Ukraine Prosecutor Offered ‘High-Level’ Access to Clinton Campaign  It’s almost as though Hillary Clinton couldn’t abide Joe Biden getting all the corruption attention. Her people just had to stick their fingers in the Ukraine cookie jar. It’s all coming out now because of our lawsuit.
We received 38 pages of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings.
This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant to President Clinton and deputy White House Chief of Staff. She is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm that was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.
In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns with Burisma and the Clinton Foundation.
We obtained these documents in response to our FOIA lawsuit against the State Department seeking documents related to a reported “untouchables list” given in late 2016 by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:19-cv-03563)). Our lawsuit requests:- All records of communication between the Department of State and any representative of the Ukrainian government regarding any actual or proposed investigation or prosecution of the AntAC; the International Renaissance Foundation [Open Society Foundations’ office in Ukraine]; and/or Transparency International.
- All records concerning any meeting or telephonic conversation between former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
- All records related to the list of individuals and entities provided to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch in late 2016.
The records include a September 3, 2016, email from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that Lutsenko informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The email’s subject line is “Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.” The email says:
[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them out. He said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid – he didn’t have funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of Parliament] that we probably didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had introduced them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she was Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s tenure), and that was appealing – to meet the possible next Presidential Chief of Staff.
Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko not take that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also mentioned corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and Podesta:
In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of Burisma/Zlochevsky, mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to lobbyists that had been prominently int he news this past month, whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels to Podesta Group and Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and the media attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy train….
…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience, and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more traction/better audience.
This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019 testimony under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running corruption investigation against it stating, “it just wasn’t a big issue.”
This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption.
Pete Buttigieg Agrees to Search His Personal Email Account to Avoid Testimony in Judicial Watch Lawsuit
Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana mayor, has agreed to search his personal email for records related to the creation of ID cards to help illegal aliens in South Bend.
This agreement and subsequent court order comes in response to our Access to Public Records Act (APRA) open records lawsuit filed in August 2019 after the City of South Bend failed to respond as required by law to open records requests seeking emails between Buttigieg, members of his staff and officials of La Casa de Amistad regarding the Community Resident Card program. (Judicial Watch v. City of South Bend (No. 71C01-1908-Ml-000389)). Andrew B. Jones of the Jones Law Office LLC in South Bend, IN, represents us. (Joe Biden wants Mr. Buttigieg to serve as Transportation Secretary if Biden is ultimately installed as president.)
We initially sought to depose Buttigieg under oath but withdrew our request upon his agreement to search his personal email for the following records:- Emails between Mayor Peter Buttigieg on any personal/private or non-South Bend email account and any of the below listed individuals from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017 containing the following terms: “Community Resident Card,” “CRC,” “Municipal ID,” “SB ID, ”Resident ID,” and/or Community ID.”
Individuals: Same Centellas, John Collins, Felix Bueno, Jr., Laura O’Sullivan, Tammy Bell, Genevieve Miller, Molly Buser, Cherri Peate, Scott Ruszkowski, Mark Bode, Eric Horvath, Jamie Morgan, Marcia I. Jones
On December 16, 2016, the South Bend Tribune reported that, “A nonprofit Latino advocacy group … unveiled a new identification card it hopes will make life easier for undocumented immigrants who live in [South Bend].” La Casa de Amistad Inc. are the creators of this “SB ID.” Buttigieg reportedly worked “closely with La Casa de Amistad, South Bend’s main Latino outreach center … and the nonprofit’s executive director, Sam Centellas,” to create a “Community Resident Card … created and distributed by the group — a private organization — not the city. Buttigieg’s part to make it all work was to sign an executive order requiring local services and institutions — like law enforcement, schools, the water utility and libraries — to accept the card as a valid form of identification.”
South Bend refused or ignored our APRA requests multiple times between June 24, 2019, and July 18, 2019. Each time, South Bend said the requests were too broad and not “reasonably particular.” After each refusal, we would comply with South Bend’s suggestion to limit their request. After four exchanges, South Bend produced Mayor Buttigieg’s executive order and two information bulletins that were already publicly accessible.
This victory will help the public understand Mayor Buttigieg’s plan to create special ID cards to make it easier for illegal aliens to stay in the United States contrary to law. It is curious that the mayor fought us for so long on this simple request for information. As I write this, we just received the results of Mr. Buttigieg’s long delayed search. We will review these records and will be sure to report back to you anything of interest and our next steps!
Attorney General Barr Resigns as Confidence in the DOJ Tanks
After getting off to an excellent start by shutting down the corrupt Mueller investigation, Attorney General William Barr failed to restore public confidence in the fair administration of justice by aggressively pursuing the unprecedented and illegal Obama-era spying abuses targeting President Trump.
Attorney General Barr was unfairly maligned by the Left because they feared he might prosecute their political allies. Instead, the reality is too many politicians and corrupt government officials seemed to get special dispensation from the Barr DOJ – Obama, Biden, Clinton, Comey, and McCabe, to name a few. Right now, for example, the Barr Justice Department is protecting Hillary Clinton directly by trying to shut down all of our Clinton email discovery and FOIA lawsuits, while withholding the release of the Obamagate-era emails and texts of the Page/Strzok/McCabe anti-Trump cabal.
The Justice Department was a black hole in terms of transparency under Attorney General Barr.
It is imperative that President Trump take immediate steps to expose the full truth about the Obama administration’s spying and abuse of President Trump and other innocents, such as General Flynn. Americans are right to expect action, justice, and accountability from Special Counsel Durham on the worst corruption scandals in American history. Also, President Trump should ensure that the exploding Biden and election integrity scandals are fully investigated by the DOJ and other federal law enforcement agencies.
Seattle May Give Criminals a ‘Poverty Defense’
Encouraging criminals is not a do-good act. It’s a revolutionary effort to introduce chaos into our society. Radical leftists in Seattle are pushing a dangerous assault on the rule of law and the public safety – as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.Elected officials in a major U.S. city plan to pass a law that will allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for basic needs and trespassers to set up camp on private property when it is to obtain adequate shelter. Dozens of other crimes—including assault and harassment—will be excused under the preposterous measure if suspects are poor, mentally ill or addicted to drugs. It is being crafted as a poverty defense and will allow municipal court judges to dismiss a multitude of crimes if poverty, mental illness or a substance-abuse disorder drove the perpetrator to commit them. Even for a famously liberal left coast city like Seattle it seems like a bit much. The proposal was first introduced during the Seattle City Council’s budget deliberations weeks ago, according to a local news report. It was put on hold over a budget process bureaucracy but has gained incredible steam and appears to have enough support to alter the city code early next year. “The idea could enormously impact the city — and set Seattle apart from the rest of the country in its approach to misdemeanor crimes,” according to the news story, which includes the concerns of frustrated public safety advocates who say the law will essentially legalize most crimes in Seattle. Not surprisingly, the idea came from a “wave of activism and historic protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota,” the Seattle newspaper story says. That motivated public defenders and community organizers to take advantage of the attention to police and court reforms to fix a “long-held frustration.” The force behind the push for the new law is a leftist organization called Decriminalize Seattle that opposes policing and the criminal legal system. The group has called for defunding the Seattle Police Department by at least 50% and reallocating the funds to “community led health and safety systems.” It also demands the release of protestors arrested during recent violent uprising without charges. An organizer with Decriminalize Seattle, identified as one of the law’s catalysts in the media, says “what we’ve already known is that the misdemeanor system is basically a system of cycling people in poverty through municipal court over and over again without meeting their basic needs.” In late October Seattle City Councilwoman Lisa Herbold, who ironically chairs the public safety committee, introduced the measure to exempt low-level criminals. The lawmaker, who represents West Seattle and South Park, writes in her official city blog that it is important to make meeting an individual’s immediate basic need an affirmative defense to a crime. The councilwoman includes a staff memo outlining the proposal, which is identified as “duress legislation” that will codify a defense against prosecution of crimes committed due to poverty or behavioral health issues. “The criminal legal system is ill-suited to address the root cause of ‘crimes of poverty’ and any involvement in the criminal legal system and incarceration causes harm,” the memo states. “As such, Central Staff understands that the intent of the proposal is to provide an exit from the system at trial and without further involvement in the system for those crimes committed because a person cannot otherwise afford to meet their immediate basic needs.” The lengthy document proceeds to reveal that the City Attorney already exercises his discretion to move away from prosecuting property crimes that appear to be committed out of “survival necessity.” The concern, however, is that future prosecutors may not continue the practice and a law must be enacted to assure individuals committing crimes to “fulfill their basic needs” have a way to “exit out of the criminal legal system.” The proposed law comes as Seattle experiences a big spike in crime—including the highest homicide rate in over a decade—and police funding gets drastically cut to appease Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors. This is not a new problem for the Emerald City. In the summer of 2019, a business publication wrote a troubling piece on the negative impact of rising crime in downtown Seattle. “The increasing prevalence of crime, drugs and homelessness in the downtown core threatens the city’s thriving tourism and convention business, and worries retailers concerned that the city isn’t doing nearly enough to combat the crisis,” the story says. “Downtown crime is increasing at an alarming rate: City of Seattle crime data for downtown Seattle indicate a jump in “person crimes” (aggravated assault, robbery, rape and homicide) of 43 percent between 2016 and 2018. In the downtown commercial district, there was a total of 568 person crimes in 2018, up from 397 in 2016, Seattle Police Department records show.” That was more than a year ago.
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