quote:Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday to request documents that will assist the committee “in answering questions regarding allegations” that former vice president Joe Biden pushed to end a 2016 Ukrainian investigation into Burisma, the gas company which employed his son Hunter.
Graham points out three main facts that, in his view, suggest a possible conflict of interest between official U.S. state policy and Ukrainian investigations into Burisma. Graham claims that Joe Biden “held a series of phone calls with former Ukrainian President Petro Porosehnko regarding previous demands to dismiss Prosecutor General Shokin for alleged corruption,” after which Shokin, who had seized property from Burisma’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky, was fired.
quote:A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes.
"Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December," said Bondy.
Shokin was ousted from his position in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including then-vice president Biden, over concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases.
Bondy tells CNN that his client and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine, according to Bondy.
That information would likely be of great interest to House Democrats given its overlap with the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and could put Nunes in a difficult spot.
Bondy tells CNN his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Bondy suggested in a tweet on Friday that he was already speaking to House Intel though the committee declined to comment.
Giuliani has told CNN previously about his conversations with Shokin and Parnas, saying that this was part of his legal work for his client, President Trump. Parnas' claims about Nunes' alleged involvement offers a new wrinkle and for the first time suggests the efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens involved a member of Congress.
quote:Parnas, who was indicted on federal campaign finance charges last month, worked with Shokin and Giuliani to push a pair of unfounded claims: that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats, and that Biden was acting corruptly in Ukraine on behalf of his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
According to Bondy, Parnas claims Nunes worked to push similar allegations of Democratic corruption.
"Nunes had told Shokin of the urgent need to launch investigations into Burisma, Joe and Hunter Biden, and any purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election," Bondy told CNN.
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When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier