A conservative Republican in Congress raised the name of the CIA officer accused of being the Ukraine whistleblower during a congressional hearing about Puerto Rico last month.
Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas asked Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s former finance minister, who is now executive director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, whether she had any involvement with National Security Council officials in her previous post. He cited an April 2016 meeting at a Le Pain Quotidien restaurant close to the White House between Eric Ciaramella, another White House official, and Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova.
A Foreign Agents Registration Act filing shows that the meeting was arranged by Doug Schoen, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally and registered foreign lobbyist for Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk. The same day, Schoen arranged for Bielkova to meet with David Kramer, who flew to Britain in 2016 to meet former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, author of a dossier containing incendiary allegations about President Trump.
Jaresko was testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 22 about Puerto Rico’s debt. An American-born Ukrainian investment banker, she was Ukraine’s minister of finance between 2014 and 2016.
Last week, attorneys for the whistleblower who submitted a complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, prompting the impeachment process to begin, declined to confirm or deny that their client was Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst. After it was reported that Ciaramella was the whistleblower, attorneys Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj told the Washington Examiner in a statement: “We neither confirm nor deny the identity of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower.”
During the October hearing, Gohmert asked Jaresko: “I’m curious, in your position there in Ukraine — were you aware of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dispatching Olga Bielkova or any other Ukrainian official to the U.S. in order to conduct an influence campaign on the 2016 election here in the United States?”
Jaresko replied she had no “knowledge of that” after she attempted to explain she was only at the hearing to testify about the Puerto Rico board. But Gohmert said her “credibility is an issue” and asked again if she had knowledge of Poroshenko sending Bielkova to the U.S. and how that trip was funded. She responded she did not have answers to either question, noting the trip did not occur when she was minister of finance. “Well, you were there,” Gohmert said.
Chairman Raul Grijalva interjected, accusing Gohmert of pursuing conspiracy theories and straying from the subject of the hearing, the Puerto Rico board. Gohmert shot back at the Arizona Democrat, “My clock is still running as the chairman is eating up my time, lecturing me, and trying to cover up this matter,” he said.
The Texas Republican continued: “Well, let me ask you, Ms. Jaresko, are you aware of Ukrainian parliamentarian Bielkova April 12, meetings with Liz Zentos and Eric Ciaramella of the Obama and National Security Council?”
Jaresko said she was not aware of any meetings between them. According to Jaresko, she became the executive director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico by being recruited by the members of the board “based on her experience as minister of finance in both the fiscal area and the debt restructuring that I did in Ukraine.”
The day she became finance minister, she was granted Ukrainian citizenship and lived in Ukraine from her initial posting in the U.S. State Department as the economics officer in 1992 until she left and took her current post in 2017.
Gohmert told the Washington Examiner, “Specifically, I asked about an April 12, 2016, meeting between Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova and Liz Zentos and Eric Ciaramella of the National Security Council, in which energy issues were discussed. I thought it was prudent to ask Ms. Jaresko on the record and under oath about this meeting, since the time frame and subject align with the concerning reports of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.”
The congressman added: “She said she had no knowledge of this meeting. Ms. Jaresko has previously said of Joe Biden’s relationship with Ukraine: ‘Joe’s role was unique and valuable and will be very hard to duplicate.’ If that is true, then the significance of a meeting like this one cannot be understated.”
Schoen arranged Washington meetings for Bielkova on behalf of Pinchuk. These included the one with Ciaramella and his then-boss Zentos, now political and economic chief at the U.S. Embassy in Tblisi.
Schoen, a Democratic operative who began foreign lobbying work for Pinchuk for $40,000 per month beginning in 2000, arranged April 2016 meetings for Bielkova with national security professionals, including Ciaramella, at the behest of Pinchuk. Schoen’s filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act stated he didn’t attend these meetings personally and that the topic of the meetings was “the Ukrainian progress in energy reform during the past year and what steps must be done in the future to increase energy independence.”
In 2004, Schoen introduced Pinchuk to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Bielkova met with Ciaramella and his colleague, Liz Zentos, then the director for Eastern Europe on the National Security Council, on April 12, 2016, at Le Pain Quotidien, on 17th Street N.W., a block from the White House. The same day, Bielkova also met with State Department official Michael Kimmage and, separately, with Kramer of the McCain Institute. Kramer figures prominently in the Trump-Russia saga — he met with Steele in December 2016 at Heathrow Airport to obtain a copy of the British ex-spy’s unverified dossier and provided information from it to over a dozen journalists after the presidential election.
Pinchuk, the powerful Ukrainian oligarch and billionaire whom Schoen works for, is the founder of Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine’s largest steel producers, EastOne Group, a large London-based international investment firm, and StarLightMedia, Ukraine’s largest broadcasting conglomerate. Pinchuk’s father-in-law is Leonid Kuchma, the Ukrainian president from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s. Kuchma was widely seen as corrupt, and he controversially privatized and sold a state-run steel factory to Pinchuk in what was considered by some as a sweetheart deal. Pinchuk was a member of Ukraine’s parliament at about the same time and has continued to use his money and connections to remain active in politics in Ukraine and abroad.
He secretly provided $4 million for a 2012 report carried out by former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig and his law firm, written at the behest of the Kremlin-linked government in Ukraine about the country’s controversial prosecution of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was tried under President Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of Paul Manafort. Schoen testified in the trial this summer, and Craig was found not guilty of misleading investigators about his actions in Ukraine this September.
Pinchuk was the founder of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Ukraine’s largest philanthropic group, which, among other donations, gave an estimated $10 million to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons have traveled on Pinchuk’s private plane, and Pinchuk attended former President Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday party in Los Angeles in 2011. Pinchuk’s foundation also donated $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 2015 for Trump to appear by video at a Kyiv conference.
