Author Archives: Denise Simon

Context of US Aid to Ukraine, Schiff’s Team is Teeming with Deception

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Ever heard of an organization called U.S. Ukraine Foundation? The organization has Directors and and Advisory Board that lobbies Congress and does a good job at that apparently. The organization calls itself a ‘do-tank’ with headquarters in Washington DC., that works for fostering a legitimate human rights, democratic government that enhances Ukraine’s stability and place in the community of nations.
After Russia invaded Ukraine five years ago, reliance of monetary and military aid to Ukraine has been critical to fight back against Russian aggression on several fronts. Since 1992, the United States has given Ukraine more than $7.2 billion from many domestic agencies that include: the Department of Defense, USAID, Energy, Agriculture, Justice and Commerce. Smaller U.S. agencies have also been quite involved in Ukraine including Peace Corps. All these resources are to ‘bolster civil society supporting the reform process where anti-corruption is a priority.
USAID, which operates under the U.S. State Department manages all assistance programs for Ukraine shoring up vulnerabilities of the country. Ukraine obviously does need help but control and oversight of U.S. assistance is tantamount. Seems since the Obama administration, it had none.

There actually is a USAID audit report for Ukraine found here.

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Impeachment is hardly deserved and below proves that fact. Gotta wonder what the real posture of Col. Vindman actually was. Further, did anyone in Congress go back and read congressional records as they related to Ukraine or tap the State Department, Ukraine desk for a summary of diplomatic efforts including corruption and what our own Justice Department or FBI did and is doing still for the benefit of Ukraine? Ah perhaps Lev Parnas is part of that eh?
Published on the website for this organization is the following in part:

The Ukrainian American community and other friends of Ukraine have long advocated for U.S. government aid and for a few years in the mid-1990s, under the Clinton administration, Ukraine was one of our largest recipients of bilateral aid. Some readers may recall that the current Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, championed Ukraine assistance in his capacity as chairman of the relevant appropriations subcommittee, and was sometimes referred to as “Mr. Ukraine” at the time. He enjoyed bipartisan support back then, and, thankfully, assistance to Ukraine continues to enjoy strong bipartisan support to this day, despite the difficult budget climate.

U.S. assistance, which increased substantially following Russia’s invasion, was backed by the Obama administration and funded by Congress. With the proposed severe cuts in foreign assistance called for by the Trump administration, there were fears that Ukraine aid, too, would be affected. Based on my sources, it looks as if assistance to Ukraine for Fiscal Year 2018 will most likely be maintained at levels similar to the last two fiscal years – underscoring the importance that the United States attaches to Ukraine. And while there is always room for improvement in how it is implemented, U.S. assistance has been substantial and vital to Ukraine – a good use of taxpayer money. Friends of Ukraine, including the Ukrainian American community, need to make sure that this practical, consequential support for Ukraine remains a priority for the United States.

The importance of those two paragraphs is the fact that President Trump questioned foreign aid to Ukraine long before the phone call with the newly elected Ukraine president Zelensky, in fact going back to the summer of 2018. When President Trump inquired what other countries were doing on behalf of Ukraine was and is the right question then and now. It is no wonder aid was held given facts, context, conditions and future plans and estimates for the country.

Focusing on Pending Ukraine-Related Action on Capitol Hill August 2018: Members of the Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN), the Ukrainian-American community, the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and other supporters of Ukraine met on August 7th to discuss pending and future legislative action on Capitol Hill regarding Ukraine.

The lobbying on The Hill went into overdrive and members of Congress visited by members of the organization clearly know/knew of all conditions in Ukraine and how sending U.S. taxpayers dollars to the struggling country should be circumspect because of human-trafficking, financial corruption, military hostilities and Ukraine military doctrine effectiveness along with split loyalties within the Ukraine government, security challenges and reforms across the board.

Day 1 of Impeachment Trial in the Senate

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After many hours, more than 12, the day was over. A long slog it was with summaries presented on each of Senator Schumer’s amendments to the rules. There was only one Republican defection vote on one amendment by Susan Collins of Maine. Even Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah stayed the course with the Republicans with all the votes they cast.

