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Why Rudy G, John Solomon, OAN, Fox Noise & Dip are in Deep Doo-Doo.
Last edited Mon May 8, 2023, 08:53 PM - Edit history (1)
The 2021 FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani is relevant. something special.
Exposes the Big Lie Machine:
Trump's Ukraine scandal is a Fox News story
Fox helped get Trump into this mess, and it's the key to getting him out of it
WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 11/13/19 8:05 AM EST
EXCERPT...
Fox supercharged Giuliani’s disinformation campaign
Giuliani, with the president’s approval, developed a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine, working with corrupt officials to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, undermine the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and remove U.S. and Ukrainian players that posed obstacles to that effort. That disinformation campaign played out on Fox.
Giuliani filtered the results of his investigation through John Solomon, a conservative writer with a long record of serving as a mouthpiece for right-wing opposition research. Solomon would write up aspects of Giuliani’s work in columns for The Hill, then go on Fox, where his scoops were woven into the network’s conspiracy theories. Over a six-month period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times; 51 of those appearances were on Hannity’s program. (Solomon’s role as a Giuliani henchman led to him landing a contract as a Fox contributor last month.) As Fox’s feverish coverage of the Bidens crescendoed, Trump and Giuliani both appeared on the network to bolster the smears.
Depositions from witnesses before the impeachment inquiry reveal that top administration figures at the White House and State Department were forced to monitor Fox for clues about the shape of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine. George Kent, a State Department official with oversight over the country, reported tracking extensive coverage from Hannity and Fox host Laura Ingraham. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official, testified that she and then-national security adviser John Bolton both regularly tuned in to Fox to keep abreast of Giuliani’s antics, adding that the network’s coverage began to “have an impact obviously on our work.”
Notably, Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch each testified to an effort by the State Department to contact Hannity in order to thwart what Kent termed a “campaign of slander” against the ambassador. Yovanovitch had apparently become a thorn to Giuliani’s effort to conduct a shadow foreign policy, and so he promoted lies about her that made their way into Solomon’s columns and then onto Fox’s airwaves.
Joseph diGenova, a frequent Fox guest who is Solomon’s lawyer, argued in March on Hannity’s program that Yovanovitch “needs to be called home to the United States for consultation” in order to “answer a slew of questions about her conduct and her assault on the president of the United States.”
According to Kent, State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl subsequently “reached out and suggested to Mr. Hannity that if there was no proof of the allegations, that he should stop covering them.” (Hannity has since denied that State contacted him about Yovanovitch.) In any case, Giuliani’s smear campaign apparently had its intended effect, as Yovanovitch was recalled from her post in May.
SOURCE: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-ukraine-scandal-fox-news-story
Now consider the Messengers, armed with disinformation — a clear and present danger to Democracy.
Professional strength propaganda...
A Dozen Questions for John Solomon
by Sidney Blumenthal
November 5, 2019
EXCERPT...
Solomon began his career as a reporter for the Associated Press, but subsequently bounced around in right-wing media from the Washington Times to a website called Circa News (owned by Sinclair Media and now defunct). In 2012, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded that Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his story line” and “distorting facts and hyping petty stories.” Among his claims to infamy is publishing the debunked Uranium One conspiracy.
Starting in March of this year, Solomon’s articles in The Hill and his tweets spun out a web of conspiracy theories, in some cases then tweeted by Trump: that parts of the Ukrainian government in coordination with the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch colluded to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign by leaking financial records of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman (who had been a consultant to the Russian backed Ukrainian president deposed in the 2014 revolution Viktor Yanukovych); that the U.S. ambassador had pressured the Ukraine prosecutor not to investigate a George Soros-backed group and “Soros-connected names” who helped the Clinton campaign in the alleged scheme; and that the ambassador told the prosecutor not to investigate a list of individuals and that, according to the prosecutor, former Vice President Joe Biden was supposedly attempting to quash the prosecutor’s probe of his son Hunter’s involvement with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
Solomon depicted a second innocent victim of these conspiracies in addition to Trump: Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash, “a major target of the Soros group.” Firtash — close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian mafia kingpin Semion Mogilevich, and a chief financier of former Ukrainian president Yanukovych — is fighting extradition to avoid U.S. federal charges of bribery and racketeering. Solomon wrote that Robert Mueller’s investigation was attempting to frame Firtash to get “some dirt on Donald Trump,” but that the case against Firtash was “falling apart.” Solomon stated, “The oligarch’s defense team told me that Firtash rejected the deal because he didn’t have credible information or evidence.”
The State Department labeled the charges in Solomon’s initial article about Yovanovitch “an outright fabrication.” Later, the Ukrainian prosecutor Solomon quoted as his source, Yuri Lutsenko, was dismissed from his position and disavowed Solomon’s reporting, saying that Hunter Biden “did not violate anything” and now said that his statements to Solomon about a do-not-prosecute list were false. Lutsenko is now under criminal investigation for abuse of power. Meanwhile, the effort to extradite Firtash to face corruption charges continues.
SNIP...
7. You claim that you met Parnas through Congressman Pete Sessions. When did you first become aware of the Parnas and Fruman financial contributions to Sessions? What other favors has Sessions done for you?
