At the heart of this latest impeachment fiasco is the Ukrainian natural gas industry, and one company in particular: Burisma.
It was Burisma’s hiring of Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a cushy board member position paying $600K per year that smelled fishy to President Trump, prompting the corruption investigation that turned into an articles of impeachment for “abuse of power”.
That was only one such logical leap being made by Democratic lawmakers here either, with many insisting that even talking about the Biden-Burisma confluence was somehow parroting Russian talking points which were designed to bring chaos to the American political system. (Apparently, raising concerns about nepotism at the highest levels of government is Kremlin propaganda).
But that’s not to say that Russia is completely innocent here, either…at least not according to the latest news on the subject.
A U.S. cybersecurity company says Russian military agents successfully hacked the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the scandal that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Russian agents launched a phishing campaign in early November aimed at stealing the login credentials for employees of Burisma Holdings, the gas company, according to Area 1 Security, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in e-mail security.
It was not clear from an eight-page report posted online by Area 1 what the hackers were looking for or may have obtained. The timing of the operation suggests, however, that the Russian agents could be searching for material that could damage the Bidens.
There were some familiar fingerprints at the scene of the crime as well.
Russian hackers from the same military intelligence unit that Area 1 said was behind the operation targeting Burisma have been indicted for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race.
Stolen emails were released online at the time by Russian agents and WikiLeaks in an effort to favor Trump, special counsel Robert Mueller determined in his investigation.
It appears as though we won’t be rid of Russia’s international electoral interference anytime soon.
