Exposing the Exposé: Ukraine Worked with Dems Against Trump in Election 2016 "to Stop Putin"
So the title says. Because some said the article was one of the most complete exposés on the Obama coup in Ukraine, I had to read it. I've always believed the US sponsored the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government, so I hoped I had finally found an article that would untangle the web.
That might have been a mistake because the "best" investigative article about the coup by Paul Sperry sounds a bit like old-lady gossip; but, hey, it is, at least, fodder for entertainment. Here is a synopsis just for fun of the "best" investigation out there:
The article begins by touting its own importance this way:
Sources say Durham has interviewed several Ukrainians, but it’s not likely the public will find out exactly what he's learned about the extent of Ukraine’s meddling in the election until he releases his final report, which sources say could be several months away. In the meantime, a comprehensive account of documented Ukrainian collusion – including efforts to assist the FBI in its 2016 probe of Manafort – is pieced together here for the first time.
OK, so this article is going to scoop Durham, himself. Sperry is going to dish the dirt so we don't have to wait for the actual investigation because we have his investigation, pulling together the stuff behind the stuff.
The tell-all tale
The tell-all article is titled "Ukraine Worked With Democrats Against Trump in Election 2016 to Stop Putin. That Bet Backfired Badly." The story it presents of how Ukraine interfered with US elections to help Hillary and stop Putin from something -- we don't know what -- is a convoluted mess of innuendos, or as Sperry described it, "pieced together." I've summarized the best pieces of the pieces below, but you can read the whole conglomeration of factoids at the link above if so inclined:
The self-important article leads off with the following big claim as its intro:
Working with both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign, Ukrainian government officials intervened in the 2016 race to help Clinton and hurt Donald Trump in a sweeping and systematic foreign influence operation that's been largely ignored by the press.
Sounds good! In fact, it sounds like exactly the same script that ran in the press for years during the Trump administration, only now flipped to Ukraine interferes in election to hurt Trump, instead of Russia interferes to hurt Hillary. Right away I started wondering if this was going to be an attempt to retread an old conspiracy theory that had largely run out of rubber. Suddenly, we have the real dirt that it was Hillary all along colluding with Ukraine to make it look like Trump was colluding with Russia. Same plot, roles reversed: Hillary and Ukraine become the collaborators, instead of Trump and Russia.
It has to be more than conspiracy spinning, though, because the article reports to be made from...
an archive of previously unreported records generated from a secret Federal Election Commission investigation of the Democratic National Committee that includes never-before-reviewed sworn affidavits, depositions, contracts, emails, text messages, legal findings and other documents from the case.
Oooh "secret." That's always good. "Unreported ... never-before-reviewed" -- it's got all the good stuff. And my synopsis will reveal what Sperry's sources don't reveal -- a whole lot of nothing. Umm, I think I said that right. Someone revealed a whole lot of nothing. Anyway, Sperry says he has gotten the secret dope, the real scoop. And here it goes:
The coordination between Ukrainian and Democratic officials can be traced back at least to January 2014. It was then when top Obama diplomats – many of whom now hold top posts in the Biden administration – began engineering regime change in Kiev, eventually installing a Ukrainian leader they could control.
Any story that begins with "top" officials is one I know is going to be good. The best stories always use the top people. You know, "Top scientists say...." That's the good stuff.
On Jan. 27, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt phoned Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at her home in Washington to discuss picking opposition leaders to check the power of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whom they believed was too cozy with Putin. “We’ve got to do something to make it stick together,†Pyatt said of a planned coalition government
So far, so good. That's the dope I came looking for.
The improper, if not illegal, operation was run chiefly out of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, where officials worked hand-in-glove with a Ukrainian-American activist and Clinton campaign operative to attack the Trump campaign. The Obama White House was also deeply involved in an effort to groom their own favored leader in Ukraine and then work with his government to dig up dirt on – and even investigate -- their political rival.... They agreed they had to “move fast."
OK. This is the stuff I came to hear. It's got Ukrainians in it! Let's see what they got:
The club sandwich club
Nuland’s role in the political maneuvering was not limited to phone calls. She traveled to Kiev and helped organize street demonstrations against Yanukovych, even handing out sandwiches to protesters. ... Obama officials greased a revolution. Within months, Yanukovych was exiled and replaced by Petro Poroshenko....
