Zelensky Says He Will ‘Happily’ Investigate Ukrainian Meddling In 2016 US Election
Chuck Ross October 10, 2019 2:35 PM ET

https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/10/ukraine-zelensky-investigate-ukrainian-meddling/
https://archive.is/nluWx

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that he would “happily” have prosecutors look into whether the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to help former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Zelensky also said during a six-hour interview in Kiev, Ukraine, that there was “no blackmail” involved in a July 25 phone call he had with President Donald Trump that is now at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Chaly confirmed interactions with Chalupa to John Solomon, an opinion contributor at The Hill, while denying that he knew she was affiliated with the DNC during her dirt-digging mission on Manafort.

“The Embassy got to know Ms. Chalupa because of her engagement with Ukrainian and other diasporas in Washington D.C., and not in her DNC capacity. We’ve learned about her DNC involvement later,” Chaly said in a statement, Solomon reported in May.

“We were surprised to see Alexandra’s interest in Mr. Paul Manafort’s case. It was her own cause. The Embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter,” the statement continued.

Chaly said that Chalupa floated the idea of approaching a member of Congress about hearings related to Manafort.

After the 2016 election, Chalupa, who parted ways with the DNC in July 2016, would continue working to dig up dirt on Trump. She partnered with Brett Kimberlin, a left-wing activist and convicted bomb maker, to obtain documents that purported to show that Rex Tillerson, a former Trump secretary of state, paid Trump’s companies $1.5 billion through ExxonMobil, The Daily Caller reported on March 21, 2017.

The documents ended up being forgeries.

Chalupa also had contact with Serhiy Leshchenko, a former Ukraine parliamentarian and investigative journalist who helped publicize a mysterious “black ledger” that led to Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign.

So far, there is no direct evidence that the DNC’s Ukraine operation overlapped with the work of the Steele dossier. But Leshchenko was identified in congressional testimony in 2018 as a source of information Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele to collect information on Trump.

Nellie Ohr, who worked for Fusion GPS during the election season, testified on Oct. 18 that Leshchenko was a Fusion GPS source, though she said she did not have insight into how the firm gathered information from the Ukrainian lawmaker. (RELATED: Nellie Ohr: Ukrainian Lawmaker Was Fusion GPS Source)

Leshchenko told the DCNF in September that he does not believe he ever met anyone from Fusion GPS, though he did not rule out speaking with Fusion GPS employees who failed to identify themselves as such.

Before the 2016 election, Leshchenko openly acknowledged that his work pushing the “black ledger” was part of an effort to stymie Trump’s campaign.

“A Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times days after publicizing the black ledger. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world.'”