The historic impeachment proceedings against Trump begin ...
Perhaps the reason for full party line votes are as a result of the letter sent to the Senate by 21 State Attorneys General found here. It is a great read even for those on the Democrat/liberal side of the ledger and have already made up their minds to remove Donald Trump from the presidency.

State AG letter to Senate o… by Fox News on Scribd


The House impeachment articles managers/team, led by Congressman Adam Schiff and Gerald Nadler filled the 12 hours with repeated emotional and passionate summaries full of twisted and selectively chosen assertions while negating full truths and context. President Trump’s team did not sway from the initial briefing they filed and made their positions short and cogent on each amendment.
For the most part the day was filled with lawyers of all distinctions warring with each other and the polarization of the Federal government was on full display to only stay with our nation for many years to come.

Adam Schiff introduced Lev Parnas several times in his intense statements when Parnas was not part of the House impeachment inquiry at all. That bit of scandal came after the House voted on the final resolution to impeach. While I am not a lawyer, one must question if that was even a lawful introduction in the first place.

Lev Parnas is a turncoat political opportunist and likely a plant infecting U.S. politics for reasons still being uncovered. Parnas has been injecting himself relationships both in Ukraine and the United States by ingratiating his cunning tactics with people such as Rudy Giuliani, John Solomon, Victoria Toensing, Joe DiGenova, Trump family members and even Yuri Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general. Presently, Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman and two others have been charged with conspiring to violate straw and foreign donor bans by the Southern District of New York.

Going forward, the argument to watch for is the matter of ‘executive privilege’. All presidents have this privilege to protect interactions and conversations that involve matters of national security and diplomatic architecture. In a matter of criminal action, privilege cannot be asserted, yet that was in fact the case in the previous scandal of Fast and Furious when President Obama gave AG Eric Holder privilege protection and he was found in contempt of Congress for that. Moving on however…

The embedded message the impeachment managers will continue to use in their summaries will be “corrupt motives”. A president is responsible for foreign policy and is the top steward/protector of taxpayer money, not government money as to where it goes and how it is spent. One question that is not asked and should be is when Congress appropriated and approved the military aid for Ukraine in the NDAA legislation, was there a clause to fully document the status of previous military aid and to make designations of caution and sanction to Ukraine if the equipment and money did not reach or be applied for the intended use. That answer is no. The Congress relied on the Department of Defense to make a statement, which it did but only to declare that the Ukraine military had taken reform steps to address corruption, that is not a certification.

Carry on good and well informed voters.

 

Rosenstein Authorized Release of Strzok-Page Texts

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Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledged in a court filing Friday that he authorized the release of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to media outlets.

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Rosenstein said in a declaration filed in response to a lawsuit Strzok has pending against the Justice Department and FBI that he authorized releasing the text messages to media outlets Dec. 12, 2017, the eve of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“The disclosure obviously would adversely affect public confidence in the FBI, but providing the most egregious messages in one package would avoid the additional harm of prolonged selective disclosures and minimize the appearance of the Department concealing information that was embarrassing to the FBI,” said Rosenstein, who left the Justice Department in May 2019.

Strzok, the former deputy chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, sued the Justice Department and FBI on Aug. 6, 2019, for unlawful termination, infringement of due process, and violations of the Privacy Act. He said he consulted with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Affairs, which determined that there was no legal basis preventing the release of the messages, and the authorized the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs to provide 375 messages to a group of media outlets.

Rosenstein asserted that Strzok and Page’s privacy interests were not violated by releasing the messages because they “were sent on government phones with the knowledge that they were subject to review by FBI” and because they “were so inappropriate and intertwined with their FBI work that they raised concerns about political bias influencing official duties.”

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The Justice Department argued that Rosenstein did his due diligence by having his aides consult with the DOJ’s top privacy official Peter Winn on the release of the text messages, and cannot be held responsible for violating the Privacy Act because there was no willful intent.

