‘The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race … advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As Democrats and their media lapdogs continued to use false narratives to justify their partisan impeachment push, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called them out for hypocrisy in their own corrupt Ukraine dealings.
“To little media fanfare, Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a July, 2017, letter to the Justice Department about reports that a DNC consultant coordinated with the Ukrainian government to acquire opposition research on Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign,” his office said in a recent statement.
It is common knowledge that former Vice President Joe Biden in 2016 pressured the Eastern European country to fire its top prosecutor, who was investigating corruption involving an energy company that was paying Biden’s son Hunter $50,000 a month to serve on its board.
Trump’s request in a July phone call that new Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy support the efforts to investigate the Bidens provided much of the basis for a second-hand complaint lodged by an anonymous whistleblower, which House Democrats are using in their long-sought impeachment effort.
In addition to Biden, several other instances have resurfaced illustrating Democrats’ attempts—often successful—to coerce Ukraine’s support in interfering with U.S. politics for its own benefit, as it now alleges Trump is guilty of doing.
In 2018, for instance, three powerful Democratic senators sent a letter to Ukraine urging it to investigate Trump prior to the midterm election, as now-debunked claims of Russian collusion befouled the air.
Even before that, though, the Democratic National Committee had dispatched a staffer to the country to solicit dirt on Trump during his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.
DNC–Ukraine Collusion
In May, the Ukrainian Embassy formally acknowledged that Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic operative, had sought information on Trump and tried to enlist help from Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president at the time.
Ambassador Valeriy Chaly said Chalupa had hoped to find out more about Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort’s dealings with the country “in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress,” reported The Hill.
Chalupa, who had been an activist on Ukrainian matters, did not disclose her DNC connections, Chaly said.
“We were surprised to see Alexandra’s interest in Mr. Paul Manafort’s case,” Chaly said in a statement. “It was her own cause. The Embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter.”
The story of Chalupa’s involvement first broke in Politico even before Trump was inaugurated president, in January 2017, but was buried by the leaking of the salacious and dubiously sourced Steele Dossier, which helped give way to the nearly two-year-long Mueller investigation.
The report said that Ukraine—specifically the Poroshenko administration—had worked in many ways during the campaign to undermine Trump, including “publicly questioning his fitness for office” and falsely suggesting that they were investigating his campaign’s alleged Russia ties.
“The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia,” Politico reported. “But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.”
The Mueller report concluded that there was no evidence that Trump’s campaign was involved in the Russian hacking efforts, nor any other attempts to interfere with the election.
But the collusion between the DNC and Ukraine offered a clear-cut motive for the Kremlin to target the Democrats’ computer systems and to throw its support to Trump.
David A. Merkel, an expert in Russian and Ukrainian relations who worked in the George W. Bush administration, said the two neighboring countries, in the midst of a territorial dispute over Crimea, appeared to be waging a proxy war in the Clinton and Trump campaigns.
After years in which the U.S. and Russia vied for influence in Ukrainian politics, “Now, it seems that a U.S. election may have been seen as a surrogate battle by those in Kiev and Moscow,” Merkel said.
Politico noted that despite efforts to fly under the radar, the Ukrainian Embassy was “helpful” to Chalupa’s quest for opposition research.
“If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with” she said.
She said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump and Manafort “to point them in the right directions.”
Another Double-Standard
Trump, in his July phone call with Zelenskiy, touched on the concerns about the Ukrainian ambassador, according to a transcript released this week.
But as with the Biden concerns, Democrats targeted his attempts to remedy the partisan corruption while downplaying the actual grievances that they were guilty of to begin with.
In a 2017 letter to the Justice Department following the Politico revelations, Grassley observed that Chalupa’s collusion between the Clinton campaign, DNC and Poroshenko administration in Ukraine constituted a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
While Manafort was later charged and indicted by Mueller’s office for failing to register with FARA, no such action befell Chalupa.
Grassley’s statement also noted that a widely used source being used to represent the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, now attempting to cast himself as apolitical, had made statements to Politico indicating that the majority of Ukraine politicians were “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”
Reporters have falsely used claims from Ukrainian officials like Serhiy Leshchenko to exonerate Biden, though the officials have continued to misrepresent their allegiances and knowledge of the matter.