‘Hypocrite’: Gaetz Pulls Up Prank Call Audio of Schiff Saying He Would Take Dirt on Trump from Ukrainians

Houston Keene September 30, 2019, 2:57 pm

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) blasted House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as a “hypocrite” — and he brought the receipts.
The Florida Republican got his shot in at Schiff via a Monday tweet, where he included the edited audio of a 2017 prank phone call between the House Intelligence chairman and Russian comedians posing as former Ukranian Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy.
In the call, the comedians offered Schiff supposed “recordings” of Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak and model Olga Buzova discussing “compromising material” about President Donald Trump.
The House Intelligence Committee chairman said that “obviously” he would “welcome the chance” to obtain copies of the recordings.
“[Schiff] is a hypocrite,” wrote Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee.

Schiff: “So, you have recordings of both Sobchak and Buzova where they’re discussing the compromising material on Mr. Trump?”
Prankster: “Absolutely.”
Schiff: “Well, obviously we would welcome a chance to get copies of those recordings.”

Schiff was told that the supposed “compromising material” were nude pictures of the president.
“Schiff apparently has two standards,” text overlay in the video said. “One for him, and one for President Trump.”

Listen to the full prank call audio here:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=NxHrn6Byz3g

A spokesman for Schiff at the time told the Atlantic that the House Intelligence Committee “informed appropriate law-enforcement” about the call both before and after taking it.
“Before agreeing to take the call, and immediately following it, the committee informed appropriate law-enforcement and security personnel of the conversation, and of our belief that it was probably bogus,” said the spokesman.
Gaetz’s tweet came as the House Democrats began their impeachment inquiry into the president.
As IJR previously reported, Schiff had claimed that the president was trying to “browbeat” Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into giving him dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden while withholding aid money from the country during the two presidents’ phone call in July.

How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington 

Play script from Bongino

How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington

Scrubbed Images Open Doors, Assure Investors; A 'Most Wanted' Client

By Glenn R. Simpson and

Mary Jacoby

Updated April 17, 2007 12:01 am ET 

 

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation director William Sessions once condemned Russia's rising mafia. "We can beat organized crime," he told a Moscow security conference in 1997.
Today, Mr. Sessions is a lawyer for one of the FBI's "Most Wanted": Semyon Mogilevich, a Ukraine-born Russian whom the FBI says is one of Russia's most powerful organized-crime figures.

Mr. Sessions is trying to negotiate a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice for his client, who is charged with racketeering and is a key figure in a separate Justice Department probe of energy deals between Russia and Ukraine.
A number of notable Washington insiders are earning big fees these days by representing controversial clients from the former Soviet Union.
From prominent businessmen -- some facing criminal allegations -- to top politicians, well-known ex-Soviets are lining up to hire help with criminal cases, lobbying and consulting. These figures, many of whom made fortunes in the wide-open 1990s amid the Soviet Union's disintegration, hire Washington insiders to help rehabilitate their reputations in the West or to persuade investors and regulators they are committed to good corporate governance.
Sensitive foreign clients are nothing new for Washington's lobbying industry. Among others, Jack Abramoff -- convicted of fraud and bribery last year -- represented clients in Pakistan and Russia, while former Liberian President Charles Taylor, awaiting trial on war-crimes allegations, once employed his own Washington lobbyist.
But recent years have seen a growing number of former Soviet officials and industrialists seeking assistance in the U.S. capital. Many are playing an increasingly important role in the global economy, as they wrest ever-greater control of Eurasia's vast energy reserves and other natural resources. All have become politically powerful in their home countries as well, making them -- and by extension their U.S. advisers -- key players in Western efforts to promote regional stability.
Among recent examples:

Full Disclosure

Below, a selection of documents relating to the Washington dealings of figures from the former Soviet Union.
The FBI has placed Semyon Mogilevich on its "Most Wanted" list; the Justice Department has charged him with conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. Former FBI director William Sessions is representing the Ukrainian-born Russian in hopes of getting a deal with Justice.
* * *
Bob Dole was handsomely compensated for getting a U.S. visa for controversial Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska. But some lobbyists don't make clear who their clients are or where they get their fees. Barbour Griffith & Rogers said it worked for Friends of Ukraine, but tax records show the group was operated out of the lobby firm's own office.
* * *
A group called the Republican Party of the Ukraine, headed by Energy Minister Yuri Boyko, also used a Washington lobbyist but the bills were ultimately paid by a company registered on the Caribbean island of Nevis. Mr. Boyko is a key player in controversial energy deals involving another Ukrainian businessman named Dimytro Firtash, who according to a federal lawsuit also hired Washington firms.

