There is a long way to go in the impeachment process, and
there are some very important issues still to be resolved. But as the process
marches on, a growing number of myths and falsehoods are being spread by
partisans and their allies in the news media.
The early pattern of misinformation about Ukraine,
Joe Biden and election interference mirrors closely the tactics used in
late 2016 and early 2017 to build the false and now-debunked narrative that
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin colluded to hijack the 2016 election.
Facts do matter. And they prove to be stubborn evidence,
even in the midst of a political firestorm. So here are the facts (complete
with links to the original materials) debunking some of the bigger fables in
the Ukraine scandal.
Myth: There is no
evidence the Democratic National Committee sought Ukraine’s assistance during
the 2016 election.
The Facts:
The Ukrainian embassy in Washington confirmed to me this past April that a
Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa did, in
fact, solicit dirt on Donald Trump and Paul Manafort during the spring of
2016 in hopes of spurring a pre-election congressional hearing into the Trump
campaign’s ties to Russia. The embassy also stated Chalupa tried to get
Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to do an interview on
Manafort with an American investigative reporter working on the issue. The
embassy said it turned down both requests.
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You can read the Ukraine embassy’s statement here.
The statement essentially confirmed a January
2017 investigative article in Politico that first raised concerns about
Chalupa’s contacts with the embassy.
Chalupa’s activities involving Ukraine were further
detailed in a May 2016 email published by WikiLeaks in which she reported to
DNC officials on her efforts to dig up dirt on Manafort and Trump. You can read
that email here.
Myth: There is no
evidence that Ukrainian government officials tried to influence the American
presidential election in 2016.
The Facts:
There are two documented episodes involving Ukrainian government officials’
efforts to influence the 2016 American presidential election.
The first occurred in Ukraine, where a court last December ruled that a Parliamentary member and a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official improperly tried to influence the U.S. election by releasing financial records in spring and summer 2016 from an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities. The publicity from the release of the so-called Black Ledger documents forced Manafort to resign. You can read that ruling here. While that court ruling since has been set aside on a jurisdiction technicality, the facts of the released information are not in dispute.
The first occurred in Ukraine, where a court last December ruled that a Parliamentary member and a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official improperly tried to influence the U.S. election by releasing financial records in spring and summer 2016 from an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities. The publicity from the release of the so-called Black Ledger documents forced Manafort to resign. You can read that ruling here. While that court ruling since has been set aside on a jurisdiction technicality, the facts of the released information are not in dispute.
The second episode occurred on U.S. soil back in August
2016 when Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, took the
extraordinary step of writing an OpEd in The Hill criticizing GOP nominee
Donald Trump and his views on Russia just three months before Election Day. You
can read that OpEd here.
Chaly later told me through his spokeswoman that he
wasn’t writing the OpEd for political purposes but rather to address his
country’s geopolitical interests. But his article, nonetheless, was viewed by
many in career diplomatic circles as running contrary to the Geneva
Convention’s rules barring diplomats from becoming embroiled in the host country’s
political affairs. And it clearly adds to the public perception that Ukraine’s
government at the time preferred Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016
election.
Myth: The allegation that
Joe Biden tried to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son Hunter
Biden’s Ukrainian gas firm employer has been debunked, and there is no evidence
the ex-vice president did anything improper.
The Facts:
Joe Biden is captured on videotape bragging about his effort to strong-arm
Ukraine’s president into firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Biden told
a foreign policy group in early 2018 that he used the threat of withholding $1
billion in U.S. aid to Kiev to successfully force Shokin’s firing. You can
watch Biden’s statement here.
It also is not in dispute that at the time he forced the
firing, the vice president’s office knew Shokin was investigating Burisma
Holdings, the company where Hunter Biden worked as a board member and
consultant. Team Biden was alerted to the investigation in a December 2015 New
York Times article. You can read that article here.
The unresolved question is what motivated Joe Biden to
seek Shokin’s ouster. Biden says he took the action solely because the U.S. and
Western allies believed Shokin was ineffective in fighting corruption. Shokin
told me, ABC
News and others that he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy that the
Burisma investigation was not shut down. He made similar statements in an
affidavit prepared to be filed in an European court. You can read that
affidavit here.
In the end, though, whether Joe Biden had good or bad
intentions in getting Shokin fired is somewhat irrelevant to the question of
the vice president’s ethical obligation.
U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to
avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions.
Ethics experts I talked with say Biden should have recused himself from the
Shokin matter once he learned about the Burisma investigation to avoid the
appearance issue.
And a senior U.S. diplomat was quoted in testimony reported
by The Washington Post earlier this month that he tried to raise warnings
with Biden’s VP office in 2015 that Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian firm
raised the potential issue of conflicts of interest.
