The Impeachment Pantomime

The Impeachment Pantomime

By Patrick Lawrence
Consortium News
November 22, 2019

Now that “Russia-Gate” has failed and “Ukraine-Gate” neatly takes
its place, many questions arise.

Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the
intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose
President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless
coup?

Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment probe,
which is to be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the
President use his office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own
personal and political interests?

Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, put U.S. national security
at risk, as is alleged?

All good questions.

Here is another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender
for the Democratic presidential nomination, get away with what
is almost certain to prove his gross corruption and gross abuse of
office when he carried the Ukraine portfolio while serving as vice
president under Barack Obama?

Corollary line of inquiry: Will the corporate media, The New
York Times in the lead, get away with self-censoring what is
now irrefutable evidence of the impeachment probe’s various
frauds and corruptions?

Ditto in the Biden case: Can the Times and the media that faithfully
follow its lead continue to disregard accumulating circumstantial
evidence of Biden’s guilt as he appears to have acted in the interest
of his son Hunter while the latter sat on the board of one of
Ukraine’s largest privately held natural gas producers?

Innuendo & Interference

It is not difficult to imagine that Trump presented Zelensky with
his famous quid pro quo when they spoke last summer: Open an
investigation into Biden père et fils and I will release $391 million
in military aid and invite you to the White House.

Trump seems to be no stranger to abuses of power of this sort.

But the impeachment probe has swiftly run up against the same
problem that sank the good ship Russia-Gate: It has produced no
evidence. Innuendo and inference, yes. Various syllogisms, yes.

But no evidence.

There is none in the transcript of the telephone exchange.

Zelensky has flatly stated that there was no quid pro quo.

The witnesses so far called to testify have had little to offer other
than their personal opinions, even if Capitol Hill Democrats pretend
these testimonies are prima facie damning.

And the witnesses are to one or another degree
of questionable motives.

To a one, they appear to be Russophobes who favor military aid to
Ukraine; to a one they are turf-conscious careerists who think they
set U.S. foreign policy and resent the president for intruding upon
them.

It is increasingly evident that Trump’s true offense is proposing
to renovate a foreign policy framework that has been more or
less untouched for 75 years (and is in dire need of renovation).

Ten days ago Real Clear Investigations suggested that the
“whistleblower” whose “complaint” last August set the
impeachment probe in motion was in all likelihood a CIA
agent named Eric Ciaramella.

And who is Eric Ciaramella?

It turns out he is a young but seasoned Democratic Party
apparatchik conducting his spookery on American soil.

Ciaramella has previously worked with Joe Biden during the latter’s
days as veep; with Susan Rice, Obama’s recklessly hawkish national
security adviser; with John Brennan, a key architect of the Russia-
Gate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian born
Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016
campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate
Donald Trump.

For good measure, Paul Sperry’s perspicacious reporting in
Real Clear Investigations reveals that Ciaramella conferred
with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading
the impeachment process, a month prior to filing his “complaint”
to the CIA’s inspector general.

This information comes after Schiff stated on the record that the
staff of the House Intelligence Committee, which he heads, had
no contact with the whistleblower. Schiff has since acknowledged
the Ciaramella connection.

Phantom in Plain Sight

No wonder no one in Washington will name this phantom in plain
sight.

The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek.

It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over
democratic process — a dangerous priority.

Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council
official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is.

CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times
knows. Congress knows. The White house knows…. They’re hiding
him because of his political bias.”

Here we come to another question.

If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have
the corporate media declined to name him?

There can be but one answer to this question.

If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record
exposed, the Ukraine-Gate narrative would instantly collapse into
a second-rate vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although
“hoax” might do, even if Trump has made the term his own.

There is another half to this burlesque.

While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for
something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment,
a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden’s official
interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the
gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March
2014 — a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated
coup in Kiev.

There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden’s activities
by way of an official inquiry.

In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime
of the impeachment probe.

Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation?

Emphatically there are.

Two reports published last week make this plain by
any reasonable measure.

