Media Again Falsely Claim That Joe Biden’s Intervention In Ukraine Was Innocent

DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama

Biden demonstrating that the ruling class duopoly is united against the masses.

Yesterday the New York Post posted a bombshell report related to Joe Biden's corrupt interventions in the Ukraine:

Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad

Hunter Biden, Joe's son, was hired as lobbyist by the Ukranian gas company Burisma while his father, then Vice President of the United States, directed U.S. foreign policy with regards to the Ukraine.

Joe Biden famously ordered (vid above) the Ukrainian President Poroshenko to fire his General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin. He threatened to otherwise withhold a $1 billion loan to the Ukraine. Biden's pressure to fire Shokin came ten days after Shokin had confiscated several house of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. Shokin was eventually fired, the loan to the Ukraine was released and the corruption case against Zlochevsky was buried.

Joe Biden has denied:

• That he had talks with his son about Hunter's lobbying job for Burisma.
• That he had ever any talk with Burisma related people.
• That his insistence on firing Shokin was related to an investigation by Shokin into the owner of Burisma.

The emails the NY Post posted show that one of Burisma's managers thanked Hunter Biden for arranging a meeting with Joe Biden. The source of the emails is allegedly a laptop owned by Hunter Biden which was left at a repair shop.

Some Biden acolytes claim that the emails must have come from an alleged Russian hack of Burisma. But the NY Post also published private photos of Hunter Biden showing him smoking and passed out next to a crack pipe. The photos may well have been, as the Post claims, on a laptop Hunter Biden owned. It is extremely unlikely that they were hacked from Burisma severs.

The Biden campaign offered only a weak refutation of the NY Post claim that he met with the Burisma manager:

Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.

In an unprecedented manipulative act Facebook as well as Twitter censored links to the NY Post story:

Twitter prohibited its users from posting links to the Post story, while Facebook reduced how often the story shows up in users’ news feeds and elsewhere on the Facebook platform.
...
The New York Post, in an editorial responding to the companies’ actions, said: “Censor first, ask questions later: It’s an outrageous attitude for two of the most powerful platforms in the United States to take.”
...
Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, limited dissemination of the Post story within hours of its publication on Wednesday, according to a tweet by spokesman Andy Stone.

Stone cited a policy saying that Facebook can temporarily take action against content pending review by news organizations and others in its third-party fact-checking program “if we have signals that a piece of content is false.”

Facebook's spokesman Andy Stone has previously worked for the Democrats:

He served as communications director for the House Majority PAC between 2012 and 2014; press secretary for Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer between 2011 and 2012; and press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) between 2009 and 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Facebook's 'fact checking' is done by the shady Atlantic Council:

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal - 2:25 UTC · Oct 15, 2020

Replying to @andymstone

It seems relevant that one of Facebook’s key third-party fact checkers, the Atlantic Council, is funded by Burisma - the corrupt Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter Biden $80k a month - DC’s Atlantic Council raked in funding from Hunter Biden’s corruption-stained employer while courting his VP father

Following the Streisand effect the censoring of the NY Post story by Facebook and Twitter has increased the distribution of its claims.

Many outlets reported on it. However a number of these also repeated false claims that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and its owner when Joe Biden pushed for his firing.

The Washington Post's 'fact checker' Glenn Kessler claims:

[T]he Americans saw an obstacle to reform in Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor, whom the United States viewed as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.

The Stars and Stripes writes:

While Shokin had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden was on the board of, the investigation had long been dormant by the time the vice president was pushing for Shokin's ouster in early 2016, a former Ukrainian official told Bloomberg News in May 2019.

NBC News asserts:

But let's be clear: Shokin wasn't fired because of anything improper Joe Biden did, no matter how colorfully Biden recounted the tale in 2018. It's a point worth repeating, loudly, as Daniel Goldman, the former prosecutor who led the investigation for House Democrats, did on Twitter.

Daniel Goldman @danielsgoldman - 12:36 UTC · Oct 14, 2020

Let’s try this one more time: the Ukrainian prosecutor was fired because he was NOT prosecuting corruption cases and there was NO Ukrainian investigation into Burisma. In addition to there being no evidence to support the bogus allegations, the basic premise is simply false.

The claim that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and its owner is evidently false. As we have pointedout several times Shokin, the prosecutor, confiscated four large houses and a luxary car of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky just ten days before Joe Biden started to press for his firing.

Ukrainian media at that time reported of the confiscation on February 4 2016:

The movable and immovable property of former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky in Ukraine has been seized, according to the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO).

"The PGO filed a petition to court to arrest the property of the ex-Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Mykola Zlochevsky, from which arrest was withdrawn, and other property he actually uses, namely housing estate with a total area of 922 square meters, a land plot of 0.24 hectares, a garden house with a total area of 299.8 square meters, a garden house in the territory of Vyshgorod district, a garden house of 2,312 square meters, a land plot of 0.0394 hectares, a Rolls-Royce Phantom car, a Knott 924-5014 trainer," reads the report.

The PGO clarifies that the court satisfied the petition on February 2, 2016.

Biden's call to Poroshenko during which he pressed for Shokin's firing followed on February 12 2016. At that time Burisma paid millions to the lobbying shop of Joe Biden's son.

That U.S. media continued denials that Shokin was indeed going after Burisma's owner shortly before Joe Biden called for his firing is despicable.

Joe Biden's corrupt intervention in the Ukraine stinks to high heaven.

Similar things must be said about the Biden family's shady business with Chinese companies.

Posted by b on October 15, 2020 at 15:46 UTC | Permalink

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