The political theatrics that
begin Wednesday raise several questions. For starters, will Joe Biden be
investigated for mounting evidence of corruption? And why is the
corporate media turning the CIA “whistleblower” into a phantom
in plain sight?
Now that “Russiagate” has
failed and “Ukrainegate” neatly
takes its place, many questions arise. Will the Democratic Party, this time in
open collusion with the intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt
to depose President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless
coup? Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment probe, which
is to
be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the president use his
office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own personal and political
interests? Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, put U.S. national security at risk, as
is alleged?
All good questions. Here is
another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender for the Democratic
presidential nomination, get away with what is almost certain to prove his
gross corruption and gross abuse of office when he carried the Ukraine
portfolio while serving as vice president under Barack Obama?
Corollary line of inquiry:
Will the corporate media, The New York Times in the lead, get away
with self-censoring what is now irrefutable evidence of the impeachment probe’s
various frauds and corruptions? Ditto in the Biden case: Can the Times and
the media that faithfully follow its lead continue to disregard accumulating
circumstantial evidence of Biden’s guilt as he appears to have acted in
the interest of his son Hunter while the latter sat on the board of one of
Ukraine’s largest privately held natural gas producers?
Innuendo & Interference
It is not difficult to imagine
that Trump presented Zelensky with his famous quid pro quo when they spoke last
summer: Open an investigation into Biden père et fils and I will
release $391 million in military aid and invite you to the White House. Trump
seems to be no stranger to abuses of power of this sort. But the impeachment
probe has swiftly run up against the same problem that sank the good ship
Russiagate: It has produced no evidence. Innuendo and inference, yes. Various
syllogisms, yes. But no evidence.
There is none in the
transcript of the telephone exchange. Zelensky has flatly stated that there was
no quid pro quo. The witnesses so far called to testify have had little to
offer other than their personal opinions, even if Capitol Hill Democrats
pretend these testimonies are prima facie damning. And the witnesses
are to one or another degree of questionable motives: To a one, they appear to
be Russophobes who favor military aid to Ukraine; to a one they are
turf-conscious careerists who think they set U.S. foreign policy and resent the
president for intruding upon them. It is increasingly evident that Trump’s true
offense is proposing to renovate a foreign policy framework that has been more
or less untouched for 75 years (and is in dire need of renovation).
Ten days ago Real
Clear Investigations suggested that the “whistleblower” whose
“complaint” last August set the impeachment probe in motion was in all
likelihood a CIA agent named Eric Ciaramella. And who is Eric Ciaramella? It
turns out he is a young but seasoned Democratic Party apparatchik conducting
his spookery on American soil.
Ciaramella has previously
worked with Joe Biden during the latter’s days as veep; with Susan Rice,
Obama’s recklessly hawkish national security adviser; with John Brennan, a key
architect of the Russiagate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a
Ukrainian-born Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016
campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate Donald Trump.
For good measure, Paul
Sperry’s perspicacious reporting in Real Clear Investigations reveals
that Ciaramella conferred with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the House
Democrat leading the impeachment process, a month prior to filing his
“complaint” to the CIA’s inspector general.
This information comes after
Schiff stated on the record that the staff of the House Intelligence Committee,
which he heads, had no contact with the whistleblower. Schiff has since
acknowledged the Ciaramella connection.
Phantom in Plain Sight
No wonder no one in Washington
will name this phantom in plain sight. The impeachment probe starts to take on
a certain reek. It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence
over democratic process — a dangerous priority. Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a
former National Security Council official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is. CNN
knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows.
Congress knows. The White house knows…. They’re hiding him because of his
political bias.”
Here we come to another
question. If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have the
corporate media declined to name him? There can be but one answer to this
question: If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record
exposed, the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate
vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although “hoax” might do, even if
Trump has made the term his own.
There is another half to this
burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something,
anything that may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record
emerges of Joe Biden’s official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma
Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 —
a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev.
There is no thought of
scrutinizing Biden’s activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way,
this, too, reflects upon the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there
sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports
published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure.