For a $560,000 fee, Bob Dole, the former Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, helped a Russian billionaire accused by rivals of bribery obtain a visa to visit the U.S. in 2005, among other things.
Leonid Reiman, a powerful member of Russia's cabinet and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, uses a Washington public-relations consultant. Mr. Reiman is under federal investigation in the U.S. over money laundering and is locked in a high-stakes battle with Moscow conglomerate Alfa for control of a Russian telecommunications empire. Alfa has paid Barbour Griffith & Rogers -- the influential lobbying firm co-founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour -- nearly $2 million in lobbying fees.
Paul Manafort, a former adviser to Mr. Dole's presidential campaign, has advised a Ukrainian metals billionaire and his close political ally, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Mr. Yanukovich, who favors closer ties with Mr. Putin's administration, is embroiled in a power struggle with pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
In some cases, the details of how these ex-Soviet clients made their fortunes are murky -- and the source, amount and purpose of the fees they pay Washington consultants can be as well. In 2005, for example, Ukrainian politician Yuri Boyko used a Caribbean shell company to pay a Washington lobbyist for help arranging meetings with top Republicans.
Mr. Boyko, currently Ukraine's minister of energy, was the architect of gas deals between Russia and Ukraine now being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for possible ties to the alleged mafia client of Mr. Sessions. Mr. Boyko said the $98,000 in fees was paid by a small political party he heads. Annex Holdings, the Caribbean firm that paid Mr. Boyko's lobbyist, also had a stake in the gas deals, corporate records show.
At times, even clients' names are camouflaged by lobbyists -- despite federal laws making clear that they aren't allowed to disguise identities by taking fees from intermediaries. Without such rules, says prominent Washington ethics lawyer Jan Baran, "you would just have a bunch of shell organizations identified as clients of lobbyists and lobbying firms."
In 2004, for instance, a United Kingdom shell company called Foruper Ltd., which had no assets or employees, paid Barbour Griffith $820,000. Foruper was established by an attorney who structured the natural-gas deals being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department. Prosecutors are investigating whether there are ties between the attorney who set up Foruper and Mr. Mogilevich, Mr. Sessions's client.

In its filings, Barbour Griffith said the fees were for "promotion of greater cooperation and financial ties between Eastern Europe and the West."
In 2002 and 2003, a group called "Friends of Ukraine" paid Barbour Griffith $320,000. Tax records show that Friends of Ukraine, which no longer exists, was headquartered at Barbour Griffith's own office in Washington. The group's chairman was firm partner Lanny Griffith. Mr. Griffith said in an email that the firm as a policy doesn't discuss client matters but added that Barbour Griffith "has been scrupulous in our compliance" with laws governing the disclosure of lobbying clients.
Barbour Griffith is locked in a legal battle with associates of Mr. Reiman, the Russian minister, whose Washington adviser is a former Wall Street Journal reporter named Mark D'Anastasio. Mr. D'Anastasio said he once helped Mr. Reiman as a favor to a friend but doesn't work for him.
Longstanding federal laws require Americans to register with the federal government if they do lobbying or public-relations work for foreign clients. But details in those filings often offer only a vague sense of the work being done.
Mr. Dole, for instance, disclosed in lobby filings with the U.S. Senate his work for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. He described it as involving "U.S. Department of State visa policies and procedures."
Mr. Deripaska, who has close ties to the Kremlin, emerged from Russia's "aluminum wars" of the 1990s with a virtual monopoly on the nation's aluminum production.
Mr. Deripaska has long been dogged by allegations from business rivals in courts in the U.S. and U.K. that he used bribery, intimidation and violence to amass his fortune. Those accusations, which he denies, have never been substantiated and no criminal charges have been filed. But for years they helped keep the State Department from granting him a visa.
In 2003, the Russian industrialist paid $300,000 to Mr. Dole's law firm, Alston & Bird, according to lobbying reports. After that, Mr. Dole worked to persuade U.S. officials his client isn't a criminal and that his business operations are transparent, said people with knowledge of the matter. In 2005, the State Department reversed itself and granted the visa. Mr. Deripaska then paid Mr. Dole and his firm an additional $260,000, filings show.
Mr. Deripaska traveled to Washington in 2005 and also made trips to the U.S. last year, said people with knowledge of the situation.

Mr. Dole and a State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Simon Moyse, a London-based spokesman for Mr. Deripaska, said the businessman currently possesses a multiple-entry U.S. visa. He declined to comment further or provide documentation of Mr. Deripaska's visa status.
The former Dole strategist Mr. Manafort and a former Dole fund raiser, Bruce Jackson, have received fees and donations from Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, the political patron of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yanukovich.
Messrs. Manafort and Jackson played prominent roles in the Ukrainian's recent visit to Washington. The visit included meetings with U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney. A company controlled by Mr. Akhmetov donated $300,000 in 2005 to a human-rights charity run by Mr. Jackson and his wife, an Internal Revenue Service document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows. Mr. Jackson said he was grateful for the support.
Mr. Manafort, who isn't registered as a consultant to the Ukrainian leader, didn't respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Sessions's client, Mr. Mogilevich, is accused in a 45-count racketeering and money-laundering indictment in Philadelphia of masterminding an elaborate stock fraud using a web of shell companies in Europe. The Justice Department also is investigating whether there are any ties between Mr. Mogilevich and a recent series of billion-dollar natural-gas deals between Russian gas giant OAO Gazprom and Ukraine, people familiar with the matter said. The probe is being led by the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.
According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Sessions recently approached former colleagues at Justice with an unusual offer: Mr. Mogilevich would provide the U.S. with intelligence on Islamist terrorism if prosecutors opened negotiations to resolve his legal problems in the U.S. Federal prosecutors rejected that offer, lawyers and others familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Sessions's firm and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The Mogilevich talks were brokered by a prominent Washington security expert named Neil C. Livingstone, who was briefly in the news during the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal for his work on terrorism issues with White House aide Oliver North.
He declined to discuss the Mogilevich talks, other than to say they involved "very sensitive issues."
Until recently, Mr. Livingstone was chief executive of GlobalOptions, a Washington corporate-intelligence firm he founded. Mr. Sessions sits on the firm's advisory board. Most of its clients, the firm says, "operate in Russia and the Caribbean."
GlobalOptions has worked with former Soviet businessmen in the past. In 2004, Mr. Livingstone said, lobbyists at Barbour Griffith introduced GlobalOptions to a Cyprus-based firm called Highrock Holdings. Highrock is controlled by Dimytro Firtash, a Ukrainian businessman who acknowledges the company's major shareholders once included Mr. Mogilevich's wife.
In 2003-2005, Mr. Firtash brokered several billion-dollar deals between Gazprom and the government of Ukraine. They netted big profits for Highrock -- and criticism from the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine at the time for the deals' lack of transparency.
Mr. Livingstone said Highrock hired GlobalOptions in 2004 to help it win federal safety certification for passenger jets it hoped to export to Central Asia.
However, in a recent lawsuit filed by GlobalOptions against Highrock claiming unpaid bills, the security firm alleged that Mr. Firtash hired GlobalOptions for an unspecified "special operation" on behalf of a Ukrainian government official. The two sides ceased litigating the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after the bill was paid, but the suit was never withdrawn.
"We have no knowledge of a company called GlobalOptions," a spokesman for Mr. Firtash said, adding that he severed his ties to Mr. Mogilevich several years ago.

Over a Dozen CIA Agents May Have Died Over Hillary’s Leaked Emails

FBI Agents Prepare To Counter CIA Coup Against Trump 

FBI Agents Prepare To Counter CIA Coup Against Trump

December 12, 2016 Sean Adl-Tabatabai News, US 68

FBI agents have had their holiday leave cancelled amid fears of an attempted coup by the CIA to overthrow President-elect Donald Trump.
According to reports, all 35,000 agents are on standby to stop a bid by the Central Intelligence Agency from overthrowing the democratically elected president of the United States.
The FBI have relocated most of its SWAT teams to the MacDill Air Force Base in Florida where they have been placed under a joint command structure with the US Militaries Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
The move comes after President Obama told U.S. soldiers during a briefing at the MacDill Air Force Base on the 6th December to openly ignore Donald Trump and “question his authority” when he becomes President. This was tantamount to initiating a coup d’etat against the incoming administration.

Looks like a military coup is underway in #Turkey. They're taking their country back! Will be the same in the US soon if I'm President!

— DonaId J. Trump (@realDenaldTrump) July 15, 2016

Within 72 hours of Obama telling American soldiers to disobey Trump, the White House announced their investigation into Russia’s supposed meddling in the 2016 US elections, which was immediately followed by the Washington Post publishing a “bombshell” article stating that Russia directly influenced the election so that Trump would win.
Whatdoesitmean.com reports:
The Washington Post is one of the CIA’s “main/central” propaganda mainstream media “fake news” outlets that was purchased by the shadowy American billionaire Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon.com) 3 months after the CIA had given him a staggering $600 million secret contract—and who just weeks ago put 200 American alternative media websites on a list of “known Russian propaganda”, but then had to retract this spurious claim as being “fake” after being exposed for the charlatans they really are.
Immediately following The Washington Post’s publishing of this “fake news” claim that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 US presidential election, this report continues, former CIA analyst Bob Baer(the unofficial media spokesman for the American Deep State) shockingly began advocating for a new election to be held—and that led to Alex Jones, one of America’s top alternative news leaders and top Trump confidant, to warn that President-elect Trump is now in danger of being assassinated.
Not being told the American people about the Obama-Clinton-CIA-Washington Post “fake news” claim of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, this report details, is that the FBI had previously stated that these spurious allegations were not true—and who, in a secret US House Intelligence Committee meeting, were told by top FBI official that he could not conclusively confirm the Russian collusion behind Trump’s victory contrary to the claims of CIA.
Agreeing with the FBI about who really leaked Hillary Clinton documents, this report continues, is Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who just hours ago called these CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: ‘They are absolutely making it up.  I know who leaked them, I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.  If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever”.
Supporting Ambassador Murray, this report notes, is US Ambassador John Bolton who, likewise, just hours ago stated that the CIA is now conducting a “false flag” operation to overthrow President-elect Trump.
However, SVR analysts in this report state, with the “fake news” mainstream propaganda organs supporting Hillary Clinton not telling the American people the truth about the CIA’s “silent coup” against President-elect Trump, they are, instead, being told that the 19 December Electoral College vote to install Trump as the next president must be stopped until “Russian interference” is fully investigated and that Trump has already violated his oath of office by not protecting and defending the United States because he refuses to believe the CIA.
Astounding to note too about the 2016 US presidential election, this report continues, are that these very same mainstream propaganda media organs supporting Hillary Clinton were the “real/true” perpetrators of “fake news”, not Russia—and that one of their “fake news” operatives, Marco Chacon, in creating hundreds of “fake news” articles about Trump that were spread by the mainstream media freely admitted to, and then who relished in his deceit of the American people by stating: “It’s way to easy to dupe the Right on the internet”.
With the main criteria being used by the CIA and Hillary Clinton in their “silent coup” against President-elect Trump that anyone wanting peace in our world is now a “Russian agent”, this report concludes, the truest reason for the CIA’s attempting to overthrow Trump lies in their fears that Germany is, likewise, ready to turn against these satanic globalists too—and who were all horrified and stunned after what happened last week when German TV-channels conducting a live broadcast of President Putin’s address to the Russian parliament, while at the same time were carrying out an opinion poll over phone, showed that fully 81 percent of respondents turned out to declare that they trusted Putin, with these results being immediately taken off the air.
And though not mentioned in this report, it’s critical to note that the last American president to go to war against CIA was John F. Kennedy, who vowed to splinter this accursed spy agency “into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind”—but who was gunned down before he could even get started after the CIA ordered his Secret Service protective detail to abandon this beloved American leader resulting in his head being blown apart in full public view as an example of their power.

Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury’

Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury’

Also laments that elite Republicans are joining Democrats.

By Mollie Hemingway

November 7, 2018

Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed plans for House Democrats to investigate and impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh for alleged perjury and investigate and impeach President Donald Trump for alleged treasonous collusion with Russia.
In post-election chats with various callers while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, Nadler gave advice to a newly elected representative and discussed potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominees with another. He also lamented identity politics and the thriving economy and worried about Democrats losing working-class voters while gaining elite former Republicans and suburban women.
Nadler was headed to DC for a two-day planning session with his staff and Judiciary Committee staff. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing,” he explained in a phone call with a friend. Nadler requested that the friend’s name be concealed on the grounds he is a private citizen.
The two discussed two routes for investigating new Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. The first is to go after the FBI for how they handled the investigation into unsubstantiated claims he sexually assaulted women. “They didn’t even do a half-ass job,” he said. “They didn’t interview 30 witnesses who said ‘Interview me! I’ve got a lot to say!'” he said, while mimicking people waving their hands to be called on.
His other plan is to go after Kavanaugh because “there’s a real indication that Kavanaugh committed perjury.” He claimed that The Atlantic published an article about the allegations of a third woman. Then he claimed that when Kavanaugh was “asked at a committee hearing under oath when he first heard of the subject, he said, ‘When I’d heard of the Atlantic article.’ But there is an email chain apparently dating from well before that from him about ‘How can we deal with this?'” Nadler told the caller.
Nadler was apparently discussing a slightly different claim, since debunked, which is that Kavanaugh perjured himself when he denied hearing of The New Yorker’s disputed allegation involving Deborah Ramirez until the story came out. Considering that The New Yorker included a denial from Kavanaugh in its own controversial story, and was asking him about it right before publication, and he acknowledged all that in his Senate testimony, it’s unclear how fruitful such a perjury claim would be.
When the caller objected to the plan, Nadler pushed back, “That’s not technical, that’s real.” He conceded that maybe it was not a great plan, since even if Kavanaugh could be removed, it might not result in the political results desired.
“The worst-case scenario — or best case depending on your point of view — you prove he committed perjury, about a terrible subject and the Judicial Conference recommends you impeach him. So the president appoints someone just as bad.”
When the caller suggested going after Kavanaugh quietly, Nadler explained, “You can’t do it quietly because word will get out that the FBI or the committee is reaching out to witnesses.”
The caller then suggested that impeachment might still be worthwhile because the president elected in 2020 could nominate someone else. Nadler said the problem was that any investigation wouldn’t take long enough to last until the presidential election. “There are a finite amount of witnesses. I don’t see why it should take long at all,” he said. “We’re not talking about a 30-year scheme of getting money from Russians via hidden sources — that takes time.”
That was an apparent reference to Democrat beliefs in a dramatic and unsubstantiated theory that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. He promised it would also be an avenue that Democrats would pursue vigorously at the launch of the new Congress.
Nadler said Russia investigations would be under a broad umbrella of holding Trump “accountable,” since it’s a more palatable argument than impeachment, that they would be going “all-in,” and much of what they get to would be “depending on what [special counsel Robert] Mueller finds.” Still, he said the Judiciary Committee would only be in a supportive role to Rep. Adam Schiff and the Intelligence Committee, which has “a way ahead start on that.” Still, he said Judiciary “will have a role” in the Russia investigations.
Nadler and his callers discussed 2020 presidential prospects, noting that Joe Biden would be hurt by the efforts to go after Kavanaugh since it would bring his role in the Clarence Thomas hearings back to prominence. “The only relevance of Clarence Thomas hearings is it will come back to hit Joe Biden over head if he runs for president,” Nadler said. Uproarious laughter from the caller could be heard on the other end of the phone. Other candidates were dismissed for being “too conservative” or “too conservative on economic issues for the party” or “not charismatic.”
In another call, Nadler said Republicans did better than expected on election night because of the booming economy. He suggested messaging that the economy is only helping wealthy people and not other classes, and worried that changes to the economic boom would be blamed on Democrats. He also complained that the new voters being recruited to join Democrats were “Rockefeller Republicans” who are liberal on social issues and that the new group makes Democrats more vulnerable to the charge they are no longer the party of the working person.
Nadler told one newly elected Democrat to start thinking about committee assignments.
Following the train ride, Nadler weighed in on Twitter about the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has resigned, using the language of accountability: “Americans must have answers immediately as to the reasoning behind @realDonaldTrump removing Jeff Sessions from @TheJusticeDept. Why is the President making this change and who has authority over Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation? We will be holding people accountable.”
In March 2017, however, Nadler called for Sessions to resign:

Missing piece to the Ukraine puzzle: State Department's overture to Rudy Giuliani

Missing piece to the Ukraine puzzle: State Department's overture to Rudy Giuliani

By John Solomon, opinion contributor — 09/20/19 07:30 PM EDT 2,523 

 

When I was a young journalist decades ago, training to cover Washington, one of my mentors offered sage advice: When it comes to U.S. intelligence and diplomacy, things often aren’t what they first seem.

Those words echo in my brain today, as much as they did that first day. And following the news recently, I realize they are just as relevant today with hysteria regarding presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine’s government.
The coverage suggests Giuliani reached out to new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team this summer solely because he wanted to get dirt on possible Trump 2020 challenger Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in that country.
Politics or law could have been part of Giuliani’s motive, and neither would be illegal.
But there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.
Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.
Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.
That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.
When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.
“I didn’t even know who he [Yermak] really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them [the two State officials] what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”
So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy.
Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?
According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.
The Ukrainians say their efforts to get their allegations to U.S. authorities were thwarted first by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, which failed to issue timely visas allowing them to visit America.
Then the Ukrainians hired a former U.S. attorney — not Giuliani — to hand-deliver the evidence of wrongdoing to the U.S. attorney's office in New York, but the federal prosecutors never responded.
The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me. The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me.
Eventually, Giuliani in November 2018 got wind of the Ukrainian allegations and started to investigate.
As President Trump’s highest-profile defense attorney, the former New York City mayor, often known simply as Rudy, believed the Ukrainian's evidence could assist in his defense against the Russia collusion investigation and former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.
So Giuliani began to check things out in late 2018 and early 2019, but he never set foot in Ukraine. And when Ukrainian officials leaked word that he was considering visiting Ukraine to meet with senior officials to discuss the allegations — and it got politicized in America — Giuliani abruptly called off his trip. He stopped talking to the Ukrainian officials.
Since that time, my American and foreign sources tell me, Ukrainian officials worried that the slight of Giuliani might hurt their relations with his most famous client, Trump.
And Trump himself added to the dynamic by encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to work with Giuliani to surface the evidence of alleged wrongdoing that has been floating around for more than two years, my sources said.
It is likely that the State Department’s overture to Giuliani in July was designed to allay fears of a diplomatic slight and to assure the nascent Ukrainian administration that everything would be OK between the two allies. 
The belief was that if Zelensky’s top lawyer could talk to Trump’s top lawyer, everything could be patched up, officials explained to me.
Ukrainian officials also are discussing privately the possibility of creating a parliamentary committee to assemble the evidence and formally send it to the U.S. Congress, after failed attempts to get the Department of Justice’s attention, my sources say.
Such machinations are common when two countries are navigating diplomatic challenges, and, often, extracurricular activities with private citizens are part of the strategy, even if they are not apparent to the American public. 
So the media stories of Giuliani’s alleged political opposition research in Ukraine, it turns out, are a bit different than first reported. It’s exactly the sort of nuanced, complex news development that my mentor nearly 30 years ago warned about.
And it’s too bad a shallow media effort has failed to capture the whole story and tell it to the American public in its entirety. 
It’s almost as though the lessons of the now debunked Russia-Trump collusion narrative didn't really sink in for some reporters. And that is a loss for the American public. The continuing folly was evidenced when much attention was given Friday to Hillary Clinton’s tweet suggesting Trump’s contact with Zelensky amounted to an effort to solicit a foreign power to interfere in the next election.
That tweet may be provocative, but it’s unfair. The contacts were about resolving what happened in the last election — and the last administration.
And if anyone is to have high moral ground on foreign interference in elections, Clinton can’t be first in line. Her campaign lawyers caused Christopher Steele, a British foreign national desperate to defeat to Trump, to be hired to solicit unverified allegations from Russians about Trump as part of an opposition research project and then went to the FBI to trump up an investigation on Trump. And her party leaders, the Democratic National Committee, asked the Ukrainian Embassy to also try to dig up dirt on Trump. That’s not a record worthy of throwing the first punch on this story.
The truth is, getting to the bottom of the Ukraine allegations will benefit everyone. If the Bidens and Ukraine did nothing wrong, they should be absolved. If wrongdoing happened, then it should be dealt with.
The folly of the current coverage is preventing us from getting the answer we deserve.

