Thread by @ClimateAudit

THREAD: This thread will provide a quick overview of the 9 hacked telecons on 7 dates from Dec 3, 2015 to Nov 16, 2016 just AFTER election. Providing full context would require a history. I'll try to be terse. Youtube version from NABU Leaks is clearest.

2/ first leak is 3 Dec 2015 (0:00 to 3:22) and is Kerry, then Sec of State talking to Poroshenko (President) on eve of Biden trip to Ukraine (which is fairly well documented). Kerry's stepson's friend (and Kerry protege) Devon Archer was also Burisma director, joining in Apr 2015

3/ about 3 weeks before Hunter Biden joined Burisma.

Kerry had arrived in Ukraine on Mar 4, 2014, less than 2 weeks after US regime change coup in Ukraine. Like Biden later on, Kerry arrived promising $1 billion in aid.

4/ Shokin was retired prior to regime change. He was called out of retirement by incoming President Poroshenko in summer 2014 as a Deputy Prosecutor General as part of Poroshenko's promise to clean up corruption.

5/ Shokin was appointed Prosecutor General in Feb 2015, after a controversy about alleged mishandling of a case in London UK in which funds belonging to Burisma owner Zlochevsky, which had been frozen by UK fraud prosecutor, had been released. A complicated sub-story.

6/ also in Feb 2015, David Sakvarelidze, an out-of-office Georgian official and Biden hanger-on who was allied with Mikheil Saakashvili, former Georgian president, another Biden hanger-on, was installed as a Deputy Prosecutor General. Shokin later got to hate Sakvaelidze.

7/ western countries who were financing Ukraine required that they create several new anti-corruption organizations, independent of Prosecutor General: a) an anti-corruption investigation office (NABU), which Shokin helped set up in summer 2015. Its first director, Artem Sytnyk,

8/ was young and soon allied with Sakverildze in intrigues against Shokin; b) the Specialized Anti-Corruption Office (for prosecution) was set up through competition. Its first director, Kholodnitsky, was announced in Nov 2015. c) An inspector general office was established

9/ in 2015 as well, reporting directly to Sakverildze, independent of Shokin.

Despite Shokin's role in hiring the young prosecutors and overall progress in establishing anti-corruption institutions, there were persistent demands from NGOs in 2015 to remove Shokin

10/ but, with the appointment of Kholodnitsky on Nov 30, 2015, US ambassador Pyatt pronounced himself pleased at the "very big day" and "historic opportunity" and subsequently wrote very satisfied 2015 annual review of anti-corruption effort.

11/ Kerry's Dec 3 call came just after Pyatt's satisfied tweet of Dec 1 and just before the much-anticipated Biden visit of Dec 6-8 to Kyiv.

11/ Kerry (h/t

https://twitter.com/lonewolfBuilder/status/1262870602269982720

for transcription) called Poroshenko trying to get him to replace Shokin, about which Biden was then very concerned

12/ Poroshenko vigorously defended Ukraine and Shokin's work to establish independent anti-corruption institutions, pointing out that Anti-Corruption Prosecutor was independent of Prosecutor General as was inspector general - both done exactly as agreed with US and Biden.

13/ so after Shokin had set up these institutions exactly as Biden had wanted, Poroshenko was reluctant to fire him.

14/ but coinciding with Biden's triumphal reception in Ukraine was a savage article by James Risen in NYT archive.is/5EBji re-upping the troubling inconsisency between Biden excoriating Ukrainian corruption, while Hunter Biden had sinecure protecting a notorious oligarch

15/ events accumulate. I'll skip ahead to an interesting one. On Jan 19, 2016, Ukrainian prosecutors Sytnyk, Sakverildze and Kholodnitsky were invited to US (but not Shokin) where they were hosted by "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella and Liz Zentos (see earlier thread)

16/ getting to the context of leaked Feb telecons.

On Feb 2, Shokin caused Zlochevsky assets to be seized as security for various cases in progress against Z. web.archive.org/web/2017030101… This seizure contradicts later assertions that Shokin had done nothing.

17/ a few days earlier, someone at State Dept had forwarded Hunter Biden's email address to someone's hotmail, in the process forwarding a May 25, 2015 exchange between Hunter and Tony Blinken, then Deputy Sec of State and presently on Biden campaign staff

18/ on Feb 4, Hunter Biden "followed" Blinken, perhaps to enable DM Twitter exchanges not in FOIA records.

18/ the second leaked call was on Feb 11 (minute 27:01 to 28:49.) A call between Biden and Poroshenko took place on Feb 11 and, according to read-out ua.usembassy.gov/readout-vice-p…, was about Minsk agreements, eastern Ukraine, also noting importance of rooting out corruption and unity.

19/ the leaked transcript includes a discussion of a contemporary political controversy, involving the resignation of Minister of Economy Abromavicius on Feb 3. He had been recruited from Lithuania and given special perqs by Poroshenko.

20/ for reference, here's a contemporary article on A's resignation bbc.com/news/world-eur…. Poroshenko was annoyed, but incident seems ordinary politics.

21/ there are two excerpts from Feb 18: at 3:22 and 12:42. In first excerpt, Biden begins with chitchat about Minnesota, where he was competing (and losing) in Dem primaries against Hillary Clinton.

