Donald Trump is facing impeachment now because he tried to blackmail the president of Ukraine into producing dirt on Joe Biden's son. Trump apparently has bought into a counterfeit story Rudy Giuliani is pushing that Ukraine, not Russia, is behind the hack on Democratic email accounts.
They also apparently think Hillary Clinton's email server is floating around in Ukraine, which is totally ridiculous. That email server never left Clinton's office: she deleted some personal emails with the approval of her lawyers. Trump apparently doesn't understand the concept of putting emails in the trash -- he seems to think that means she took the whole server to the dump and the Ukrainians made off with it.
Trump is angry at Ukraine because he thinks the country is behind the "whole Russia thing." But Trump's problems all started when he and his campaign got all buddy-buddy with the Russians. In particular, his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had worked for Viktor Yanukovych, a corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who was kicked out of the country by his own countrymen. (His extravagant presidential estate became of tourist attraction, a "museum of corruption," displaying the lavish lifestyle of an oligarch.)
Manafort was working for Trump free of charge. Trump, ever the cheapskate, thought this was a great idea. But no one works for Trump for free. In August 2016 Ukrainian investigators uncovered a ledger that showed Manafort received $12.7 million for working for Yanukovych's party, which Manafort of course had not disclosed on his taxes. Manafort had just finished tilting the Republican Party platform severely toward Russia at the expense of Ukraine, which Russia had invaded a few years earlier.
Clearly, Manafort was still working for Russia and/or pro-Russia Ukrainians, and being Trump's campaign manager was just his cover story.
Manafort was quickly kicked off the campaign, and Trump claimed he hardly knew the guy. Manafort is currently serving a prison sentence for his various crimes.
This is relevant now because history is repeating itself. Rudy Giuliani is working as Trump's "personal lawyer," free of charge. He has been interfering with American foreign policy in Eastern Europe, and has been the driving force in extorting Ukraine to fabricate dirt about Joe Biden and his son.
Like Manafort, Giuliani is not really working for free, or for Trump: he's been doing some dirty deals with two Ukrainians with connections to Russia, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have been charged with making illegal campaign contributions on behalf of Russians who want to get into the marijuana business in the United States (yeah, Giuliani -- the former prosecutor -- and his buddies are in bed with drug dealers).
Recently it was revealed just how Giuliani was getting at least some of his payoff: he got a Trump supporter, Charles Gucciardo, to "invest" half a million smackers in Parnas's company, Fraud Guarantee (that's the actual name!). Parnas then turned around and gave that money to Giuliani.
This, of course, reeks of corruption: the president's personal lawyer leans on a Trump supporter to invest in a bogus company that puts the money back into Giuliani's pocket.
Hey, Rudy, back in your prosecutor days you would have called that kind of a mob deal "money laundering."
Meanwhile, Giuliani was running around Ukraine demanding that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy "investigate corruption," which is Trumpspeak for manufacturing fake evidence against the Bidens.
It is clear that Giuliani always intended to corruptly cash in on his position as Trump's lawyer, while claiming to work for free. Just like Paul Manafort.
Didn't Donald Trump learned anything from the whole 2016 election mess? He's gone and done exactly the same thing: employing some corrupt bozo making crooked deals in Ukraine.
Trump is either a total idiot, or he's fully aware of the corruption and doesn't care. Or both.
Geeze. How can Republicans continue to support this crook, and all the crooks who work for him, enriching themselves at the expense of the United States' good name?
After three years of Trump we've become just another corrupt oligarchy.
No comments:
Post a Comment