THREAD: This looks like the first blast of significant foreign interference in 2020 presidential race but hard to say exactly who is pulling the strings. 1/X
The Ukrainian parliamentarian who released tapes of Joe Biden's & John Kerry's phone calls with fmr President Poroshenko is a perennial agent provocateur who tried to insert himself in the middle of the Trump impeachment drama and Rudy Giuliani's fever dreams about the Bidens 2/X 
Andrii Derkach has so many unseemly connections in Ukraine, Russia, and pro-Trump circles and such a problematic personal history (more on that in a sec) that it's all too easy to discount what comes out of his mouth. 3/X
Derkach attended the FSB intelligence academy in the early 1990s. His father Leonid Derkach served as director of the Ukrainian intel service SBU under then Pres Kuchma who was implicated in the murder/beheading of dogged anti-corruption journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000 4/X
Derkach's flamboyance and sheer relentlessness make it hard to take any of his wild, unsubstantiated accusations about the Bidens, Soros, et al seriously. Unless, of course, you work for One America News Network 5/X.
Derkach was part of OAN's counter-programming during impeachment "led" by Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani along with a familiar cast of similar discredited Ukrainian figures embraced by the WH (Shokin, Lutsenko, et al) 6/X
So, if the accusations he makes are totally wild and scurrilous, why does any of this matter? Because someone today decided to leak tapes of sensitive conversations Biden had with a foreign head of state during his tenure as VP. The tapes now have a snazzy home on YouTube 7/X
The first drip drip drip of anti-Clinton material released by the Russian GRU during the 2016 election was done via the equally lame DC Leaks website. Here's DOJ's description of how the site was created. 8/X justice.gov/file/1080281/d…
I have no idea who orchestrated today's shenanigans. Maybe Derkach is simpy trying to put himself back in the spotllght and Trump campaign surrogates like @gatewaypundit are all too happy to amplify it. 9/X
But what I know for sure is a new line has been crossed: unsanctioned release of high-level conversations a US presidential candidate conducted as part of his official duties. Who benefits from that? What rules need to be in place regarding proper media coverage, etc? END
ADDENDUM: Nothing to see here.....just Don Jr. and RT.com tweeting about leaked tapes of Biden's phone calls with fmr Ukrainian President Poroshenko
