WASHINGTON — An Ukrainian-American woman at the center of accusations by U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 American presidential election, has spoken to the Kyiv Post about attacks on her by the Trump camp and how she is ready to assist the Congressional impeachment inquiry process that took such a dramatic turn this week.
Alexandra Chalupa, a former part-time consultant at the Democratic National Committee, brought to American attention that Paul Manafort, who in 2016 became the manager for Donald Trump’s election campaign, had previously been Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych’s, long-time spin doctor.
Trump was forced to fire Manafort. Later, information emerged that Manafort had concealed from U.S. tax authorities millions of dollars in payments from Yanukovych. He is currently serving a seven-and-a-half-year jail sentence after being convicted of tax fraud.
Three U.S. Congressional committees are looking into accusations that Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into launching a corruption investigation against former American Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Biden looks likely to be the candidate from the Democratic Party to challenge Republican Trump in next year’s American presidential election. The Trump camp apparently hoped that a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens would discredit Joe Biden.
The accusations surfaced after complaints by two White House whistleblowers that Trump was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv launched an investigation against Joe Biden seen as Trump’s most powerful rival in next year’s election.
The allegations that Trump wanted to involve a foreign country – Ukraine – in getting dirt on an election rival seem to be borne out by a transcript of a July telephone conversation between the American and Ukrainian presidents.
Testimonies to the committees, including by a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv and the current top American diplomat in Ukraine, have also tended to undermine Trump’s defense that he did not try to strong-arm Zelensky into gathering dirt on Biden.
Giuliani crops up often in the saga as Trump’s point man in Ukraine to get various, dodgy Ukrainian politicians, officials, and businessmen, to play supporting roles in a discredited narrative he has pushed that Joe Biden had a Ukrainian prosecutor general fired in order to protect from a corruption investigation a company that had employed his son, Hunter.
Two businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both American citizens born in Ukraine and Belarus, respectively, involved in Giuliani’s narrative were arrested last week as they tried to fly out on one-way tickets.
This week they pleaded not guilty to charges making illegal campaign contributions to U.S. political candidates in exchange for potential influence.
As the fake Biden narrative withers, Giuliani and Trump have stepped up attempts to discredit Ukraine as “corrupt.”
The other prong of Trump and Giuliani’s attacks on Ukraine has been the “Ukraine collusion” allegations in which they claim that Kyiv, through Alexandra Chalupa, conspired to damage Trump’s 2016 election chances.
Those first surfaced in December 2016 when Chalupa faced a barrage of accusations from Trump’s supporters. At the same time, there were disturbing incidents round her home, which she reported to police, and which she believes were meant to intimidate her.
They included people lurking around the back and front of her suburban home in Washington, D.C., and break-ins into her car when nothing was stolen but items were carefully re-arranged as a warning, she believes, to demonstrate that she and her young children were vulnerable.
Chalupa’s challenge to Giuliani
In recent weeks Giuliani has tweeted more conspiracy allegations against Chalupa who has also been attacked by Republican Congressmen, a pro-Trump political action committee, American right-wing media and Kremlin propaganda radio station Sputnik, which broadcasts in the Washington area.
Chalupa responded by proposing that she and Giuliani should give testimonies to Congress. She told the Kyiv Post: “I would love to explain to Congress how Giuliani and Manafort planted in the mainstream media in the U.S. this Ukraine collusion narrative. This narrative originated with Moscow and has been coordinated with the Trump team in the WH and Giuliani’s team.”
Trumps’s denials about improper behavior received a drubbing this week when America’s acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, testified before impeachment inquiry members that several top U.S. administration officials told him that Trump blocked military aid for Ukraine and would not meet Zelensky until he launched an investigation against Biden.
Read also: Taylor’s testimony proves damning to Trump, may be turning point in impeachment probe
Chalupa believes that Giuliani, likely in coordination with Manafort, has been trying for three years to distract public attention from conclusions by all American intelligence agencies and the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated links between Trump and the Kremlin, that Moscow interfered massively by online media distortion and huge email thefts, to aid Trump’s 2016 election bid.
According to Giuliani’s narrative, Chalupa received “dirt” about Manafort from Ukrainian officials intent on interfering in the 2016 elections to help Trump’s then-rival, Hillary Clinton.
But she said that she had first learned about Manafort when monitoring events during the 2014 mass demonstrations in Kyiv: “This is not information that was obtained from any government, most of it had been in the public domain for years. They’re (Giuliani and his associates) trying to make me out as a researcher who was digging dirt on Manafort. The dirt was out in the open. The information about who Manafort was and his influence-peddling for Putin was available and understood by any Ukrainian-American paying attention to what had been happening in Ukraine, everyone in Ukraine, the U.S. embassy. It was not research – I was sounding the warning bell.”
She said she had already reported her concerns about Manafort to a contact in the U.S. National Security Council in 2014.
Chalupa said that earlier this year it seemed that Trump and the man he appointed as United States Attorney General, William Barr, had succeeded in making many Americans believe the Mueller Report had failed to find wrongdoing by Trump – something far from the truth – and that only the 2020 election could eject the president from office.
However, she believes the recent testimonies show that Trump’s removal by impeachment is a realistic possibility.
She said: “I think the importance of the impeachment inquiry process is that every day there’s been light dramatically shined on truth and that truth is exposing part of the bigger picture. There are a lot of witnesses despite the continued obstruction from the White House that are bravely coming forward – probably more than we realize. We just see some of them.”
“This is an administration that is clearly terrified of the truth coming out. They have been caught and are using the Ukraine-collusion conspiracy to distract from their crimes and to commit more crimes by strong-arming foreign nations,” said Chalupa. “But this a Congress that is adamant that the truth does come out and we’re going to see a lot more. The information that has been made public is just the tip of the iceberg.”
As she is once more drawn into the political turmoil, anonymous attacks on social media platforms, as well as by politicians and Trump supporters, have increased. The Kyiv Post asked Chalupa if she felt safe.
She replied: “Safety is relative. I think the behavior of this illegitimate president shows nobody is safe in the world. We have seen this with our allies the Kurds, we have seen this with many who have defended the Constitution or stood up to his (Trump’s) corruption.”
She said that her grandparents had experienced the horror of the Holodomor and one of her grandfathers had been arrested and tortured during Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s purges but had not surrendered. Their example, she said, showed her that everyone had a choice. “And I choose truth,” she said.
“This is not about me. Three years of intimidation tactics and harassment that has been orchestrated by the Kremlin and the White House targeting me has done nothing but give me strength. Regardless of the danger and how hard this administration wants to come after me, I will not be silenced. In fact, the more they come after me, the louder I will become,” she promised.
