By Bob Williams, Stevensville
What follows are gatherings of one person asleep at the switch, until Lavrov, Kislyak, and their recoding equipment got into our White House.
July 2016, the GOP approves a Paul Manafort promoted, new platform plank, with no USA financed weapons in Ukraine, against Putin’s continuing intrusions into Ukraine territory by Russian military, artillery, and tank forces.
2016, Donald Trump campaigns to reduce impediments between USA and Russia.
January 2017, soon after inauguration, without the State Department, President Trump and insiders draft substance of deal to remove Congressional sanctions laid against Russia. Costly, burdensome sanctions in response to Putin’s Kremlin wrongful annexation of Crimea, away from Ukraine, in April, 2014.
January 2017, high ranking USA intelligence officials conclude: Russian Federation operatives reporting to Putin, interfered in our 2016 Presidential Election to favor Donald Trump.
May 10, 2017, in surprise meeting in Oval Office, Putin’s Foreign Minister Lavrov, and then Ambassador to USA Kislyak, are assured by Trump that he is not concerned about Putin’s interference with our 2016 USA Presidential Election.
Starting in 2017, Putin meets five times with President Trump, who never makes a deal with Putin to not interfere with our USA Elections.
March 2018, the same Mercer financed institute that produced the soon debunked book “Clinton Cash”, produces poorly researched book, “Secret Empires”, smearing the Bidens about corruption in Ukraine in 2014.
Late 2018, in New York also in Europe, Rudy Giuliani discusses Biden conspiracy theories with former Ukrainian prosecutors dismissed for being soft on corruption; Shokin, and Lutsenko.
Early 2019, major USA newspapers report Giuliani’s ongoing contacts with shady, corrupt Ukrainians positioned by Russian interference with Ukraine 2004 elections.
March 2019, Giuliani, longtime legal aid friend of wealthy, pro-Russian affiliates, and entangled, and likely financed by a few Ukrainians, “routes” to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a long document, theorizing wrongdoings by Joe Biden, also the American Ambassador to Ukraine. Trump and Pompeo may accept that long document as believable. Trump hears the Ambassador was undermining Giuliani’s attempts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. In May, Pompeo recalls the USA Ambassador to Ukraine.
April 7, 2019, Giuliani goes on Fox TV demanding that USA DOJ investigate corrupt dealings by Democrats in Ukraine.
April 25, President Trump calls in to the Fox-Hannity show, calling on USA AG Barr to investigate Biden corruption in Ukraine.
Mid-summer 2019, most major USA newspapers report evidence debunking theorized corruption by Joe Biden in Ukraine in 2014.
In 2019, it’s reported that Putin interfered to some degree with every one of our 2016 State Elections.
One of Mueller’s key findings relates to 2016 Trump Campaign internal polling data, being shared by Trump top deputy Campaign Director with an agent of an agent of Putin.
July 25, 2019, President Trump by phone asks President Zelensky of Ukraine, to interfere with the 2020 USA Election cycle, work with the USA DOS and take calls from Giuliani and AG Barr, to investigate and seek evidence against Joe Biden, that would be used to prosecute, maybe smear, the top contender against President Trump.
On the call, President Trump threatened to continue to withhold a quarter of a billion dollars of USA military aid, that the Pentagon, also the State Department, intended to help Ukraine defend against Putin’s attacks on eastern Ukraine.
White House lawyers wrongfully sought to hide the call. National Security lawyers intervened to hide a record of that call. The Administration tried to hide that call from scrutiny by Congress.
September 30, 2019, in early morning, I submitted 250 words of this article to the Ravalli Republic for consideration for a LTE. More importantly, USA AG William Barr flew to Italy, and the UK, to discover evidence that might discredit some of the intelligence findings Mueller relied on. Of course, the 428-page Mueller report concludes: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 Presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
USA AG William Barr, and John H. Durham, leader of DOJ inquiry into Mueller investigation origins, end run around USA Intelligence Officers, risked certain consequences harmful to the USA, to obtain open door with any Italian intelligence gathering operation. Unfortunately, we know only, that in private quarters, Barr watched an old tape, of long controversial, Joseph Mifsud.
October 1, in Italy, Secretary of State Pompeo admits he was in on the 7/25 Trump-Zelensky conversation.
October 2, 2019 State Department Inspector General Steve Linick warns of the mysterious package, delivered six months ago, with calligraphy indicating a forwarding address from the White House, and addressed to Secretary Pompeo and “Ruth”, and containing reportedly 40 pages of material. Giuliani admits some of the pages are material of his own creation, claiming that he as whistleblower disclosed corruption by Joe Biden.
Bob Menendez, top Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hammers that the pages “are long debunked theories and false statements” about the Ukraine Ambassador, and Joe Biden.
House Oversight and Reform Committee member Jeremy Raskin sums it up. The pages are full of “disinformation and conspiracy theories.”
Social media propaganda spreads much faster than factual news, and since “Secret Empires” tens of millions of Americans have long been repeating the recurring theme, become meme, become smear imagery that Joe Biden was doing crooked things in Ukraine.
Giuliani, with one American financier, and business dealings with certain Russians, and certain Ukrainians, grossly ignored the facts, and theorized stories that Pompeo, Barr, and Trump have bought into.
However, Giuliani was not investigating corruption, but instigating corruption, when he and others tried to force Ukrainian politicians to appoint wealthy GOP contributors to inside positions of the Ukrainian national natural gas company.
There’s also tragedy in our President so coveting re-election that he leaned heavily on Zelensky, to interfere with the USA 2020 Election. Deep tragedy, with some irony, that our President was relying on fake news manufactured by Giuliani and associates domestic also foreign.
And for me, dark national tragedy, when gasping at twisted truth uprights, sitting on a foundation with narrow footings and soft corners. That describes the Giuliani theorized material I have encountered in researching this article.
Consider these ominous words from 2013-17 National Security Adviser Susan Rice: “Our domestic political divisions are, in fact, at the moment, our greatest national security vulnerabilities.”
Will Trump Syria policy, like Trump Ukraine policy, help Putin get what he wants?