CONTINUES...
https://www.justsecurity.org/66962/a-dozen-questions-for-john-solomon/
Garland has the goods on these traitors. There is nothing FOX, OANN, the Moonie Times, etc etc etc can do about it. So, let’s get busy with the indictments already. The future of democracy is at stake.
39 replies
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Indicted oligarch Firtash found to have accounts open at insolvent German bank as he fights extradition
By Mark Raczkiewycz
The Ukrainian Weekly, Feb. 12, 2021
Excerpt...
Russian banks, mainly the state-run Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (VEB) and Gazprombank, have over the years primarily financed the growth of Mr. Firtash’s business empire in energy and chemicals.
Under former President Viktor Yanukovych’s truncated presidency in 2010-2014, the former fireman and soldier received credit lines of up to $11 billion from bankers close to Russian President Vladmir Putin, a Reuter’s investigation found in November 2014.
Leading up to 2009, Mr. Firtash was at the dead center of the biggest alleged corruption operation in Ukraine’s history in which he raked in billions of dollars by jointly running an intermediary company with Russian state-owned Gazprom to supply natural gas to Ukraine.
Mr. Firtash has defended the business arrangement as saving consumers money because the imported Russian gas was sold at prices lower than what official Kyiv had negotiated, albeit on the surface and when Ukraine was largely Gazprom’s second-largest customer in Europe.
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables featuring his meeting with Washington’s ambassador in Kyiv have him admitting to associating with criminals, including Russian mafia kingpin Semion Mogilevich, to establish businesses.
Continues...
https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/indicted-oligarch-firtash-found-to-have-accounts-open-at-insolvent-german-bank-as-he-fight-extradition/
Seems Old Joe is to be mixing conflicts of interest, the people’s bidniz, and treason. Da.
From Dumpy and Lev Parnas to Semion Mogilevich.
From Mafiya to Mayfair: Firtash, Giuliani and the London Connection
Stephen Komarnyckyj
Byline Times, 4 December 2019
On 23 March 2011, Dmytro Firtash, wearing the ornate robe of a Cambridge University beneficiary, shook hands with Prince Philip. That moment marked the peak of his ascent in British society. The village boy who once loved pasturing cows had come a long way. Thanks to his PR team, he enjoyed the image of a businessman and patron of the arts in the UK.
As bagman for mobster Semion Mogilevich, Firtash directly links the Russian mafiya to the British Establishment. He was once described by a Chicago attorney general as “upper-echelon associat[e] of Russian organised crime”. Eight years after his royal handshake, Firtash is currently holed up in Vienna fighting extradition to the US but remains untouched by British law enforcement.
However, there is evidence that his London associates are linked to Cambridge Analytica and Trump’s impeachment investigation.
Excerpt...
Some of the team at the Baobab Group worked for the renowned political consultant Arthur Finkelstein. Finkelstein, who died in 2018, was reportedly Paul Manafort’s mentor. He introduced Manafort to the eastern oligarchs who would prove Manafort’s downfall and lobbied for his protégée to be added to Trump’s campaign.
Finkelstein was also a strategist to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian President who had been befriended by Firtash’s boss Semion Mogilevich in the 1990s. Mogilevich and the Russian mob he oversees routinely perform favours for Vladimir Putin and work closely with Russian intelligence. Hungary, under Orban’s leadership, still purchases gas from Rosukrenergo, which is a joint creation of by Firtash and Mogilevich. The circle is complete.
Continues...
https://bylinetimes.com/2019/12/04/from-mafiya-to-mayfair-firtash-giuliani-and-the-london-connection/
Nice people.
Always appreciated and sought out your threads before Octofish seemed to disappear.
Thanks for this thread, and the excellent work you always have done. Conscientious, organized, and concerned with intensely important events and their meanings, not just a b.s. artist passing time until dinner.
Kicking, of course. 
The guy’s a pro.
Who is John Solomon? Here’s what we know about the journalist whose stories shaped the Ukraine saga
A tweet from President Donald Trump is displayed as former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in Washington on Nov. 15, 2019. (AP/Harnik)
PolitiFact
Excerpt...
Solomon’s commentary for The Hill has generated the most buzz. In 2017, he played a major role in pushing the inaccurate Uranium One conspiracy, alleging that Hillary Clinton sold a share of America’s uranium to Russia in exchange for a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.
Snip...
When Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia expert, was asked during private testimony how she first learned about Giuliani’s "interest" in Ukraine, she mentioned Solomon, whose columns outlined the same conspiracies that Giuliani was actively pushing on Twitter and TV.
Senior State Department official George Kent later testified that what he had described as the "campaign of slander" against former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch began with one of Solomon’s articles and ended with Yovanovitch’s removal.
Snip...
Solomon’s columns also alleged misconduct in Ukraine by Democratic donor George Soros and claimed, without much evidence, that Democrats coordinated with Ukrainian officials to interfere in the 2016 election by sharing dirt on Trump and reviving a 2014 investigation into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who had ties to the country’s old, pro-Russia regime.
Continues...
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/19/who-john-solomon-heres-what-we-know-about-journali/
Yours is a great and accurate depiction of The Hill, Hortensis. For the Ages.
