The focus on AntAC - whose youthful street activists famously wore "Ukraine F*&k Corruption" T-shirts - was part of a larger probe by Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.
ADVERTISEMENT. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.
"The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center, based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced," then-embassy Charge d' Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor's office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent.
The implied message to Ukraine's prosecutors was clear: Don't target AntAC in the middle of an America presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, , Ukrainian officials said.
More than a half-dozen U.S. and Ukrainian sources confirmed to me the AntAC case wasn't the only one in which American officials exerted pressure on Ukrainian investigators in 2016.
Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.
Vachon said the group asked Soros not to divulge the size of his contribution, and Soros later learned the group hired Fusion GPS, the same firm that was paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party to create the infamous "Steele dossier" alleging Trump-Russia collusion.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016
ADVERTISEMENT. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.
"The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center, based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced," then-embassy Charge d' Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor's office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent.
The implied message to Ukraine's prosecutors was clear: Don't target AntAC in the middle of an America presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, , Ukrainian officials said.
More than a half-dozen U.S. and Ukrainian sources confirmed to me the AntAC case wasn't the only one in which American officials exerted pressure on Ukrainian investigators in 2016.
Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.
Vachon said the group asked Soros not to divulge the size of his contribution, and Soros later learned the group hired Fusion GPS, the same firm that was paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party to create the infamous "Steele dossier" alleging Trump-Russia collusion.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016
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