Ukraine Rocked By Massive Corruption Scandal - But Who's Really To Blame?
A massive scandal has rocked all levels of government in Ukraine, from local mayors all the way up to the Minister of Defense. Bribe-taking and outright theft appears to have infected the entirety of Ukraine's ruling class. But who is really guilty in this scandal? Also today - shocking revelations about George Soros' early promotion of NATO expansion. Finally - just like Pelosi, Speaker McCarthy is set to poke China by traveling to Taiwan.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good, but I'm waiting for the rain to come.
Not that I need the rain, and we don't need it because of our tin roof.
Yeah, people will hear it if it comes.
If I come.
But first off, we have to sound better than the tin roof.
That's what we have to do.
And we have some interesting stuff today.
Not any total surprises, but just confirmation on how ridiculous some of these things are in the world.
We want to start off with one big surprise.
Corruption in Ukraine.
They're abusing the money they're getting.
What is it up to a trillion dollars?
They got to get it.
We keep pouring out 100,000 Ukrainians, a huge number of Ukrainians having died from this war, and everybody's just wondering what's going on.
How long is this going to last?
But there is some investigation now.
They've discovered corruption within the administration of Zelensky.
And of course, he wouldn't be involved.
But they're prosecuting some people.
They say some of them may go to jail.
But for some reason, I don't think anybody's holding their breath from that.
But it's good that it's coming out.
But it's like, wow, why didn't they know about this?
And I was thinking that if a person a few years ago, when this all started, and especially when the money's float, it wouldn't have been a tough prediction to say, don't sweat it.
It'll end up in corruption.
I have a generalized statement.
You send the money to other nations and people who are in trouble with war and all.
The money never goes to the people who are suffering.
The people who are starving and getting killed, they don't get help.
But the people, the money is divided up, and then there's a big fight over the good guys and the bad guys.
And we pick and we decide who the good guys are, and we keep sending money.
But I don't think they should be surprised of this.
I think this is probably a little bit of, it's a consequence you could expect, but it's minor compared to the big corruption.
To me, the big corruption, why do the American people allow this to happen, allow Federal Reserve to print the money in the deep state, send the money over there, precipitating the war, having a coup and doing all those things.
So this is petty crimes, serious, and it's good if they do it, maybe, but I want them to investigate a little bit more.
What in thunder are we doing there?
And, you know, that's been going on for so long.
I guess the very first time I started talking out about this was, you know, in the 1960s.
It was Vietnam at the time.
I was wondering what was going on in Korea, but really it got my attention more in the 60s.
But it's been going on and on.
But, you know, it's interesting.
There's a little shift here.
We might be able to mention this, is that this is a sterile war.
The one thing, the most important thing is we do this.
We have the deep state.
We're going to take on Russia.
We threaten them.
And we don't want to see anybody bags back here.
You know, that's when the American people tend to say, hey, maybe this is costing us something.
They're waking up a little bit.
It's costing them something if they ever realize that inflation is a result, an ultimate result of this type of a foreign policy.
It contributes to it, which we made that point many times.
So it's to me a mass.
I'm not very optimistic.
The best thing that could come from this is calling attention to the corruption, but then expand it.
When did this corruption start?
And I think it started when we put our nose into somebody's business that we shouldn't have done.
Yeah, you know, it wasn't that long ago that the mainstream media was quoting Transparency International, which has consistently found that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe.
And then all of a sudden in February, when they finally got their war, that was forgotten.
Nobody talked about corruption.
Oh, they're cleaning up.
That's fine.
We don't want to hear anything about this.
And now with this scandal unfolding, and it is massive.
It goes to every level of government from the defense minister down to mayors.
That's how deep this corruption scandal is.
It's interesting to see, I was just looking at the BBC's version of what's happening.
And rather than saying massive corruption scandal uncovered in Ukraine, their headline is, Ukraine finally doing something about corruption, you know.
And we've talked about it before, but it reminds me of our, I think, both of our favorite scenes in Casablanca where he says, there's gambling going on in here.
You know, who would have thought it?
But let's put on this first clip because this is from Politico.
And I think it's significant because it is in Politico.
They can't ignore what's happening in Ukraine right now.
And this says Defense Minister Reznikov under fire as corruption probes rock Ukraine.
Go on to the next one.
This is from the article.
And this is basically what's happened.
And both the inquiries are related to war profiteering and triggered an immediate pledge of action from President Zelensky.
The case involving the defense ministry involved purchases of military rations at inflated prices.
Basically, you buy something for twice what it is on the market value, and then you split the difference between you and your corrupt people and the corrupt suppliers.
