WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2019) US intelligence officials briefed senators this fall about allegations that Russia has been carrying out a campaign to shift blame for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election onto Ukraine, the New York Times reported citing senior intelligence officials.
Since at least 2017 Russia has allegedly been working on pushing a number of conspiracy theories along with established facts to give the impression Ukraine was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Convention server and interfered in the 2016 presidential election, the report said on Friday.
US intelligence alleges that Russian intelligence officials conveyed the information to important Russians and Ukrainians who used various intermediaries to pass it to US politicians, the report said.
A final report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after an investigation of nearly two years said it found no evidence that the Trump presidential campaign colluded or conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election's outcome.
Trump associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, arrested last month in the United States on charges of campaign finance violations, reportedly met with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in February 2019 and offered a meeting with President Donald Trump in exchange for an investigation into former US Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Democrats alleged the prospective investigation was an attempt to dig up dirt on Biden, a presidential candidate for the 2020 election, whose son was a board member at Ukrainian oil company Burisma. A probe into alleged Ukrainian interference into the 2016 US presidential election was also part of the request.
Trump's talks with Poroshenko's successor, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking him to launch an investigation into the Bidens are now at the center of an impeachment inquiry of the US president.
