Ukraine agency says allegations against Burisma cover period before Biden joined

[Skya Rhen]

September 27, 2019

KIEV (Reuters) - A Ukrainian investigation of gas company Burisma is focused solely on activity that took place before Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, was hired to sit on its board, Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigation agency said.

<Snip>

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said it was investigating permits granted by officials at the Ministry of Ecology for the use of natural resources to a string of companies managed by Burisma.

But it said the period under investigation was 2010-2012, and noted that this was before the company hired Hunter Biden.

“Changes to the board of Burisma Limited, which are currently the object of international attention, took place only in May 2014, and therefore are not and never were the subject of (the anti-corruption bureau’s) investigation,” the bureau’s statement said.

Hunter Biden was a director on Burisma’s board from 2014-2018, according to documents filed by the company in Cyprus, where it is registered.

The investigation into Burisma covers a period when Ukraine was governed by a Kremlin ally, Viktor Yanukovich. Burisma hired Hunter Biden after Yanukovich was toppled in a popular revolt in 2014 and replaced by a pro-Western government.

At the time, many Ukrainian firms were seeking to distance themselves from their relationships with the previous, pro-Moscow authorities, and some invited Western public figures to sit on their boards.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-ukraine-buris/ukraine-agency-says-investigating-burisma-but-not-when-hunter-biden-was-on-board-idUSKBN1WC1LV

[Iliyah]

1. It does not matter with RWers . . .

they are void of facts and truths.

[TheRealNorth]

3. It's funny/scary how Republicans take a scandal and twist the facts

To make it look like it's something that implicates a Democrat.

It's a failure of the media that they usually run with the Republican talking point instead of finding out what the truth is.

[NurseJackie]

9. Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia?

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/why-are-right-wing-conspiracies-so-obsessed-with-pedophilia/

The children were being sodomized in secret underground tunnels. Their captors drank blood in front of them and staged satanic ritual sacrifices. Sometimes the kids were filmed for pornographic purposes. In total, some several hundred children were subjected to this treatment. And it all happened in the middle of a safe neighborhood where crimes were not supposed to happen, let alone such unspeakable and horrific ones.

.....

The McMartin preschool scandal of the 1980s was a sort of analog version of the more recent Pizzagate, part of a lurid and misbegotten moral panic about subterranean child abuse. Even though the supposed crimes unfolded thousands of miles and several decades apart, under very different circumstances, the two conspiracy theories share the same rough contours. The McMartin saga, which began in 1983 with accusations made by one boy’s mother, came to encompass fantastical claims about a massive pedophile ring lurking beneath a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. Pizza­gate was concocted during the 2016 presidential campaign and alleged that prominent figures in the Democratic Party were running a child sex ring in tunnels beneath the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in a residential Washington, DC, neighborhood. Both spun off into new theories: Amid a full-on national hysteria, McMartin spawned a series of day-care conspiracies, while Pizzagate has led to QAnon, an even wilder conspiracy theory that postulates that President Donald Trump is on the verge of arresting a throng of liberal elites for facilitating and participating in a sprawling child sex ring. Both drew on natural fears about child safety and supercharged them into national phenomena with real-world ramifications. Both of course were fictions.

Conspiracies centering on the vulnerability of children are neither new nor distinctly American. Wild claims of Jews killing Christian children and using their blood in rituals—the “blood libel”—date back to at least the 12th century and have popped up every so often since then, and long before that Christians were suspected of performing similar rites. “Hurting children is one of the worst things you can say someone is doing. It’s an easy way to demonize your enemy,” says Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at the University of California-Davis, who has studied conspiracy theories.

Why do child-abuse conspiracies explode into public consciousness at certain moments? Explanations offered for the peculiar resonance of Pizzagate and QAnon tend to focus on pathologies in the media ecosystem—epistemic bubbles, polarization, the unruly growth of social media. But years before the fracturing of mass culture and the dawn of Reddit and 4chan, the McMartin accusations fed a national spectacle during which scores of people were wrongly accused of sex crimes against children.

The continuities between the McMartin case and Pizzagate suggest a broader explanation for pedophile conspiracies: They aren’t the residue of malfunctions in our media culture. They’re an outgrowth of the normal workings of reactionary politics.

[customerserviceguy]

2. How does this

help Joe Biden?

A company gets its ass into a wringer, then they bring on politically connected people and pay them large amounts of money to get out of trouble. The timeline above is not inconsistent with that scenario.

I just wonder why so many Americans see the need to profit off of an emerging Second World nation.

[Cha]

5. Quit trying to smear Hunter Biden.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Tom Steyer backs rival Joe Biden around impeachment inquiry, says he 'should be left out of this'

“This is an attempted smear by the Trump campaign. Just the way he tried to smear Hillary Clinton,” Steyer said in an interview with Yahoo News Thursday, defending his political rival. “I think that Mr. Biden should be left out of this. I don’t think he’s done anything wrong. I think a bunch of newspapers looked at it and decided he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=294531

“I think it’s very clear that the president is very afraid of Joe,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “And so he’s going after Joe and his family for political purposes and I’ll stand with Joe against any president who acts that way.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287293997

**BREAKING ** Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden 'did not violate anything'

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287293616

[Kingofalldems]

6. Agree totally.

[Cha]

7. Thank you, Kingofalldems!

This is us against trump.. not innuendoes and blatant smears against Hunter and Joe Biden who didn't violate anything!

“I think it’s very clear that the president is very afraid of Joe,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “And so he’s going after Joe and his family for political purposes and I’ll stand with Joe against any president who acts that way.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287293997

**BREAKING ** Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden 'did not violate anything'

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287293616

[Kingofalldems]

8. Well I think some posts are a bit swampy.