Whoa! That's it? Phone calls and sandwiches? Yes, that's the meat of the whole story right there -- the actual details of Democratic involvement. The Ukrainians must have really wanted to have a coup if all it took to help organize them was a few well-placed phone calls and some sandwiches. However, it was none other than Victoria Nuland who personally handed out sandwiches in the streets to get this fired up. So, that's something. I wonder if she cut the crusts off to make them look nice. Cucumber? The top sandwiches for things like this are always cucumber, quartered, and have the crusts cut off. I mean, that's what I think.
The U.S. meddling resulted in the installation of an anti-Putin government next door to Russia. A furious Putin viewed the interference as an attempted coup and soon marched into Crimea.
Phone calls and sandwiches. I guess that was it because next thing you know we have Putin marching into Crimea. Seriously, that was the best the story had to offer about Obama's role, and this was supposed to be the deep-throat stuff the mainstream media never covered! The article does make some serious allegations, though:
Ukrainian and Democratic operatives also huddled with American journalists to spread damaging information on Trump and his advisers – including allegations of illicit Russian-tied payments that, though later proved false, forced the resignation of his campaign manager Paul Manafort.
There's the meat in the sandwich I'm looking for. Unfortunately, we never really get any more evidence than just the allegation serving as its own evidence, but I love it when they use words like "operative." Makes it read like a spy novel. And we have this -- not exactly evidence, but it's a good strong statement:
Poroshenko who would later do Biden’s bidding – including firing a prosecutor investigating his son Hunter.
That was an allegation made by Team Trump, which Trump was never able to prove, even though he held the presidency. But who needs proof when you have allegations on both sides?
It turned out, the article says, that betting everything on Hillary was a bad bet.
At first glance, it was a bad bet as Trump upset Clinton. But by the end of his first year in office, Trump had supplied Ukrainians what the Obama administration refused to give them: tank-busting Javelin missiles and other lethal weapons to defend themselves against Russian incursions.
If they bet on Hitlary, I can't argue with that being a bad bet. It reads like nice pro-Trump propaganda, but according to none other than Business Insider, there is a massive bomb crater in the middle of that story. You can read it separately here:
As noted by Business Insider,
Javelins were mentioned in the July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to a whistleblower complaint and spiraled into an inquiry that resulted in Trump's impeachment, and they've repeatedly come up as Republicans attempt to defend the president. During the call, Trump urged Zelensky to launch investigations into his political rivals — including former Vice President Joe Biden.
As you might recall at the time, that was the very aid package that Trump supposedly dangled over Zelensky's head to try to get the dirt on Biden, and he actually only released the aid AFTER he was accused of offering it to Z as bait but refusing to give it unless he got the dirt:
At the time, Trump had placed roughly $400 million of congressionally-approved security assistance to Ukraine on hold, and the president is accused of dangling the aid over Zelensky as part of a broad scheme to pressure him into launching the investigations.
Now back to our exposé at hand where we come to the salacious details, though I do pause to wonder why Trump says he was so nice to the Ukrainians if they did all they could to keep him from winning, Trump being the kind of guy who often likes to get even. Nevertheless, on with our tale that includes the very whistleblower just mentioned, a CIA small-time operator named Eric Ciaramella (we'll call him Mr. C-4), but first another highly paid operative ($5,000 a month! I guess you get what you pay for), who, according to this new article, played an even larger role than Mr. C-4:
Whispering in their ear at the time was a fiery pro-Ukraine activist and old Clinton hand, Alexandra “Ali†Chalupa.... Almost a month before the first GOP primary – Chalupa told top DNC official Lindsey Reynolds she was seeing strong indications that Putin was trying to steal the 2016 election for Trump.
Let me get this right: Even a pro-Trump, pro-Russian article carried later on a pro-Russian website where I found it, which tries to make Ukraine look bad, confirms that Putin was interfering in the 2016 US election, and the old version of this conspiracy theory was that he did that to help Trump. This, the DNC learned from a woman named after a food product at Taco Bell -- Chalupa.
Chalupa's efforts we learn were backed by intel provided by none other than...
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who provided Nuland with written reports on the Ukrainian crisis and Russia that echoed Chalupa’s warnings. Nuland treated them as classified intelligence, and between the spring of 2014 and early 2016, she received some 120 reports on Ukraine and Russia from Steele.
Chillary & Co.
Ah, another familiar character back in the story. Still not clear, though, how Steele's involvement confirms the story's main tenet that Ukraine was colluding with Pillary to interfere in the election. We know that Clinton & Co. hired Steele to create evidence against Trump, but that proves what about Ukraine? Apparently, the point is that we can know the Ukrainians were bad guys because Steele's report said the same thing the Ukrainians were saying, and we know Steele was a very bad guy. We don't know what Steele reported to Clinton on this particular matter about the Ukrainians, but it had to be bad-guy stuff.
Getting even more convoluted and mirky, Ukraine's big involvement in all of this turns out be what we already knew: that Trump asked them to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden, and they refused. And this they did to help "stop Putin" ... from doing what? Interfering with the US election? The article doesn't say. Was Ukraine's big crime that they refused to help Trump get dirt on Biden or just that they actually took the phone call?
Chalupa grew concerned that Manafort was or would be involved with his [Trump's] campaign since Manafort had known Trump for decades and lived in Trump Tower.... Chalupa began encouraging journalists both in America and Ukraine to dig into Manafort’s dealings in Ukraine and expose his alleged Russian connections. She fed unsubstantiated rumors, tips and leads to the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as CNN.
OK, so Ukraine's big involvement was that Taco Belle talked to some Ukrainian journalists who were friends of hers to find out more about Trump's new campaign guy.
“I spent many, many hours working with reporters on background."
Ukrainian reporters. Are these the same kind of inside government sources regarding Ukrainian involvement in trying to toss the election to Hillary as New York Times reporters?
As RealClearInvestigations first reported,
So far, this is anything but real clear!
Chalupa was also sounding alarm bells in the White House. In November 2015, for example, she set up a White House meeting between a Ukrainian delegation including Ukraine Ambassador Valeriy Chaly and NSC advisers – among them Eric Ciaramella, a young CIA analyst on loan to the White House who later would play a significant role as anonymous "whistleblower" in Trump’s first impeachment.
In walks Mr. C-4.
Ciaramella was a CIA detailee to the White House occupying the NSC’s Ukraine desk... He also worked with Nuland and Chalupa. Ciaramella was carried over to the Trump White House.
Apparently he didn't walk. He was carried. Why? He had no legs? (When the reporting gets as sloppy as endless innuendo -- they talked to Ukrainians, so you know they were up to illegal activity -- you have to have some fun with it. So, here we go ... the Ukrainian connection. I'm sure they will beat the French any day of the weak.)
He would later anonymously blow the whistle on Trump asking Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to help “get to the bottom of†Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, a phone call that triggered Trump’s first impeachment by a Democrat-controlled House.
Putin power
Something that we all remember Trump could not get Z to do no matter how hard he supposedly tried. Even those trying to destroy Trump stated over and over that Trump had to keep pressuring Z to try to get him to do this. So, supposed-bad-guy Z's big role was that he wouldn't help Trump? Doesn't that just leave Trump as the real bad guy for trying to pressure Z to reveal the evils of Ukraine after Trump won the election and became president. I frankly, don't know what it shows about Trump, but all I see here is that Z wouldn't talk. Proof he was hiding something? Or just proof there was nothing there to talk about? It will come down to whatever you already want to believe about Biden & Sons, but so much so far for any actual evidence that Ukraine did anything, except people who were Ukrainians met with people who were not.
Ciaramella’s former NSC colleague Alexander Vindman leaked the call to him.
Oooo. Now we're getting down to something. The notorious Vindman enters the picture, and we all know he's Ukrainian, and he must have been a friend of Mr. C-4 because they worked in different but related branches of the government. So, Vindman, whom the story's intended audience will already know from the Trump impeachment proceedings is one of those Ukrainian bad guys, reported that TheRump was trying unsuccessfully to pressure Z into digging up dirt on Biden. And this makes the Ukrainians the bad guys, how? Because they tell on TheRump as to being pressured? No, Z never said he felt pressured. They tell on Biden & Son? Nope didn't do that either. So, was it just because, Z refused to do TheRump's bidding?
Vindman, a Ukrainian-American, is also aligned with Chalupa.
The taco lady? Now we've got some serious guilt by association going! I mean, the chalupa was always bad.
