Part 2 observed that many of the same people who originated the Russia Hoax also were involved in Trump’s impeachment over his (appropriate) phone call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Paul Manafort, described as “ground zero for all manufactured Trump scandals,” was alleged to have dark dealings as a lobbyist in Ukraine, and we expressed curiosity as to how he, of all people, ended up as Trump’s campaign manager.

George Soros, described as probably the most influential man in Ukraine, also ties into the story, through funding for an entity called the Democratic Integrity Project — that name is so funny — founded by Dianne Feinstein staffer and (yes) former FBI analyst Dan Jones, who gave Fusion GPS $3.3. million. Dan Jones brought in Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta, and their purported field of endeavor was — egad — to study how Russian intel operations were influencing elections.

Recall that during Trump’s impeachment, which would’ve been exposed as a joke if the existence of Hunter’s laptop had been revealed by the FBI, a parade of pro-Soros, pro-“Anti-Corruption” Action Center (AntAC) witnesses was brought in by committee chairman Adam Schiff. That’s about where we left off last week.

One quick update before we get into Part 3: Margot Cleveland has another great piece involving the laptop, this one analyzing the strategy behind The New York Times’ admission — finally — that it was real. First, she makes the point that if the laptop is real, that means the scandals are real, not “Russian disinformation” as was falsely maintained by so many, as calculated election interference. Like many, she also sees this admission as an attempt to “get ahead of the story” before it gets much worse. She outlines possible charges, some quite serious. Finally, she dissects the persuasive technique used by the NYT propagandists to downplay the seriousness and gain sympathy for Hunter. This last part, especially, is a must-read.

Efforts to Root Out Corruption in Ukraine Meet Resistance

Back to Ukraine. As we said, when a new Ukrainian prosecutor tried to investigate Soros-funded AntAC, he met resistance from our own U.S. embassy staff. “We ran right into a buzz saw and we got bloodied,” is how one Ukrainian official put it. That buzz saw consisted of the Obama administration, the U.S. State Department, some in the FBI, and, of course, Soros and his Open Society Foundation.

John Solomon uncovered a memo dated around the time Manfort joined Trump’s campaign that contained a chart of people to be investigated, including “some with ties to Manafort.” It’s thought that this refers to Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash, who was a business rival of Soros who had already been looked into on a civil charge of money laundering and cleared.

This was also the time when Glenn Simpson was doing oppo research on Trump and Manafort, and the DNC’s Alexandra Chalupa, from Ukraine, was bad-mouthing Manafort in America. She visited the Obama White House 27 times.

AntAC was the perfect vehicle for going after Manafort. But as Dan Bongino points out, if AntAC really had wanted to root out corruption in Ukraine, they might have taken a peek into Burisma’s showering of money on the American Vice President’s son. As Bongino puts it, “…when your benefactor is an enormous investor in the Democratic Party committing to spending millions to try and stop Trump, maybe that investigation isn’t very appealing.”

A Latvian investigative agency, the Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity, was actually trying to look into it, and they sent a memo to Ukrainian officials on February 18, 2016, notifying them that a transaction involving Hunter Biden and Burisma had been flagged.

Ukrainian officials failed to respond.

Soros, the Obama White House, and the FBI

Later, when COVID hit, and hospitals and relief organizations needed all the help they could get, Soros gave $3 million — not to help with that, but to Priorities USA Action, the Democrats’ Super PAC. It was earmarked specifically to fund a series of ads slamming Trump’s response to the virus. Soros had already given them $2 million in January. Priorities indeed.

Bongino calls the Obama White House “an unofficial club for Ukraine obsessives.” There are other connections between AntAC (thus, Soros), the Obama White House, and the FBI. Of these, Daria Kaleniuk, who now heads AntAC, met at the White House on December 9, 2015, with Eric Ciaramella, who would later come to fame as the anonymous “whistleblower” from Trump’s impeachment. At the time, he was a CIA employee working as a Ukraine (yes) specialist on the National Security Council. Later he was replaced in that position by Alexander Vindman, who also ended up testifying at Trump’s impeachment. Ciaramella had also worked with Joe Biden and John Brennan. It’s as I said: the same people just keep turning up again and again!

Since Ciaramella’s identity was kept secret during the impeachment, nothing was ever said about why he’d been moved out of the White House: he’d been accused of “leaking and working against Trump.” (Remember the huge concern with White House leaks during Trump’s early days in office?) That revelation would’ve done a lot to “impeach” this whistleblower.

The Trump to Zelenskyy Phone Call

As for the call from Trump to Zelenskyy that supposedly sparked the complaint, there was no wrongdoing in it at all. Certainly, no quid pro quo took place, because Zelenskyy got his military aid package and there was no investigation into Burisma and the Bidens, much as it was needed. Also, there was no cover-up, as Trump countered the false characterization of his call by releasing the full transcript himself. Of course, after that, Democrats continued to mischaracterize it and “mind-read” to cast his motives in the worst light they could, as they’ve always done with Trump about everything he’s ever said or done.

Again, the laptop was central to the whole issue. It was evidence of the legitimate need to investigate the Bidens in Ukraine, and the FBI withheld it. Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t mention it either, even after Biden lied about it, so the media was still able to present the false narrative that it was a Russian plot. Here’s the significance of Barr’s glaring omission.

Ciaramella filed a complaint about Trump’s phone call with Intel Community IG Michael Atkinson and also summarized it in unclassified letters to Intelligence Committee chairs Adam Schiff and Richard Burr. He claimed he had “received information from multiple government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

It seems so strange to read those words now, as we know today that Hillary’s campaign is the one that did this very thing, through the solicitation of information for the Steele “dossier.” It was also pro-Hillary people in our State Department — oh, and Joe Biden — who tried to intimidate Ukrainian prosecutors who might have looked too closely at Hunter.

Bongino’s Chapter 8 in Follow the Money reveals even more connections and conflicts, some involving Adam Schiff and IG Atkinson, who defied a Justice Department order when he set events in motion to notify Schiff about the false whistleblower complaint. Highly recommended reading!

UPDATE: In very welcome breaking news, California Rep. Darrell Issa has announced that if (when!) Republicans take back the House this year, he will lead an investigation of the 2020 election-related suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The Epoch Times has a report — it’s “premium,” but we’ll have the full story coming up.

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN. 

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.