U.S. diplomat told Congress he raised red flag about Biden and Ukraine - source

By David Morgan

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden attend an NCAA basketball game between Georgetown University and Duke University in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2010. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. diplomat told congressional investigators this week that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden's position with a Ukrainian energy company in 2015, only to be turned away by an aide to then-Vice President Joe Biden, a person familiar with the testimony said on Friday.

 

Hunter Biden's role https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hunter-biden-ukraine/what-hunter-biden-did-on-the-board-of-ukrainian-energy-company-burisma-idUSKBN1WX1P7 on the board of Burisma Holdings Ltd while his father was in the White House plays into a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump in the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

Late on Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy notified Congress that it would not comply with a subpoena and provide documents Democrats want to review, according to media reports. They are looking into contacts outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry has had with Ukraine.

 

The inquiry is focussed on whether Trump may have withheld $391 million in U.S. security aid to Ukraine earlier this year until newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy opened an investigation into the Bidens and into a discredited theory that Ukraine may have meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections.

 

American intelligence agencies concluded that it was Russia that used social media and other tools to secretly try to bolster Trump's 2016 prospects against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

 

The U.S. diplomat, George Kent, who was the State Department's deputy chief of mission in Ukraine, told congressional investigators on Tuesday that he became aware of Hunter Biden's Burisma board seat in early 2015 and spoke to a Biden staffer about it.

 

At the time, Joe Biden's other son, Beau, was dying from cancer.

 

"Kent testified that he raised this issue - the perception of a conflict of interest - that was problematic," the source said. "What he was told by the Biden official was that Beau's dying of cancer and they didn't have any further bandwidth to deal with family issues."

 

Hunter Biden's role in Burisma coincided with a U.S. anti-corruption drive in Ukraine that emphasized the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, the source said.

 

Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, without providing evidence, have accused the Bidens of corruption. Joe Biden is a leading contender https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-democrats-poll/biden-expands-edge-in-u-s-democratic-nomination-race-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1WX2O4 for the Democratic Party's nomination to run against Republican Trump in the November 2020 election.

 

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden's presidential campaign, said in a statement that when he was vice president, "the U.S. made eradicating corruption a centerpiece of our policies towards Ukraine."

 

House Democrats are looking into a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy and whether Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

 

House and Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have introduced legislation prohibiting funding for next year's Group of Seven summit if it is held at a Trump-owned resort in southern Florida, as the U.S. president intends.

 

The decision has raised questions over whether Trump's move could be an impeachable offence since the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal officials from receiving any gifts, payments or other things of value from foreign representatives, unless approved by Congress.

 

Trump calls the impeachment inquiry a "witch hunt" motivated by Democrats' bitterness over his 2016 surprise victory.

Trump's re-election campaign has begun selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Get Over It."

 

NEW ROUND OF WITNESSES

 

Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly, who sat in on Kent's testimony, told reporters this week that the diplomat also described a parallel foreign policy effort to sideline career diplomats on Ukraine and place relations with the country in the hands of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, a Trump donor, Energy Secretary Perry and Trump's then-special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker.

 

State Department diplomats, administration national security officials and a Defense Department Ukraine policy expert are due to testify to the House inquiry next week.

 

On Thursday, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney startled Washington when he told reporters that Trump's decision to withhold the security aid from Ukraine was linked to Trump's desire for Kiev to investigate a theory, long ago debunked, that a Democratic National Committee computer server was held in Ukraine.

 

Trump has denied that he ever used the American foreign aid as leverage to get Zelenskiy to look into U.S. political matters, but he has publicly urged both Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens.

 

Meanwhile, U.S. House Republicans on Friday ramped up their demand that Democrats investigating Trump provide lawmakers with access to all materials gathered by the three committees during their closed-door interviews and depositions.

 

(Reporting by David Morgan, additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Writing by Richard Cowan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Grant McCool and Daniel Wallis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-10-19

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Uh oh - there goes Joe. Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

Hunter even admitted that he got a job from China worth 1.5 billion $....why do they need to investigate that?

“Kent testified that he raised this issue - the perception of a conflict of interest - that was problematic,"

 

The perception!

 

Meanwhile the queue of witnesses corroborating actual crimes committed by the President grows longer by the day.

 

32 minutes ago, Thian said:

Hunter even admitted that he got a job from China worth 1.5 billion $....why do they need to investigate that?