(Vindman is now back in the news for his demands that the United States provide more active military support to Ukraine and his insistence that Trump shares great blame for the war.)
Now, supposedly, the Dems, in hiring these aids to help destroy Trump, would have liked Vindman to say that Trump succeeded in pressuring Z into trying to dig up dirt on Biden and that Z looked into it but failed to find anything because then the Democratic Nutball Committee. would really have something on Trump and have vindication for Biden at the same time. Instead, the worst they could get out of the people that the Dem's purportedly put in power as Obama's puppet government was that Trump tried to get them to dig up dirt on Biden but that Z provided no dirt.
I'm reading the story at this point and having a hard time seeing there how these are the bad guys who helped the Democrats beat Trump in order to "stop Putin." They are bad because they said Trump tried to pressure them to do something they wouldn't do? That's their crime? And stop Putin from what?
Now we're going to get the real dirt. At last, we come to those secret meetings that were mentioned at the start of the article:
less than a month after the White House summit, Telizhenko, who worked for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, met with Zentos of the NSC at a Cosi sandwich shop in Washington.
Hold it. We're back to lunch crimes? First it was handing out sandwiches in the public square. Then something to do with the Taco Bell lady, and now they are having nefarious meetings at sandwich shops in Washington? Got it. But stop Putin from what?
It's not known what they discussed.
Of course not. One can figure out right off, though, what a crime this must have been because it involves a Ukrainian having another sandwich summit about nothing that we are aware of!
But, hey, we had a meeting at a sandwich shop. We know that much. In that case, probably another menu crime like the chalupa.
A week later, Obama officials gathered with Ukrainian officials traveling from Kiev in the White House for a series of senior-level meetings to, among other things, discuss reviving a long-closed investigation into payments to American consultants working for the Party of Regions, according to Senate documents.
But hold it. That's the party of the guy that the supposed Obama puppet replaced -- you know the "democratically elected" guy. So, you mean there were possible illegal payments to American consultants who helped put the guy in place that Putin wanted that Obama later ousted?
One of the attendees, Ukrainian Embassy political officer Andrii Telizhenko, recalled Justice Department officials asking investigators with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, if they could help find fresh evidence of party payments to such U.S. figures
But these were payments to people who helped elect the pre-coup guy, Viktor Yanukovych. I thought he was the good guy (the democratically elected pro-Russia guy), while Z was like the also legitimately elected descendant of the puppet replacement via coup, Petro Poroshenko. It's all so confusing. Oh, but it turns out Manafort was one of those people who, as a big campaign manager, helped put Yanukovych in power -- helped get him Democratically elected. Or was it Republicanly elected? Now, he's working for Trump and always lived in Trump tower. So, the guy who worked to put Trump in Republican power also worked to put the pro-Putin guy in power.
Don't cross my red lines
How exactly, though, does that make the Ukrainians the bad guys, rather than the pawns being moved back and forth to each side of someone's red line -- the American side and the Putin side with Manafort being the double-crosser in the middle? I thought this article was about Ukrainians trying to keep Trump from getting elected to stop Putin from doing something. Then, suddenly, there are hints about Yanukovych, who was elected before the coup kicked him out, maybe being Putin's puppet? Or was he Trump's puppet?
I mean who was Manafort laundering the money for? Was it Putin interfering in Ukraine's election and trying to hide his financing of Yanukovych's campaign -- because that is something that would be absolutely illegal in the US. And whose organization would be large enough to handle so much money as the laundry service? That's how you launder money. You buy big things and sell them and rinse and repeat or finance big things. I mean Manafort lived in Trump Tower, knew Trump for years, and worked for Trump as his next assignment. And guilt by association seems to be the big crime in this article.
Surely someone is crossing someone's red line here, but what a tangled line it is.
The Obama administration’s enforcement agencies leaned on their Ukrainian counterparts to investigate Manafort, shifting resources from an investigation of a corrupt Ukrainian energy oligarch who paid Biden’s son
Well, maybe, but I'd kind of want to know, too, why the American guy who is helping Trump get elected was paid by pro-Russian Yanukovych's party as a consultant to help get Yanukovych elected when Yani was the anti-American guy. Jaded as I am, I might wonder if Putin was even paying Manafort's consulting fee to get his buddy Yanukovych elected. Could have all been legit of course -- just Ukrainians hiring a renowned expert in democratic elections with no money from Putie at all. I'm just asking a question. You know, follow the money.
