Trump's Claims About Biden Aren't 'Unsupported.' They're Lies.
On Sept. 24, 2015, Geoffrey Pyatt, then the American ambassador to Ukraine, spoke in Odessa about the scourge of corruption. It was about a year and a half after what is sometimes called the Revolution of Dignity, when Ukrainians overthrew the kleptocratic, Russian-aligned regime of Viktor Yanukovych. The country was trying to move in a more liberal, European direction. Corruption, said Pyatt, threatened to hold the new Ukraine back.
Pyatt called out the office of Viktor Shokin, then the prosecutor general of Ukraine. Corrupt actors within the prosecutor generals office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform, he said. Pyatt specifically lambasted Shokins office for subverting a British case against a man named Mykola Zlochevsky, Yanukovychs former ecology minister.
In 2014, as part of a money-laundering investigation, British authorities froze $23 million Zlochevsky had in London. They requested supporting documentation from Shokins office. Instead, it intervened on Zlochevskys behalf. As a result the money was freed by the U.K. court and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus, said Pyatt.
Shokin was seen as a single point of failure clogging up the system and blocking corruption cases, a former official in Barack Obamas administration told me. Vice President Joe Biden eventually took the lead in calling for Shokins ouster.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/trump-ukraine-republican.html
Ninga
(8,275 posts)Thanks for posting.
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)All day yesterday the talking heads were saying "no evidence has been found to support the claims," but that doesn't begin to reach the truth. Of course there's no evidence! Trump was fishing for fabrications. I hope the newswriters for cable news take this to heart.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)That needs to change.
dalton99a
(81,515 posts)among his cult members