I don't know if you're lying or just swallowing what Trump claimed. But no, he didn't get a job from china worth 1.5 billion. In fact, he didn't get a job from China at all.

5 hours ago, bristolboy said:

I don't know if you're lying or just swallowing what Trump claimed. But no, he didn't get a job from china worth 1.5 billion. In fact, he didn't get a job from China at all.

Guess you've watched too much bbc news...it was on video which i have seen. He admitted it.

Just now, Thian said:

Guess you've watched too much bbc news...it was on video which i have seen. He admitted it.

Which you can no longer find.

5 hours ago, bristolboy said:

I don't know if you're lying or just swallowing what Trump claimed. But no, he didn't get a job from china worth 1.5 billion. In fact, he didn't get a job from China at all.

 

At 15:31 you see joe biden commit about the ukrain...

 

I'm searching for hunter biden's confession though. Just wait.

4 minutes ago, Thian said:

 

At 15:31 you see joe biden commit about the ukrain...

 

I'm searching for hunter biden's confession though. Just wait.

First of all, I was replying to your assertion that Hunter Biden got 1.5 billion dollars from China.

As for Joe Biden, he never denied that he threatened to withhold money from Ukraine if it didn't fire Shokin. But he was just carrying out US policy in coordination with the EU and the IMF. This has been documented exhaustively.

5 hours ago, bristolboy said:

First of all, I was replying to your assertion that Hunter Biden got 1.5 billion dollars from China.

Right, so you won't believe that hunter got a deal worth 1.5 billion from the chinese?

1 hour ago, rooster59 said:

The inquiry is focussed on whether Trump may have withheld $391 million in U.S. security aid to Ukraine earlier this year until newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy opened an investigation into the Bidens and into a discredited theory that Ukraine may have meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections.

 

Discredited...debunked....by whom? When? Where? Let's see some proof

linkmeisters!

Just now, Thian said:

Right, so you won't believe that hunter got a deal worth 1.5 billion from the chinese?

So, first off you're no longer claiming that "Hunter even admitted that he got a job from China worth 1.5 billion $...." Because that's the nonsense I was replying to.

1 hour ago, rooster59 said:

Hunter Biden's role in Burisma coincided with a U.S. anti-corruption drive in Ukraine that emphasized the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, the source said.

 

The irony of this statement is deafening.

2 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

Discredited...debunked....by whom? When? Where? Let's see some proof

linkmeisters!

G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Affirms Russia Attacked Election, and Urges Action

 

As President Trump amplifies unsubstantiated claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee reaffirmed on Tuesday that Russian operatives engaged in a widespread social media campaign to improve his chances in the race.

In a report, the committee backed up the conclusions of the intelligence community, the special counsel and researchers that Russia mounted a broad campaign to interfere in the election. A Russian troll farm central to the election campaign supported “Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin,” the committee said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/business/senate-report-russia-election.html

2 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

The irony of this statement is deafening.

Agree with you there. I don't think anything wrong was done by the Bidens, but it sure doesn't look good.

1 hour ago, Thian said:

Hunter even admitted that he got a job from China worth 1.5 billion $....why do they need to investigate that?

Because he's a crack head with no known virtues and people don't hire known drug addicts- unless there is a HUGE upside somewhere else to mitigate the risk. Gee, what do you think that huge upside might be?

7 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Affirms Russia Attacked Election, and Urges Action

 

As President Trump amplifies unsubstantiated claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee reaffirmed on Tuesday that Russian operatives engaged in a widespread social media campaign to improve his chances in the race.

In a report, the committee backed up the conclusions of the intelligence community, the special counsel and researchers that Russia mounted a broad campaign to interfere in the election. A Russian troll farm central to the election campaign supported “Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin,” the committee said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/business/senate-report-russia-election.html

 

Says Russia interfered....doesn't say Ukraine didn't interfere (on behalf of democrats)...please check again...maybe you have a better link.

 

 U.S. diplomat told Congress he raised red flag about Biden and Ukraine - source

The title of this article is misleading" 

I found it difficult to follow the focus of the above article,  but it seems to me to be a recap of the events that led to and followed the allegations of  trump's quid pro quo with the Ukraine, of which the testimony concerning the report to Biden about his son's involvement in the Ukraine plays a small and incosecuencial part.