And that apparently is what happened here.
But wait, there's more, as they say on TV.
Put this next one on because while Reznikov is vigorously defending the ministry's contract, Deputy Minister of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, Vasil Lozhinsky, was fired immediately.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine reported the deputy minister was busted while accepting $400,000 for facilitating an overpriced power generating equipment purchase.
Again, that's the same thing.
They bought generators at, I don't know, twice the price, three times the price.
Hey, let's split the difference.
Now this stuff has been going on in Ukraine forever.
So there's a few questions we have.
Why is it coming out now when the wheels seem to be coming off the war, at least for the Ukraine is winning people?
And what does it mean and how far will it go?
And the final thing I'll say in this first segment, Dr. Paul, just to kind of lay out the scene, if you'll put this next one, this is from the BBC report.
It's not just these two people.
The defense minister himself has been under scrutiny.
A host of other top officials were dismissed on Tuesday, i.e. today, including Deputy Prosecutor Prosecutor General, Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories, Deputy Minister for Development of Community and Territories, Yachislav Nagoda, Deputy Minister for Social Policy, and the regional governors of Dnipro Provetsk, Zaprozhia, Kiev, Sumy, and Hassan.
So this, and they're saying now that it may actually hit the prime minister.
He may be the next to go.
And this is all in the shadow of, of course, the departure of the president's top advisor, who was also forced to resign last week because he started telling the truth and an admission by the head of their intelligence that his intelligence agency assassinated one of the negotiators early in the war who happened to be from another Ukrainian intelligence agency.
So the wheels are coming off this.
The question is why now and what does that mean?
You know, what I notice here is this is not a discussion about policy.
Why are we there?
What are we doing?
How's the war going?
This is a consequence of a war gone badly, but it was going badly before it started.
But what they're in the process now that I see is they're dividing up the loot.
I mean, there's a lot of loot over there.
It's all in all forms, in the form of weapons and food and so much.
But it has nothing to do with how do we get out of this mess because we help create the mess.
And it could well be that the concentration on this, away from where the battle zones are and when that's going to change and whose policy is it, it's an admission of defeat.
I think when they're down to the bottom line there and everybody's grabbing, I think there was a bit of that when the Soviet system was coming apart.
Who was going to walk away with the loot?
And the loot came from mostly America.
And we did that.
And it was a big mistake.
There's going to be a limit.
So the only thing is, is that, you know, it gets tough searching for something.
How can we get something positive out of this?
I just hope it wakes up a few more people and say, what in thunder are we doing there?
It makes no sense.
Oh, well, we're defending the Constitution and our freedoms.
And we have to do this or the Russians will come and invade us.
So that is a problem, getting the truth out, and hopefully we can contribute to that.
Well, we'll do our best.
Two things I forgot to mention is the president's basically deputy chief of staff, Timoshenko, he was also fired for corruption.
And also we had this thing, we haven't talked about it on the show, but there's this very mysterious helicopter crash, I think about a week ago, where the interior minister and his entire staff were killed.
Now they blamed it on a pilot error, but according to some stories I've seen, he was involved in some serious corruption issues himself and may have been offed by one of the other people in the cabinet.
But you know, the main reason we're bringing this to the attention, because this is not new news.
This is pointing out the obvious.
But this was your first reaction when we started talking about the show.
Yeah, but what's the real corruption?
And the funny thing is the real corruption, the real mafia, seems to be Biden himself and his family.
And he even admitted it.
You remember when he was on videotape bragging about getting the prosecutor who was investigating Biden's own son, getting him fired in exchange for a billion-dollar loan to Ukraine.
He's literally on tape admitting to his own corruption, and now we're supposed to be surprised.
Yeah, but he's been selected.
He's a passy.
He's been put there, and he's playing their game because the people behind the scenes, which even when you have a different situation, there's always somebody behind that makes these final decisions of what the policy is going to be.
So I think it's still this very mysterious deep state.
A guy like George Soros could probably belong in a deep state.
And when you think of George Brooks, he was involved in this mess, too.
So he made the astounding statement that, you know, it'd be best if there's going to be a war, which we need to do, is the Western, though, he included the United States and Western Europe, as people, they were sensitive about bodybuilders.
So let the people in Eastern Europe do it.
Let the Ukrainians do that because they're less sensitive about bodybuilding.
I mean, that's the attitude he has.
You'd think this would be a wake-up call, but too many people go along with that.
But who knows what the people are receiving as far as information goes.
And just look at the true, the truthful misinformation that comes to our country on foreign policy or COVID policy or all these other things is just pounding away.
