By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  September 26, 2020; UPATE September 21, 2024: BE SURE to check the Rachel Maddow-produced, Bill Corden-of-Cocaine Cowboy-directed From Russia With Lev (trailer here), the MSNBC documentary focusing mainly the exact same events and people I chronicled five years ago, excerpted below!

This is the Epilogue from my eBook published on November 23, 2019.  For the full context in one place, check out that eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), a detailed look at Trump-Russia and how its Ukraine machinations led to Trump’s impeachment (Sept. 27 update: this eBook also goes into detail on Trump’s long history of scandalous, criminal business dealings, bankruptcies, and financial problems that are of increasing interest since the bombshell report on Trump’s taxes was released on 9/27, and this article of mine offers a less complete version of those misdealings). As far as articles, for more info on Trump’s nefarious, criminal business dealings in Panama and how they connect to pro-Russian Ukrainian political force Viktor Medvedchuk; for specific context on now convicted-by-Mueller’s-team felon Paul Manafort’s work on Ukraine on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stooge Viktor Yanukovych alongside Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, one of the top partners in Ukraine for years of Russian mafia “godfather” Semion Mogilevich, himself a right-hand of Putin; for how Konstantin Kilimnik was a link between Manafort and the Kremlin; for how Andrii Artemenko fits into all this; and how Rudy Giuliani’s longstanding ties with Mogilevich-connected Sam Kislin are also of interest, as is the history of Kislin’s old partner Tamir Sapir in Trumpworld, especially the infamous Felix Sater-brokered Bayrock deals, see my articles How Cohen’s and Manafort’s Ukraine Ties Tell the Deeper Story of Trump-Russia and the Mueller Probe and Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind, which link to some more detailed work of mine on some of these individual subjects (the second article contains information on Trump’s banruptcies and business fiascos relevant to the 9/27 major report on Trump’s taxes).  For more on the inner workings of the Burisma issues in Ukraine involving various Ukrainian prosecutors, including Viktor Shokin and Vitaliy Kasko, and how they do—and do not—relate to the Bidens, see my other piece The Untold Story of the Bidens and Burisma.  You can see all my Trump-Russia coverage here.

The Circus Comes to Ukraine and Blows Everything Up

The Government Accountability Institute should be famous, but it is not.  Founded by none-other than Steve Bannon—former maestro of right-wing-propagandistic site Breitbart, former CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign (something of a replacement for Manafort), former top advisor to President Trump, and current orchestrator of a European pan-national right-wing movement—the Florida group was critical in advancing debunked disinformation on the Clintons during the 2016 election cycle.  Its then-and-current president, Peter Schweizer (also an editor at Breitbart), wrote the notoriously error-riddled Clinton Cash.  One thing he was good at, though, was getting mainstream media—including The New York Times—to feature his work prominently and help to get these false stories mass traction: myth would become reality and some of the main talking points used against Hillary Clinton during the election were first given prominence through Schweizer and his manipulations and continued to be amplified by him and his allies all throughout the election.  It was a concerted, deceitful, coordinated effort from right-wing media using dubious financing that depended on co-opting mainstream media outlets for legitimacy, and it succeeded wildly in its aims of damaging Clinton.  Such tactics actually even mirror Kremlin disinformation campaigns.

Defying belief, Schweizer and his Institute are doing the same thing again—and succeeding—with a newer book, Secret Empires, to target the Bidens with debunked disinformation and even eventually succeeded in 2019 in once again co-opting The New York Times for the same thematic purpose as before, among other outlets. 

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor now acting as Trump’s personal lawyer, picked up on the new Schweizer false narratives late in 2018 and began engaging relevant Ukrainians in person in New York and Ukraine, including ousted former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, to advance them.  He also enlisted one of Shokin’s successors, Yuriy Lutsenko, in January, when Lutsenko made unsubstantiated incriminating claims about Hunter Biden (it was, interestingly, under Lutsenko’s watch that the aforementioned criminal record of Igor Anopolskiy, involved in the Trump Panama fiasco and apparently financially connected to Medvedchuk’s wife, was purged). 

Lustenko has a reputation for using his power as a personal political weapon and for being an amateur, and proved it for Giuliani, agreeing to work to reopen inquiries into Burisma and to focus on Hunter Biden, which he did in March even though he had earlier cleared the Bidens.  He was already clashing on corruption issues with then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch—who had pushed him to act more against corruption—and sought ways to discredit her with Giuliani, hoping his actions against the Bidens would earn him favor from Giuliani and Trump when he was not getting along with Yovanovitch.  Lutsenko accused her of giving him a list of certain untouchables, implying the Bidens, but later admitted he lied about this.

Yet the “political hit job” on Yovanovitch was successful: she was recalled from her post in May, in part because of the disinformation fed to Trump by Giuliani, right-wing media, and others as well as the complicity of her boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (it was this silence and inaction on his part that led to the abrupt resignation of Michael McKinley, one of Pompeo’s senior advisors, who has since testified in detail to investigators).  Also, in what could be an example of an earlier inappropriate quid pro quo with the Trump Administration, Lutsenko in early 2018 froze Ukraine’s investigations into Manafort and others related to the Mueller probe right when Trump Administration was deciding whether to provide Ukraine with advanced anti-tank Javelin missiles that could help check Russian armor (Lutsenko was also responsible for allowing Manafort’s colleague Kilimnik to escape to Russia without being asked questions that would have aided Mueller’s investigation).  Lutsenko would later even talk with Giuliani about the unsubstantiated wild conspiracy theory that Manafort was set up by Clinton supporters.  Lutsenko was fired for his misconduct in September, after which he admitted there was no evidence on which to base investigations against the Bidens and is now facing his own criminal investigation for abusing his power.

