Solomon: Latvian Government Flagged "Suspicious" Hunter Biden Payments In 2016

From John Solomon, Dec 2019:

As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of “ suspicious” financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev’s help investigating, according to documents and interviews.

The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden’s younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.

“The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity … is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the Latvian agency also known as the FIU wrote Ukraine’s financial authorities.

The memo was released to me by the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office and confirmed by the Latvian embassy to the United States.

Latvian authorities said they did not get any incriminating information back from Ukraine to warrant further investigation and did not take additional action in 2016.

But the memo adds to the mounting evidence that there was ongoing investigative activity surrounding Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden’s compensation as a board member in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor overseeing the Burisma investigation in spring 2016.

The Latvian law enforcement memo identified a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million that were routed from companies in Beliz and the United Kingdom to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015.

The flagged funds were “partially transferred” to Hunter Biden, a board member at Burisma since May 2014, and three other officials working for the Ukrainian natural gas company, the Latvian memo said.

The letter asked Ukrainian officials for any evidence about whether the funds were involved in corruption and whether Ukrainian officials were investigating Burisma and the recipients of the money.

“On the grounds of possible legalization of proceeds derived from criminal activity and corruption, please grant us permission to share the information included in the reply to this request with Latvian law enforcement entities for intelligence purposes only,” the letter said.

Arturs Saburovs, the Third Secretary at the Latvian embassy in Washington, confirmed his country flagged the transactions in February 2016 after seeing public reports that Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine and that Hunter Biden served on the company’s board. He said Latvia did not receive any evidence back from Ukraine to further its investigation.

“The Latvian FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit) is the institution which receives, processes, and analyses reports on banking transactions as well as conducts information exchange with foreign FIUs,” he explained. “If a matter comes to public attention as it did here, the FIU processes that information.

“In this case, the Latvian FIU reached out to its Ukrainian counterpart seeking additional clarifications,” he added. “Information was received, yet no incriminatory evidence for further analysis was provided by the Ukrainian authorities.”

Saburovs said authorities in his country could find no evidence they flagged the same transactions to U.S. authorities even though Hunter Biden and two others named in the letter were Americans and the U.S. firm, Rosemont Seneca Bohais that was connected to Hunter Biden, routinely received monthly payments totaling more than $166,600 from Burisma.

“We do not possess such information,” he said when asked about contacts with U.S. officials.

A lawyer for Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign did not respond to requests Monday seeking comment.

The Latvian correspondence adds to a growing body of evidence that questions and investigations of Burisma were swirling in early 2016 just before Joe Biden used his authority as vice president to force the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid.

Shokin was overseeing a wide-ranging Ukrainian investigation of Burisma and has said he was making plans to interview Hunter Biden when he was fired by Ukraine’s president and parliament in March 2016 under pressure from Joe Biden.

Biden and his defenders have said he forced the firing of Shokin because the Ukraine prosecutor was an ineffective corruption fighter; Shokin alleges he was dismissed because he wouldn’t end the Burisma probe.

The Biden family has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, with Jill Biden offering the latest defense of her son this past weekend. “I know my son. I know my son’s character. Hunter did nothing wrong. And that’s the bottom line,” she told MSNBC.

But recently, multiple State Department witnesses testified during the impeachment hearings against President Trump that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma while his father oversaw U.S.-Ukraine policy as vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest. One testified e even blocked a project with Burisma because State was concerned about allegations of corruption.

When I first divulged Joe Biden’s role in Shokin’s firing last year, Democrats and their allies in the media and Ukrainian civil society organizations claimed it was no big deal because the Burisma investigation in Ukraine was dormant at the time Biden took action.

But since that time, significant evidence has emerged that the investigation was, in fact, active and that Burisma itself had concerns about the corruption allegations swirling around it.

For instance, Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed in December 2015 they transferred their investigative files to detectives at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to pursue several leads.

On Feb. 2, 2016, the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office secured a court order to re-seize the assets of Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Officers went to the home, placed seizure notices and took items from the home that included a luxury car, officials said.

About two weeks later, the Latvian suspicious financial transactions memo was transmitted to Ukrainian authorities.

And then in late February, according to U.S. documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Burisma’s American representatives pressed the U.S. State Department to try to help end the corruption allegations against the company. You can read those documents here.

By mid-March 2016, State’s top official for Ukraine policy publicly called for Shokin’s ouster, and less than three weeks later Joe Biden managed to force Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

Almost immediately, Burisma’s American legal team was in Ukraine seeking to meet with Shokin’s replacement at the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office.

A summary of an April 6, 2016 meeting between Burisma representatives and Ukraine prosecutors – released by the Prosecutor General’s Office – states “false information” was used to justify Shokin’s firing.

Whatever the case, the corruption investigations were dropped in late 2016 and early 2017, and Burisma paid a penalty for tax issues.

