Trump Punks the Press on Biden and Ukraine

Here’s a quick history quiz: Regarding which investigation did former FBI attorney Lisa Page write the following text message: “[X] might be our next president. The last thing you need is us going in there loaded for bear”?

Was it, (a) a text warning an FBI agent to be careful about investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to hide evidence she used her position to take special care of people who gave cash to her family foundation; or (b) a text warning an FBI agent to be careful about investigating Vice President Joe Biden for using his influence to end investigation into his son’s work in Ukraine?

If you guessed (b), you’re wrong but you can be forgiven for getting the two scenarios confused. We are in the midst of yet another upside-down scandal in which the mainstream media are attempting to chill a legitimate inquiry into potentially corrupt behavior. Even the ironically named liberal fact-bending website Politifact admits,

Hunter Biden [Joe Biden’s son] was serving as “a director to Ukraine’s largest private gas producer,” his father “threatened to withhold $1 BILLION in U.S. aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire a prosecutor looking into” the gas company.

[P]ieces of this assertion are right—Hunter Biden was a director of the company, and Joe Biden did leverage U.S. aid to fire a prosecutor. But it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with.

Did Joe Biden really threaten to withhold aid from Ukraine unless it fired the prosecutor investigating his son? Consider Biden’s own words:

If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

As John Solomon noted at The Hill: “Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor.”

Another Media Boomerang

Well, don’t believe your lying eyes and ears. The real story, according to CNN is “nuanced,” a euphemism for “correct but should be ignored for partisan reasons.” CNN claims that the investigation into Hunter Biden had already been “shelved” when the vice president pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor. It further claimed, “western governments, including the Obama administration, wanted the prosecutor removed due to concerns about corruption in his own office.”

So just to review, the Obama Administration tolerated its secretary of state running an influence-peddling operation out of the State Department. Using her official position, she devoted fully half of her meetings to donors to her private foundation seeking official action from the state department. This same administration suddenly made some vague and unspecified “corruption” in a Ukrainian prosecutor’s office a diplomatic priority above and beyond cleaning up Hillary Clinton’s pay-to-play scheme at Foggy Bottom.

So, you might ask, how is this a story about something Trump did wrong? The reason this is all a scandal about Donald Trump is that a “whistleblower” has now accused Trump of soliciting information about whether Biden might have intended to protect his son by demanding the investigating prosecutor be fired.

I have news for you, mainstream media: you’re being punked. Trump has tricked you into covering Biden’s corruption by intentionally allowing a breathless deep-state leaker overhear him. Consider these recent words of Joe Biden himself: “Not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertions. Not one single one.”

Not anymore, Joe. Trump dangled an opportunity to “get Trump” to the media and now they can’t stop explaining the Biden-Ukraine scandal to their readers and viewers. Like so many other boomerangs aimed at Trump, this one will end up making fools of the media.

>A Way to Real Reform?

But there’s another reason the Biden-Ukraine scandal helps Trump. The new “whistleblower” imbroglio may be the best way to inspire bipartisan support for reform to prevent 2016-style interference in our political process as perpetrated by the Justice Department and the intelligence community. Either it’s illegal to use government surveillance and counterintelligence investigations against the incumbent party’s political opponents (in which case the perpetrators in 2016 should be severely punished) or it’s legal and those same tools are now at the disposal of the president to use against his opponents.

Third, the coverage forces the media into covering the Biden-Ukraine scandal with a double standard when compared to a strikingly similar scenario involving Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. You simply can’t cover the Biden/Ukraine scandal without mentioning the story involving Manafort. Trump’s inquiry to Ukraine closely mirrors the investigation launched and leaked by the Obama Administration against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his shady Ukrainian dealings. That can’t be a coincidence.

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