Another key Ukrainian Giuliani enlisted in this effort, Kostiantyn Kulyk, was Lutsenko’s deputy.  An opportunistic current prosecutor, he is known for corruption, for targeting his political opponents with investigations, and for ties to a Russian intelligence agent who set up a paramilitary unit of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east to fight the Ukrainian government.  With Lutsenko’s blessing, Kulyuk went all in on Giuliani’s Biden scheme in March, joining in the smearing of U.S. diplomats (including Yovanovitch) and even Democrats by accusing them of covering up for the Bidens, accusations he has not substantiated.  Also unsubstantiated was an apparently fabricated dossier authored by Kulyuk about the Bidens, purporting to describe the corruption of both Joe and Hunter Biden.  Fittingly, Kulyuk will soon be fired, much in the manner of his old boss.

Giuliani even began trying to coordinate strategy with Pompeo, who would be one of the most senior Trump Administration officials to parrot Biden disinformation and conspiracy theories, in essence encouraging a witch hunt.  Fox News began getting in on the action, too, and a prominent figure at The Hill, John Solomon, began intensely advancing debunked false narratives through a series of columns in the spring of 2019, even coordinating with Giuliani and interviewing Lutsenko.  They were not only attacking the Bidens though: they, too, began attacking Amb. Yovanovitch, spreading unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine had tried to help Clinton win in 2016 (sure to grab Trump’s attention) and repeated unsubstantiated, self-serving claims from Shokin about Biden.  On April 25^th, 2019, the very same day Biden officially began his presidential campaign, Trump himself called into the Fox News show of Sean Hannity—who has been predictably trafficking the Biden smears—and told Hannity he wanted to have his Attorney General, Bill Barr, to look into the Bidens.  The following month, The New York Times would have a major story on the “controversy” involving the Bidens.

As to this problematic May, 2019, New York Times piece: it was co-authored by Kenneth Vogel and Iuliia Mendel; in 2015, Vogel, writing for Politico, seems to have known how to properly characterize information coming from Schweizer, so it is not sure what changed in 2019.  His co-author Mendel was a Ukrainian freelancer at the time and was controversially hired the month after this article was published as the press secretary for freshly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, raising serious questions about her background, motives, and conflicts of interest.  The article was a major boost, perhaps even a turning point, in the attention given to the Bidens’ activity in Ukraine.  Earlier, just before Trump’s inauguration and during his Politico days, Vogel was also instrumental in advancing the false Kremlin propaganda that Kilimnik had fed Manafort who, in turn, fed it to Trump that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and did so to help Clinton and hurt Trump.

A follow-up piece a week later in May by Vogel for the Times even portrayed Giuliani’s trip to Ukraine as a legitimate fact-finding mission and failed, again, to note the problematic, baseless origins of the claims even though Vogel was familiar with Schweizer.  Just to name one example of the mirror effect, even the BBC had a piece on the Bidens and Ukraine a week-and-a-half after.

It was 2016 all over again, just this time Biden was the target of the coordinated assault, not Hillary Clinton.

A conspiracy of lies had been birthed, raised in an accelerated program, and was now of fighting age, much like a clone trooper from Star Wars.  This clone trooper, like in Star Wars, was not produced randomly but was part of an organized plot pushed by people with nefarious, deceptive interests and operating and funded from the shadows.  And that false narrative of the Bidens is what is existing as reality in the eyes of many millions duped by this concerted right-wing disinformation campaign.  For those who can remember Kerry vs. Bush, this takes what happened with GOP attacks in 2004 on John Kerry—referred to as “swiftboating”—and injects that with steroids, especially in utilizing the official powers of the presidency and Executive Branch in doing so.

Within the context of this fabricated reality, Giuliani engaged in gross antics in Ukraine, to be detailed below in a bit.  Trump himself engaged in pushing this nonsense onto Ukrainian President Zelensky during a July 25^th phone call between the two, freezing aid authorized by Congress to Ukraine before the call and verbally pressuring him during it, both as part of a bid to try to force the new Ukrainian president to play along with the alternate-reality Biden fantasy world (and the “Ukraine was behind U.S. election interference” fiction) just to be able to receive aid for his country as it fought Russian aggression.

Trump’s goofy power play almost worked with the desperate Ukrainian president, but pressure from Congress on Trump to release the aid just two days before Zelensky was about to cave in to Trump’s demands in September salvaged propriety.  Even so, Ukraine’s new president still finds himself in an extremely uncomfortable situation with America even as he tries to defuse tensions in his own country.

For many, this moment was a Rubicon that had been crossed.  The actual U.S. government professionals who had spent years running Ukraine policy or enforcing ethical norms—from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, from the National Security Council to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General—were aghast at what was happening.  And, throughout Trump’s own Executive Branch, they revolted (including Yovanovitch and William Taylor, whom Firtash tried to sweet talk all those years ago), many coming out already to testify to Congress about Giuliani’s misdeeds and other details, with Trump and his minions attacking them in response in ways that amount to clear witness tampering.  And it is that revolt that has been dominating headlines lately, fueling the impeachment inquiry, and increasing support for impeachment like never before in Trump’s presidency.

Some of what has been happening on the ground in Ukraine involves some important details that may have been reported but have not received nearly as much attention as they deserve, nor been made top stories from top outlets, as they should be.  But these details are explosive in the context of everything outlined in this book and bring disparate elements of this narrative together, so are therefore discussed below.

Rather incredibly, Dmitry Firtash is trying to align his defense with claims made by Trump and Giuliani.  Yet, when one realizes that Firtash switched up his defense team in July to include Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova—a conservative married couple who are prominent media defenders of Trump (often passionately so on Fox News) and who work closely with Giuliani as business partners—this is hardly surprising.  The duo met with Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, also in July, to ask him to end the U.S. effort to extradite Firtash and present a case against the charges levied against their client, but Barr chose not to become involved.  It is worth nothing here that Brady Toensing, the son of Victoria Toensing and stepson of diGenova, began working for Barr’s Department Justice as a senior counsel for the Office of Legal Policy the month before his parents started working for Firtash.  Indications are he will recuse himself from at least some areas from which he should recuse himself, but the potential for conflict of interest here should not be forgotten.