22/ Poroshenko then tells Biden that they "didn't have any corruption charges" against Shokin or "any information about him doing something wrong", but, in response to a personal request from Poroshenko, Shokin agreed to resign.

23/ this is obviously an entirely different picture than painted by Biden apologists. Rather than the government having cause because of corruption, Shokin was prepared to sacrifice to appease Biden vendetta.

24/ this quickly becomes convoluted as Shokin quickly re-considered his situation and returned to his job. More on this later.

24/ the other Feb 18 excerpt concerns Poroshenko's difficulty in holding a coalition government together. An issue well attested in contemporary news, but not directly relevant to Biden narrative.

25/ the US embassy readout of the Feb 18 call
ua.usembassy.gov/readout-vice-p…
contained standard pablum about Minsk agreements, but seems disconnected to the contents of the leak.

26/ Biden talked to Poroshenko again on Feb 19. they chatted about Poroshenko's problems in forming a minority coalition. Biden asked how he got the IMF bill passed: Poroshenko seems to have begged for help from departing factions.

27/ needless to say, the official read-out recites hortatory nostrums nowhere evidenced in leaked portion of call
ua.usembassy.gov/readout-vice-p…

28/ next two excerpts from March 22, including the direct quotes about $1 billion. Shokin withdrew his resignation. Perhaps he was stung by idea that his resignation vindicated accusations of corruption. In any event, he was still in office on March 22.

29/ Biden called Poroshenko from Air Force Two and made a simple offer: Tell me there is a new government and a new Prosecutor General, I'm prepared to do a public signing of the commitment for the billion dollars.

30/ this call appears to be germ of truth behind Biden's Corn Pop-esque and fictional account at CFR of how
cfr.org/event/foreign-…

30/ re-tracing chronology a little: according to John Solomon, on Feb 18, 2016, the Latvian money-laundering office sent a notice to Ukrainian Prosecutor General about suspicious transactions involving Burisma, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer
johnsolomonreports.com/latvian-govern…

31/ then on Feb 24, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies, a big-time Dem fixer (former Bill Clinton chief of staff), contacted State Dept to plead Burisma's case, dropping Hunter's name for emphasis. (Recall that Deputy Sec of State Blinken was Biden satellite.)

32/ Tramontano met with UnderSecretary Novelli on March 1, where she pleaded Burisma's case. scribd.com/document/43338…

33/ meanwhile, Devon Archer, Hunter's friend, partner and protege of John Kerry, arranged to meet Kerry on March 2
scribd.com/document/43338…

34/ neither of the above lobbying activities at State Dept on behalf of Burisma appears to have been registered.

35/ the other leaked excerpt of the March 22 call was all about details of managing the coalition. Nothing of obvious interest to Biden narrative.

36/ the readout of the March 22 is totally disconnected from topics in the two excerpts. The readout says that the call was about Savchenko and Minsk agreements, more heroic topics than what was discussed in the excerpts. ua.usembassy.gov/readout-vice-p…

37/ on March 31, Shokin was removed by vote of Ukrainian parliament anxious for IMF funds. Shokin's last act as Prosecutor General was to fire Sakveralidze, who had done whatever he could to sabotage Shokin

38/ jump now to next leak, on May 13, 2016. In this call, Poroshenko explains to Biden the difficulty of collecting enough votes in parliament to approve the IMF package. Biden promised to work with Poro to secure the votes.

39/ the $1 billion loan closed in June. Eric Ciaramella is copied on the correspondence. I'll tidy this up in a day or two.

40/ the last and latest leak is potentially the most interesting. (I'm tired and will return to this). It occurs on Nov 16, only 8 days after election. Biden is urging Poroshenko "to push the Privatbank to closure so that IMF loan comes forward" before Trump catches on.

41/ Privatbank, controlled by oligarch Kolomoisky, was totally insolvent. It had capital deficiency of $5.65 billion. It was so corrupt that "over 97% of its corporate loans had gone to companies linked to shareholders"

42/ even as early as August 2015, open source reporting by Alexander Cockburn (Harper's) harpers.org/2015/08/undeli… described a scheme by which Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoisky and his partner almost instantaneously funneled $1.8 billion of IMF aid delivered by Kerry and Biden

43/ into offshore companies, which were quickly stripped of assets into other offshore companies, leaving Privatbank with uncollectable debt. The extraordinary larceny appears to have been totally ignored by the DOJ, who were later much more interested in Flynn FARA filings.

44/ in any event, in accordance with Biden's wishes, Poroshenko pushed through the nationalization of insolvent Privatbank and its capital replenishment, so that the entire sordid episode was more or less concealed from view when Trump admin arrived

45/ tomorrow I'll finish off by telling how Dem fixers Blue Star Strategies settled all of Burisma's problems with Shokin's replacement (Lutsenko) in very last days of Obama admin - cleaning up Hunter Biden almost at exactly same time as Flynn was being dirtied up.

46/ See

47/ this is the last tweet in a May 19, 2020 thread about the Biden leaks. Easiest way to read thread is to scroll up. Below is picture of Hunter Biden's patron oligarch, Zlochevsky. One has to wonder what Hunter was thinking.