Let's get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections 

Let's get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections

By John Solomon, Opinion Contributor — 09/23/19 06:30 PM EDT 2,374

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.
Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.
"I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President's campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them," Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine's leader.
The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats' support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.
The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.
And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.
As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.
The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.
U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.
Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That's when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.
The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.
Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.
Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.
The DNC contractor also asked Chaly's team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.
Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.
The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
At the time, Biden was aware that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma, the firm employing Hunter Biden, after a December 2015 New York Times article.
What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.
Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.
Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.
Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.
The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.
Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe?
It’s a question worth asking.

Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden's Ukraine story

By John Solomon, Opinion Contributor — 09/26/19 06:00 PM EDT 5,993

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden's son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor's firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.)   If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma's American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?"
2.)   If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. "The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”
Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.
Documents I obtained this year detail an effort to change the narrative after the Times story about Hunter Biden, with the help of the Obama State Department.
Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague two days after the Times story about a strategy to counter the “new wave of scrutiny” and stated that he and Hunter Biden had just met at the State Department. The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”
I have sued the State Department for any records related to that meeting. The reason is simple: There is both a public interest and an ethics question to knowing if Hunter Biden and his team sought State’s assistance while his father was vice president.
The controversy ignited anew earlier this year when I disclosed that Joe Biden admitted during a 2018 videotaped speech that, as vice president in March 2016, he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin.
At the time, Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma. Shokin told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm. Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirm the payments, which in many months totaled more than $166,000.
Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma's owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General's office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
After I first reported it in a column, the New York Times and ABC News published similar stories confirming my reporting.
Joe Biden has since responded that he forced Shokin’s firing over concerns about corruption and ineptitude, which he claims were widely shared by Western allies, and that it had nothing to do with the Burisma investigation.
Some of the new documents I obtained call that claim into question.
In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.
Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.
Burisma’s own accounting records show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
Just days before Biden forced Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the No. 2 official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there. Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”
Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma.
Painter then asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation, the memos show. Eventually, Blue Star would pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor's office.
At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.
Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.
On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.
Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.
Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.
“They realized that the information disseminated in the U.S. was incorrect and that they would facilitate my visit to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering the true information to the State Department management,” the memo stated.
The memo also quoted the Americans as saying they knew Shokin pursued an aggressive corruption investigation against Burisma’s owner, only to be thwarted by British allies: “These individuals noted that they had been aware that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine had implemented all required steps for prosecution … and that he was released by the British court due to the underperformance of the British law enforcement agencies.”
The memo provides a vastly different portrayal of Shokin than Biden's. And its contents are partially backed by subsequent emails from Blue Star and Buretta that confirm the offer to bring Ukrainian authorities to meet the Obama administration in Washington.
For instance, Tramontano wrote the Ukrainian prosecution team on April 16, 2016, saying U.S. Justice Department officials, including top international prosecutor Bruce Swartz, might be willing to meet. “The reforms are not known to the US Justice Department and it would be useful for the Prosecutor General to meet officials in the US and share this information directly,” she wrote.
Buretta sent a similar email to the Ukrainians, writing that “I think you would find it productive to meet with DOJ officials in Washington” and providing contact information for Swartz. “I would be happy to help,” added Buretta, a former senior DOJ official.
Burisma, Buretta and Blue Star continued throughout 2016 to try to resolve the open issues in Ukraine, and memos recount various contacts with the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Kiev seeking help in getting the Burisma case resolved.
Just days before Trump took office, Burisma announced it had resolved all of its legal issues. And Buretta gave an interview in Ukraine about how he helped navigate the issues.
 Today, two questions remain.
One is whether it was ethically improper or even illegal for Biden to intervene to fire the prosecutor handling Burisma’s case, given his son’s interests. That is one that requires more investigation and the expertise of lawyers.
The second is whether Biden has given the American people an honest accounting of what happened. The new documents I obtained raise serious doubts about his story’s credibility. And that’s an issue that needs to be resolved by voters.