“Even if [the] Plaintiff could show that the disclosure was somehow inconsistent with the Privacy Act — the Department did not intentionally or willfully violate the statute,” the court filings read. Strzok and Page, who were both members of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team, were caught exchanging messages that were disparaging of President Trump and highly partisan in nature throughout 2016.

Page, who eventually resigned from the Bureau, sued the DOJ last month over the release of the text messages, claiming it violated the Federal Privacy Act. She said she has suffered numerous damages including therapy costs and “permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage.”

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Strzok also sued the DOJ last month, claiming his First Amendment Rights had been violated. He is seeking reinstatement on the basis that his firing was unconstitutional. Rosenstein’s declaration was part of the government’s defense in Strzok’s lawsuit.

Rosenstein resigned from his post with the DOJ in April and is now with a corporate law firm in Washington, D.C.

Iran Refuses to Release Black Box of Downed Ukraine Plane

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(Reuters) – Ukraine will press Iran to hand over the black boxes from the crash of a Ukrainian passenger plane at a meeting with a visiting Iranian delegation on Monday, Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told reporters.

Ukraine would convey the message to visiting Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami, that returning the black boxes would show that Iran wanted an unbiased investigation of the crash, Prystaiko said.

“His main task is to apologize and acknowledge what happened. We hope that we can go a little further than just political discussions and discuss practical problems. Among them in particular is the return of the black boxes,” Prystaiko said.

Iran has appeared to reverse course after its earlier decision to send abroad the black box flight recorders from the Ukrainian jetliner shot down earlier this month, saying Tehran would first review the audiotapes.

Hassan Rezaeifar, who is leading the investigation into the tragedy, was cited by the state-run IRNA news agency on Sunday as saying: “The flight recorders from the Ukrainian Boeing are in Iranian hands and we have no plans to send them out.”

“We are trying to read the black boxes here in Iran. Otherwise, our options are Ukraine and France, but no decision has been taken so far to send them to another country,” he added.

A day earlier, another Iranian news agency, semi-official Tasnim, cited Rezaeifar as saying that it was not possible to interpret the recordings in Iran, and that the black boxes would be sent to Kyiv, where French, American and Canadian experts would help analyze them.

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***Gotta wonder if the Iranians protesting against the regime know this.

A slew of influential Iranian artists, television personalities and sports stars have publicly broken with Tehran after the government denied for days that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane this month.

“Apologies for lying to you for 13 years,” Gelareh Jabbari, a host on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting TV network, wrote last Monday in an Instagram post. The post has since been deleted, but it was seen by

“It was very hard for me to believe our people have been killed, forgive me for believing this late,” Jabbari, the anchor of the lifestyle show “Good Morning Iran,” added in an apparent reference to the 82 Iranians who were among the 176 passengers and crew members killed.

Iran initially denied that a missile had struck the plane on Jan. 8 shortly after it took off from Tehran, the capital, only to reverse course and admit that it had shot the plane down by mistake.

Many students and middle-class Iranians took to the streets in protest. In Tehran, some students refused to trample on paintings of U.S. and Israeli flags in an apparent rejection of the government’s attempts to deflect blame.

Those in more influential positions used their sway to send a message.

The government’s handling of the incident has served only to “confirm an existing sense of moral bankruptcy that the Islamic Republic is accused of,” said Afshin Shahi, an associate professor of Middle East politics at Bradford University in England.

“The Islamic Republic is facing the worst legitimacy crisis in its 40-year history, and the pressures are mounting from every angle,” he said, adding that state repression, censorship and the country’s economic woes in the last three years had created a profound sense of disillusionment. “The gap between the state and society has widened to an extreme extent.”

In a sign of how seriously Iranian authorities are taking the backlash, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered a sermon at last week’s Friday prayers praising recent strikes on Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces.

About that GAO Report that Trump Broke the Law

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So, it has reported that President Trump ordered the Office of Management and Budget to hold the funds for Ukraine which was in the NDAA passed by Congress. There was a stopgap provision in the NDAA that the funds would remain available until after September 30, which was after the end of the U.S. fiscal accounting period. The money was released on September 11. President Trump questioned what other countries are stepping up with financial and military support of Ukraine. It is unclear if the White House ever got a succinct report on that question. In fact, a few days before the Zelensky phone call, the OMB the aid was withheld, not after the call. Furthermore, Zelensky was a newly elected President and a new government, an unknown quantity.

