Washington Post Asks Graham, Nunes for Comment on Story; Gets Call Back From… John Solomon?
There was an odd moment buried inside the latest fact check from the Washington Post: the paper apparently received a random call from Fox News contributor John Solomon after reaching out to Republican lawmakers for comment.
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler is out with a story on Wednesday that picks apart the GOP’s efforts to prove that Joe Biden and his family committed wrongdoing with Ukraine. The piece lays out the timeline and circumstances behind Biden’s call for the firing of former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, which President Donald Trump has sought to tie to Hunter Biden’s job on the board of a Ukrainian company.
Kessler writes that Biden pushed for Shokin’s removal — not to protect his son, which is a baseless theory — but as part of U.S. policy in response to the prosecutor’s failing to combat corruption in Ukraine. As former Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin noted, demands for Shokin’s firing “came not just from the U.S., and not just from Biden. I heard it in every meeting with the international financial institutions.”
Kessler’s fact check takes particular aim at a new allegation from Republicans that seeks to support the theory that Biden corruptly intervened in Ukraine. Per the Washington Post:
These facts have not stopped Trump’s Republican defenders from trying to prove Trump correct. In recent weeks, senior lawmakers have suggested that there was a nefarious connection between a “raid” in February 2016 on the home of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, and calls that Biden made at the time with Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko.
The Post looked into the allegations about the raid, and determined they were unfounded. Kessler writes, “we’ve determined that this alleged connection is based on a misunderstanding of what took place in the Ukrainian courts.” The Post awarded the allegations four Pinocchios.
You can read the full details of the fact check here. But one bizarre anecdote caught our eye. Here’s what happened when Kessler reached out for comment to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressmen Devin Nunes:
We reported our findings to Graham’s aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee and to a spokesman for Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee but did not receive an immediate response. Instead, out of the blue we received a phone call from John Solomon, a former Washington Post reporter who apparently was the source for Republicans. He said two people from Capitol Hill had alerted him to our inquiry.
Solomon acknowledged that there had been a seizure of assets in 2015 but said that on the basis of his interviews, such as with Shokin, and a review of court files, he believes some new assets were seized in February 2016. “My understanding is there was a reseizure and a new seizure of assets,” he said. “There was back and forth [in the courts], sure.”
Solomon added: “I am very careful to use the word ‘seizure.’ I don’t use the word ‘raid.’ ”
Solomon — a controversial media figure thanks to his flimsy writing on Ukraine and frequent appearances in the impeachment inquiry — has pushed the theory in his writing.
Solomon wrote columns for The Hill before he was hired by Fox as a contributor. Now, his old publication is conducting a review of his work in light of allegations he helped fuel a smear campaign against former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Nunes has defended Solomon’s work by accusing the media of “smearing” him, and Solomon lamented the “McCarthy tactics” used against him during the impeachment inquiry.
[H/T Lachlan Markay]
