia! While running for office!! 

But that just proves how little you know about fighting corruption. 

Yes. We are talking about Vladimir Putin, the man, the myth, the foe of corruption on all seven continents, a man willing to toss reporters off fifth floor balconies in an effort to drain the swamps of countries he has invaded. We are talking about a guy who, on a humble government salary, going back to when he worked for the KGB, saved, and saved. And, lo, he came to be worth somewhere between $70 and $200 billion, so carefully did he save his rubles.

 

* 

The only way to clean up all the corruption in Ukraine. 

IN CLOSING this tale of Trump and his unfailing efforts to clean up government, both home and abroad, we should mention two other young men who have dedicated themselves to the same fight. These are two men, unlike Hunter Biden. They would never trade on the family name, just to milk millions out of prospective business partners. Here, of course, we are talking about Eric and Donald Trump Jr., pillars of squeaky clean business and pristine government. 

According to James Dodson, a golf writer, Eric told him in 2014 that the Trump Organization was having no trouble financing new golf courses. They agreed to play a round, as Dodson remembers it: 

So when I got in the cart with Eric…as we were setting off, I said, “Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks – because of the recession, the Great Recession – have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.” And this is what he said. He said, “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia [emphasis added].” I said, “Really?” And he said, “Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.” Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.

 

By the way, it might be worth mentioning here that one fine way to launder money is to sneak it out of, say, Russia, and buy assets like real estate, including golf courses, in, say, the U.S.A. But that could not in any way be the case here, because everyone knows Trumps hate corruption. 

Eric responded, as all Trumps do, by calling Dodson’s story “totally fabricated and just another example of why there is such a deep distrust of the media in this country.” It didn’t help when someone dredged up a quote from his older brother. In 2008, Don Jr. told an audience at a real estate conference in New York City, that the “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

 

Five years later, while running the Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow in 2013, Don Sr. first got interested in cleaning up corruption when he attended a party with all kinds of Russian corruption fighters. “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” is how he put it later. In fact, a more recent review of financial records by Reuters in 2017, found that 63 Russians had invested a total of $100 million in Trump Florida properties. So, the moral of that story is: 63 more corruption fighters, fighting crooks by investing in foreign real estate. 

A story by McClatchy, in June 2018, revealed the names of even more corruption-fighting Russians and Ukrainians, who had seen the wisdom of buying up Trump properties. There was, for instance, Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian-born businessman who engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare of $26 million (or maybe $30 million). Burman is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. So, his corruption-fighting days may be over. In sunnier times, however, he paid $725,000 in cash for a condo at a Trump Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Another typical buyer – McClatchy said there were 86 – was Leonid Zeldovich, who had “reportedly done extensive business in the Russian-annexed area of Crimea. Records show he gobbled up four Trump condo units at a cost of $4.35 million, three in New York City, between 2007 and 2010.   

He, too, paid cash.

 

It is alleged that Donald J. Trump got interested in “cleaning up corruption” way back in 1984. At that time, he allowed purchasers of multi-million-dollar condos to pay in cash, by going through shell companies. A gentleman named David Bogaton, said to have been a Russian gangster, was one of his first customers. Bogaton handed over $6 million (equal to something like $15 million today) and snagged five condos in the new Trump Tower in New York City. 

Last, but not least, Trump enjoyed fighting criminals by using banks that would give him risky loans – when many banks wouldn’t – just because a string of Trump casinos ended up bankrupt. That meant Trump worked closely with Deutsche Bank, which fought crookery on all fronts, by laundering Russian money. And also, money for drug cartels. Sadly investigators round the world did not appreciate the sterling efforts the bank was making, because Deutsche had to pay a 15 million euro fine for the Russian business. Then there was the $630 million fine for more money laundering, involving more Russians. And the other fine for laundering drug cartel dollars. 

So, yes. The only way to clean up all the corruption in Ukraine. 

Get Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden.

Rybolovlev's yacht.