Washington, DC. Ever since Donald Trump’s election, money is pouring in to well-heeled Republican lobbyists. The Ukrainian government said in January that it had hired BGR Group as its Washington lobbyist to “help open lines of communication” with Congress, the administration, and the American people.
Translated, that means the lobbyists will urge members of Congress and the administration to tighten economic sanctions against Russia until it pulls out of Donbass and Crimea.
The Ukraine also seeks more financial and military aid as it struggles to make ends meet, while its oligarchy takes the aid money the American government sends endlessly. BGR Group is on a retainer worth $50,000 a month. Its past foreign clients have included Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The “B” in BGR is former Republican Party leader and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The “R” is Ed Rogers, a former White House official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Rogers’s ongoing column in the Washington Post has come under fire for failing to disclose numerous conflicts of interest with his firm’s clients. He writes “news” but gets paid by Kiev to write that news.
Another American jumping on the Ukraine gravy train this year was Monica Crowley, a former Fox News commentator who had to pass up an appointment as director of strategic communications for Trump’s National Security Council after CNN revealed that she had plagiarized portions of her dissertation and a subsequent book.
Ms.Crowley now represents Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk in Washington policy circles on unspecified “issues of concern” to him. In a bipartisan spirit, Pinchuk also pays Democratic pollster Doug Shoen $40,000 per month to facilitate conversations with US policy officials “regarding Democratization in Ukraine and European integration.”
Pinchuk, is a billionaire with interests in steel, pipelines, media and banking, buying his way into the Clinton camp by contributing over $30 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation and hosting a visit to Ukraine by Chelsea Clinton and her husband. Two years ago, he paid the Trump Foundation $150,000 in return for Donald Trump appearing on video at an annual meeting held by Pinchuk.
The American public, their elected officials, and Washington bureaucrats have a hard enough time sorting out the complex issues of foreign relations without the additional challenge of not knowing who is paying their elected officials to skew policy in favor of Kiev over American needs. It is no understatement to say that Donald Trumps so-called “Russian problem” is one made entirely in the Ukraine.