Quote:
Originally Posted by ReelinRod
Perhaps you should direct your question to George Kent who testified that he had complete confidence in the Zelenskyy government now.
Kent also said he would love to see complete investigations begun by the Zelenskyy government into Burisma's theft and the corruption of former Ukraine officials -- Officials, including prosecutors, who were bought off to end the earlier investigation and allow all that money (some provided by the USA) to vanish. "George Kent, deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, said he believed alleged corruption related to Ukrainian gas company Burisma should be investigated, a point Republicans have emphasized in their defense of President Donald Trump.
“To summarize, we thought that Mykola Zlochevsky had stolen money,” Kent said of the oligarch head of Burisma. “We thought a prosecutor had taken a bribe to shut the case, those were our main concerns."
“Are you in favor of that matter being fully investigated and prosecuted?” asked Steve Castor, Republicans' counsel on the House Intelligence Committee.
“I think since U.S. taxpayer dollars were wasted, I would love to see the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office find out who the corrupt prosecutor was and who took the bribe, and how much was paid, and that’s what I told the deputy prosecutor general on February 3, 2015,” Kent replied.
When asked if he thought individuals or organizations responsible for the bribes should be prosecuted, Kent replied, "I agree that the Ukrainian law authorities should uphold the rule of law and hold people accountable for breaking Ukrainian law.""
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/new...ed/4180372002/
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I watched the hearing and have yet to see an official transcript, but when Kent was asked that question he qualified his answer quite carefully and did not say he had "complete confidence"
There was also another line of questioning about the timeline of Biden, Burisma and investigations that I don't have time to look up on video.
Some other things Kent said:
“It was unexpected, and most unfortunate, to watch some Americans — including those who allied themselves with corrupt Ukrainians in pursuit of private agendas — launch attacks on dedicated public servants advancing U.S. interests in Ukraine,” he said.
"You can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people."
“To your knowledge, is there any factual basis to support the allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?” Goldman asked, to which Kent replied, “To my knowledge, there is no factual basis, no. … I think it’s amply clear that Russian interference was at the heart of the interference.”
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter also had some applicable comments:
"What strikes me about President Trump‘s efforts to smear Vice President Biden and spread a pro-Russian conspiracy theory about the 2016 election is both the degree to which Trump was willing to abuse the office of the presidency to achieve his aims, but also the types of people he and Rudy Giuliani enlisted in their effort. Partnering with henchmen like Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman is bad enough. But look closely at who Trump and Giuliani worked with in Ukraine.
Viktor Shokin, Konstantin Kulyk, Yuri Lutsenko, and Dmytro Firtash are all associated with major corruption scandals. In other words, President Trump and his lawyer enlisted the most corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and officials to carry out their scheme of pressuring the Ukrainian President. Rather than helping Zelensky to fight corruption, they dragged him into their own corruption scandal."