Forget Russia Stealing the Election, Ukraine Got Involved in American Politics...Against Trump
Forget Russia Stealing the Election, Ukraine Got Involved in American Politics...Against Trump
No Wonder the Uniparty Regime Loves Zelensky
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While Israel remains the country that American politicians are most loath to criticize, there’s another that, in recent years, has come close to becoming beyond reproach in American politics. That country, of course, is Ukraine. Now fighting a war with Russia that was sparked mainly by American meddling, both during the Euromaidan color revolution and with rumors of NATO involvement later, its ties to the American Uniparty are extremely close. So close, in fact, that it has gotten actively involved in American politics, siding against Donald Trump.
That anti-Trump Ukrainian involvement in American politics began with the “Russiagate” scandal that itself began in 2016. And, of course, there is Hunter Biden’s “job” with Burisma, where he was paid tens of thousands of dollars a month for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian energy company despite knowing nothing about pipelines or Ukraine.
This article will explore, at a high level, Ukrainian involvement in American politics in 2016, namely how the Ukrainians did their best to torpedo Trump and why that matters.
This is the third article we have done involving these issues. Read the first, on how broken promises and NATO expansion led to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the second, on Alexander Vindman and his role in the Trump impeachment, to learn more about the general issue at play.
Ukraine’s Involvement in Russiagate and the Clinton Campaign
Russiagate, for those that don’t remember, was the lie concocted by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and intelligence agencies that, after being spread by the mainstream media, was used to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and distract him with lawfare. The root of the DNC-constructed scandal was a dossier report by former British spy Christopher Steele. The dossier claimed, generally, that the Russians had leverage on Trump and that the Trump Campaign was collaborating with the Russians to win the election. Steele’s made-up report was paid for by the Clinton Campaign and DNC, then found its way to the FBI, where it became the grounds for Mueller’s tedious investigation into Trump. It also led to the broader “Russiagate” narrative of 2016 and on, a constant cacophony of claims that Trump had been bought and paid for by the Russians who “stole” the 2016 election.
The entire report, along with the “Russiagate” accusations related to it, was a fabrication meant to smear Trump, whatever the cost to the legitimacy of America’s media, intelligence agencies, Department of Justice, and government generally. It was also a lie promoted by the Ukrainians, who desperately wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2016, presumably because she was a warhawk who would be harsher on Russia than Trump.
Ukrainian Involvement in Russiagate
When the DNC and Clinton Campaign needed dirt for their war on Trump, one of the sources to which they turned was the Ukrainian government, using contacts in it and the DNC to lash out at Trump and his campaign personnel while also discrediting. Such was reported by Politico in January of 2017, though the shocking report was quickly hushed up in favor of the Russiagate narrative. Beginning its report, Politico said (emphasis ours):1
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
Continuing, Politico noted that Ukraine’s involvement in American politics was, for some reason, treated very differently than supposed Russian meddling. It also hinted that the reason for the Ukrainian hostility to Trump was his more accommodative stance on Russia. It reported (emphasis ours):2
Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.
Russia’s meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. The U.S. intelligence community undertook the rare move of publicizing its findings on the matter, and President Barack Obama took several steps to officially retaliate, while members of Congress continue pushing for more investigations into the hacking and a harder line against Russia, which was already viewed in Washington as America’s leading foreign adversary.
Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko’s regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin’s regime.
The Ukrainians, in their efforts to take down Trump, needed a way to latch onto him. They found one in Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman and a former advisor to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It was he whom an ethnically Ukrainian DNC operative, Alexandra Chalupa, targeted with the assistance of the Ukrainian state. And it was through that Ukrainian-American DNC operative that the Ukrainians built their pro-Hillary intelligence connection. Again according to Politico:3
Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.
In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.
Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”
But it wasn’t just Chalupa. One of the main ways the Ukrainians assisted the Clinton Campaign was by leaking Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s confidential information in an attempt to swing the election to Hillary. Politico, reporting on that as well, noted that leaked documents appeared to show a large payment to Manafort by a Russia-aligned Ukrainian political party. Predictably, the media and Clinton Campaign latched on to the story to claim Trump-Russian collusion, and Ukrainian government officials were involved in highlighting the story (emphasis ours):4
Clinton’s campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats’ argument that Trump’s campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump “disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them.”
A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko’s party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.
“I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law — we have the proof from these books,” Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. “If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,” Leshchenko added.
It later emerged that the Ukrainian government was behind the leak of those ledgers, as The Hill reported in March of 2019 (emphasis ours):5
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.
The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to “an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign,” Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administration’s U.S. Embassy in Kiev at the time.
Lutsenko, the implacable foe of pro-Clinton corruption, was then fired in August of 2019 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In any case, the Manafort ledgers were then used in the Steele dossier, as Politico noted as well. And as Steele used them to promote a lie, the Ukrainian politician behind the promotion of the ledgers, Leshchenko, admitted that his purpose in drawing attention to them was to torpedo Trump’s candidacy. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” he admitted to the Financial Times.6
What’s more, that attempt by Leshchenko, a Ukrainian politician, to torpedo Trump likely came with the approval of Ukrainian President Poroshenko, as Politico reported.7 Poroshenko, for reference, was the president installed after the CIA-backed Euromaidan “revolution.” And not only did Ukraine’s leader give the nod to go after Trump, but the documents used to do so might have been forged (emphasis ours):8
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country’s head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that “only one part of the black ledger appeared.” He asked, “Where is the handwriting analysis?” and said it was “crazy” to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, “of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign.”
