In an interview with the Gateway Pundit, Telizhenko said he met Chalupa in the spring of 2016 at the Ukrainian Embassy, where Chalupa told him she was "a DNC operative working for the DNC" and the "Clinton campaign." Telizhenko continued, noting that Chalupa said she was "collecting any dirt or background information on Manafort, presidential candidate Trump or any other campaign official from the Trump campaign" and was looking for "connections to Russia or the FSB or Russian mob, or Ukrainian mob, etc."
According to Telizhenko, Chalupa said the information would "be used for committee hearings in Congress under a congresswoman." Telizhenko didn't disclose the identity of the congresswoman, noting, "I don't want to mention her name on record."
In January 2017, Telizhenko told Politico that Chalupa said, "If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump's involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September."
In a recent tweet, Telizhenko summed the situation succinctly, noting "The Clinton campaign had a Democratic operative working with Ukraine's embassy in Washington to research Trump's Russia ties, as well as a Ukrainian lawmaker feeding information to Fusion GPS."
The "Democratic operative" refers to Chalupa, while the "Ukrainian lawmaker" refers to Leshchenko.
Isikoff Collaborates With ChalupaOn April 26, 2016, Yahoo News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff published a story about Paul Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
The Isikoff article referenced an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets, which was started by Manafort and several partners in 2007. According to The New York Times, Deripaska was the financial backer of the fund and agreed to commit as much as $100 million, although he apparently only invested $18.9 million in 2008 to finance the purchase of Black Sea Cable, a Ukrainian telecommunications company. Pericles is now defunct, and Deripaska sued Manafort in a Cayman Islands court, seeking to recover his investment.
This same transaction would later be referenced in the Aug. 14, 2016, New York Times article that reported the alleged payments to Manafort from the Party of Regents' black box.
On April 28, 2016, Chalupa appeared on a panel to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress, for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.
Appearing with her was Isikoff, with whom she was apparently working and whom she had invited, according to a May 3, 2016, email that Chalupa sent to Luis Miranda, communications director of the DNC, and was published by Wikileaks:
"I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last Wednesday at the Library of Congress--the Open World Society's forum--they put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort and I invited Michael Isikoff, whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians."
Isikoff is the same reporter who published an article about Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page on September 23, 2016. The article, headlined "U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin," was based on an interview with Christopher Steele. Isikoff's article would later be used as corroborating information by the FBI in the FISA warrant application on Page.
Chalupa's email closed with a reference to something larger that would become public in the coming weeks:
"More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of."
In late July, according to the Politico article, Chalupa left the DNC to work full-time on her research into Manafort. Around the same time, on August 4, 2016, Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador, wrote an op-ed in The Hill against candidate Trump, noting that "recent comments by Republican nominee Donald Trump about the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea occupied by Russia since March 2014 have raised serious concerns in Kyiv and beyond Ukraine."
Leshchenko's Ties to ChalupaOn August 14, 2016, The New York Times broke their blockbuster story alleging that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents' "black box", the 400-page handwritten ledger released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow for Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign just days later.
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