Strangely, none other than the Ukrainian prosecutor ousted by pressure from Joe Biden and others pushing Ukraine on corruption, Viktor Shokin, submitted an affidavit on Firtash’s behalf to his legal team, claiming that Biden had had him fired to protect Hunter Biden and had pressured Ukraine’s government not to allow Firtash back into Ukraine in order to limit Firtash’s political influence (this second point is quite believable since Biden was working against corruption in Ukraine).  The idea was to discredit Biden, and Giuliani has made this affidavit a major pillar of his Biden attacks.

Here is where Soviet-born Americans Lev Parnas (from Ukraine) and Igor Fruman (from Belarus), two partners of Giuliani’s working for him to dig up dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine, enter quite interestingly into our story.

After their dramatic arrest early last month at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, trying to use one-way tickets to get out of the U.S. and travel to Vienna, Austria, they were front-page and round-the-clock TV material for a while.  They were charged by federal prosecutors from SDNY for breaking campaign finance law to feed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican groups and candidates including a pro-Trump super PAC.  Their indictment mentions that they were funneling money into these campaigns from an unspecified Russian to help gain leverage with certain state and national politicians regarding a recreational marijuana “future business venture” in Nevada and other states.  The indictment also notes that Parnas met with a congressman (former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas, who had lost to a Democrat in 2018 and is hoping to mount a comeback) to whom money from the scheme had been donated to try to get him to work towards the removal of then-Amb. Yovanovitch from her post, and that this was done at the request of at least one Ukrainian government official.  Sessions would join this effort, and now he has had to respond to federal grand jury subpoenas.

The whole investigation into Parnas and Fruman is part of an ongoing investigation, as Parnas and Fruman were arrested as a matter of necessity because they were leaving the country, not because prosecutors preferred that time for the arrest.  That piece of information and the keeping of several individuals’ identities in the indictment secret indicates that the SDNY prosecutors are holding their cards close to their chest and that more charges can be expected.  And it would hardly be surprising if the unnamed Ukrainian government official(s) were Lutsenko and/or Kulyuk and that this investigation into Parnas and Fruman were actually part the SDNY investigation into Giuliani’s finances and activities in Ukraine and his overall activities involving Parnas and Fruman (incredibly ironic since Giuliani made a name for himself as the SDNY U.S. Attorney), given what will be outlined below.

As part of their efforts in Ukraine as directed by Giuliani (who, it seems more and more, was in turn directed by Trump), Parnas and Fruman connected Giuliani with Shokin late in 2018.  We also just learned that, according to Parnas’ current lawyer (who claims his client has text messages and other documentation backing this up), at or near the same time, Shokin met in Vienna with, of all people, egregious Trump apologist and disinformation-and-conspiracy-theory all-star Devin Nunes, the disgraced leader of the Republican side on the House Intelligence Committee, which has been the recent front line in the impeachment fight (some of his most controversial efforts involved baselessly attacking the legitimate FISA surveillance of Carter Page).  Nunes was seeking to combine his efforts to dig up “information” on the Bidens with Giuliani’s intrigues, along with efforts to boost a discredited, baseless conspiracy theory pushed by the Kremlin that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 U.S. election meddling.   Nunes also met with Parnas around this time and directed his staffer, Derek Harvey, to coordinate efforts with Parnas, and they met repeatedly after.  Such meetings were confirmed by Solomon, whose “reporting” was a basis for some of Nunes’s lines of inquiry.  Nunes engaged and directed this activity after the 2018 midterm elections—in which Democrats took the House back from Republicans—but before the new Congress was seated specifically in order to avoid having to reveal details about his trips and meetings to the incoming Democratic leadership.   It is obviously extremely problematic that, in the public impeachment hearings exploring all of this, the highest-ranking Republican present during and helping to lead these public hearings has not disclosed that he was involved in the very efforts that are currently under the impeachment microscope.  It should be noted that, concurrent with Nunes in recent days spewing these lies about Ukraine on the record at these hearings, Putin himself exclaimed “Thank God, no one is accusing us of interfering in the US elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine.”

We also know that in January of 2019, Giuliani asked the State Department to grant Shokin a U.S. visa: State said no, so then Giuliani asked the White House, and an official there also said no after discussing with State.  Giuliani also met Lutsenko with both Parnas and Fruman that same January in a meeting arranged by the pair, who engaged frequently with the then-prosecutor.  In February, the pair tried pressuring Poroshenko in person along with Lutsenko to announce an investigation into the Bidens, just months before Poroshenko lost to Zelensky.  They offered a formal state visit to Washington for Poroshenko in return—something he was actively seeking—and present at this meeting was Lutsenko.  Such a state visit in Washington could have bolstered Poroshenko’s support at home just before an election, but it never came and Poroshenko was crushed by Zelensky just two months later in April (voters had tired of Poroshenko, hamstrung as he was by competing interests and falling short of what he had promised).  In March, Parnas was the guy who orchestrated Lutsenko’s interview with The Hill conducted by Solomon in which Lutsenko disseminated lies he later retracted.  Parnas’s intro to Solomon, in turn, was facilitated by Rep. Pete Sessions, and Parnas and Solomon continued to coordinate after the Lutsenko interview.  Adding to the idea of a coordinated campaign, Solomon is represented legally by Toensing and diGenova; clearly, Solomon’s role is far beyond that of a just a writer.

Just days before Zelensky’s inauguration in May, Parnas and Fruman had a meeting with Serhiy Shefir, a member of Zelensky’s “inner circle;” according to Parnas’s lawyer, in that meeting Parnas laid out a list of demands: the Zelensky Administration must announce an investigation into the Bidens or both Vice President Mike Pence would not attend Zelensky’s inauguration and the U.S. would freeze aid for Ukraine, and these demands were made by Parnas on orders from Giuliani. 

In the end, Trump ordered Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration, a clear a sign of retaliation for non-compliance with these demands.

