Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44215656
Interesting if true. The part about Poroshenko desperately needing to hold talks with Trump for internal political reasons is completely accurate. He needed that badly. Also, the part about how Ukraine iced official investigation into Manafort and stopped collaborating with Mueller was reported elsewhere, and appears to be true. You can't blame them, too.

This quote is absolutely amazing, if you stop and think about it:

"Poroshenko's inner circle were shocked by how dirty this whole arrangement [with Cohen] was."

This is amazing for this reason: Petro Poroshenko may be a pro-Western leader fighting Russia and bringing his country closer to Europe; nevertheless, he is also a big Ukrainian business owner who had longstanding ties to every single government in Ukraine, many times as a political ally in his own right. In short, he is an oligarch. Considering what you usually do in this position virtually every day, and what kind of people you do "business" with, him finding an American operative "dirty" is like a Nazi officer shunning an American for "anti-Semitism".

Poroshenko is a kind of person who bought mayors, regional customs chiefs, governors, police chiefs, and Cabinet ministers and who started political parties and other profitable endeavours with some of the most corrupt people in Eastern Europe. This is simply the way you build even a legitimate business (like Poroshenko's chocolate empire) in post-USSR. He even held a Cabinet position under his predecessor (another Manafort's client who hides in Russia and is on trial in absentia, for high treason). An American licensed attorney and President's close associate being named "dirty" by someone of this background is... wow. Just... wow.

 

Very interesting!

 

So what? The price of admission to Secretary of State Clinton's office was a donation to the Clinton Foundation (Chelsea's slush fund) or paying Bill $500,000 for a speech.

 

Sure, nothing to see here, move along, concentrate on building a case for impeachment of President Hillary Clinton.

...I'm still impressed. A fixer that grossed out the close cronies of Poroshenko, a noted master of fixings and shady backroom deals (for evil as well as good). Playing with American President's official schedule. Wow, wow, wow.

BTW, there's little here to blame Poroshenko for. He could convincingly say that getting that glorified photo-op was good for the country at the time, and worth it. But Ukraine has no political culture to speak of; what are you doing?