And it is a real struggle when there are things like the Main Street media and the social media.
I mean, we're competing with some great odds, but still success comes about and people do finally wake up.
And I just have optimism about the people if they have an honest chance to make a decision and know what's going on.
And this is why, sadly, one of our biggest problems now is the whittling away at our First Amendment rights to express ourselves.
Yeah.
And you know what's particularly disgusting is when a scandal like this, these guys are in trenches.
This is World War I type of warfare.
They're up to the waist in mud.
The idea of some minister of government getting rich and these guys in the trenches not getting their food perhaps because of it, I thought it's particularly disgusting.
But you're right, the real corruption is the corruption of robbing Americans of $100 billion and sending it into the cesspool of Ukraine.
That's where the real corruption is.
Yeah, this minister stole some money, took a bribe, but our government stole from us to help foment this war.
But I'm going to play a clip, Dr. Paul, because actually our good friend and colleague Jeff Deiss sent it over to me.
It's a fascinating tweet from Michael Tracy.
And it happened today.
Zelensky was addressing a chambers of commerce meeting in Boca Raton, where he thanks BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and others for their support.
And he says that sending Ukraine heavier weapons like Abrams tanks represents a big business opportunity for U.S. corporations.
Let's hear Zelensky in his own words.
Global economic growth.
We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international, financial, and investment world as BlackRock, GP Morgan, and Golden Sox, such American brands as Starlink or Westinghouse have already become part of our Ukrainian way.
Your brilliant defense systems, such as High Mars or Red Lace, are already uniting our history of freedom with your enterprises.
We are waiting for Patriots.
We are looking closely at Abrams.
Thousands of such examples are possible.
And everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine in all sectors, from weapons and defense to construction, from communication to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine.
And I believe that freedom must always win.
So the whole thing is just a big, great business opportunity for BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Productive Effort in Finance00:02:25
It's kind of like you said the quiet part out loud, isn't it?
You know, you have that type of decision-making and their goals or personal goals.
But we also have the economic factor.
How do we finance wars?
Do we finance it with capital?
Capital comes from savings and productivity.
No, it's the same old things, how we finance our whole government.
It's fiat money, it's printed in money.
And what is a characteristic of that?
The value of the money goes down and prices go up.
But the other one is malinvestment.
The money goes to the wrong places and they do things that you wouldn't otherwise do.
What if we were on a signed monetary system and the money had to come literally out of the people's pocket directly rather than indirectly by paying higher costs for their food?
So they want to do this and think it's going to work out.
But it is, in a way, one of the ultimate of malinvestments because there's easy credit, deficits don't matter, and we have thrown money at this.
And, you know, still, and the Republicans and Democrats, guess what?
They're in cahoots together.
They're both doing the same thing.
You know, they both, this is sacred, the military-industrial complex, which is corruption.
How much of this money is really going to be a productive effort and it comes from saving and sound policy?
No, it's whoever gets hold of that money first.
It happens to be the banking system or the pharmaceutical companies.
It is so corrupt that I think that's why people should say it's guaranteed or what the bad results will be.
But it doesn't mean that it has to be there or you can't do something about it or you can't recover about it.
The whole goal is getting people to understand what freedom is all about and how a free market is the most productive, you know, the most productive effort that you could have is let people overcome these obstacles, but instead, we all march us on.
And this to me is just another example of the worst firm form of malinvestment coming from out of the Federal Reserve.
Yeah, and my reaction was actually exactly what you just said.
When Jeff sent it to me, I sent him a note back saying, it reminds me of the COVID because the whole thing was a big pharmaceutical scandal.
Yeah, there you go.
Chinese NATO Expansion Concerns00:10:28
It's all the same thing.
Well, you alluded to this next little story we're going to do.
If you can put that up, and this is thanks to our friends at Zero Hedge, but this is authored by John Cody at Remix News.
And this takes us way back to 1993.
And I remember this well.
George Soros involved in the expansion of NATO.
And here's what the article says.
George Soros urged the use of Eastern European soldiers to, quote, reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, end quote, in a new world order article.
And put this next one on.
This is from the piece that he wrote back in 1993.
And he was very, very open about it, Dr. Paul, toward a new world order, the future of NATO.
And if you go to the next one, here's a quote from it, from the article, and here's what Soros is writing.
He's no dummy.
Let's put it this way.
The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world.
When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others.
Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act.
This is a viable alternative to the booming, to the looming world disorder, he wrote.
So basically, the U.S. is not intervening enough overseas.
The reason it's doing, as you point out, is because it doesn't want a lot of body bags to come home.
