Senate Democrats tried last week to block the Republican-controlled Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs from issuing a subpoena for testimony from a Ukrainian who has peddled conspiracy theories central to the extortionate dirt-digging project that got President Trump impeached.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) moved in a Friday letter to block a subpoena for testimony from Andrii Telizhenko, a former staffer at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington who has spent most of the Trump administration parlaying his stint as a post-Soviet diplomat into unsubstantiated allegations that the DNC colluded with the Ukrainian government to hurt Trump in 2016.
“I remain concerned that the United States Senate and this Committee could be used to further disinformation efforts by Russian or other actors,” Peters’s letter to Johnson disapproving of a Telizhenko subpoena reads.
“Because these efforts pose a threat to our national security, I have asked for this Committee to receive defensive briefings — specifically regarding Mr. Telizhenko — from relevant intelligence community and law enforcement officials, to ensure the Senate is not used to advance any disinformation campaigns.”
Sen. Johnson told Peters in a Sunday letter that the Committee would move forward with a vote on issuing a subpoena to Telizhenko, adding that he was seeking a “narrow” array of documents and that the FBI had provided relevant information about the onetime diplomat.
Telizhenko defended himself as a “patriot of Ukraine” in a statement to TPM.
“The main issue that it has to be investigated what happened in Ukraine under Obama admin. And if the Dems where not guilty they would initiate such investigation themselves from the beginning and show what is true and what is not,” Telizhenko said. “But they choose to discredit anybody who came out with the truth.”
Johnson wants to issue a subpoena to Telizhenko so the Ukrainian national can discuss his work on Burisma with Blue Star Strategies, a D.C.-based lobbying firm that was hired by the gas firm in 2016 to burnish its image.
Telizhenko purportedly gave the Committee information suggesting that he helped the company lobby the State Department.
The allegations bring it all back to what many see is the point of the whole enterprise: dirt on the Biden family. Telizhenko has claimed that Burisma used Hunter Biden’s position on its board to gain some kind of unspecified, unstated benefit from the State Department.
The Senate panel is also probing other allegations of Telizhenko’s, including his unverified claims about the presence of a DNC official at the Ukrainian embassy in 2016.
Read the letter here:
Even his mama would fail to stop to wizz on Telizhenko if he were on fire.
What a sorry damn joke. If this laughable buffoon is the best the fascist regime has…
But, why? According to Barr, the President and presumably, VP, can do whatever they want and Congress has no recourse.
Or is it Unitary Executive theory for me, not for thee?
Agreed its a joke that, in the absence of a craving for partisan electoral advantage, would be DOA.
They don’t, however, need or want a real investigation.
Like with Donnie’s clamoring for an announcement of an investigation, what they’re looking for is a source of aspersions that they can toss at Drumpf’s opponents, incite misdirected chants of ‘Lock him up,’ at Donnie’s rallies and sow doubt among low information voters.
They’re not the most imaginative people in the world. Their first impulse is to reach for replays of what worked before and this is just a reincarnation of, “But, her e-mails…”
Some enemy told him that a huge quilted orange vest would produce a slimming effect.
If it is so cold you need a vest - do not wear shorts.
Today’s Trump GOP are effectively the propaganda arm of the Putin Russian secret service. They have no patriotism, and eagerly use Russian espionage and false narratives for their short term political purposes.
An entire political party is comprised of traitors.