[Red State] Former President Barack Obama address the participants at a summit on climate change involving mayors from around the globe Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, in Chicago. The conference comes after President Trump said the U.S. will pull out of the Paris agreement. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)The Hill’s John Solomon has uncovered new information which provides one more indication that much of the conspiracy to take down President Trump originated from the Obama White House.
Solomon reported that, in January 2016, the White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington under the pretense of coordinating their nation’s ongoing anti-corruption efforts. (At this time, DNC consultant Ukrainian-American Alexandria Chalupa was warning Democrats that Trump was likely to tap Paul Manafort to run his campaign. I wrote about this here and here.)
Solomon wrote:
The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).Solomon spoke to a former Ukrainian Embassy officer, Andrii Telizhenko, who said, "U.S. officials kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united."
The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long ‐ during the meetings and afterward ‐ to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.
The Americans told Telizhenko they were interested in reopening an investigation about improper payments to GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who belonged to Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions. The FBI had closed this case in 2014. (Manafort’s firm had long been connected to Roger Stone.)
Telizhenko and other attendees "recalled DOJ officials asking investigators from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans." Telizhenko told Solomon. "It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election."