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1. This is the 2nd of my series about Ukraine & the scumbaggery of GOPrs like @senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz and all the others who don't care how much global damage they cause to protect Trump.

The first of the series is attached: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1222595…
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz 2...in this, we will deal with the abject lies by the @GOP about their corrupt hero, Viktor Shokin, and Burisma. Everything - EVERYTHING - they say is a lie.

Now, to begin: Hunter Biden was an idiot to join the Burisma board, even though he did so as a rep of its US law firm...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 3...dems have to finally recognize truth does not matter to GOP. All has to be seen in how it can be spun. And joining Burisma was a bad idea not only because of how it could be spun, but because of how it could appear, even if Hunter was there as a lawyer for Boies, Schiller...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 4...with that out of the way...Burisma. Everything the GOP says is backwards. Everything. That is why they have to make a hero of the villain - Viktor Shokin - because if he is not the hero, the entire lie falls apart.

The story begin in the London branch of BNP Paribas bank....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 5...this is March 2014, long before Hunter was part of Burisma.

A Ukraine lawyer asks for BNP to move $23 mill from one of their accounts to a bank in Cyprus. This was just after the corrupt president was replaced and the world was seeking money stolen from Ukraine....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 6...the money was seized by Brits, who declared this was part of their fight against Ukraine corruption to repatriate money stolen from there. The account containing the money belonged to a Ukrainian politician named Mykola Zlochevsky. He was the natural resources minister....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 7...since 2010, and after the new president came in place, was seen as a possible looter of the country's wealth by having received bribes. Zlochevsky was the founder of a number of companies, including the energy company, Burisma.

Now, an end point: A British court later....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 8...found that the $23 mill was from the sale of an oil storage facility, but we'll get back to that...

The $23 mill was frozen by a British court on April 14, 2014 (long before Hunter had any connection with anything touching Zlochevsky). The British investigation of...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 9...Zlochevsky was headed by Richard Gould of the British Serious Fraud Office. He wanted documents from Ukraine, so he contacted Vitaly Kasko, head of international inquires at the General Prosecutors’ office in Kiev. Kasko sent the request to his boss, the General Prosecutor...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 10...and nothing happened. Despite that impediment, Kasko sent the documents he could find - but there was *no* Ukraine investigation of Zlochevsky. Gould of SFO thought it was enough, but no.

In January 2015, a British judge rejected the argument that there was evidence to...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 11...freeze Zlochevsky's account. “The case remains a matter of conjecture & suspicion,” the British judge wrote. The ruling cited a letter, dated 2 December 2014, signed by in Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, saying Justice Zlochevsky was not suspected of a crime....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 12...now, was that letter the consequence of corruption? Probably.

One month after the British ruling, Viktor Shokin is named Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

So: There is now no Zlochevsky investigation. Meaning there is no *possibility* this will *become* a Burisma inquiry..
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 13...more important, Biden has said nothing about Shokin - the prosecutor driven out of office two years later - because *Shokin just became Prosecutor General.* The case, whatever it might have become, had ended before he took over.

Then, in March, Ukraine's first deputy...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 14...prosecutor general announced that a prosecutor had taken a bribe to tank the Zlochevsky case. Please note: This is as if prosecutors alleged that Bill Gates had bribed a prosecutor to end a case against him. And then saying it is all about Microsoft. Nope.

The 1st Deputy..
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 15...launched a corruption investigation. And Viktor Shokin, the hero the GOP, the man held out by Trump as "a good man," blocked the investigation of corrupt prosecutors. In fact, witnesses and people pursuing the case were arrested - by Shokin's goons.

In fact....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 16...Shokin authorized criminal cases against two of Kasko’s investigators, and those in other organizations that aided his attempt to help the British.....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 17...this, the deputy prosecutor general concluded, constituted a "protection racket" being orchestrated by his own department and headed by Shokin. "“Sadly, the protection racket we uncovered … turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg,” Sakvarelidze wrote on 10/2015....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 18...at this point, Joe Biden had said *absolutely nothing* about the corruption of Shokin and the Prosecutor General's office. Shokin *was going after the people who investigated the founder of Burisma* - not the other way around. There WAS no Zlochevsky case, no Burisma case...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 19...(and remember, there never *had been* a Burisma case. There was only an attempt to get documents from Zlochevsky to the British.)

At this point, with the corruption of Shokin laid bear by his deputy, Western lenders leaned on President Poroshenko to do something.....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 20...lawyers were publishing articles about how Shokin was promoting obstruction of justice. Then, following up on the EU, Biden said that the corrupt Prosecutor General's office had to be cleaned up by ditching Shokin - the man who *impeded* an investigation of Zlochevsky and...
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 21...his fellow oligarchs by launching criminal investigations of the prosecutors who tried to investigate them.

Now, in the GOP world, up is down and black is white. Viktor Shokin is the hero who tried to "investigate" Zlochevsky, when there never was an investigation....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 22...to begin with, but only an attempt to gather documents for the British. Zlochevsky had already been declared not suspected of any criminal acts in *writing* to the British by the Prosecutor General's office. And the people who pushed the effort to get the documents were....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 23...chraged criminally. THOSE people, the ones who fought corruption, are described by Trump in his July call with Ukraine president as the bad guys. Shokin is described as "a good guy." And this insanity is continuing, because Americans don't know foreign affairs, don't....
@senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @JohnCornyn @tedcruz @GOP 24...read, and Fox News viewers will believe any lie that comes out of the mouths of their favorite propagandists.

Coming in Part 3: The wreckage caused in Ukraine by GOP hailing the villain Shokin as a hero hurt by bad people. And they are doing it just for domestic politics.
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