‘Bursimagate’
John Solomon, a singularly
competent follower of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, published a
report last Monday exposing Hunter Biden’s extensive contacts with the
Obama State Department in the early months of 2016. Two developments were
pending at the time. They lie at the heart of what we may well call
“Burismagate.”
One, the Obama administration
had committed to providing Ukraine with $1 billion in loan guarantees. In a
December 2015 address to the Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, V–P Biden withheld an
apparently planned announcement of the credit facility.
Two, coincident with Hunter
Biden’s numerous conferences at the State Department, Ukraine’s prosecutor
general, Viktor Shokin, was swiftly advancing a corruption investigation into
Burisma’s oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was by early 2016 living in
exile. Just prior to Biden’s spate of visits to Foggy Bottom, Shokin had
confiscated several of Zlochevsky’s properties—a clear sign that he was closing
in. Joe Biden wanted Shokin fired. He is, of course, famously on the record boasting
of his threat [starts at 52.00 in video below]to withhold the loan
guarantee as a means to getting this done. Shokin was in short order dismissed,
and the loan guarantee went through.
Solomon documents his report
with memos he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year.
These add significantly to the picture. “Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas
firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during
the 2016 election cycle,” he writes, “including one just a month before Vice
President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his
son’s company for corruption.”
Last Tuesday, a day after
Solomon published his report, Moon of Alabama, the much-followed web
publication, posted a granularly researched and well-sourced timeline of
the events surrounding Shokin’s dismissal at Vice President Biden’s request.
This is the most complete chronology of the Burismagate story yet available.
In an ethical judicial system,
it or something like it would now sit on a prosecutor’s desk. There is no
suggestion in the Moon of Alabama’s timeline that Shokin had shelved
his investigation into Burisma by the time Biden exerted pressure to get him
sacked, as Biden’s defenders assert. Just the opposite appears to be the true
case: The timeline indicates Shokin was about to pounce. Indeed Shokin said
so under
oath in an Austrian court case, testifying that he was fired because
of Biden’s pressure not to conduct the probe.
It is important to note that
there is no conclusive evidence that Joe Biden misused his office in behalf of
his son’s business interests simply because there has been no investigation.
Given what is beginning to emerge, however, the need for one can no longer be
in doubt. Can Democrats and the media obscure indefinitely what now amounts to
very strong circumstantial evidence against Biden?
We live in a time when the
corporate media make as much effort to hide information as they do to report
it. But as in the case of Ciaramella’s identity, it is unlikely these myriad
omissions can be sustained indefinitely — especially if Biden wins the
Democratic nomination next year. Forecast: If only because of Burismagate, Joe
Biden will never be president.
As everyone in Washington
seems to understand, it is highly unlikely Trump will be ousted via an
impeachment trial: The Republican-controlled Senate can be counted on to keep
him in office. Whatever Trump got up to with Zelensky, there is little chance
it will prove sufficient to drive him from office. As to the charge that
Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian president threatened national security, let
us allow this old chestnut to speak for itself.
Price of Irresponsible
Theatrics
This leaves us to reckon the
price our troubled republic will pay for months of irresponsible theatrics that
are more or less preordained to lead nowhere.
More questions. What damage
will the Democrats have done when Ukrainegate draws to a close (assuming it
does at some point)? What harm has come to U.S. political institutions,
governing bodies, judiciary and media? The corporate press has been
profligately careless of its already questionable credibility during the years
of Russiagate and now Ukrainegate. Can anyone argue there is no lasting price
to pay for this?
More urgently, what do the past
three years of incessant efforts to unseat a president tell us about the power
of unelected constituencies? The CIA is now openly operating on American soil
in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this
can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities
Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency’s classic coup operations
abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership,
pumping up the opposition, waving false flags, incessant disinformation
campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole
of the postwar era would eventually come home.
What, at last, must we
conclude about the ability of any president (of any stripe) to effect authentic
change when our administrative state — “deep,” if you like — opposes it?
