It seems like every day we learn that the Trump regime lied about some part of the Ukraine story, and this time it's the White House lies that Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn't know of any pressure by Trump until the August 25 phone call. It turns out that Zelensky's people raised questions almost immediately all the way back in May.
The White House was alerted as early as mid-May — earlier than previously known — that a budding pressure campaign by Rudy Giuliani and one of President Donald Trump's ambassadors was rattling the new Ukrainian president, two people with knowledge of the matter tell NBC News.
Alarm bells went off at the National Security Council when the White House's top Europe official was told that Giuliani was pushing the incoming Ukrainian administration to shake up the leadership of state-owned energy giant Naftogaz, said the sources. The official, Fiona Hill, learned then about the involvement of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates who were helping with the Naftogaz pressure and also with trying to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
Hill quickly briefed then-National Security Adviser John Bolton about what she'd been told, said the individuals with knowledge of the meeting.
The revelation significantly moves up the timeline of when the White House learned that Trump's allies had engaged with the incoming Ukrainian administration and were acting in ways that unnerved the Ukrainians — even before President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had been sworn in. Biden had entered the presidential race barely three weeks earlier.
In a White House meeting the week of May 20, Hill was also told that Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, a major Republican donor tapped by Trump for a coveted post in Brussels, was giving Zelenskiy unsolicited advice on who should be elevated to influential posts in his new administration, the individuals said. One of them said it struck the Ukrainians as "inappropriate."
Zelenskiy was inaugurated that same week — on May 20 — snapping selfies and giving high-fives to the crowd as he made his way through the Ukrainian capital for his speech to parliament.
Hill learned of Zelenskiy's concerns from former U.S. diplomat Amos Hochstein, now a member of Naftogaz's supervisory board. Hochstein had just returned from pre-inauguration meeting with Zelenskiy and his advisers in Kyiv in which they discussed Giuliani's and Sondland's overtures and how to inoculate Ukraine from getting dragged in to domestic U.S. politics.
Zelenskiy's early concern about pressure from Trump and his allies, expressed in the May 7 meeting with his advisers and Hochstein, was earlier reported by The Associated Press. The fact that those concerns were then quickly relayed to the White House National Security Council has never previously been reported.
The bigger issue is that this assuredly means former National Security Adviser John Bolton's mustache is now directly in the crosshairs of Rep. Adam Schiff and House Democrats investigating the Trump regime's impeachable offenses.
Whether or not Bolton will talk is another thing.
According to multiple reports on Thursday and Friday, the former national security adviser’s lawyers have spoken with the three Democratic-led House committees about a potential deposition. If that happens, he would be by far the most high-level witness to testify, possibly giving investigators the most authoritative account of President Donald Trump’s policy toward Ukraine.
This is very bad news for Trump. The president and Bolton had a contentious relationship that spilled out into the open after the top aide left the administration: Trump said he fired Bolton, but Bolton clapped back saying that he resigned. That means Bolton is unlikely to protect the president and instead will recount what he saw inside the government as truthfully as he can.
He surely has some explosive things to say. After all, he was on the infamous July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the American leader requested a “favor” in exchange in for investigations into Joe Biden’s family and Democrats. What’s more, two separate witnesses in the impeachment inquiry noted that Bolton felt the pressure campaign on Ukraine was highly inappropriate.
Today's story means Bolton knew as early as May, not July, what Trump was up to in Ukraine with Rudy. He may very well want to set the record straight.
But another Republican has emerged as being neck deep in the Ukraine mess, and that's one of the GOP senators who would ostensibly sit in judgment on Trump in any impeachment trial: Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.
Sen. Ron Johnson met in July with a former Ukrainian diplomat who has circulated unproven claims that Ukrainian officials assisted Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a previously unreported contact that underscores the GOP senator’s involvement in the unfolding narrative that triggered the impeachment inquiry of President Trump.
In an interview this past week, Andrii Telizhenko said he met with Johnson (Wis.) for at least 30 minutes on Capitol Hill and with Senate staff for five additional hours. He said discussions focused in part on “the DNC issue” — a reference to his unsubstantiated claim that the Democratic National Committee worked with the Ukrainian government in 2016 to gather incriminating information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Telizhenko said he could not recall the date of the meeting, but a review of his Facebook page revealed a photo of him and Johnson posted on July 11.
“I was in Washington, and Sen. Johnson found out I was in D.C., and staff called me and wanted to do a meeting with me. So I reached out back and said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down the Hill and talk to you,’ ” Telizhenko told The Washington Post on Wednesday.
An individual close to Johnson confirmed that staff for one of his committees met with Telizhenko as part of an ongoing investigation into the FBI and its probes of the 2016 election, but declined to say whether the senator was involved.
The meeting points to Johnson’s emerging role as the member of Congress most heavily involved in the Ukraine saga that has engulfed the White House and has threatened Trump with impeachment.
It's bad enough that Trump did what he did, but he couldn't have done it without Republican senators playing ball, and Johnson is the first real connection among Mitch's merry band of mobsters to directly enabling Trump's dirty deeds.
Surely Johnson would recuse himself from any Senate proceedings involving Trump and Ukraine, yes?
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