Fruman and Giuliani deny the above account, at least so far; Fruman is represented by one of Trump’s former White House lawyers, John Dowd, who represented Trump as his top lawyer during the Mueller probe but ultimately resigned over Trump ignoring his advice and what he viewed as Trump’s risky approach to the whole situation.  With this current situation, Dowd tried to get Parnas to claim executive privilege to not have to answer questions, but that clearly did not happen.  Fruman’s other main lawyer is Todd Blanche, who also represents Manafort.

Sherfir, now President Zelensky’s top advisor, confirmed the May meeting but rather coyly said military aid, specifically, was not discussed (giving him a lot of wiggle room), but this statement, like Zelensky’s affirmation that no one pressured him, must be seen in the context of the extraordinary situation in which the Zelensky Administration finds itself.  Obviously, Zelensky is trying as hard as he can to appease and not to alienate Trump and must walk a delicate line with all his public statements relating to America since the brand new politician has been sucked into impeachment proceedings in an election year, so you can expect him to try not to say things to make either Trump and Republicans on the one hand or Democrats on the other hand think he is helping the other side, at least up to the point Trump looks as if he really will withhold aid or do something worse, as has kind of been happening already.  And all this happens while the young Ukrainian leader faces immense overall challenges in Ukraine.

Parnas and Fruman specifically clearly helped facilitate meetings designed to pressure, and to get Giuliani access to, Zelensky and others close to him (and Poroshenko before him) and were therefore very much a part of setting in motion the July phone call between Trump and Zelensky, with the May disputed meeting only the most emphatic example of the duo’s pressure.

And yet, ties get even more incestuous as far as our threads are concerned.  What received less attention was that one of the two associates of Giuliani, Lev Parnas, was working as a translator for Firtash’s legal team, but both Parnas and Fruman had worked for Firtash before “in an unspecified capacity.”  Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas were trying together to dig up dirt on Democrats with ties to Ukraine, involved Solomon in these coordinated efforts, and Parnas has even tried to portray Firtash as a victim.  Federal prosecutors working on Firtash’s case on Chicago for which the U.S. is supposed to extradite him reached out to their counterparts in New York about the relationship of Firtash with Parnas and Fruman.  The Chicago prosecutors had been investigating their ties to Firtash for some time and when the pair was arrested, they were heading to Vienna; Giuliani was supposed to fly there the following day, but canceled after the arrest.  The trips were to coordinate a meeting with Shokin to prep him for an interview he would do with Sean Hannity from Vienna.  But they could also easily have been trying to engage Firtash.  Either way, it is clear that the two camps of Firtash/pro-Russian Ukrainians and Team Giuliani/Trump were now coordinating, uniting on messaging and strategy.  Giuliani has even admitted to personally looking into Firtash as a resource, and clearly, Russian media along with America’s right-wing media are all too happy to further these narratives and provide assists. 

Firtash’s right-wing lawyers see any way to discredit Biden as corrupt and as going after both Shokin and Firtash for personal political reasons as the best way to help their client other than getting charges dropped.  Firtash even paid diGenova and Toensing $1 million to find incriminating information on Biden.  In this context, if Shokin (rewriting history, Trump is now saying that Shokin was “very good” and that it was “unfair” to fire him) and Firtash are remade into the good guys, then Biden must the bad guy and Trump benefits.

Reforms Biden pushed for intensely on corruption and for the gas sector may have cost Firtash up to $400 million a year, and he feels a rage towards Biden, calling him an “overlord” who wielded inappropriate and “enormous” influence on the Ukrainian government after Yanukovych’s ouster.  Lacking self-awareness, Firtash and his team seem not to have considered that such assertions, if anything, are a vindication of Biden’s efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine.  But maybe they are instead playing to an audience of one, hoping like so many others that winning over Trump is enough and will result in interference on his part that might save Firtash from extradition.  It seems Biden is to Firtash what Hillary Clinton was to Putin: his main American enemy, at least in his mind. 

Parnas and Fruman were also concurrently trying to pursue a change at the top of Naftogaz along with replacing Yovanovitch, with both moves designed to help them personally sell gas to Naftogaz and to benefit Firtash.  They worked with and received funding from Firtash towards this effort, advocating for the wiping out of the exiled gas tycoon’s debts with Naftogaz.  The current CEO of Naftogaz, Andriy Kobolev, is seen by Ukrainians and Westerners as a star of Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts and had been tough on Firtash, accusing Firtash of illegally keeping some $2 billion since 2017 by not making required payments to Ukrainian state-owned companies.  Since Yovanovitch was supporting Kobolev, Parnas and Fruman thought getting rid of her would help them deal with Kobolev more easily.

Despite Parnas and Fruman being photographed repeatedly with Trump and working closely with Giuliani on behalf of Trump, Trump denies knowing either of them.  This has apparently hurt the feelings of Parnas, who now seems to be cooperating with investigators.

A third associate of Giuliani’s we should well remember: Ukrainian-born Sam Kislin, whom U.S. authorities believe is an important figure in the Mogilevich Russian mafia outfit and who did business with Trump both with Tamir Sapir—strongly linked to Sater’s Bayrock—and by selling a Trump condo to a future member of Ukraine’s Party of Regions.  Kislin also supported Giuliani politically by raising several million in fundraising for him and served on important New York City bodies at the behest of Giuliani while he was mayor.  Giuliani had denied in 1999 knowing that the U.S. government considered Kislin a serious Russian mafia member or associate, but that claim is impossible for him to maintain in recent years, when he engaged Kislin to help in these Ukraine shenanigans. 