So what the heck?
These East Europeans, they're Untermension, right?
They're not even humans.
So just use them.
Let them be bloodied and bruised.
And as it's suggested in the article, that is sort of a foreshadowing of the situation we're in right now where Ukraine is bleeding to the last person.
You know, this emphasizes and makes the point that, you know, any type of society is government's authoritarian, which almost every government is to some degree.
And when it is authoritarian, then the benefits are sorted out and given away for political reason.
And I think this is one where the whole purpose now is to have relative value of life.
You know, if you live in western Ukraine, your life is worth more than if it's in eastern Ukraine or if you're in Europe and all of a sudden, oh, they're not people over there.
And it's so much of a corruption of a mental status and a mental understanding of what morality is all about.
So it is a significant event, but right now, we have a long way to go to get people to understand this because it starts with the principle of non-interventionism and a limitation of government.
People have to start with saying, what is the purpose of government?
That's why we were so blessed with our early approach to what we had in this country was the Constitution was that you can't do a thing unless you have explicit authority to do it.
Now the people say the Constitution says you can do anything you want if there's no prohibition.
And they believe this.
That's what they're taught in schools.
So that's a hard one to correct.
But I don't hear enough people talking about that, I'll tell you.
Well, I'll tell you where they're not taught that in the Ron Paul curriculum.
So homeschool your kids so they don't end up being dumb.
But it's interesting to see Soros, and this is a long time ago.
In fact, this is just a couple of months after I moved to Hungary, and they were talking about NATO expansion to Hungary.
Here's Soros with his vast fortune made in suspicious circumstances, looking for ways to increase U.S. interventionism overseas and expressing the natural reticence of the average American to get involved overseas.
And I think we both believe this.
Americans, generally speaking, don't like all this foreign nonsense, these foreign wars.
So he's trying to figure out how do we go to get over this reticence.
That has really been the entirety of his entire time in the post-communist world is how to get the U.S. more involved.
He even funds a think tank in D.C. under the auspices of being less involved.
It actually makes a lot of excuses for more involvement.
So this is the real deal.
This is what's really happening, I think.
You know, we don't deserve our empire.
But can you think of it here, most empires have to, the Roman Empire didn't wait until somebody was motivated, bring them in, bring them in.
Here they are.
They're begging for us to come in.
Of course, they think they're going to get monetary benefits from it or get political power and they will share this all.
But eventually it comes down and I think there's cracks in their system already and it will not last because the bankruptcy.
They cannot avoid the bankruptcy and dealing with it.
That has to happen.
There has to be liquidation and that is what we're going to see.
And the longer they play around and play games with it, the liquidation process, whether it's in the foreign policy or in economic policy, the worse it's going to get.
They think, oh, we're going to have a soft landing next week.
Everything will be okay.
We're going to have a soft landing in Ukraine next week.
It could be twice as bad next week in Ukraine.
Yeah.
Well, the last thing we want to cover, basically we could summarize this in Tom Wood's great maxim.
No matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.
And that is indeed the case, unfortunately.
Let's put on this next one.
This is from our friends at antiwar.com, Dave DeCamp, report, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to visit Taiwan.
The Pentagon is preparing for his trip to Taiwan following, of course, the massively controversial trip by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan last August.
He wants to get in on some of that action.
He wants to stir things up.
He wants to kick China in the face.
I think I heard somebody say, we're all hawks now.
Yeah.
Well, they need the Keynesians to pay for it, but the Hawks are there.
And it's so bipartisan.
You know, here it is.
They were fighting tooth and nail out there.
So what, matter of fact, McCarthy actually promised to do that.
So you give him credit for sticking to his promises.
No, not when they're monstrous and that is invasive and you're working on your empire.
But here he said, I'll do like Nancy Pelosi did.
And they went over and hers was just, well, a silly trip in a way, but very symbolic of our government.
So on that, and the payment of all these things and this charade they're going to go through.
They're really worried about the deficit.
How are we going to pay the bills?
And they all know everything's going to get paid for.
Because matter of fact, what if they just froze?
What if they just had the Congress disappear, but the Federal Reserve was there?
You know, during tough times, the Federal Reserve can send so much money, you know, internationally, because all their activity internationally is, that's the most secret part of the Federal Reserve.
So they can send money to another government and do whatever they want.
This whole idea that we're going to obey the law here on the deficit, they have ways of hiding it, and they're very generous in using those ways.
That's why we need to audit the Fed.
Well, here's from the article a little bit, because this tells you everything that it's about.
It's not about diplomacy or foreign policy.