Te issue is the president's quid pro quo, if there are any evidence that Either Biden or his son did anything illegal those who have it need to bring to the appropriate authorities and have it  investigated, 

Everything else is BS designed to distract from the issue at hand.   

1 minute ago, sirineou said:

if there are any evidence that Either Biden or his son did anything illegal those who have it need to bring to the appropriate authorities and have it  investigated, 

 

well of course...it needs to be looked into...which is what Trump asked for in his phone call to Ukraine.

 

5 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

Let's say you have $1.5 billion to invest. Do you allow a known crack head anywhere near a deal involving such a large some of money? Yes or no?

No one should deny that Hunter Biden is a sleazy character and it's a sure thing that he got the favorable treatment he did because of who his father was. It's also sleazy that Ivanka got expedited treatment for trademark approval in China. And even more sleacy that Jared got bailed out of his disastrous NY real estate investment on ridiculously favorable terms by a fund that gets some of its money from Qatar. Maybe we should start an investigation of Trump on those grounds? 

3 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

well of course...it needs to be looked into...which is what Trump asked for in his phone call to Ukraine.

 

The US deals with corrupt government all the time. And even denounces them for it. But the only case we have of Trump intervening in a foreign corruption investigation is one where it would work to his political benefit. And he was asking for an investigation of an opponent whom he denounced for being a crook. Repeatedly and vociferously. And he directed officials to report and deferto his private lawyer.

14 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

well of course...it needs to be looked into...which is what Trump asked for in his phone call to Ukraine.

 

And in doing so asked a foreign leader to provide him with something of value in the forthcoming election.

 

Just now, Chomper Higgot said:

And in doing so asked a foreign leader to provide him with something of value in the forthcoming election.

 

Not really. He asked Ukraine to "find out what happened". If they find out Biden did nothing wrong (which is certainly an option based on Trump's request), that would be of no value to Trump.

7 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

When a corrupt US politician faces justice, every American benefits. True or false?

We’ll come back to that when Trump is thrown in the slammer.

1 minute ago, Crazy Alex said:

Not really. He asked Ukraine to "find out what happened". If they find out Biden did nothing wrong (which is certainly an option based on Trump's request), that would be of no value to Trump.

Nothing for Trump and his supporters to worry about then.

17 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

well of course...it needs to be looked into...which is what Trump asked for in his phone call to Ukraine.

 

We have appropriate agencies in the US to investigate these matters, no need to call the Ukraine   

and trump did not just asked the Ukraine  for an investigation , he compromised American foreign policy to further his political goals. I would think that as a patriotic American you would be against such behaviour

regardless of who the president is. 

38 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

And in doing so asked a foreign leader to provide him with something of value in the forthcoming election.

 

 

I dont think that's at all the case....very thin thread you're hanging off counsellor.

 

It may be considered value if he asked Zelinsky to manufacture a false charge (kinda

like Steele dossier)....all he said was ...look into it....does that mean something else to you?

Bill Barr, the nations top law enforcement guy, uses that phrase all the time....look into it.

Just now, JHolmesJr said:

 

I dont think that's at all the case....very thin thread you're hanging off counsellor.

 

It may be considered value if he asked Zelinsky to manufacture a false charge (kinda

like Steele dossier)....all he said was ...look into it....does that mean something else too you.

Bill Barr, the nations top law enforcement guy, uses that phrase all the time....look into it.

Again, nothing for Trump and his supporters to worry about then.

2 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Again, nothing for Trump and his supporters to worry about then.

 

Aww I was hoping for a more indignant response and a strong rebuttal....

but I'll take that as "there's nothing here".

 

Still, the business at hand is Biden....and he's looking guilty as sin.

4 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

Can you list out all these agencies please?

Does he go to the fbi, probably not.

Does he go to CIA (which has many Clapper/Brennan loyalists)?

Who should he have gone to, in order to pass your ethics test?

 

The Ukrainians were attempting to come to the US to deal directly with Bill Barr because they didn't trust the US operatives in Ukraine. They had a perception the US didn't want evidence of US corruption in Ukraine:

 

Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don't you want our evidence on Democrats?

 

The Ukrainians didn't trust the US operatives in Ukraine, which clearly would include people from various US agencies. So they wanted to deal directly with Bill Barr to bypass these people.