See, Kislin, too, is neck-deep in the current Ukraine drama.  In January 2018, Kislin tried to push then Amb. Yovanovitch to assist in helping to release millions in funds in a Cyprus shell company of which he was the current owner.  That company held part of some $1.5 billion Yanukovych had criminally looted from Ukraine.  His effort to unfreeze the funds had, strangely, earlier been blocked by Lutsenko, of whom Kislin alleged improper conduct.  This mirrors a similar effort from another Ukrainian oligarch with another Cyprus-based shell company holding some of Yanukovych’s ill-gotten fortune, an oligarch named Pavel Fuks (or Fuchs) who was also tied to Giuliani and one of several attempts to make a Trump Tower happen in Moscow.  Fuks, who was introduced to Trump by Tamir Sapir, was also more recently involved in helping Giuliani go after the Bidens.  The shell companies owned by Kislin and Fuks held $20 million and $160 million, respectively, primarily in government bonds Ukrainian authorities now say were issued illegally by Yanukovych’s government.  Kislin had purchased his company, Opalcore Limited, in November, 2016, the very month Donald Trump was elected president.  In what seems to be a shady scheme to take money that belongs to the Ukrainian people, Kislin claims he did not know that the assets were frozen when he bought Opalcoare and alleged procedural malpractice by Ukrainian government officials during the freezing process, hoping that claim would lead to them being unfrozen and requesting Yovanovitch get involved to this end.

But Kislin is also currently advising Giuliani on Ukraine, is meeting with Ukrainian government officials, and seems to even have been an informal emissary for Trump there on the Biden smear campaign while also agitating against Poroshenko as the former president, too, is under investigation there.  Kislin is now apparently also “good friends” with Andrii Artemenko (to quote Artemekno himself), with the two coordinating and exchanging information on some of these efforts.  Somehow, Artemenko is now living in Washington, DC, and is a regular guest on Kremlin-run television, offering negative takes on Ukraine’s current leaders and now also pushing for a probe into Hunter Biden.  It was reported in October that Kislin was in communication with the House investigators, who are interested in his Ukraine activity in relation to Giuliani’s efforts.

Amid all of this context of clear, overt political pressure on Ukraine from the Trump Administration, in the middle of October, Ukraine’s new prosecutor general announced that he was auditing one previous case concerning Burisma’s owner, Zlochevsky, and that Hunter Biden could be fair game even though neither Burisma nor Hunter were specific points of focus, noting that this audit was a part of a general audit of fifteen high-profile cases handled by the previous administration.  The shady General Prosecutor’s Office is in the midst of a massive overhaul the Zelensky Administration hopes will fix the corruption that made it untrustworthy in the eyes of Ukrainians and Westerners alike, taking away its investigative powers and shifting them to other departments.  Kasko has been restored and promoted to the number-two spot in the office, and the new top prosecutor, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, has a history of working for transparency.  Different departments are expected to take up several cases involving Manafort, but there is worry that much of the information on them and other cases will be lost in the transition.  Perhaps this is in part a shrewd move to stall any findings during a turbulent time in American politics that Ukraine’s new president fears could provoke serious retaliation from Trump should either bad things come out about Manafort or the Burisma probe yields no dirt, likely outcomes given what is known that could leave the country exposed to the rage of President Trump.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006.

This article is an excerpt from Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here). Also be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

© 2019-2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 6, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981), November 6th, 2018

AMMAN — With the unprecedented publication by The New York Times of an anonymous op-ed by “a senior official in the Trump Administration” hot on the heels of the release of preview excerpts from legendary journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming damning exposé on the Trump White House—both showing that top Trump officials are deliberately undermining and ignoring him for, in their view, the good of the nation—something is clear that is not being acknowledged yet, even two months after these events, in the major coverage of these unfolding developments:

The presidency of the United States of America is, and has been pretty much since the beginning of the Trump Administration, operating extraconstitutionally, that is, outside the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. In American history—in the modern era, anyway—the only times we have been in waters this uncharted and this dangerous from a constitutional perspective were the final year-and-a-half of the Woodrow Wilson Administration from 1919-1921 and the very last days of the Richard Nixon Administration in 1974.

In the first instance, after Wilson became essentially medically incapacitated later in 1919, his wife basically secretly took on his duties as president behind the scenes. As Joel Goldstein noted in 2014 in the scholarly journal Politics and the Life Sciences, while “[t]he length of Wilson’s disability has been debated,” he quoted an assessment by historian John Blum that seemed to be broad enough to reflect much of the range of opinion: “for a month the United States had no President; for many months the country had only a shell of a President.”

In the words of Goldstein, the situation clearly demonstrated that in terms of presidential succession under certain conditions, “the Constitution was ambiguous in…numerous material ways.”

Decades later, looking back at this situation was a significant inspiration for the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, providing a path to transfer presidential authority away from a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” as well as to transfer (vice) presidential authority under other circumstances.

In the second instance, as the curtain was coming down on Nixon’s presidency in the face of coming impeachment amid the Watergate scandal, and even while Nixon was still legally the president, senior officials were prepared to ignore and defy him and did so. The crisis that forced Nixon to resign was largely a result of reporting by the duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in large part armed with information from an anonymous senior Nixon Administration official known then as Deep Throat and later revealed to be Mark Felt, then-Associate Director at the FBI, not unlike some of the officials working against Trump today, actions also revealed by Woodward.

*****

A major reason the Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted was to make sure a clear Constitutional order would continue even in certain rare and/or extreme circumstances.

The Roman Republic had a rarely-held office called the dictator that was only appointed in emergencies and only to fulfill specific mandates and/or last for a specific period of time and generally no longer than six months. It was essentially a way to temporarily put aside the Roman Republic’s normal working order while still preserving the Republic’s overall constitution, allowing both the law to be preserved during emergencies and regular order to be restored after them, with both happening under the same constitution. Marc de Wilde, writing for the journal History of Political Thought, noted that this system worked quite well for some three centuries as, in his view, during that period, “the dictatorship was never abused and turned against the constitution” (though, after a long hiatus, the rare later iterations proved far more problematic).

But the U.S. Constitution does not have the same flexibility. And what is happening now places the current U.S. government outside of the prescribed range of the functioning Constitution.

With the recent revelations, some have called the moves against Trump by his own people a kind of coup (including Woodward); in fact, it is impossible to argue that this is anything but that: the president leads the Executive Branch and is the Commander in Chief, and while, as I noted over a year ago, the system was designed by the Founding Fathers to empower officials under the president to defy him if he was violating the Constitution or the law, if the president gives an order that is not such a violation and he is still defied, the we are operating outside the legal bounds of the U.S. Constitution. While Trump is not medically and physically incapacitated like Wilson was for over a year-and-a-half, the nation is essentially being governed throughout Trump’s presidency like it was, briefly, in the final days of Nixon’s presidency, with senior officials under the president deeming him unstable and unfit to govern and that it may be and was necessary to defy and ignore him.

But the temporary state in which the Constitution was essentially illegally but practically put aside for a few days in 1974—a bad, and scary, enough, state of affairs then—it is terrifying for the health of the nation, the power of the Constitution, the world standing of America, and the staying power of democracy worldwide that the Constitution of the world’s oldest continuous democracy has essentially been put aside for coming up on two years since the beginning of Trump’s presidency because not just so-called “deep state” career bureaucrats, but even the president’s own most senior appointed officials chosen by him and his inner circle (including the author of the Times op-ed) deem him to be a madman unfit and unable to govern, and that it is necessary for the good of the country that they work to usurp his authority, lest he abuse it in such a gross way as to do serious damage to the country. 

Whether ignoring more extreme orders or swiping papers off the president’s desk to prevent his official signature from enacting terrible policies, those around Trump are unconstitutionally governing with some of the president’s constitutional powers along with the president himself but without the president’s knowledge or permission.

In other words, this presidency is by definition both a constitutional crises and inherently extraconstitutional.

Which begs the questions: Who is in charge? Who is making the decisions, how often, and when?  Who answers to whom? How aware is the president of any of this? How well can the president perceive the situation and understand the reality of his own White House? To what degree are America’s allies aware of all this and how is this damaging America’s relationships with them? To what degree are America’s rivals and enemies aware of this and how is this emboldening them and weakening American national security? If a major crisis erupts, if the U.S. is under attack, how would the country be led?

The disturbing and unacceptable truth is that we do not know the answers to any of these questions. We are like a ship unmoored with crew running around furiously to keep the ship from colliding or sinking but with no one at the helm. We have been fortunate—extremely fortunate—that so far, no major crisis has emerged to challenge this far-from-ideal modus operandi.

Some will argue that the officials undermining Trump are way out of bounds. Others will argue that Trump is so terrible that these actions are necessary. The great philosophical question—which will be debated as long as debate exists—is, do you stay true to the Constitution even as superiors destroy it, or do you violate the Constitution to protect it?

There is no easy answer, hence, we are where we are. 

Especially considering that Trump has not, as is also the case with his tax returns, released a recent credible and full medical record, a reality that is necessary to confront is that Trump’s age and physical condition make him an ideal candidate for “executive dysfunction” under conditions discussed by Mark Fisher, David Franklin, and Jerrold Post in the same journal issue as Goldstein’s aforementioned article. “Based on the known neuroanatomic localization of executive function and its well described age-dependent changes,” they write, “a significant proportion of political leaders over the age of 65 are likely subject to executive dysfunction.” Trump is 72 and can barely string together a complete sentence or stay focused in a meeting. Many around him question his mental state, and any honest view of video of a far younger Trump compared with President Trump makes it clear to all but the most fanatical that there has been some sort of mental degeneration in the interim.

However you feel, what is not in dispute is that the Constitution is being ignored and that the longer this continues, the more the American system and American credibility is undermined and the greater the chance that the American ship of state will run into disaster, with no guarantee it will be restored to its former functionality.  If America’s current extraconstitutional republic is not restored to a constitutional one, history will look back on Americans harshly, and justly so.

*****

Ultimately, this is actually all part of a massive “active measures” political warfare campaign by Russia, designed from the beginning to weaken and undermine American institutions from the top down, beginning first and foremost with the U.S. presidency but trickling down to all walks of American political life. To be sure, what I have termed the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar—Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bold and unprecedented campaign to install Trump in the White House—succeeded wildly beyond what probably most Kremlin planners had dreamed of, and a president that literally broke the U.S. Constitution almost from the get-go for the duration of his first few years in office (and who knows how much longer) was probably not a specifically anticipated or designed outcome, especially within this timeframe. But it would have been within the realm of desired outcomes, as placing an agent of chaos—witting or unwitting—in the oval office can obviously produce a wide range of outcomes that generally destabilize and weaken the United States, which most certainly were the Russian aims in 2015-2016, and, as the just-released latest Justice Department criminal charges show, still are the goals as we head into the 2018 midterm elections, carried out by some the same overall agents as before. This campaign of Putin’s is still further part of his overall war against the West, NATO, and democracy, or the rise of what I call worldwide (small-d) democratic fascism. Taken together, this is a new form of (cold) warfare, using Twitter and racism instead of tanks and rockets, but it is warfare nonetheless. 

And it is warfare we are losing.

That a sitting U.S. president is essentially not necessarily in charge and is being constantly ignored and sidelined by patriotic underlings, that the U.S. Constitution has ceased to properly function as intended, that the Trump presidency is operating outside the bounds of the Constitution and the law, may all be an overperformance on the stage that Putin has set, but make no mistake about it, this is all part of the Kremlin’s overall designs to do short, medium, and long-term damage to American political institutions, rule of law, politics, standing, culture, and the norms that support them. The longer this all continues unchecked, the more success that will be enjoyed by Russia and the more damage to the health, even survivability, of the American political system and the U.S. Constitution. If the true functioning U.S. Constitution is not restored soon and Trump and his now cultish, sycophantic Republican party remain in power, perhaps Trump’s successor will operate within the Constitution, but perhaps not. Far better to check Trump and the GOP in these midterms, than leave it to chance, for the history of the Roman Republic shows that once precedents are broken and the longer they are broken, the greater the propensity that they will be broken again or swept away by new precedents, in Rome’s case, an autocratic emperor-based system operating under the guise of a democratic republic, and even that eventually gave way to out-and-out acknowledged autocracy. To maximize our odds of not repeating and falling down the same degenerative path, it is essential to restore the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law by first checking Trump and his Republican enablers during today’s midterms, and then Constitutionally removing him and them from power as soon as possible, whether at the ballot box or through other measures as allowed within our properly functioning constitutional system.