The call between President Trump and President Zelensky was the genesis of the whistle-blower complaint. Countless people were on the call which is a procedural condition for all international foreign policy national security calls. Each call between the United States and a foreign entity are outlined, reviewed and prepped in full by those to be on the call.

The OMB is under the Executive Office of the President and it is responsible for measuring the quality of agency programs, policies and procedures. The agency also ensures that reports, rules, testimony and proposed legislation is consistent with administration policies, meaning evaluations and inter-agency reviews.

OMB’s Office of General Counsel provides legal advice and counsel to the Director and the OMB components and staff. In addition, the General Counsel’s Office manages the Executive Order and Presidential Memoranda process for OMB and the Administration; reviews and clears all legal and constitutional comments by the Department of Justice and other agencies on proposed legislation before such comments are conveyed to Congress; participates in the drafting of bill signing statements for the President; reviews all proposed legislative text comprising the President’s Budget and for all budget-related legislative proposals; evaluates legal issues in proposed regulations; convenes meetings of all agency general counsels and coordinates legal issues across agencies; and ensures OMB’s compliance with ethics laws, the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Records Act, and other statutory requirements.

OMB’s Office of Legislative Affairs works closely with White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Agency Legislative Affairs offices, and congressional offices on current legislative issues. The office conveys information and strategies to the Director to inform decisions on Administration policies. The office, in turn, disseminates budget materials, descriptions of relevant concerns, and statements to Congress to communicate the Administration’s positions. The Office of Legislative Affairs also advises the OMB Director and the organization on legislative issues and developments, provides expertise on the congressional budget process, supplies daily congressional reports to the Director and the OMB staff, oversees correspondence with the Hill, and manages the clearance and transmittal of the President’s Budget and the Administration’s Statements of Administration Policy.

LAWYERS AND MORE LAWYERS

So, now we have the General Accounting Office that publishes a report that President Trump broke the law by placing the aid on hold. The GAO is the congressional ‘go-to’ department that measures, often with bias the cost(s) of proposed legislation along with legal viability and other realities.

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Now, remember that within the two articles of impeachment, neither allege a violation of law that the General Accounting Office report declared at the behest of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

So, a deeper look at the GAO shows that it is represented by the AFL-CIO’s International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a PAC that gave 100% of political donations to Democrats…no Republicans.

Now, the GAO is is packed full of lawyers that is assigned to legal, accounting, auditing and other financial/legal duties requested by Congress. GAO engages in audits and investigations, but it has negligible enforcement power. Once a legal determination has been made, GAO has exhausted its regulatory authority. Regardless of the adjudicative outcome, GAO has no authority to exact fines, issue injunctions, or pursue further proceedings, criminal or otherwise. Instead, the Comptroller General reports the determination to Congress, to the president, to the offending agency, and to any other relevant agencies (such as the Department of Justice).

Seems that the GAO plotted with the Pelosi/Schiff operation in the House and likley Schumer/Van Hollen in the Senate…who advised the White House immediately that there could be issues legally or otherwise, if that is really the case regarding placing a hold on the Ukraine aid? No one it seems and procedures were not followed.

As for the accusations of withholding the money to force a Ukraine public statement to investigate all things Biden(s), hold on. On July 14, several days before the infamous phone call, the polls had Trump trailing Biden, Warren and Sanders. Sanders was 1 percentage point at the time behind Biden and Warren was a mere 2 percentage points behind Biden. Kamala Harris was 5 percentage points behind Biden. This was hardly a reason for President Trump to go full attack on Biden as is alleged. On the other hand, there as investigations continue, there are reasons for sure to question those aiding the whistle-blower, the continued corruption timelines of Ukraine and where Hunter Biden and his wide range of associates did some unsavory things still being determined.