Quote (Goomshill @ Nov 13 2019 08:28pm)
based on the money changing hands and testimony today and leading questions from republicans in the know, it seems to paint a pretty clear picture of what was up
burisma started loading western officials onto its board at the same time as the oligarch owner was driven into exile, in some combination of {seeking to innoculate itself from western investigations} / {being forcibly taken over by the west} / {seeking to convince the west it would play ball with them in control}. They started funneling lots of money to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer & John Kerry from 2014 to 2016. Then when Shokin stirred the pot and raided the oligarch's home- maybe Shokin's palm wasn't getting greased enough, or in reaction to western figures pressuring him- they used their leverage with the west to get direct US intervention to protect Burisma from investigations. A simultaneous outreach through Hunter Biden, Devon Archer & John Kerry, all popping up in diplomatic channels in the same few months of 2016.
its pretty ridiculous to claim its a coincidence that the people getting these millions in payouts from a corrupt ukrainian gas company were the same people who served as diplomatic conduits for Burisma's lobbying to get a reprieve from corruption charges. And its a bad look when your secretary of state, your vice president's son and a former CIA director are all dipping into that gravy. It wasn't even an indirect laundered money trail, it was straight payments from Burisma into an LLC formed by co-founded by Hunter Biden, Christopher Heinz and Devon Archer
dunno how much more direct the money trail could be, unless a chinese businessman walked up to Hunter Biden's hotel room and handed him an $80,000 diamond in person (oh wait)
As per usual, you're turning reality upside down.
I don't know how these documents change the story at all... we already knew Hunter Biden and others were paid by Burisma. Why does it matter that they used a private equity firm? And how do we know John Kerry Sr owned part of the company?
The testimony of pretty much everyone at the time(apart from Shokin and the oligarch Firtash) is that Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption in Ukraine, the Burisma investigation wasn't aggressively happening, and Biden's intervention was an Obama administration effort backed by Western partners.
George Kent was in the State Department at the time, and included in his testimony yesterday:
Quote
• The pervasive and long standing problem of corruption in Ukraine included exposure to a situation involving the energy company Burisma. The primary concern of the U.S. government since 2014 was Burisma’s owner -- Mykola Zlochevsky -- whose frozen assets abroad we had attempted to recover on Ukraine’s behalf. In early 2015, I raised questions with the deputy Prosecutor General about why the investigation of Mr. Zlochevsky had been terminated, based on our belief that prosecutors had accepted bribes to close the case.
• Later, I became aware that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Soon after that, in a briefing call with the national security staff in the Office of the Vice President, in February 2015, I raised my concern that Hunter Biden’s status as board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest. Let me be clear; however, I did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny. In fact, I and other U.S. officials consistently advocated reinstituting a scuttled investigation of Zlochevsky, Burisma’s founder, as well as holding the corrupt prosecutors who closed the case to account.
• Over the course of 2018-2019, I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to run a campaign to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and other officials at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv.
• The chief agitators on the Ukrainian side of this effort were some of those same corrupt former prosecutors I had encountered, particularly Victor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko. They were now peddling false information in order to exact revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct, including U.S. diplomats, Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, and reform-minded civil society groups in Ukraine.