Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index scores, 2018.
"The fiery trial through which we pass"
by Tom Sullivan
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index scores, 2018.
Accusing others of what they themselves are doing is a staple of right-wing politics. Call it projection or inoculation, it is a variant of that fine schoolyard tradition of shouting, "I know you are, but what am I?"
So it is with shouting "corruption." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow gave an extended monologue Monday night [timestamp 15:20] on how corruption is the new "fake news," a phrase originally used to describe social media propaganda efforts by Russia and others. By adopting the phrase and twisting it to their own purposes, Donald Trump and the right rendered analysis of the actual false stories impossible. Any story they don't like is now dismissed as fake news. Facts be damned.
Trump is attempting the same bad Jedi mind trick now with corruption, Maddow observes, deploying the term relentlessly against anyone and everyone so that it loses all meaning and turns investigation of his actual corrupt acts as president into he said, she said stories. "I know you are, but what am I?"
Fighting corruption in Ukraine is Trump's latest explanation for holding back military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to open an investigation into his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. The Associated Press reports that at the same time Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a band of associates were attempting to "install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company" (Naftogaz) to help direct lucrative contracts to firms owned by Trump allies:
But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.On Friday, Trump blamed Energy Secretary Perry for instigating the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that triggered a formal impeachment investigation. Perry admitted encouraging Trump to call Zelensky, explaining it as part of U.S. efforts to open Ukraine's energy sector to Western companies.
Two clients of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Ukrainian-American Trump donors Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had met with Naftogaz earlier this year to pitch themselves as suppliers of U.S. natural gas, according to media reports.AP's sources revealed the Naftogaz plan involved several of Trump's large donors, "two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs," Parnas and Fruman, and "an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III" who hoped "to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company, Andrew Favorov."
“I may or may not know anything about it,” Giuliani told POLITICO when asked whether he knew about Perry’s efforts to install new people on the board.
The three approached Favorov with the idea while the Ukrainian executive was attending an energy industry conference in Texas. Parnas and Fruman told him they had flown in from Florida on a private jet to recruit him to be their partner in a new venture to export up to 100 tanker shipments a year of U.S. liquefied gas into Ukraine, where Naftogaz is the largest distributor, according to two people briefed on the details.Favorov told the group Trump planned to replace U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch with another official friendlier to their economic interests.
Sargeant told Favorov that he regularly meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and that the gas-sales plan had the president’s full support, according to the two people who said Favorov recounted the discussion to them.
These conversations were recounted to AP by Dale W. Perry, an American who is a former business partner of Favorov. He told AP in an interview that Favorov described the meeting to him soon after it happened and that Favorov perceived it to be a shakedown. Perry, who is no relation to the energy secretary, is the managing partner of Energy Resources of Ukraine, which currently has business agreements to import natural gas and electricity to Ukraine.
Like the inhabitants of all borderlands throughout history, many Ukrainians have learned to play one side against the other in securing money and power for themselves. Lavishing money on an American consultant with deep ties to the Republican establishment (like Manafort) or to the Democratic one (like Hunter Biden or Devine) can go a long way in securing influence in Washington and, hopefully, still more money in the form of American aid. The same can be done to secure the flow of Russian funds.Ukraine scored 32/100 on Transparency International's 2018 corruption index, improving. The U.S. scored 71/100 on Transparency International's 2018 corruption index, worsening. The transparency of the acting president's efforts to smear his political opponents with his own dung would be laughable if not for the peril he and his allies' corruption pose to the future of the republic Lincoln described during "the fiery trial through which we pass" as "the last best hope of earth."
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Ukraine pops up in our domestic political scandals because it is in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the West, and because Westerners go there to enrich themselves doing questionable work. But in our minds, it is a small country somewhere over the horizon, full of people with funny Slavic names. Ukraine is much easier to think about if we cram it into our own political dichotomies, even if that distorts what’s really happening on the ground. The problem in doing so, however, is that we become unwitting participants in someone else’s games.