from WND:

Sections of the whistleblower complaint alleging President Trump pressured Ukraine’s president for political advantage relied on a self-described investigative journalism organization funded by billionaire, left-wing activist George Soros.

The whistleblower admits not having been “a direct witness to most of the events described” and bases many claims on the work of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project or OCCRP, reports Aaron Klein of Breitbart News.

Soros’ Open Society was listed as the No. 2 donor in most of the annual financial records posted on OCCRP’s website beginning in 2012. In some years, Breitbart notes, Soros’ group was the organization’s top donor.

OCCRP is cited in a key section of the complaint that claims Ukrainian officials followed up on Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate allegations of corruption by then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was receiving $50,000 monthly from a natural gas company despite having no experience in the industry.

The complaint states “multiple U.S. officials told me” that Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani “had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other” advisers of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.”

Breitbart points out that even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me” – it contains a footnote citing OCCRP.

The OCCRP report was a joint investigation with BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.

BuzzFeed is known for being the first to publish the dubious  anti-Trump dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that was largely debunked by Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. None of its claims, from unnamed Russian sources, were corroborated.

OCCRP and BuzzFeed separately published similar lengthy pieces on July 22 as a result of their investigation claiming Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.

In addition to the claim that Giuliani reached out to top Zelensky advisers, the complaint relies on the OCCRP report in three more instances.

It claims:

• Ukraine’s prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.”


• Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”


• “Associates” of Giuliani were trying “to make contact with the incoming Zelensky team.”

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