Lest anyone think the Obama Admin. was going after Manafort because he was working Trump's campaign, the article notes that the reopening of the FBI's criminal investigation into Manafort began two months before Manafort signed onto the Trump campaign, which also means that, whatever his involvement was with Yanukovych, the Trump Campaign had plenty of time to know about it and about the criminal investigation and vet it. Of course, if Manny was a Trump crony, the Teflon Don might not have cared about all of that. Just saying they had plenty of time to do their due diligence.
Now, just because the investigation was regarding Manafort's alleged money laundering does not mean we have to follow the money to Putin just because Manafort was paid by someone to work for Yanukovych. Nor does it mean Yani was Putin's puppet. It might have all been Ukrainian-donated Party of Regions money or just money of some Putin oligarch who was a Ukrainian citizen, interfering with the democratic election in Ukraine. Well, you can hardly ask such things and be considered a reasonable man in society today, so fortunately for you all, the article moves on before I get carried away with all the questions that start leaping into my mind about possible connections.
Just as we're getting to some interesting questions, the author lets that little nugget drop into the dust and gets back to what's really important. First, the sandwich shop and then...
Off to the bar
On March 3, Zentos and Telizhenko planned to meet again, this time at a Washington bar called The Exchange.
Say it isn't so! First they met at a sandwich shop, now a bar of all places? One nefariously called "The Exchange" no less! Exchange what? Like gossip? Or secret briefcase handoffs? Not seeing a lot in the article about the secret briefcase handoffs. The article does, however, present photographic email evidence of pleasantries exchanged, which it summarizes like this:
According to their email, Zentos wrote, “I’ll see if my colleague Eric is up for joining.†The pair also met the next day at Swing’s coffee house in Washington. After the meeting, Telizhenko emailed Zentos seeking a meeting with senior Obama NSC official Charlie Kupchan.... Kupchan is an outspoken critic of Trump who has made remarks suggesting what countries “can do to stop him†and “protect the international institutions we’ve built .†Zentos and Telizhenko also met on March 10, patronizing the Cosi coffee shop again.
Quite the coffee clutch aren't they? I mean one guy's even named after a coffee cup! I can see from this in-depth report why it is hard to keep from putting on weight when working in Washington. That's what I learn from all this. It's just an endless string of coffee meetings and beers at bars. Did they ever discuss anything other than the Taco Bell menus? The emails don't provide a clue. We do learn, however, that they met with an outspoken critic of Trump, and they sound like they are Ukrainians, so there had to be some crime involved in a meeting like that. People that don't like Trump meeting with Ukrainians? How much more evidence do you need? Well, here's some:
Chalupa met at the Ukrainian Embassy with Ambassador Chaly and his political counselor Oksana Shulyar, where they shared their concerns about Manafort, according to Politico.
O.K. Good. We're back to Ukrainians apparently dining on the Taco Belle in their own embassy. I was wondering when Chalupa was going to come in. Maybe they were in the mood for Mexican delivery. Anyway, in she pops.
The big news here is they had "concerns about Manafort," the guy who had many connections with Ukrainians, who was allegedly involved in money laundering for Ukrainians, though if true that would have been for the Ukrainians who were trying to get Yanukovych elected because those were the ones paying Manafort for his services! Which might sort of explain why Obama's dumb-guy foreign policy said he needed to undo everyone's tangled red lines with a good-guy-club sandwich coup.
Chalupa couldn't contain herself.
I always had problems keeping the vegetables inside a chalupa, too. So, I get that.
She immediately began circulating anti-Manafort memos, warning the DNC of the “threat†he posed of Russian influence.
O.K. Back to confused. So, the guy with many Ukrainian connections (Manny) is a threat because he might be bringing too much Red Russian influence into the elections. That would be a serious red line. Just trying to follow the thread here (or the line): Would that be because he's being investigated for his connection as advisor to Putin's favorite Ukrainian president in possible money laundering? And would that be because the Russians were trying to influence Ukraine's elections and now somehow trying to gain influence in American elections through that same influencer, Manafort? But what I still can't figure is how does that make the Ukrainians the bad guys, instead of just the pawns to each side's moves? Are they the bad boys in the story because they might be the ones using Manafort to interfere in US elections because, after all, they know him? Got it! Or they might have been used by the Russians. Hmm.
