“A Ukrainian former diplomat who exposed corrupt Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden networks, and who warned Americans about a Russian agent of influence, is now on what appears to be an assassination list.
After working for years with the Obama White House and a Clinton-aligned lobbying firm working for the Burisma gas company, Andrii Telizhenko became a source for Senate Republicans in 2019-2020. He helped expose some of Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine and their dangers to American national security policy.
Telizhenko had been one of many witnesses who provided evidence to joint Senate committee investigation of Hunter Biden, the Burisma gas company, and corruption impacting US government policy.
Telizhenko’s revelations prompted Senate Democrats to accuse him of being a Russian disinformation agent, and ultimately for partisan bureaucrats to trick the Trump Administration into sanctioning him as a Russian asset in the last days before Biden took office. Two of Telizhenko’s accusers, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) pushed the Russian disinformation in the discredited Steele Dossier.
Telizhenko, left, enters a meeting with then-Senator Bob Corker, center; and at right, President Obama’s ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, just weeks after the ouster of Yanukovych. (Credit: public domain)
Now that wrongful partisan action was used to put Telizhenko on what many Ukrainians consider a kill list.
The list appears on a website that Ukrainian ultranationalists use to dox and track people they consider pro-Russian. Ukrainians understand it to be a kill list in the event of armed conflict with Russia.
(…) Telizhenko fell afoul of Democrat partisans in the US Treasury and State Department bureaucracies after he began exposing Hillary Clinton’s corrupt networks relating to Ukraine, and to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company.
He said he learned of the networks between 2013 and 2019 while serving as a Ukrainian diplomat, working with the Obama White House and the office of then-vice president Joe Biden, and State Department; and working for a Clinton-affiliated lobbying group called Blue Star Strategies. The lobby shop had a contract with Burisma while he was a contractor there.
Telizhenko was one of many witnesses who helped a joint investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Finance Committee, chaired at the time by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Democrat defense of then-candidate Joe Biden caused the Republicans under Johnson and Grassley to issue their own staff report, which discussed Telizhenko’s testimony and email and WhatsApp messages he produced as evidence.
Democrats were fine with Telizhenko until he exposed Hunter Biden. Then they called him a Russian agent.
“The Obama administration and the Democrat lobby shop Blue Star Strategies had consistent and extensive contact with Andrii Telizhenko over a period of years,” the Johnson-Grassley report said.
Telizhenko told me that his involvement with the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s team began in 2013, during the Revolution to overthrow the pro-Putin regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He said he was coordinator of international relations for the Maidan movement and worked with the US Embassy in Kyiv between 2010-2014 to remove Yanukovych and his government.
“Yet despite these well-documented contacts with Democratic officials, Democrats have attempted to impugn this investigation for having received some Blue Star-related records from him. … Democrats have claimed that Telizhenko is involved in a Russian disinformation campaign,” according to the senators’ staff report.
“In doing so, they conveniently have ignored their own long history of meeting with Telizhenko and his year-long for a Democrat lobby shop. If Democrats are concerned that Telizhenko presents any risk of advancing disinformation, it is notable that the Ranking Members [Democrat Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)] have not expressed any curiosity about his work with the Obama administration or Blue Star Strategies.” (Read more: Center for Security Policy, 2/14/2022) (Archive)