But early in 2019, NABU and the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office announced they were reopening the investigation into Burisma, specifically to revisit the allegations about money laundering, according to the notice of suspicion released by prosecutors in that country. You can read NABU’s request to reopen the probe here.

That probe is ongoing and recently was expanded to look at other issues. And the entire Burisma episode is now part of the larger impeachment proceedings playing out in America against President Donald Trump.

"The Elites Don't Give A F*ck": Bannon Explains Why Boris Won, Blacks Dig Trump, And What GOP Needs Most Right Now

From Zero Hedge:

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon sat down with The Guardian, offering his take on everything from Boris Johnson's win the the recent UK election, to why minority support for Trump is on the rise, and finally - why the GOP needs its own version of AOC.

Bannon says that Boris Johnson's sweeping UK victory over Labour's Jeremy Corbyn is a "victory for populism," noting how he was fascinated by focus groups on British TV during the election campaign. "These were Labour voters and they were not going to vote for Labour and the reason was they kept asking, ‘How are these programmes going to be paid for?’ What I was most impressed with was the specificity and the granularity of the questions.."

"People don’t want to be spun any more. They don’t want to be BS’d any more. They want to know what you’re laying out and how you’re going to effectuate it and, most importantly, how you’re going to pay for it and ‘if paying for it means more increased taxes or less opportunities for me, you’re not going to get my vote no matter how good it sounds’."

"I think the Democrats, on whether it’s Green New Deal or healthcare for illegal aliens or whatever, ought to take the lessons of the working class. These are lifetime Labour members that voted for a Tory," Bannon added.

Bannon regards Johnson as neither a nationalist nor a populist and likens the prime minister’s vision of Brexit to “Singapore-on-the-Thames” – very different from the version hoped for by those who voted for him. Even so, Bannon argues that both the Conservatives and Republicans should aim to seize their traditional rivals’ territory by appealing to the working class. -The Guardian

Bannon explains that nationalism is about protecting the working class from both illegal and legal immigration - which disproportionately hurts minorities. 

"Look, this is what drives me nuts about the left. All immigration is to flood the zone with cheap labour, and the reason is because the elites don’t give a fuck about African Americans and the Hispanic working class. They don’t care about the white working class either. You’re just a commodity".

"So they have unlimited labour and they’re paying you nine bucks an hour. ‘Let more guys in and, by the way, it’s bigger markets.’ It destroys the working class. That’s what we’ve got to protect. Once we show working-class people of every ethnicity and race that you being a citizen you get a special deal, you get that realignment."

"As soon as we won in London at the end of June, I kept saying this is a lock for Trump, we’ve just got to drive the same topics. That’s why, when I took over the campaign, it was let’s get back to some basics: stop mass illegal immigration, limit legal immigration, protect your workers. Why do you think Trump today is at 34% approval rating in the Emerson polls among blacks and 36% among Hispanics? He’s going to get 20% of the black vote and here’s why: everybody’s working," said Bannon.

Why the GOP needs an AOC, and Trump can thank Bloomberg for impeachment

"We’ve turned the Republican party into a working-class party," said Bannon, adding "Now, interestingly, we don’t have any elected representatives who believe that, but that’s a legacy issue. We’ll get over that. We’ve got to find our AOCs."In short, while Trump swept into office on an America First policy aimed at supporting the working class - particularly those in flyover states, the Republican party needs "more bartenders."

Bannon says that the Democrats took back the house in 2018 for two reasons; Mike Bloomberg - whose PAC injected $110 million into supporting Democrats in the midterm elections (21 of the 24 candidates he supported won their races), and "better casting."

Ocasio-Cortez, a 30-year-old former bartender from New York, was elected to Congress last year and has built a huge social media following as a member of “the Squad”, a group of four progressive women of colour. Her eagerly sought presidential endorsement went to fellow progressive senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The Democrats and their supporters have “better casting”, Bannon admitted. “They did an amazing job in 18. I keep saying I admire AOC. I think her ideology’s all fucked up, but I want her. I want to recruit bartenders. I don’t want to recruit any more lawyers. I want bartenders.” -The Guardian

He notes that in addition to AOC and 'the squad,' Democrats had military veterans such as Max Rose of New York and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey. "That’s perfect casting. That’s why we got smoked."

On Bloomberg, Bannon says "people are missing the point."

"Trump wouldn’t be impeached if it were not for Bloomberg. It’s Bloomberg’s hundred million dollars that won the seats … The Democrat party is just like Republicans: a pass through. There’s no actual people to do anything. They’re not out in any state ringing doorbells. Those activist groups are. That’s where Bloomberg put his hundred million dollars."

