In their push for impeachment over what would otherwise have been a ridiculous issue, House Democrats, along with their friends in the national media, are about to jog the public’s memory on something most of us forgot three years ago: Ukraine directly interfered in our last presidential race for the benefit of one candidate over another. It just so happens that the candidate who benefited didn’t end up winning.
In August 2016, Ukrainian prosecutors revealed that Paul Manafort, who at the time was serving as Trump’s campaign manager, may have received millions of dollars in payments from Ukrainian companies and politicians who were believed to make up a corrupt pro-Russia network.
The prosecutors, along with the Ukrainian government’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, gave interviews and materials to the New York Times so that it could run an extensive report on Manafort’s involvement in the matter.
That story included the detail that the NACB “has an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI.”
Guess who was secretly investigating the Trump campaign at least one month before that Times story published? The FBI was, and we still don’t really know why, or who initiated the investigation.
The evidence connecting Manafort to the pro-Russia ring in Ukraine is almost comical. It was an accounting book that had his name handwritten inside, along with other names and monetary figures. How was it found? “In the burned-out ruins” of an office building in Kiev, according to the guy who produced it, an anti-Russia politician in Ukraine. How did he get his hands on it? “An anonymous source,” he says. (I wonder if the source’s initials are anything like “FBI.”)
That Times report kicked off the now-debunked conspiracy theory that Trump is an agent of Russia. But at the time, it just embarrassed the Trump campaign, resulting in Manafort’s resignation as its manager, and eventually his conviction and imprisonment.
The reason why Ukraine got involved in the 2016 election was obvious. Trump had been saying he wanted the U.S. to have a more constructive relationship with Russia, which has been engaged in military conflict with Ukraine since 2014. Lev Golinkin, a journalist originally from Ukraine, laid the whole thing out in an article for the ultra-liberal Nation magazine back in late September.
“Ukrainians certainly had every reason to expose Manafort’s corruption, and the man’s subsequent trial showed there was an enormous amount to expose,” wrote Golinkin. “But Ukraine’s efforts also happened to coincide with—and have an immediate impact on—an American campaign. And yet, despite this information’s being available in English, and published by established Western media, we’ve had almost no debate about its implications.”
We’re about to have that debate now, though I don’t think Democrats are looking forward to it.