McCarthy and other Republicans have said they will make confronting China a priority as they now have control of the U.S. House because before we weren't doing that, before we weren't doing that.
But I would just put this out, Dr. Paul.
I don't think the Chinese are that afraid of what's happening.
Because when the Chinese look at the U.S., hundreds of bases overseas, thousands of troops overseas.
The U.S. lost a 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The U.S. lost in Iraq and they destroyed the country.
They blew up the Middle East and it's still a disaster.
They're losing in Ukraine and that is a fact.
This is not, and even who was it that said the other day, I think it was the Russian foreign minister, he said, this really is a war between Russia and NATO in the U.S.
And that is a fact.
They're very much involved.
They're losing that war.
So the Chinese look around.
Every time these dunderheads that run things in D.C. decide on an intervention, it always ends up bad.
So I think this might be the case again.
So the world has changed a lot in this past year.
And I think they may not be as terrified as they were.
Yes, and I think they have to play gimmicks on this because the American people would not tolerate what's happening, but they have to play these games.
And I think it's the insincerity that makes it so bad.
And I keep thinking about how we started to make inroads with our side of the story on COVID.
And it was when the hypocrisy was pointed out.
Hypocrisy and inconsistent, because the little guy doesn't have a chance to make these choices and they feel lost.
And it really angers them.
And you know, it's one time when sometimes a Democrat will switch and challenge the Democrats themselves.
Same way with Republicans.
They do that because they just get disgusted with all this talk and hypocrisy that goes on.
But it's there and we have to deal with it.
And I think this trip, there's no benefit to it, mainly because of the way it's being done.
Now, under see, I don't think I would say the same thing in spite of some shortcomings of when Nixon and Kissinger decided, well, maybe we ought to at least talk to the Chinese because all I know is I remember the conditions before that happened, and the whole thing was so different.
And then all of a sudden, people saw the positive side.
Oh, you know, they could become customers in this sort of thing.
But that's different.
That's not Pelosi's more Pelosi and McCarthy.
Libertarian Party's Anti-War Rally00:02:12
They want to go with the warmongering stuff and intercede there.
That's the problem.
Why are they over there?
And once again, I think if you had a true non-interventionist Congress and a president, we wouldn't be having any treaties or any foreign aid that we would have to go inspect.
How are they doing everything?
Oh, don't you think we ought to go?
We're conservatives and we don't want any corruption.
So we're in Congress.
Boy, I can't wait till I can go to Ukraine and straighten up that mess.
I mean, that's such a misconception.
It is.
Well, I'm going to close out with a little bit of an announcement.
If you can put this next one on, this is from anti-war.com yesterday.
Right and left to join in D.C. protests.
Not another penny for war in Ukraine.
February 19th, the new anti-interventionist coalition to march to the White House from the Lincoln Memorial.
It's going to be, it's called Rage Against the War Machine, February 19th, Washington, D.C. Mark your calendars.
There's a huge list of speakers from the left to the right.
Scott Ritter, who's spoken at our events, is going to be there.
And Dr. Paul, guess who else is going to be there?
Let's look at the next clip.
Ladies and gentlemen, there we go.
Don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.
I will be speaking at this rally on February 19th.
I will not wear a buffalo hat on my head and go in the Capitol building.
However, I can assure you, but I will make some comments to what I hope is a massive, massive rally, the Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party.
Several other organizations are behind it.
So mark your calendars.
Go to Google Rage Against the War Machine, and you'll find out more information.
And I'll put a link in the description here where you can find out more.
The People's Party and the Libertarian Party are sponsoring it.
It is time to get out there and demonstrate against this war.
Okay.
Glad you're going on a trip.
Take care of them.
Keep them on us.
But you know what?
The Libertarian Party is involved in this.
And this is good because there was a time we complained, why aren't the Libertarian Party, you know, really being hardcore libertarian?
Libertarian Party Progress00:01:04
And they had some changes in their leadership here in a recent year.
And Tom Woods had a lot to do with that.
He deserves credit.
And he even got me to go to one of their functions.
So I think it's good.
And I think they should be encouraged because in a way, you know, people would say, well, what do you think about third parties?
And my answer was, I'm still waiting for the second party.
And that's all I ever mentioned here.
They're all the same when it comes down to the big issues, whether it's war and money and budget deficits and all this.
So I think this is good and this is an issue.
And in a way, it's not waiting until it gets so bad that somebody's finally going to get together and get organized on that.
So I hope there's a big turnout for them.
And everybody can go and see and meet Daniel McAdams.
He'll probably be the star of the show.
Come on.
But I do want to thank all our viewers for tuning in today.