Solomon, who until recently was a columnist and executive vice president at The Hill, has found himself entangled in the impeachment inquiry as his Ukraine-related articles and frequent appearances on pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show helped fuel the president’s desire to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and the unfounded 2016 DNC server conspiracy.
Throughout his testimony, released Friday, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—who listened in on the infamous July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s president—noted that Solomon’s March interview with former Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was a major influence on Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the president, especially when it came to the removal of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last spring.
Lutsenko alleged in the interview that Ukrainian officials helped Hillary Clinton in 2016 by leaking damaging information about former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and that Yovanovitch gave him a “do-not-prosecute” list and cooperated with Clinton to undermine Trump.
Lutsenko eventually retracted the claim against Yovanovitch. [ Editor’s note: “And not widely reported by mass media. Imagine that.”…Jim W. Dean ]
During an exchange with pro-Trump Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Vindman said that Solomon’s article was a “false narrative” and that he based that assertion on “authoritative sources.”
When asked to elaborate, the NSC official said he talked to “interagency colleagues from State and the Intelligence Community,” adding they found the claims against Yovanovitch to be “preposterous.”
When pressed by Zeldin on whether his sources found some or all of the parts of Solomon’s report to be false, Vindman replied, “I think all the key elements are false.”
“Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements,” the congressman asked. “Are you referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?”
“All the elements that I just laid out for you,” Vindman said. “The criticisms of corruption were false.”
“Were there more items in there, frankly, congressman? I don’t recall,” he continued. “I haven’t looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right.” Read more….
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Why is nobody using Israelgate as the basis for the impeachment?
Vindman “noted that Solomon’s March interview with former Ukraine prosecutor, General Yuriy Lutsenko was a major influence on Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the president,…”. Has anyone calculated that this could be construed in testimony as exculpatory, in that Trump and his lawyer were acting on the word of a man, Lutsenko, whose word has been subsequently shown to be unreliable, one way or the other? The funny thing about Manafort in Ukraine is that he was working with the Pedestal Group there from 2012 -2014. People in high places (government and media) conveniently have amnesia when it comes to the nefarious part US State Department and intelligence played in the Maidan Coup regime change in Ukraine. To these people, it’s like all the corruption started with Trump. The whole thing stinks, going back to Obama! We want Trump impeached so bad that we have blinders on toward all the other corruption, going back to the 20th century.
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