The next day, March 29, she briefed the DNC communications team about Manafort. They, in turn, hatched a plan to reach out to the Ukrainian Embassy to get President Porochenko to make an on-camera denouncement of Manafort and feed the footage to ABC News, where former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos works as a top anchor. On March 30, Chalupa fired off an email to Shulyar, her contact at the Ukrainian Embassy:
So, the big interference by Ukraine in the US elections in order to "stop Putin" from doing something was going to be to have Obama puppet President Porochenko, who replaced Yanukovych via the sandwich coup, tell the world that Manafort worked to set Yanukovych up as Putin's puppet and was now working for Trump. That would mean the Ukrainian's big crime was that they knew a guy who now worked for Trump? Didn't the Ukrainians also know a bunch of people who worked for Putin, and weren't those the Ukrainians Manafort was helping -- the Party of Regions? And what about the people they knew who worked for Taco Bell like Chalupa? What was Taco Bell's role in all of this? And haven't they now pulled out of Russia due to sanctions? Well, here it is: Chalupa had a warning for the DNC:
"There is a very good chance that President Poroshenko [the Obama puppet] may receive a question from the press during his visit about the recent New York Times article saying that Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort as an adviser to his campaign and whether President Poroshenko is concerned about this considering Trump is the likely Republican nominee and given Paul Manafort’s meddling in Ukraine over the past couple of decades,†Chalupa wrote. "It is important President Poroshenko is prepared to address this question should it come up. In a manner that exposes Paul Manafort for the problems he continues to cause Ukraine."
So, again, the Ukrainians aren't the bad guys. They're the pawns everyone is trying to toy with, and the big Ukrainian crime here is that the Obama Puppet told the world Trump hired Manafort, which the world already knew, and that Manafort meddled in Ukraine's elections, meaning Puppet Poroshenko believed he was hired by Putin, or it wouldn't have been "meddling," given that Putin is the only outsider that wants Yuki to be president. Poroshenko would say there was meddling in Ukraine by Americans long before Obama, but they were meddling on the side of Putin's guy! Oddly, I don't find that hard to believe, but evidence seems scant there, too.
At the end of the day, then, Manny caused a lot of problems for Ukraine! Got it. And that's why Ukraine is the bad guy here. Got it. Because everyone is meddling with them. That, and the fact that Trump called them to try to get dirt on Joe that they wouldn't give. O.K. These Ukrainian guys really are evil. They know bad guys. We don't know throughout the article what they stop Putin from doing. But they stop him. Maybe stop him from interfering via Manafort in the US election, never proven, or stop him from keeping his own puppet president in power in Ukraine. They stop him. They also sometimes get calls from American presidents asking for dirt and then, evil of evils, they refuse to hand out the wanted dirt. And they drink a lot of coffee with Shrillary's gang of election tossers.
O.K. Got it! At last.
Chalupa and Shulyar exchanged emails and agreed to meet for coffee on April 7, 2016, at Kafe Leopold... The email does not identify any particular purpose for the meeting, but Chalupa states that she intended to continue planning the upcoming cultural event at the Ukrainian Embassy.
Not another coffee meeting! Seriously? Another coffee meeting? And again with the nefarious nature of the meeting: "email does not identify any particular purpose." A coffee meeting with no purpose other than a cultural event! These guys are evil! That's all I can say. We have emails proving they meet for coffee! And they plan "cultural events," and who knows what those are?
Putin did it
And this is why I hate conspiracy theories. They attempt to link together every possible coincidence and then try to make something of the coincidences, but all along the way they provide little to no hard evidence of actual crime. We find this one constantly doesn't know what was talked about, except likely the coffee and the planning of a cultural event; but, hey, there is proof if you ever wanted it that Ukraine meddled in the US election to stop Putin.
Or was it Putin meddled in Ukraine? Which way you read all the coincidences depends on what you already believe. Stop Putin from what? The article never clearly says, even though that's in the title. But they wanted to stop him ... maybe from moving on to meddle in the US elections? Well, to this day, we don't know on that one either. They tried hard to prove he did, and never succeeded. BUT -- and this is the important part -- we do know now they regularly met for coffee and, at least once, a beer!
How do you say skoal or salute in Ukrainian?