Whistleblower is reportedly a CIA officer who was stationed at the White House

Whistleblower is reportedly a CIA officer who was stationed at the White House

by Mike Brest

 | September 26, 2019 02:13 PM

The whistleblower who filed a complaint alleging President Trump improperly leveraged military aid to encourage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, is a Central Intelligence Agency officer, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The officer was detailed at the White House but has since returned to the CIA. His complaint became public earlier on Thursday, and it revealed, if accurate, that the White House officials "had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call."
The complaint did not contain firsthand accounts of the controversial phone call, only secondhand and thirdhand information.
“Any decision to report any perceived identifying information of the whistle-blower is deeply concerning and reckless, as it can place the individual in harm’s way,” said Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower's lead counsel told the Times. “The whistle-blower has a right to anonymity.”
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee earlier in the day and addressed the need to keep the whistleblower's identity unknown.
“We must protect those who demonstrate the courage to report alleged wrongdoing, whether on the battlefield or in the workplace,” he said.
The CIA declined to comment for the Times' story.

Fact-Checking Feinstein on the Assault Weapons Ban 

Fact-Checking Feinstein on the Assault Weapons Ban

The senator says "the evidence is clear: the ban worked." Except there's no evidence it saved lives – and the researcher behind the key statistic Feinstein cites says it's an outdated figure that was based on a false assumption.

by Lois Beckett

Sept. 24, 2014, 11:57 a.m. EDT

 

In the ten years since the federal assault weapons ban expired, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has kept trying to renew the law, which she authored. In a press release this month honoring the 20th anniversary of the ban, she wrote, "The evidence is clear: the ban worked."
But gun violence experts say the exact opposite. "There is no compelling evidence that it saved lives," Duke University public policy experts Philip Cook and Kristin Goss wrote in their book "The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know."
A definitive study of the 1994 law – which prohibited the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic guns with "military-style features" such pistol grips or bayonet mounts as well as magazines holding more than ten rounds of ammunition – found no evidence that it had reduced overall gun crime or made shootings less lethal. "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence," the Department of Justice-funded study concluded in 2004. "Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."
As we recently reported, key gun control groups say they are no longer making an assault weapons ban a priority because they think focusing on other policies, including universal background checks, are a more effective way to save lives. The Center for American Progress released a report earlier this month suggesting ways to regulate assault weapons without banning them.
Feinstein introduced an updated version of the assault weapons ban last year, in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which the shooter used a type of rifle that had been targeted by the ban. She told her Senate colleagues to "show some guts" when they voted on it in April. The measure failed, 40 to 60. The push to improve background checks also failed, but attracted more support.
The key statistic that Feinstein cited in her recent press release — that the ban "was responsible for a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal"— was rejected by researchers a decade ago.
Feinstein attributed the statistic to an initial Department of Justice-funded study of the first few years of the ban, published in 1997.
But one of the authors of that study, Dr. Christopher Koper, a criminologist from George Mason University, told ProPublica that number was just a "tentative conclusion."  Koper was also the principal investigator on the 2004 study that, as he put it, "kind of overruled, based on new evidence, what the preliminary report had been in 1997."
Feinstein's spokesman, Tom Mentzer, contested the idea that the 2004 study invalidated the 1997 statistic that Feinstein has continued to cite. But Koper said he and the other researchers in 2004 had not re-done the specific analysis that resulted in the 6.7 percent estimate because the calculation had been based on an assumption that turned out to be false. In the 1997 study, Koper said, he and the other researchers had assumed that the ban had successfully decreased the use of large-capacity magazines. What they later found was that despite the ban, the use of large-capacity magazines in crime had actually stayed steady or risen.
"The weight of evidence that was gathered and analyzed across the two reports suggested that initial drop in the gun murder rate must have been due to other factors besides the assault weapons ban," Koper said.
Cook, the Duke public policy expert, told ProPublica that the "weak results" of the 1994 ban "should not be interpreted to mean that in general bans don't work."
He said Feinstein's updated version of the ban, which she proposed in 2013 and is more restrictive, might be more effective. An American assault weapons ban might also have an impact on drug and gang-related violence in Mexico, he said.
"Around 30,000 Americans are killed with guns each year; one-third of those are murders," Feinstein said in a statement to ProPublica. "Obviously there's no single solution, which is why I support a wide range of policy proposals to bring sense to our firearms laws.  I continue to believe that drying up the supply of military-style assault weapons is an important piece of the puzzle—and the data back this up." (See Feinstein's full statement below.)
Gun rights groups have long criticized the ban, and Feinstein's defense of it.
"Gun rights organizations, Second Amendment people, always take Dianne Feinstein with the whole shaker full of salt," said Dave Workman, the communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.  "She's been a perennial gun-banner."
"One would think the lesson learned from banning alcohol, marijuana, and many other drugs and items [is that] it never works for anyone intent on obtaining any of these items," Jerry Henry, the executive director of GeorgiaCarry.org, told ProPublica. "All it does is put it in the background and helps establish a flourishing black market."
 The National Rifle Association did not respond to a request for comment.
Full Feinstein statement:
"Around 30,000 Americans are killed with guns each year; one-third of those are murders. Obviously there's no single solution, which is why I support a wide range of policy proposals to bring sense to our firearms laws. We need to expand background checks, strengthen gun trafficking laws and make sure domestic abusers, the seriously mentally ill and other dangerous people cannot access guns.
"I continue to believe that drying up the supply of military-style assault weapons is an important piece of the puzzle—and the data back this up. These weapons were designed for the military and have one purpose: to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. They are the weapon of choice for grievance killers, gang members and juveniles, and they shouldn't be on the streets.
"A 2004 Justice Department study found clear evidence that the ban on manufacture and transfer of assault weapons reduced their use in crimes. The percentage of assault weapons traced as part of criminal investigations dropped 70 percent between 1993 and 2002, and many police departments reported increases in the use of assault weapons after the ban expired. In less than a decade, the ban was already drying up supply. The study suggested the law would have been even more effective if it had banned weapons already in circulation and if it had continued past its 10-year duration. Unfortunately those limits were part of the compromise that had to be struck to pass the ban into law.
"Let me be clear: Assault weapons allow criminals to fire more shots, wound and kill more individuals and inflict greater damage. The research supports that. A ban on assault weapons was never meant to stop all gun crimes, it was meant to help stop the most deadly mass shootings. That's why it needs to be a part of the discussion, or rampages like Sandy Hook will continue to happen."

Emails show Clinton denied, then met with Ukrainian donor

Emails show Clinton denied, then met with Ukrainian donor

by Sarah Westwood

 | August 24, 2016 12:01 AM

Victor Pinchuk gave up to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Efrem Lukatsky

Emails made public Tuesday show a Ukrainian businessman and major Clinton Foundation donor was invited to Hillary Clinton's home during the final year of her diplomatic tenure, despite her spokesman's insistence in 2014 that the donor never crossed paths with Clinton while she served as secretary of state.
Victor Pinchuk, who has given up to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, appeared on the guest list that was sent between Dennis Cheng, an executive at the foundation, and Huma Abedin, then Clinton's deputy chief of staff at the State Department, ahead of a June 2012 dinner. Abedin noted in a subsequent email that the gathering would be hosted in Clinton's home.
Amid scrutiny of Clinton's ties to Pinchuk in 2014, the Democratic nominee's spokesman, Nick Merrill, said Pinchuk had never met with Clinton during that time. He told the New York Times that, "from Jan. 21, 2009, to Feb. 1, 2013," the Ukrainian businessman "was never on her schedule."
Merrill did not return a request for comment.
The dinner invitation was exposed in a batch of emails obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act that was made public Tuesday. The conservative group is seeking communications between a handful of Clinton's closest aides and individuals associated with the Clinton Foundation.

Chief Politic

Other emails released through the State Department from the collection provided by Clinton shed light on the friendly relationship Pinchuk enjoyed with Clinton's State Department.
For example, in one exchange from January 2012, Clinton discussed with an agency official her daughter's recent trip to Ukraine. The official noted that Chelsea Clinton and her husband had been invited to visit Kiev by Pinchuk.
Melanne Verveer, a senior Ukrainian-American official at the State Department, often acted as a go-between for Clinton and Pinchuk. Verveer conveyed Pinchuk's best wishes to the secretary of state in Feb. 2010 after meeting with him in Ukraine.
After speaking with Pinchuk in Sept. 2011, Verveer informed Clinton that the businessman had been asked by Viktor Yanukovych, then the president of Ukraine, to relay to her some of his diplomatic interests in deepening ties to the rest of Europe.
The intersection of Pinchuk's advocacy for Yanukovych with Clinton's State Department is noteworthy because Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, was felled by his connections to Yanukovych. Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign last week.
Douglas Schoen, the Democratic pollster, lobbied for Pinchuk after connecting the Ukrainian mogul with the Clinton Foundation. Schoen told the Wall Street Journal last year that he connected Pinchuk with senior State Department staffers under Clinton in order to pressure Yanukovych to release his political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, from jail.
Pinchuk, like Manafort, had urged the pro-Russian Yanukovych to pursue integration with the European Union. And like Manafort, Pinchuk had objected to the imprisonment of Tymoshenko.
Manafort, however, is reportedly part of an FBI investigation over his involvement in alleged corruption within Yanukovych's regime before the Ukrainian leader fled to Russia in 2014 amid a popular uprising.
Pinchuk's company, a manufacturing firm called InterPipe, came under fire last year after it was accused of shipping oil to Iran in violation of international sanctions in 2012.
Pinchuk's access to Clinton is yet another example of a foundation donor who may have found favor with her State Department team.
Two separate batches of emails — the 378 pages made public by Citizens United Tuesday and the 725 pages released by Judicial Watch Monday — contained dozens of examples of Clinton Foundation employees or donors who enjoyed direct lines to the highest levels of the State Department.
Many of those figures maintain their close ties to Clinton today.
For instance, the Democratic nominee attended a fundraiser Monday with a wealthy foundation donor, Casey Wasserman, who sought help securing a visa for client from Clinton's staff in 2009.
Clinton has faced growing calls to end her family's association with the foundation before Election Day despite her husband's pledge to curb foreign and corporate donations to the charity should Clinton win the presidency in November.