ARGUMENT: Ukrainegate 2.0Manafort’s Reward: Sen. Ron Johnson and the Ukraine Conspiracy Investigation: Part II

Published 25 August 2020

After three years of insisting that unvetted information should never form the basis for an investigation into an active presidential candidate (did someone say “Steel Dossier”?), Republican members of the Senate would never attempt to do such a thing themselves, right? “Wrong,” Asha Rangappa and Ryan Goodman write in Just Security, adding that this is exactly what Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) is attempting to do in the home stretch of the 2020 election: “An attempt to accomplish through a congressional hearing what President Donald Trump was unable to achieve through his quid pro quo to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, namely, to put Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, under a cloud of suspicion before the country votes this November.” But Johnson’s investigation as a second purpose, too: “The goal isn’t just to smear Biden, but also to shift blame for 2016 election interference to Ukraine.”

After three years of insisting that unvetted information should never form the basis for an investigation into an active presidential candidate (did someone say “Steel Dossier”?), Republican members of the Senate would never attempt to do such a thing themselves, right?

“Wrong,” Asha Rangappa and Ryan Goodman write in Just Security, adding:

That is exactly what some are attempting to do in the home stretch of the 2020 election. Specifically, Senator Ron Johnson has been laying the groundwork to undertake Ukrainegate 2.0: An attempt to accomplish through a congressional hearing what President Donald Trump was unable to achieve through his quid pro quo to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, namely, to put Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, under a cloud of suspicion before the country votes this November. And rather than wait for any report voted out by his committee, Johnson has taken to penning an open letter and tweeting out insinuations.

But Ukrainegate 2.0, like the original, has a dual purpose. The goal isn’t just to smear Biden, but also to shift blame for 2016 election interference to Ukraine. An architect of that false narrative about Ukraine is Paul Manafort, and the probe has accordingly served the former Trump campaign chairman’s interests along numerous fronts in Ukraine politics and at home. With regard to his personal interests, Manafort is currently serving a 7 1/2-year federal sentence for bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, false statements, and witness tampering. Manafort has attempted to use the Ukraine’s “election interference” conspiracy to discredit the evidence that led to his own prosecution.

Rangappa and Goodman write that what has not received sufficient attention is how Johnson’s efforts have worked in tandem with Manafort’s – as Johnson’s probe looks to discredit the same Ukrainian officials responsible for working with American investigators in bringing charges against Manafort. “Undermining Manafort’s prosecution offers a basis for President Trump to tie up the last loose end from the charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign and finally give the pardon he had dangled to Manafort over a year and a half ago.”

Rangappa and Goodman say that to understand how these two parallel efforts are linked, “we need to rewind the tape a few years to when the Ukraine conspiracy began and also look at the common denominator in this combined effort, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani” (and see Part I of their article on the subject).