So I checked to see if I'd mentioned Paul Manafort recently coz.. you know.. my research tends to focus on child trafficking..
In
Tony Podesta and Kurt Volker, former director of the McCain Institute viewtopic.php?f=50&p=9219#p9219
In mid-September 2019, reports began to surface suggesting that a whistleblower complaint had been submitted to Michael K. Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, which he found to be credible and a matter of “urgent concern”.[25] Subsequently, claims were advanced by various chairmen of U.S. House committees that Kurt Volker, while acting in his official capacity as US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, had been told by the White House "to intercede with President Zelensky" about investigations regarding Joe Biden and Paul Manafort..
In June 2019, Volker married Georgian journalist for Voice of America Ia Meurmishvili[/color]
https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/ia-meurm ... e-married/
Ia Meurmishvili is a Georgian journalist for Voice of America News who is the wife of Kurt Volker, the former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine.. Volker also resigned as the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University. Volker, who has previously worked for the State Department, as a legislative fellow to the late Republican U.S. Senator John McCain and as U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush, along with in the private sector. He was previously married to Karen Volker and has two daughters...
Before entering the journalism world, Meurmishvili worked in the private sector, as a Congressional aide and for an NGO [
Eurasia Foundation https://www.eurasia.org/who-we-are/board-of-trustees/].
She was the executive assistant to the president of Finmeccanica North America, Inc., an Italian aerospace company, from 2006 to 2008, accoding to her Linkedin profile...
Meurmishvili was also a Congressional Research Fellow for former Pennsylvania Democratic Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz. She, “Played lead role in providing staff support to the Congressional Georgia Caucus, briefed Congresswoman Schwartz and her senior foreign policy staff on emerging political, social, economic, and security issues in Georgia..
She was a founding board member of the Georgian Center in D.C..
Meurmishvili was previously married to Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon aide. Maloof lost his security clearance because, in part, of his relationship with Meurmishvili, according to “Sabatoge,” a 2006 book by Rowan Scarborough.
Kurt Volker’s McCain Institute received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Orbán Government
https://hungarianfreepress.com/2019/10/ ... overnment/
Kurt Volker is a former CIA agent turned diplomat who served in Budapest between 1994 and 1997. He learned Hungarian and developed close relations with then opposition Viktor Orbán and his circle. Returning to the US he maintained close relations with pro-Orbán émigré organizations and acted as a “soft lobbyist” for the Orbán regime. ..
Volker’s promising diplomatic career was cut short after President Obama removed him as the United States ambassador to NATO. He was close to the late Senator McCain and now serves as executive director of the McCain Institute. Under his tenure the think tank received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Budapest. We estimate that the institute receives $150-200,000 annually, mostly from The Hungarian Initiatives Foundation, a Washington DC-based organization created and funded by the Orbán government.
Kurt Volker also serves on the board of The Hungarian Initiatives Foundation. This raises the suspicion of conflict of interest since it puts him in the position of approving funds channeled to his own Institute. We don’t know his compensation as a Board Member.
He also received the highest state award from the President of Hungary for his services. In the US, Volker is close with a pro-Orbán organization, the Hungarian American Coalition run by a mother-daughter team, Edith Lauer and Andrea Lauer Rice. Edith Lauer is a fellow board member of The Hungarian Initiatives Foundation.
AMBASSADOR KURT VOLKER
https://www.hungaryfoundation.org/about ... rt-volker/
Ambassador Volker was a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service, with over 23 years of experience working on European policy under five U.S. Administrations. He served as Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from July 2, 2008 until May 17, 2009 – straddling the transition from the Bush to the Obama Administrations. His tenure at NATO saw Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the ramp up of military efforts in Afghanistan, the return of France to NATO’s military structure, the enlargement of NATO to 28 members, and NATO’s 60th Anniversary Summit in Strasbourg, France..
From 1999 to 2001, Ambassador Volker was Deputy Director of the Private Office of then-NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson. As a State Department Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Senate from 1997-1998, Ambassador Volker worked on foreign policy matters for Senator John McCain.
My most recent post involving the McCain Institute:
