Ukraine scandal Archives - Iran News Daily

Ukraine, Victim of US Politics

reporter 1222 — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:28:46 +0000

Regardless of how the House of Representatives’ impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump ends, some Ukrainian-Americans believe their ancestral homeland has already become an unwitting victim of tumultuous US politics.

“I think Ukraine is kind of a victim of US politics in this case because I believe they were pushed to do something that is not in the real Ukrainian interest,” said Igor Yarmak, 63, a tech professional in New York City who has voted Republican in the past but dislikes Trump. Iran News quotes the story.

The inquiry into whether Trump misused US foreign policy to ask Ukraine to target a domestic political opponent enters a critical phase on Wednesday when Congress holds its first public, televised hearings to question witnesses.

Others among the roughly 1 million people of Ukrainian descent living in the United States also expressed frustration at seeing Ukraine, which largely depends on foreign aid and protection from Russia, dragged into the impeachment fight.

“Once again, Ukraine is in the spotlight for its critical position in eastern Europe and I feel it’s being used by political powers for their own gain,” said Paul Jablonsky, a small business owner and the president of the Ukrainian American Community Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The inquiry comes three years into Trump’s unconventional presidency and as Democrats and Trump’s Republicans are gearing up for a brutal election battle.

Democrats are investigating whether there are grounds to impeach Trump over his July 25 request, in a phone call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, that the latter investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a key political rival to Trump in 2020.

That call prompted a whistleblower complaint that led congressional Democrats to launch the probe into whether Trump abused his power by withholding nearly $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine to pressure the vulnerable US ally.

“(It is) really disheartening if it does come to pass that President Trump has been using his individual influence as president to further his political ambitions for the next election,” said 59-year-old Jablonsky, who considers himself an independent and agrees with Trump politically on issues including trade.

There are large populations of Ukrainian-Americans in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, which are seen as competitive in next year’s presidential election.

“Trump putting the screws and the pressure on Ukraine, which is the victim of US politics … to extort and grind a poor fledgling democracy, it’s beyond the pale of understanding,” said Ulana Mazurkevich, a business owner from the Philadelphia area and a Democrat who declined to give her age.

Ukraine’s Zelensky, a comedian and, like Trump, a political novice, won a landslide election victory in April promising voters an end to a conflict with Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region that has killed 13,000 people.

He has been walking a diplomatic tightrope to maintain good relations with both US political sides whose bipartisan support Ukraine counts on for aid and diplomatic cover against Russia following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula in 2014.

“He might appear as a weak leader because he was trying to play ball with Trump or he was trying to avoid playing ball with Trump,” said Irina Medvinskaya, a US citizen who was born in Kyiv and emigrated to the United States at age 15.

But Medvinskaya, a Democrat, voiced hope that Ukraine could play a historic role if Trump were to be impeached and removed from office.

“If this becomes the death of him, I will be very proud of my motherland.”

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The ‘Giuliani factor’ that might condemn Trump to impeachment

reporter 1222 — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 10:02:44 +0000

Rudy Giuliani’s fingerprints are everywhere. The Giuliani factor is the thing that may lead to Trump’s impeachment.

Despite being invisible for days after shelving his train-wreck TV interviews he is emerging with Donald Trump as the most dominant and intriguing figure in the impeachment drama. Iran News quotes the report of CNN.

The man once feted as America’s mayor is looming over events on Capitol Hill as details of his expansive role in the scandal fill publicly released witness testimony.

“He was always swirling around somewhere,” US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified, adding that Giuliani’s shadow foreign policy mission in Ukraine got more “insidious” as time went on.

Giuliani was ubiquitous, on the phone with Ukrainian officials, inserting himself in US diplomatic meetings, sowing confusion and exasperation about what he was up to, witnesses said.

Even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo couldn’t rein in the President’s man, rolling his eyes when Sondland mentioned him and saying: “Yes, it’s something we have to deal with,” according to transcripts of Sondland’s testimony.

Revelations about Giuliani’s mission are piling up as the Democratic impeachment push races ahead. A critical new stage of the inquiry opens next week with public hearings where the absent Giuliani’s name is sure to be on everyone’s lips.

Pages of newly released witness testimony appear to be cementing the Democratic case that Trump abused his power by seeking political favors from Ukraine. The President, however, insists he did nothing wrong and is dismissing the latest revelations.

Evidence of Giuliani’s intimate involvement in the Ukraine scheme turns the focus on why the President was apparently so keen to bypass accredited US diplomats and senior officials.

And on a day when Giuliani announced his own high powered legal defense team, speculation is growing about his own legal exposure and how the scandal will stain his own legacy.

“Even someone like Rudy Giuliani who at one point was a pretty significantly good lawyer realizes you need outside counsel,” said CNN legal analyst Preet Bharara, who like Giuliani is a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, on CNN’s “Situation Room.”

“I don’t know that he is in true criminal jeopardy, but at a minimum when people are beginning to investigate you … you want to have able counsel at your side,” he said.

The torrent of revelations about Giuliani will mean that Trump’s attitude and mood regarding his lawyer and most vociferous cable television defender need to be closely watched.

If the President begins to create some distance between them, Giuliani wouldn’t be the first Trump lawyer to face carrying the can for his client’s alleged wrongdoing — as former Trump attorney Michael Cohen well knows.

Most fundamentally, the flurry of disclosures about Giuliani poses the question of whether Congress will ever get to the bottom of what happening in Ukraine without his testimony.

Giuliani has said in the past that he would like to testify. But it seems unlikely he has much to gain by doing so. But any attempt to avoid an appearance based on attorney-client privilege or executive privilege would be a tough legal sell given his non-official role and ramblings into Europe — well beyond the confines of a relationship with Trump.

He might also exercise his right to avoid self-incrimination given the current criminal and counter-intelligence investigation into his business dealings in Ukraine.

Giuliani rejected the idea that he was enriching himself abroad through his associations with the President in a conversation with CNN Investigative Reporter Drew Griffin.

“I am in private law practice. I practice law honorably and well. Never had a complaint. Never had an issue ever in 50 years of private law practice,” he said.

Trump has defended Giuliani in recent weeks, but the President does have a history of minimizing his relationship with former associates when they get into trouble. There’s also a possibility that his lawyer could become a useful scapegoat.

As recently as last month, however, Trump was standing by his fellow New Yorker.

“He’s a great gentleman. He was a great mayor, one of the greatest, maybe the greatest mayor in the history of New York,” Trump said. “He’s a man that looks for corruption … I know he’s an honorable man.”

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Second whistleblower in Trump-Ukraine scandal comes forward

reporter 1222 — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 10:31:19 +0000

A second whistleblower, with first-hand knowledge of President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, has spoken with the intelligence community’s internal watchdog, the lawyer representing the official said on Sunday.

Mark Zaid confirmed in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” that the second official, also from the US intelligence community, has been interviewed by the inspector general. Zaid represents the first whistleblower who filed a complaint involving a July 25 phone call Trump held with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he asked him to investigate a Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, Iran News covers what Reuters reported.

The existence of the second whistleblower followed stirrings of discontent within Trump’s own Republican Party after he called on China on Friday to investigate Biden’s son, who had business dealings in China.

Republican US Senators Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Susan Collins all have expressed concerns about Trump reaching out to foreign countries to help him in his 2020 reelection bid.

The telephone call and the whistleblower complaint prompted House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch impeachment proceedings on Sept. 24 against Trump, saying his actions jeopardized US election integrity and threatened national security.

Trump told House Republicans Friday that he was urged by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to make the midsummer phone call to Ukraine’s president, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Trump suggested it was a call he didn’t even want to make, the sources said.

The news was first reported by Axios.

Department of Energy Press Secretary Shaylyn Hynes told NBC News late Saturday that “Secretary Perry absolutely supported and encouraged the president to speak to the new president of Ukraine to discuss matters related to their energy security and economic development.”

“He continues to believe that there is significant need for improved regional energy security — which additional options for natural gas supply will provide — and this is exactly why he is heading to Lithuania tonight to meet with nearly two dozen European energy leaders (including Ukraine) on these issues.”

Perry is reportedly set to resign from his position as energy secretary in November.

The July 25 phone call led a US intelligence official to file a whistleblower complaint that set off a cascade of fast-moving events, ultimately leading to an impeachment inquiry into the president.

Trump has publicly maintained that the call was “absolutely perfect” and “totally appropriate.”

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Russia Sends Its Protest to US over FBI Questioning of MP

reporter 1222 — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 09:00:55 +0000

Tehran (Iran News) – The Russian embassy in the United States sent a note of protest to the US State Department over FBI questioning of a Russian lawmaker in a New York airport overnight.

Russian deputy Inga Yumasheva was questioned for an hour by the FBI upon arrival in New York, the Russian embassy said in a statement posted on its Facebook page. It did not specify which airport she arrived at. Now Russia is on the way to send its protest against US FBI questioning of Russian MP.

“She was asked to go to a separate room and an FBI officer, who introduced himself, started to question her, for an hour…,” the embassy said, citing Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov.

“Moreover, she was offered to meet with the FBI officer in a different, informal setting and to continue the conversation,” said the ambassador, Reuters reported.

US-Russia ties are strained by a number of issues from Syria to Ukraine as well as allegations of Russian interference in US politics, which Moscow denies.

In September, Washington refused to issue visas to 10 members of a Russian delegation traveling to the United Nations General Assembly. Moscow called the US move outrageous and a violation of international commitments.

Yumasheva, who had a visa, had traveled to the United States to attend the Fort Ross Dialogue forum that takes place in California on Sunday, the embassy said. In the lower house of Russian parliament – known as State Duma – she coordinates relations with the US Congress.

State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called Yumasheva’s questioning a “cynical provocation”.

“The actions of the United States of America are yet another example of a violation of its international obligations,” the State Duma’s press service said on Sunday.

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