And as the intelligence agencies and politicians did their best to sink Trump, other Ukrainian officials joined in to criticize him and attempt to frame him as a Russian pawn. The Ukrainian ambassador broke diplomatic protocol to attack Trump in an op-ed for the Hill. Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, accused Trump of having “challenged the very values of the free world” in a Facebook post. Joining in, the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, took to Twitter to accuse Trump of being more dangerous than terrorism and of being a “clown.”9
As the ambassador and all manner of politicians and officials did their best to smear Trump, the Ukrainian embassy shut down the idea of even meeting with him, with a conservative Ukrainian politician taking that to mean that the Ukrainian government was openly siding with Clinton. That was Andriy Artemenko, and he claimed that the Ukrainian embassy staff was doing its best to support Hillary and torpedo Trump:10
“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”
The Trump White House recognized what happened and, early in the Trump presidency, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fired back at Russiagate accusations by saying, "If you're looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC, who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy."11
Altogether, that Politico report, one that came out in early January of 2017 and then faded into obscurity despite the shocking details contained within it, shows deep Ukrainian involvement in the Russiagate scandal that almost propelled Clinton into the White House and was a millstone around Trump’s presidency. Ukrainian politicians, officials, and internal security agents used their influence and power in a clear, conscious attempt to torpedo Trump and boost Clinton. Sen. Chuck Grassley, summarizing what had happened in a letter demanding the DOJ investigate Chalupa, argued the facts show there is “evidence of collusion between the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Ukrainian government.”12 In summary, the Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election and, in so doing, put themselves firmly on the side of the Democrats.
Why It Matters
The Uniparty and its agents in the media reacted with horror to the lies of the Steele dossier and Russiagate generally. They wrung their hands, clutched their pearls, and pretended the world was ending because Russia ran a few cheesy anti-Hillary advertisements, meanwhile believing, or at least pretending to believe, all of the ridiculous stories Steele spread. But then, when evidence emerged that the Ukrainians had really been at work to meddle in the election, nearly no one cared in that social milieu cared, and the story was hushed up.
That response indicates two things in particular. The first, more obvious, giveaway is that it was never about “our democracy.” They didn’t care any more about foreign meddling in the election in 2016 than about what was going on with mail-in voting in 2020. Rather, they hated that Hillary lost. So the Russians were bad because they were perceived as pro-Trump, and the Ukrainian behavior was unproblematic because it was pro-Hillary.
Relatedly, it shows that the GOP is utterly useless when it comes to fighting back against the Deep State: it was well-known, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comment shows, that the Ukrainians had interfered in the election and attempted to put Hillary in office. But did the GOP do anything at all, or even shift their stance on the Ukrainian situation? No. The Ukrainians backed the GOP’s political enemy, yet the GOP has still gone all-in on backing the Ukrainians against Russia and referring to Russia as an enemy. The GOP knows they interfered with the election, on the side of Hillary, in 2016. Yet, despite its hostility to their party and attempt to keep them out of power, Congressional Republicans have voted to send hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons to the Ukrainians. Why? The only possible reason, other than the whole lot of them being imbeciles, is that they see an opportunity for pecuniary gain. Whether it’s congressional stock trading to make profits on the defense contractors the Ukraine aid is flowing into, kickbacks from the Ukrainians as hundreds of billions of dollars flood their country, or roles in Ukrainian companies like Hunter Biden’s cushy board seat at Burisma, the Uniparty, including its GOP half, has found a way to use Ukraine to its profit.
A few standouts, such as Tucker Carlson, do otherwise, but the GOP remains primarily in the Ukraine’s pocket despite the Ukraine’s attempt to put Hillary in office.
The other takeaway is something that the regime’s response to the Russo-Ukrainian War has made increasingly clear: the Uniparty is deeply in bed with the Ukrainians and intends to keep that relationship alive. So, when Trump came along and tried to mix things up, they went ballistic and tried to keep him out of office. That effort involved British spy Christopher Steele, Hillary’s Campaign, the DNC, regime foreign policy apparatchiks like Alexandra Chalup, and, of course, the Ukrainian government. It was a massive effort that tied our Uniparty regime closely to the Ukrainians, and now we’re risking World War III to determine which Eastern European oligarchy rules the Donbas. It’s idiotic, but it makes sense in the context of the Ukrainian anti-Trump effort and the profits those inside the Beltway can reap from keeping conflict with the Russians alive.
As an example of that profit potential is the money spent on Ukraine, by now hundreds of billions of dollars in financial aid and equipment. The Cold War would be dead and its prodigious defense spending levels with it, particularly with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over were there no conflict, but with the Ukrainian cause alive, they can keep the gravy train of defense contracts and foreign aid flowing until the Ukrainian regime runs out of men to toss in the meatgrinder. The fact that Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet is a good thing to them, as it makes the opportunities for under-the-table gain all the more prevalent.
Foreign intelligence agencies and their co-ethnic agents in America shouldn’t be interfering in American elections. That applies to Israel and the Israel lobby (read about Epstein’s involvement with Israeli intelligence here), it applies to Russia, and it applies to the Ukrainians and their 2016 operation. The fact that the Uniparty has openly allowed the Ukrainians to get away with it is deeply concerning and shows the problems with our current regime, particularly given the massive levels of corruption in the country and the loose fiscal morals of our own leaders.