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 29, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) December 29th, 2017; republished by IR.net on March 23rd, 2018, and updated March 27th, 2018, to reflect Putin’s abstemious nature

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

AMMAN — Those wishing for impeachment might get more than they wished for, and either way, America may be irreparably damaged.

Disclaimer: this is a fictional, hypothetical situation

Sometime in April of 2019…

The House vote to impeach President Donald Trump set off a firestorm in American politics not seen since at least the 1960s and perhaps even the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into all things Trump-Russia ended on August 10th, 2018. In the process, nearly two-dozen Trump associates—from lower “unofficial” campaign officials to senior Administration officials—had been charged with various crimes, from lying to federal investigators to money laundering, some resulting in stiff prison sentences. Mueller uncovered enough information that made it clear people very close to Trump had attempted to collude with Russia, then lied about it and attempted to obstruct justice. While specific evidence making it clear that Trump had himself colluded did not emerge, clear evidence that he had attempted to obstruct justice did.

And yet, this information only came out in and drabs leaked to the press, as the Republicans in Congress who received the report decided to sit on its details and not release them to the public, ignoring the recommendation of charges by the Special Counsel and signed off on by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Just a few months before the midterms, the actions of the Congressional Republicans, combined with the juicy leaks to the press about some of what they were hiding, set off an uproar that allowed a November Democratic sweep of all House Republicans on the West Coast—alone accounting for nearly 20 seats—as well the flipping a number of seats in East Coast liberal areas, including suburban districts in places like Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and even a few rural districts in places like Maine and Maryland. A few of the key Republicans who deliberately kept Mueller’s findings from the public were voted out of office, too, the so-called “Resistance” pouring inordinate amounts of resources into their races, and Republicans overall—facing many more tight races than expected across the country and with the donor class demoralized—were unable to match the intensity of their rivals in those marquee races.

Even allowing for all this, the Democrats were unable to take back the House, but they had eroded the GOP House advantage to just a handful of seats and managed to score a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

The public had spoken, a voting coalition that included conservatives in many liberal states who had united with “the Resistance” to stand against the blatant Republican obstructionism in the Trump-Russia investigation, sending send a clear message as the 116th Congress took power in 2019. It was obvious that the GOP would find it much more difficult to get away with its blatant obstructionism, and the House Judiciary Committee with only a few GOP defections was able to pass a vote allowing the contents of the Special Counsel’s detailed findings to be made public late in January, though with some redactions. 

Then in mid-February, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reluctantly agreed to allow the House Judiciary Committee to take up discussion of impeachment articles that had been introduced by Democrats months ago.

The evidence was clear and overwhelming, and the committee—with just a few Republican defections—was able to vote in March to recommended several articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

A right-wing media assault led by former Trump advisor (and still confidante) Steve Bannon from his perch at Breitbart News had already begun once Speaker Ryan had allowed impeachment to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee, but it went into overdrive once the House debate on impeachment began. The vast majority of the well over 200 GOP House members stayed loyal to the President, but all that was required to reach a majority were a handful of Republican defectors—some of the few remaining Republicans from states like New York and New Jersey, ironically, Trump’s backyard—and the House voted to impeach both Trump and Pence on April 9th, 2019, in a vote that featured two fistfights on the House floor.

The vote’s symbolism—154 years after General Lee’s surrender of “Confederate” rebel forces at Appomattox in Virginia—was not lost on Trump’s supporters, who used it as a galvanizing call. The day of the vote, hundreds of protests and counter-protests all over the country were held, violence breaking out in many; a good number of the protests against impeachment were organized by alt-right groups as armed open carry protests, and were often men by Antifa folks ready for a fight. Dozens of protesters, counter-protesters, and even some law-enforcement officials were wounded and, all told, there were 14 fatalities, the worst political violence in America since the 1992 Los Angeles riots and, before that, since the unrest of the 1960s and 1970s.

That same day, Russia launched offensives (with soldiers in unmarked uniforms) in Moldova and in Ukraine, taking the capitals of each and removing what Putin, in a speech televised live nationally in Russia, called “criminal regimes installed by the West.” Russian jets also buzzed U.S. planes in Syria, the Black Sea, and over the Baltic states, where aggressive Russian activities resulted in several air defense missiles being fired in Latvian airspace at Russian jets that nevertheless maneuvered safely back to Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. 

North Korean forces fired several test missiles into Japanese waters but also shot down a U.S. spy plane with newly equipped anti-air missiles purchased from Russia, taking the American pilot prisoner. 

Iran—reacting to the U.S. decision nearly a year earlier to ignore the nuclear deal reached under the Obama Administration and to unilaterally reimpose sanctions, as well as fearing war from a bellicose American government—conducted the first nuclear test in that nation’s history in the middle of the night, even catching Israel’s Mossad by surprise. 

ISIS also conducted attacks on several American embassies in the Middle East, killing dozens (though mostly local bystanders and local military), and al-Qaeda even managed several attacks in Afghanistan and against the U.S. embassy in Pakistan, though no Americans were killed in either attack.

The next day, Mike Pence resigned as Vice President, and Congress made it clear that it would not vote on anyone Trump would nominate as a successor until (at least) the Senate had decided its verdict.

Even before the Senate began its proceedings, cries among rightists that the country was being stolen from them, that liberals and the “Deep State” were conspiring to thwart the will of the voters and to illegally overturn a valid presidential election, had been mounting. Vigilantes in Texas and Arizona assaulted migrant workers, seriously injuring a dozen, claiming that liberals were trying to get them to illegally vote after Trump tweeted concerns about illegal voting helping change the balance of power in the new Congress amid an unprecedented Twitter storm the day of his impeachment.

In one day, several apparently spontaneous assaults on congressmen and senators in town halls being held across the country before the Senate’s trial resulted three failed assaults but also in two dead congressmen, one seriously wounded senator, and one slightly wounded senator (the seriously wounded senator the result of an attack by an Antifa extremist, the lone leftist among the assaulters). All town halls were subsequently canceled and Congress began to operate amid unprecedented security, with the special election to replace the murdered congressmen operating in a state of fear and rage.

Meanwhile, many alt-right groups were organizing a combined armed march on Washington, to begin in Northern Virginia the day the Senate trial of Trump—who was showing no signs of backing down and had ordered military units to protect him in the White House—was to begin. They had weeks to organize, and well over 100,000 arms-bearing Trump supporters—including some full militia groups—gathered during the days before the Senate trial was to start. Since it was illegal for armed protests to happen in when the groups tried to march across the Potomac over several bridges into Washington, they were blocked by authorities; rather than cooler heads prevailing, gunshots rang out and pitched battles occurred on the bridges. The shots could be heard from the Senate floor as the trial commenced. When Sec. of Defense Jim Mattis acted to deploy units to restore order, Trump abruptly removed him from office that day, and the militia groups and civilian law enforcement, each sustaining wounded and dead, settled into a stalemate as Washington went on lockdown. Protesters protesting the march were also shot, and of protesters, inspired by a defiantly unhinged Trump and the first wave of protesters who refused to back down, began to organize. Throughout the country, federal government installations were attacked by militias, which in some cases took over smaller facilities and took hostages. More deaths occurred during these developments, and protesters of all stripes took to the streets that evening, with scuffles and deaths reported in a wide range of locations. 

Many governors reacted to the shocking events by imposing state-wide curfews and calling in the National Guard. In many instances, the National Guard had to use force to restore order after overwhelmed local law enforcement officials were unable to do so.

By the next morning, from the Memorial Bridge connecting Arlington and Washington to Austin’s Texas State Capitol and many other locations, over 200 Americans were dead, more wounded. The fighting in the U.S. had sent world markets into their worst plunges since the 2008 financial crises, and many governments halted trading. Governors in West Virginia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, North and South Dakota, and Kentucky called for secession, as did dozens of state lawmakers elsewhere.

By this time, Israel had already carried out military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran had retaliated by firing missiles that hit Tel Aviv and had killed several hundred Israelis, while Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon had killed scored of Israelis and Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Lebanon and in Syria against Hezbollah-stationed units there killed over 1,000 people. Israeli jets had ended up in dogfights with Russian jets while American planes just looked on, though the Russian and Israeli leaders were said to be reducing tensions, all this occurring without any mediation 

On the Korean Peninsula, several border incidents resulted in several dozen U.S., South Korean, and North Korean dead, with fears of war gripping East Asia and Kim Jong-un threatening nuclear attacks on Seoul, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. 

When the UN convened the Security Council, none of the other representatives knew if America’s ambassador spoke for the U.S. Government anymore (even more so than before).

The Senate, fearing what a prolonged trial would lead to and with some surprising defections from Republicans who were taken aback by the national violence, got exactly 66 votes to remove Trump from office.

The President, suffering from a mental breakdown, then said that he refused to acknowledge the result and called on his supporters to “fight to take the country back.” With Mattis gone, chaos reigned at the Pentagon as individual local unit commanders took it upon themselves to assist local law enforcement officials in beating back the armed pro-Trump militias converging on Washington; fatalities crossed the 1,000 mark and continued to rise rapidly in this second day of increasing violence, and members of the Secret Service, as well as the military units that had been ordered to the White House by Trump, felt torn. 

With violence erupting across the country and law and order breaking down in some areas (even though most Americans remained safe), with the Senate having convicted a President of High Crimes and Misdemeanors for the first time in American history (one who was still defiantly occupying the White House), and with several million angry Trump supporters—many armed—converging on Washington, the U.S. was faced with a constitutional crisis that went far beyond Nixon and even the Civil War. Whatever would happen in the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, there was serious doubt that such a polarized and wounded nation could come back to “normal order” anytime soon. It seemed clear that Trump would be gone soon, and Paul Ryan in as president, but how could he govern? And how could the violent fury that had been unleashed and the calls for secession be contained?

Vladimir Putin sat in in bed in his presidential palace, breaking his usual abstemiousness by sipping vodka with one of his mistresses lying naked on top of him, and gleefully watched the Breitbart News Network (BNN) coverage of the fighting on the Memorial Bridge. “You Americans were so arrogant thinking you had ‘won’ the Cold War,” he said aloud, his mistress chuckling. “Who is winning now?” he asked and downed the entire rest of his glass before turning his attention to his mistress, gunshots in America providing the mood music for his date night.

CTK/AP

*****

It is impossible to know if or when Donald Trump will be impeached. But if he were, none of the events described above are so far out of the realm of possibility that they can be regarded as mere fantasy. Whatever events do transpire, it is far more likely that impeachment would only further divide the nation rather than bring it together, the same as the prospects for a continued Trump presidency. It seems, then, that for the foreseeable future, we are the Divided—not United—States of America.

With or without Trump in office for a full term, Putin has already won. 

Disclaimer: the author does not hope for, nor does he encourage, any of the violent acts depicted in these hypothetical scenarios

September 21st, 2019 note: I absolutely think as a matter of principle, Trump should be impeached. But in practical terms, it’s not so simple, and bad timing or moving without enough support could hurt Democrats, empower Trump, and even help Trump go after his political enemies. So I’m with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I trust her judgment and if it can work she’ll know the time to strike if it presents itself or if it will be better to hold off. After all, there are a lot of possible side-effects to consider…

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here!

See author’s Amazon eBooks here!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!