by WorldTribune Staff, March 21, 2019
Ukraine’s top prosecutor has opened an investigation into a Ukrainian law enforcement agency’s alleged attempt to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in Hillary Clinton’s favor, a report said.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko alleges that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) had intentionally leaked a “black ledger” of illegal business dealings by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, John Solomon reported for The Hill on March 20.
“The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years,” Solomon wrote.
Lutsenko launched the investigation after a Ukrainian parliamentarian released a tape recording purporting to quote NABU director Artem Sytnyk saying the anti-corruption bureau leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton’s campaign.
The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to “an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign,” Lutsenko told Solomon.
Breitbart investigator Lee Stranahan, who has closely monitored the case, said Sytnyk released Manafort’s “black ledger” along with Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko.
Stranahan previously reported that “The main spokesman for these accusations was Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian politician and journalist who works closely with both top Hillary Clinton donors George Soros and Victor Pinchuk, as well as to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
“The New York Times should also explain why they didn’t mention that Leshchenko had direct connections to two of Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial backers. Victor Pinchuk, the largest donor to the Clinton Foundation at a staggering $8.6 million also happened to have paid for Leshchenko’s expenses to go to international conferences. George Soros, who also founded the International Renaissance Foundation that worked closely with Hillary Clinton’s State Department in Ukraine, also contributed at least $8 million to Hillary affiliated super PACs in the 2016 campaign cycle.”
Leshchenko was convicted by Kyiv court in December of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.
The Kyiv court said that the documents published by Leshchenko and Sytnyk were part of an ongoing pretrial investigation in Ukraine into the operations of the pro-Russian Party of Regions. The party’s head had been President Viktor Yanukovych until he fled the country amid mass protests two years earlier.
According to former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, Leshchenko was a source for opposition research firm Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign. Fusion GPS commissioned the infamous anti-Trump dossier.
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