‘Bursima-Gate’

John Solomon, a singularly competent follower of Russia-Gate
and Ukraine-Gate, published a report last Monday exposing Hunter
Biden’s extensive contacts with the Obama State Department in
the early months of 2016.

Two developments were pending at the time.

They lie at the heart of what we may well call “Burisma-Gate.”

One, the Obama administration had committed to providing Ukraine
with $1 billion in loan guarantees. In a December 2015 address to
the Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, V–P Biden withheld an apparently
planned announcement of the credit facility.

Two, coincident with Hunter Biden’s numerous conferences at the
State Department, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,
was swiftly advancing a corruption investigation into Burisma’s
oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was by early 2016 living
in exile.

Just prior to Biden’s spate of visits to Foggy Bottom, Shokin had
confiscated several of Zlochevsky’s properties—a clear sign that
he was closing in.

Joe Biden wanted Shokin fired.

He is, of course, famously on the record boasting of his threat
to withhold the loan guarantee as a means to getting this done.

Shokin was in short order dismissed, and the loan guarantee
went through.

Solomon documents his report with memos he obtained via
the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year.

These add significantly to the picture.

“Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple
contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016
election cycle,” he writes, “including one just a month before
Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the Prosecutor
investigating his son’s company for corruption.”

Last Tuesday, a day after Solomon published his report, Moon of
Alabama, the much-followed web publication, posted a granularly
researched and well-sourced timeline of the events surrounding
Shokin’s dismissal at Vice President Biden’s request.

This is the most complete chronology of the Burisma-Gate story
yet available.

In an ethical judicial system, it or something like it would now
sit on a prosecutor’s desk.

There is no suggestion in the Moon of Alabama’s timeline that
Shokin had shelved his investigation into Burisma by the time
Biden exerted pressure to get him sacked, as Biden’s defenders
assert.

Just the opposite appears to be the true case: The timeline
indicates Shokin was about to pounce.

Indeed Shokin said so under oath in an Austrian court case,
testifying that he was fired because of Biden’s pressure not
to conduct the probe.

It is important to note that there is no conclusive evidence that
Joe Biden misused his office in behalf of his son’s business interests
simply because there has been no investigation.

Given what is beginning to emerge, however, the need for one
can no longer be in doubt.

Can Democrats and the media obscure indefinitely what now
amounts to very strong circumstantial evidence against Biden?

We live in a time when the corporate media make as much
effort to hide information as they do to report it.

But as in the case of Ciaramella’s identity, it is unlikely these
myriad omissions can be sustained indefinitely — especially if
Biden wins the Democratic nomination next year.

Forecast: If only because of Burisma-Gate, Joe Biden will never be
president.

As everyone in Washington seems to understand, it is highly unlikely
Trump will be ousted via an impeachment trial.

The Republican-controlled Senate can be counted on to keep him
in office.

Whatever Trump got up to with Zelensky, there is little chance it
will prove sufficient to drive him from office.

As to the charge that Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian president
threatened national security, let us allow this old chestnut to speak
for itself.

Price of Irresponsible Theatrics

This leaves us to reckon the price our troubled republic will pay for
months of irresponsible theatrics that are more or less preordained
to lead nowhere.

More questions.

What damage will the Democrats have done when Ukraine-Gate
draws to a close (assuming it does at some point)? What harm has
come to U.S. political institutions, governing bodies, judiciary and
media?

The corporate press has been profligately careless of its already
questionable credibility during the years of Russia-Gate and now
Ukraine-Gate.

Can anyone argue there is no lasting price to pay for this?

More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts
to unseat a president tell us about the power of un-elected
constituencies?

The CIA is now openly operating on American soil
in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law.

There is absolutely no way this can be questioned.

We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russia-Gate
and Ukraine-Gate share with the agency’s classic coup operations
abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the
leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags and
incessant disinformation campaigns.

Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad
the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home.

What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president
(of any stripe) to effect authentic change when our administrative
state — “deep,” if you like — opposes it?

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/patrick-lawrence-the-
impeachment-pantomime