Michael WeissVerified account

The U.S. was exporting cronyism and corruption to a country suffering from a surfeit of both. All while lecturing Ukrainians on how backward they are, and conditioning aid on their ability to rehabilitate themselves. It's sick.

This saga is a lot of things already (and bound to be even more as impeachment proceeds), but among them it's tale of two crooks, both of them ex-prosecutors.

Shokin sold Giuliani on this conspiracy theory, that he was a victim of the supposed Biden patronage network in Kyiv.

Then along comes another prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who sold Giuliani on another bullshit story: that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Namely, Lutsenko has defamed one of Ukraine's best investigative reporters, Serhii Leshchenko, who uncovered...

... Paul Manafort's 'black ledger,' documentary evidence that was apparently good enough for DoJ and a US court, which used it in charging and convicting Manafort for tax evasion. Lutsenko even disparaged a US diplomat, former Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, saying...

she kept a "do not prosecute" list at the embassy -- i.e. of Ukrainians Lutsenko shouldn't go after because they were protecting Democratic interests in Ukraine. Another conspiracy theory, easily debunked, and vigorously lapped up by America's Mayor and his moron client.

Ironically, Lutsenko himself can be credibly accused of trying to interfere in domestic U.S. politics -- and a forthcoming U.S. presidential election -- the very crime he claimed Leshchenko was guilty of.

(Lutsenko and Giuliani liked to cite a Ukrainian district court verdict against Leshchenko on these grounds. However, that verdict was overturned in July by the Court of Appeals. The original complaint, by the way, was brought by an MP who, like Lutensko...

... has fled Ukraine on corruption charges.)

So in summary: Two compromised prosecutors peddling lies to the U.S. president and his credulous (and increasingly doo-dah) personal attorney. Lies constructed to protect themselves and also blacken the reputations of honest and principled Ukrainians.