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CHARLIE MARTIN:  The Game’s Afoot in Ukraine: Burisma Reportedly Indicted for Money Laundering.

Now things start to stack up. We’ve seen that Vindman has close ties to the previous Ukrainian government, dating back to Yanukovych and his successor Petro Poroshenko, while this alleged money-laundering scheme was taking place. The connection to the Franklin Templeton Fund is interesting because John Templeton, Jr. was a major Obama campaign donor, and Thomas Donilon, who was Obama’s National Security Advisor before Susan Rice and is now the chairman of BlackRock Investment Institute, a major owner of Franklin Templeton stock.

As an aside, remember how it was just shocking and unprecedented for Trump to use a personal representative? Here’s a quote from Donilon’s official bio:

Reynolds’ comment:

Mr. Donilon served as the President’s [Obama’s] personal emissary to a number of world leaders, including President Hu Jintao and President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Now, a little graft in the amount of a few million dollars is one thing, but $7.5 billion is real money, and a friend in the NSC could be really helpful. Especially with a couple friends in CIA and another one in an executive office in the West Wing.

Well, stay tuned and let’s see what develops. But yeah, it could explain why Vindman was scared and “literally shaken” by Trump’s phone call asking for an investigation into corruption.

165Posted at 6:50 pm by Glenn Reynolds