Myth: Ukraine’s
investigation into Burisma Holdings was no longer active when Joe Biden forced
Shokin’s firing in March 2016.
The Facts:
This is one of the most egregiously false statements spread by the media.
Ukraine’s official case file for Burisma Holdings, provided to me by
prosecutors, shows there were two active investigations into the gas firm and
its founder Mykola Zlochevsky in early 2016, one involving corruption
allegations and the other involving unpaid taxes.
In fact, Shokin told me in an interview he was making
plans to interview Burisma board members, including Hunter Biden, at the time
he was fired. And it was publicly reported that in February 2016, a month
before Shokin was fired, that Ukrainian prosecutors raided one of Zlochevsky’s
homes and seized expensive items like a luxury car as part of the corruption
probe. You can read a contemporaneous news report about the seizure here.
Burisma’s own legal activities also clearly show the
investigations were active at the time Shokin was fired. Internal emails I
obtained from the American legal team representing Burisma show that on March
29, 2016 – the very day Shokin was fired – Burisma lawyer John Buretta was
seeking a meeting with Shokin’s temporary replacement in hopes of settling the
open cases.
In May 2016 when new Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko
was appointed, Buretta then sent a letter to the new prosecutor seeking to
resolve the investigations of Burisma and Zlochevsky. You can read that
letter here.
Buretta eventually gave a February 2017 interview to the
Kiev Post in which he divulged that the corruption probe was resolved in fall
2016 and the tax case by early January 2017. You can read Buretta’s
interview here.
In another words, the Burisma investigations were active
at the time Vice President Biden forced Shokin’s firing, and any suggestion to
the contrary is pure misinformation.
Myth: There is no
evidence Vice President Joe Biden did anything to encourage Burisma’s hiring of
his son Hunter.
The Facts:
This is another area where the public facts cry out for more investigation and
raise a question in some minds about another appearance of a conflict of
interest.
Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, was
appointed to Burisma’s board in mid-April 2014 and the firm Rosemont Seneca
Bohai — jointly owned by Hunter Biden and Devon Archer — received its first
payments from the Ukrainian gas company on April 15, 2014, according to the
company’s ledgers. That very same day as the first Burisma payment, Devon
Archer met with Joe Biden at the White House, according to White House
visitor logs. It is not known what the two discussed.
A week later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and met with
then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. During that meeting, the
American vice president urged Ukraine to ramp up energy production to free
itself from its Russian natural gas dependence. Biden even boasted that “an
American team is currently in the region working with Ukraine and its neighbors
to increase Ukraine’s short-term energy supply.” Yatsenyuk welcomed the
help from American “investors” in modernizing natural gas supply lines in
Ukraine. You can read the Biden-Yatsenyuk transcript here.
Less than three weeks later, Burisma added
Hunter Biden to its board to join Archer. To some, the
sequence of events creates the appearance that Joe Biden’s pressure to increase
Ukrainian gas supply and to urge Kiev to rely on Americans might have led
Burisma to hire his son. More investigation needs to be done to determine
exactly what happened. And until that occurs, the appearance issue will likely
linger over this episode.
Myth: Hunter Biden’s firm
only received $50,000 a month for his work as a board member and consultant for
Burisma Holdings.
The Facts:
This figure frequently cited by Biden defenders and the media significantly
understates what Burisma was paying Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Bohai firm
for his and Devon Archer’s services. Bank records obtained by the FBI in an
unrelated case show that between May 2014 and the end of 2015, Hunter
Biden’s and Archer’s firm received monthly consulting payments totaling
$166,666, or three times the amount cited by the media. In some months,
there was even more money than that paid. You can review those bank records here.
The monthly payments figures are confirmed by the
accounting ledger that Burisma turned over to Ukrainian prosecutors. That
ledger, which you can read here,
also shows that in spring and summer of 2014 Burisma paid more than $283,000 to
the American law firm of Boies Schiller, where Hunter Biden also worked as an
attorney.
Myth: President Trump was
trying to force Ukraine to reopen a probe into Burisma Holdings and its founder
Mykola Zlochevsky when he talked to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr
Zelensky, in July of this year.
The Facts:
Trump could not have forced the Ukrainians into opening a new Burisma
investigation in July because the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office had
already done so on March 28, 2019, or three months before the call.
The prosecutors filed this
notice of suspicion in Ukraine announcing the re-opening of the
investigation. The revival of the case was even widely reported in the
Ukrainian press, something U.S. intelligence and diplomats who are now
testifying to Congress behind closed doors should have known. Here’s an example
of one such Ukrainian
media report at the time.