'You Need Rehabilitation': Nunes Letter Dismantles Schiff Over FISA Lies, Stroking Steele, And Participating In Coverup

From Zero Hedge: 

"As part of your rehabilitation, it's crucial that you admit you have a problem - you are hijacking the Intelligence Committee for political purposes while excusing and covering up intelligence agency abuses." -Devin Nunes to Adam Schiff

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has written perhaps the most brutal 'I told ya so' letter in recent memory to Adam Schiff, his Democratic rival and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. 

After last week's Inspector General report on FBI FISA abuse revealed Schiff was peddling lies to the American public in a February, 2018 'counter-memo' to Nunes's now-proven claims, Schiff passed the buck - telling Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday that he was 'unaware' of certain things unccovered by the IG - while failing to admit he's been dead wrong on an ongoing basis about a number of things.

Nunes isn't letting this go. In a Sunday letter, he reminded Schiff that "The IG's findings of pervasive, major abuses by the FBI dramatically contradict the assertions of your memo released on February 24, 2018, in which you claimed, "FBI and DOJ officials did not 'abuse' the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump Campaign."

Schiff is in clear "need of rehabilitiation," continues Nunes, adding "I hope this letter will serve as the first step in that vital process."

"Outlining every false claim from your memo would require an extremely long letter," Nunes continues, who then lists several key claims made by Schiff which 'the IG report has exposed as false.' 

• FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
• The DOJ "made only narrow use of information from [Christopher] Steele's sources about Page's specific activities in 2016."
• In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele's reporting.
• The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect "valuable intelligence."
• "Far from "omitting' material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims. DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele's background, credibility, and potential bias."
• The FI31 conducted a "rigorous process" to vet Steele's allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI's reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
• Steele's prior reporting was used in criminal proceedings.

Nunes goes on to dismantle Schiff's bullshit point by point using findings from the IG report, which include: 

• Information provided by Christopher Steele played a "central and essential role" in the decision to seek a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
• There were seventeen "significant errors or omissions" in the FISA application and renewals, and the IG did not get satisfactory explanations for them.
• The Crossfire Hurricane team failed to inform the DOJ of "significant information", and "much of that information was inconsistent with, or undercut" assertions in the FISA applications.
• The FBI relied solely on Steele information for its assertions about Page's alleged coordination with Russians to hack the 2016 elections.

(See entire list below)

Nunes then calls out Schiff for defending Steele, who peddled his discredited, Clinton-funded dossier to the media six weeks before the 2016 US election. 

"As you know, your misguided validation of the FISA warrant was part of a years-long pattern in which you touted Christopher Steele's credentials and reliability," writes Nunes.

"For example, during this committee's March 20, 2017 open hearing, you claimed Steele "is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence." and proceeded to read into the congressional record numerous conspiracy theories proffered by Steele, all of which are false." 

Next, Nunes accused Schiff of participating in a coverup: 

As is clear from the 16 report, Carter Page was the victim of a smear campaign that was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and was implemented by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS. The FBI used these false allegations to obtain a warrant to spy on Page, a gross violation of an American citizen's civil liberties. Your direct participation in the smear campaign against Page is extremely concerning. considering you are chairman of the committee responsible for uncovering precisely these sorts of abuses by the Intelligence Community. Instead of joining committee Republicans in exposing these abuses, however, you excused them. And by supporting the agencies' stonewalling of our attempts to gather information on this affair, you helped cover up this misconduct.

Because of Schiff's misdeeds, and his blind faith in the US intelligence communities which the House Intelligence Committee is supposed to monitor, Nunes says "This makes it clear your rehabilitation will be a long, arduous process." 

"this committee is responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Community and exposing abuses. Yet when the IG identified gross abuses in our jurisdiction, you expressed full faith in the agencies we're supposed to be vigilantly monitoring. and you rejected any oversight whatsoever of their supposed clean-up efforts," writes Nunes. 

Read the entire letter below:

***

Dear Chairman Schiff:

As you are aware, on December 9, 2019, U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz published the results of his investigation of the FISA warrant and renewals obtained by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The IG's findings of pervasive, major abuses by the FBI dramatically contradict the assertions of your memo released on February 24, 2018, in which you claimed, "FBI and DOJ officials did not 'abuse' the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump Campaign."

After publishing false conclusions of such enormity on a topic directly within this committee's oversight responsibilities, it is clear you are in need of rehabilitation, and I hope this letter will serve as the first step in that vital process.

Outlining every false claim from your memo would require an extremely long letter, so I will limit my summary to a few highlights. In your memo you made the following assertions:

• FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
• The DOJ "made only narrow use of information from [Christopher] Steele's sources about Page's specific activities in 2016."
• In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele's reporting.
• The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect "valuable intelligence."
• "Far from "omitting' material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims. DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele's background, credibility, and potential bias."
• The FI31 conducted a "rigorous process" to vet Steele's allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI's reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
• Steele's prior reporting was used in criminal proceedings.

The IG report has exposed all these declarations as false. Despite your denial of any problems with the FISA warrant, the 16 found:

• Information provided by Christopher Steele played a "central and essential role" in the decision to seek a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
• There were seventeen "significant errors or omissions" in the FISA application and renewals, and the IG did not get satisfactory explanations for them.
• The Crossfire Hurricane team failed to inform the DOJ of "significant information", and "much of that information was inconsistent with, or undercut" assertions in the FISA applications.
• The FBI relied solely on Steele information for its assertions about Page's alleged coordination with Russians to hack the 2016 elections.
• The applications omitted information provided to the FBI about Page's operational contact with another U.S. government agency and the agency's positive assessment of him. In fact, an FBI official altered an email stating that Page was a source for another government agency in order to have it read the opposite—that he was "not a source."
• FBI Director James Conley and Deputy Director Andy McCabe sought to include Steele's reporting in the Intelligence Community Assessment even though the CIA dismissed the Steele information as `Internet rumor."
• In FBI interviews, Steele's own sources contradicted information from Steele that was used in the FISA applications.
• The significance of Steele's prior reporting was '-overstated."
• None of the Steele reporting on Caner Page used in the FISA applications could be corroborated, and some of it contradicted other information in the FBI's possession.
• The FBI omitted information about Steele's bias provided by DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
• The applications omitted exculpatory statements by Page and others.
• The FBI failed to reveal in the applications that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary' Clinton campaign were receiving and/or funding Steele's work through Fusion UPS.
• Overall, the Inspector General found, "That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process... In our view, this was a failure of not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command." Indeed, the problems are so severe that the Inspector General has initiated an audit to further investigate FBI's compliance with Woods Procedures in FISA applications.

As you know, your misguided validation of the FISA warrant was part of a years-long pattern in which you touted Christopher Steele's credentials and reliability. For example, during this committee's March 20, 2017 open hearing, you claimed Steele "is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence." and proceeded to read into the congressional record numerous conspiracy theories proffered by Steele, all of which are false. These included:

• Carter Page had a secret meeting with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.
• Sechin offered Page a brokerage fee involving the sale of 19 percent of Rosneft.
• Russians offered the Trump campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for the Trump administration adopting policies favorable to Russia
• Paul Manafort chose Page to act as a go-between for the Trump campaign and Russia.

As is clear from the 16 report, Carter Page was the victim of a smear campaign that was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and was implemented by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS. The FBI used these false allegations to obtain a warrant to spy on Page, a gross violation of an American citizen's civil liberties. Your direct participation in the smear campaign against Page is extremely concerning. considering you are chairman of the committee responsible for uncovering precisely these sorts of abuses by the Intelligence Community. Instead of joining committee Republicans in exposing these abuses, however, you excused them. And by supporting the agencies' stonewalling of our attempts to gather information on this affair, you helped cover up this misconduct.

I am particularly concerned by the press release you issued after the release of the IG report. I applaud you for acknowledging that the report identified "issues and errors" and "potential misconduct" connected to the FISA warrant. This acknowledgement, though dramatically downplaying the scale of the abuse the IG uncovered, could be a valuable first step - a baby step, but a step nonetheless - in your rehabilitation. Nevertheless, in your statement you expressed full faith in FBI Director Christopher Wray's promise to address the problem: demanded that the implementation of reforms be confined to "career officials, away from the political arena;" and denounced Attorney General Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham for expressing concerns about these matters.

This makes it clear your rehabilitation will be a long, arduous process. As previously noted, this committee is responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Community and exposing abuses. Yet when the IG identified gross abuses in our jurisdiction, you expressed full faith in the agencies we're supposed to be vigilantly monitoring. and you rejected any oversight whatsoever of their supposed clean-up efforts. If agencies with a documented, severe abuse problem should be trusted to police themselves, then it's fair to ask why this committee even exists and what we're supposed to be doing, if anything, aside from being exploited by you as a launching pad to impeach the president for issues that have no intelligence component at all.

As part of your rehabilitation, it's crucial that you admit you have a problem - you are hijacking the Intelligence Committee for political purposes while excusing and covering up intelligence agency abuses. The next step will be to convene a hearing with IG Horowitz, as the Senate Judiciary Committee has done and the Senate Homeland Security Committee will do next week.

I understand taking action on this issue will be difficult for you, as it will be an implicit acknowledgment that you were wrong to deny these abuses and that you were complicit in the violation of an American's civil liberties. I also understand such an acknowledgement is made even more difficult by the fact that you've already been discredited by your years-long false claim that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the 2016 presidential election.

Nevertheless, I refuse to believe you are beyond redemption. I invite you to work closely with me on your rehabilitation program, and look forward to your scheduling a committee hearing with IG Horowitz at the nearest opportunity.