"The Hill" Reporter John Solomon, Worked With Indicted Giuliani Associate To Craft Ukraine Lies

Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in U.S. elections, collaborated closely with The Hill’s John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine.


Six months later, in April 2018, Derlega was forced out of The Hill. The Hill’s owner, president and top editors haven’t responded to detailed questions about Derlega’s memos and Solomon’s tenure at the paper. A spokesman for the advertiser, Job Creators Network, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

In interviews with ProPublica this week, Solomon repeatedly declined to discuss his activities on The Hill’s business side, saying, “I just simply can’t talk about anything business related with The Hill.”

A month later, the paper’s editor in chief, Bob Cusack, emailed staff that “effective immediately” Solomon would no longer publish stories under the banner of news but instead would be an “opinion contributor.”

From this new perch, Solomon broke in early spring what seemed to be an explosive piece of news: claims by Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s top prosecutor, that a U.S. diplomat, serving under President Barack Obama, presented him a list of people and groups he could not prosecute. Additionally, Lutsenko said that he was reviving a probe into the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, seeking to determine whether Joe Biden, as vice president, interfered with the initial inquiry to protect his son Hunter, who sat on Burisma’s board.

Behind the scenes, Parnas had been central to connecting Solomon with Lutsenko. In a March 2019 email that included the businessman, the columnist wrote that he’d “just got word from Lev that the prosecutor general has agreed to do an interview tomorrow.”


https://crooksandliars.com/2019/10/hill-reporter-worked-indicted-giuliani