Myth: Former Ukrainian
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko retracted or recanted his claim that U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in 2016 identified people and entities
she did not what to see prosecuted in Ukraine.
The Facts: In a
March interview with me at Hill.TV captured on videotape, Lutsenko stated that
during his first meeting with Yovanovitch in summer 2016, the American diplomat
rattled off a list of names of Ukrainian individuals and entities she did not
want to see investigated or prosecuted. Lutsenko called it a “do not
prosecute” list. You can watch that video here.
The State Department disputed his characterization as a fabrication, which
Hill.TV reported in its original report.
A few weeks later, a Ukrainian news outlet claimed it
interviewed Lutsenko and he backed off his assertion about the list. Several
American outlets have since picked up that same language.
There is just one problem. I re-interviewed Lutsenko
after the Ukrainian report suggesting he recanted. He adamantly denied recanting,
retracting or changing his story, and said the Ukrainian newspaper simply
misunderstood that the list of names were conveyed orally during the meeting
and not in writing, just like he said in the original Hill.TV interview.
Here is Lutsenko’s full explanation to me back last
spring:
“At no time since our interview have I ever retracted the statement I made about the U.S. ambassador providing me a list of names of people and organizations she did not want my office to prosecute. Shortly after my televised interview with your news organization I was asked by a Ukraine reporter if I had a copy of the letter that Ambassador Yovanovitch provided me with the names of those she did not want prosecuted. The reporter misunderstood how the names were transmitted to me. I explained to the reporter that the Ambassador did not hand me a written list but rather provided the list of names orally over the course of a meeting.”
Lutsenko reaffirmed he stood by his statements again in September.
“At no time since our interview have I ever retracted the statement I made about the U.S. ambassador providing me a list of names of people and organizations she did not want my office to prosecute. Shortly after my televised interview with your news organization I was asked by a Ukraine reporter if I had a copy of the letter that Ambassador Yovanovitch provided me with the names of those she did not want prosecuted. The reporter misunderstood how the names were transmitted to me. I explained to the reporter that the Ambassador did not hand me a written list but rather provided the list of names orally over the course of a meeting.”
Lutsenko reaffirmed he stood by his statements again in September.
It is important to note Lutsenko’s story was also backed
up by State Department officials and contemporaneous memos before his interview
was ever aired. For instance, a senior U.S. official I interviewed for the
Lutsenko story reviewed the list of names that Lutsenko recalled being on the
so-called do-not-prosecute list.
That official stated during the interview: “I can confirm
to you that at least some of those names are names that U.S. embassy Kiev
raised with the Prosecutor General’s office because we were concerned about
retribution and unfair treatment of Ukrainians viewed as favorable to the
United States.”
Separately, both U.S. and Ukrainian official confirmed to
me a letter written by then-U.S. embassy official George Kent in April 2016 in
which U.S. officials pointedly (and in writing) demanded that Ukrainian
prosecutors stand down an investigation into several Ukrainian nonprofit groups
suspected of misspending U.S. foreign aid. The letter even named one of the
groups, the AntiCorruption Action Centre, a nonprofit funded jointly by the
State Department and liberal megadonor George Soros.
“We are gravely concerned about this investigation, for
which we see no basis,” Kent wrote the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office in April
2016. You can read the letter here.
So even without Lutsenko’s claim, there is substantial
evidence that the U.S. embassy in Kiev applied pressure on Ukrainian
prosecutors not to pursue certain investigations in 2016.
Myth: The narratives about Biden, the U.S. embassy and Ukrainian election interference are conspiracy theories invented by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to impact the 2020 election.
Myth: The narratives about Biden, the U.S. embassy and Ukrainian election interference are conspiracy theories invented by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to impact the 2020 election.
The Facts:
Giuliani began investigating matters in Ukraine in late fall 2018 as a personal
lawyer to the president. But months before his quest began, Ukrainian
prosecutors believed they possessed evidence about Burisma, the Bidens and 2016
election interference that might interest the U.S. Justice Department. It is
the same evidence that came to light this spring and summer and that is now a
focus of the impeachment proceedings.
Originally, one of Ukraine’s senior prosecutors tried to
secure a visa to come to the United States to deliver that evidence. But when
the U.S. embassy in Kiev did not fulfill his travel request, the group of
Ukrainian prosecutors hired a former U.S. attorney in America to reach out to
the U.S. attorney office in New York and try to arrange a transfer of the
evidence. The Ukrainian prosecutors’ story was independently verified by
the American lawyer they hired.
So the activities and allegation now at the heart of
impeachment actually pre-date Giuliani starting work on Ukraine. You can read
the prosecutors’ account of their 2018 effort to get this information to
Americans here.
