Interfax-Ukraine."KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Some $16.5 million received by Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, as payment from Burisma was stolen from Ukrainian citizens, member of parliament Andriy Derkach has said."Ecology Minister?" Those Eastern Europeans have a sense of humor. But never mind. Far more important and disturbing details about this accusation emerge from the Interfax reports (there are two from the same press conference).
"Derkach said at a press conference at the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency that on November 14 the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) announced a new suspicion to the owner of Burisma, former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, (R-SC) confirmed in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that he is sending a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting the transcripts of three phone calls the senator said then-Vice President Joe Biden had with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
"I want to know are there any transcripts or readouts of the phone calls between the vice president and the president of Ukraine in February [2016] after the raid on the gas company president's house," said Graham."After this raid, Hunter Biden kicks in. Hunter Biden's business partner meets with [then-Secretary of State] John Kerry, and Vice President Biden on three occasions makes a phone call to the president of Ukraine and goes over there in March and they fire the guy, and this is the same man that the ambassador wanted investigated in 2015."Graham added he found it "odd" that instead of lauding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, for investigating the Burisma chairman, he was instead relieved of his duties.
He said that in 2015, President Obama's ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, said in a speech he wanted Shokin to be more forceful in his investigation of domestic corruption.
"The one person he named as being a sleazebag was the president of Burisma," Graham remarked.
President Trump tweeted that the Navy "will NOT" take away the trident pin, an emblem signifying membership on the elite SEAL team, from embattled Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher.See also: Trump pardons 2 US Army officers for war crimes in Afghanistan; Pentagon says undermines military justice
"it's unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI's investigation of Page and whether the FISA warrant would have been approved without the document."What we do know, however, is that it was significant enough to warrant a criminal investigation.
"There had never been political calm in Bolivia, with the exception of the time when Andrés de Santa Cruz was in power, between 1829 and 1838... It was the period of the greatest prosperity for the country. It used to be one of the leaders in the region..."Morales was speaking with Ecuador's former president, Rafael Correa, on his show Conversation with Correa, aired on RT Spanish.
"I remember when I was a soldier in the armed forces in 1978, three presidents changed in one year; all were generals... During the five years before I took office [in 2006], there were five presidents."
Ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales said he has "zero doubt" that a mechanical failure that occurred on a helicopter he was traveling on last month was an "assassination attempt" and no accident. Morales said the incident - apparently a mechanical fault with the tail rotor - happened while he was flying to the opening ceremony for a new road.The Bolivian coup was about the lithium...
The socialist leader pinned blame for the alleged assassination attempt on Air Force General Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara, who he said had "changed completely" in recent times. He also pointed to the fact that coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho had announced on the same day that Bolivians were about to "witness Evo's fall" and that it would be "captured on video."
"When the news came that we survived the crash that night, those who expected the president to die in it were disappointed," he said. Over the following days, Morales recalled, police began to join protesters on the streets.
On a visit to Chimoré that Saturday, Morales said one police officer showed him "numerous text messages and phone calls offering 50 thousand dollars" for capturing him. The officer warned him to be careful, to double up on security and go back to the capital La Paz.
Morales on Wednesday called on the UN to intervene and denounce the coup and subsequent massacre.
The Organization of American States played a key role in deposing him, and that Bolivia's huge reserves of lithium had spurred on the coup, had engineered his downfall.Watch Evo Morales' full interview with Rafael Correa in Spanish here.
"Nowhere did it say that there is fraud," he said of the OAS' report on Bolivia's October elections, which found "irregularities" at the polls, despite contradictory reports from other expert groups. "The OAS made a decision and its report is not based on a technical report, but on a political decision."
The coup against him, Morales continued, was aimed at installing a right-wing leader who will open up Bolivia's lithium reserves - some of the largest in the world - to exploitation by industry. Morales had planned on nationalizing the extraction of lithium to secure the country's economic future. "In Bolivia we could define the price of lithium for the world...Now I have realized that some industrialized countries do not want competition."
Tesla, whose electric cars use lithium in their batteries - saw its stock jump following Morales' departure. Companies that manage to get a hold of Bolivia's lithium stocks - estimated at around 900 million tons - stand to make a lucrative profit. Worldwide demand for the element is expected to more than double by 2025, Bloomberg noted last year.
"Those who participated in the egregious irregularities and manipulation of the vote in the flawed October 20 election must, for the good of Bolivia, step aside and let Bolivians rebuild their institutions."The top US diplomat also maintained that "violence, repression, and political intimidation have no place in a democracy," even as Morales supporters were gunned down in the streets by the very interim government that Pompeo swore to "support."
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has finally provided her take on the violent unrest that toppled the sitting president Evo Morales, telling her followers that it was a coup which shouldn't involve US interference. "What happened in Bolivia is a coup. Period," Gabbard wrote on Twitter, warning against what may lie in store for Washington's interventionists. "The United States and other countries should not be interfering in the Bolivian people's pursuit of self-determination and right to choose their own government," she argued.See also: Morales to Correa: Coup ended stability Bolivia hadn't seen for over 180 years
Gabbard's words come days after another top-tier Democrat, Bernie Sanders, used the same vocabulary when commenting on Bolivia's turmoil. "When the military intervened and asked President Evo Morales to leave, in my view, that's called a coup," he tweeted.
Comment: Schiff brings lip-reading witnesses and angry bureaucrats into impeachment theater