Considering all these republicans grew up sucking on the teet of Reagan, it's crazy how cozy they are with former Soviet henchman. Fucking traitors, all of them.
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WSJ: Key players in Ukraine scandal & Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas & Igor Fruman, arrested on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules
- Thread starter chadskin
- Start date
Was Pete Sessions one of them?
I also believe I remember hearing during this scandal that there is a Senator involved but we never heard a name.
Edit - He was not there. Senator Johnson was though and his name has been mentioned in this scandal as he appears to try and distance himself.
What's funny is Johnson and Kennedy are on this list and those are two of trumps biggest banner wavers the past couple weeks
Totally makes the president seem super guilty of crimes! Thank you!
Good that these guys are caught, but I do fear that :
1) They are given a light sentence even if they refuse to cooperate - The "Otherwise a Blameless Life" treatment that Manafort got despite being proven guilty on multiple counts, what do they have to fear?
2) Information they have is not later passed over to the House for the Impeachment investigation. It is locked away as deep as possible to prevent anyone else getting caught up for as long as possible.
Those are the only question marks I have at this point, and hopefully this moves things forward and that they cooperate.
1) They are given a light sentence even if they refuse to cooperate - The "Otherwise a Blameless Life" treatment that Manafort got despite being proven guilty on multiple counts, what do they have to fear?
2) Information they have is not later passed over to the House for the Impeachment investigation. It is locked away as deep as possible to prevent anyone else getting caught up for as long as possible.
Those are the only question marks I have at this point, and hopefully this moves things forward and that they cooperate.
I take it since it was SDNY that Barr couldn't do anything about it? The fact that he knew if something though.
Manafort still got 7 1/2 years, that's a little long for "I've got nothing to fear" territory.
He probably did tell them through an intermediary. There was a reason they were trying to flee at this point. Also Barr right now is forcing SDNY to defend Trump in his tax fight to keep Manhattan from getting them.
They previously said they weren't going to cooperate
Plus, as noted later, they were actually leaving the country
Some more bad news for Trump, a scoop by the WSJ:
So they were arrested while they were about to flee the country by plane? Totally legal, very cool.
If it's true that they are mob-connected, they are definitely clamming up. I hear cement is really cheap these days.
And when they were supposed to testify in front of Congress the very next day.
Rudy's gonna tweet his texts from Parnas and Fruman to declare his innocence soon. Watch.
OP
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Well, I guess the gist is that Parnas and Fruman wanted to replace the CEO of Naftogaz, an Ukrainian energy company, in order to steer lucrative business deals to their companies.
As part of the scheme "Parnas told [the Naftogaz exec Parnas and Fruman hoped would replace the current CEO] Trump planned to remove U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and replace her with someone more open to aiding their business interests", per the AP story. They enlisted the help of and donated to Pete Sessions, who wrote a letter to Pompeo last year saying Yovanovitch is bad-mouthing Trump behind closed doors, i.e. the most cardinal sin in the Trump administration. Wrongdoing in connection to those donations to Sessions and a Trump super PAC is at the heart of this indictment.
When those efforts ultimately went nowhere Giuliani met multiple times with the then-Ukrainian prosecutor, Yurij Lutsenko, who accused Yovanovitch of pressuring him to not prosecute a group funded by the Obama administration and liberal billionaire George Soros in 2016. State Dept and Yovanovitch denied it, and Lutsenko later walked back those comments, but it fed into a smear campaign on Fox News against Yovanovitch and she was ultimately recalled by Trump in May. Lutsenko also fed Giuliani the whole Hunter Biden/Burisma narrative, and took his accusations public in interviews with John Solomon, a noted right-wing hack whose stories were mentioned in the whistleblower complaint and who emailed his Lutsenko story to Parnas and Trump lawyers/Giuliani associates Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing ahead of publication.
After Zelenskyy won the presidential election in May he vowed to replace Lutsenko. Notably, Trump praised Lutsenko during the July 25 phone call and told Zelenskyy he should keep him around. But he was eventually fired a couple of weeks later.
It's quite possible that the quid pro quo was not (only) the military aid or a meeting with Trump that Zelenskyy sought but that Trump wanted to help Giuliani/Parnas/Fruman with their business ventures. And per the AP story, Rick Perry was also involved in efforts to unduly exercise influence over Naftogaz, which raises yet more questions.
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They most likely have shit on a lot of people Ukraine related:
No doubt in my mind this is one of those cases Mueller farmed out. Don't be surprised to see Michael Cohen dragged back into the fray here either. LOTS of Ukraine fun involved him directly.
