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If President Trump's nominee for FBI director is confirmed by the Senate, the Democratic National Committee could face an investigation into its interactions with the Ukrainian government.

During his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Christopher Wray signaled a willingness to investigate allegations that the DNC worked with the Ukrainian government to impede Trump's presidential campaign in 2016.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., read an excerpt from Politico's January investigation into the matter during his allotted time to question Wray. "Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country," Graham quoted from the report.

Politico's investigation asserted that Ukrainian government officials "helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers."

The report, published before Trump's inauguration earlier this year, also cited "people with direct knowledge of the situation" claiming that a "Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the DNC met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia."

Alexandra Chalupa, described by Politico as a "veteran Democratic operative," was engaged during the presidential campaign in research on Trump's ties to Russia, part of which was guided by the Ukrainian embassy. At the time, she was consulting for the DNC on outreach to ethnic communities. Politico reported that the DNC "encouraged" Chalupa to facilitate an interview during which Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko would discuss Paul Manafort's connections to former President Viktor Yanukovych.

Chalupa confirmed to Politico that she "occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton's campaign."

"Will you look into this?" Graham asked Wray after reading an excerpt from Politico's article. The nominee responded he would be "happy to dig into it."

For its part, the DNC has denied any wrongdoing. A source familiar with the matter spoke to CNN, claiming in a story published Wednesday, "We never got any actual information. It didn't go beyond running by someone in a hallway and hearing rumors ... It was hearsay in the hallway conversation, there was never any formal conversation or paper research."

Allegations regarding the DNC's interactions with Ukraine resurfaced this week after news broke that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer to potentially receive opposition research on Hillary Clinton sourced from the Russian government during his father's campaign.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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DNC could face investigation into Ukraine ties if Christopher Wray is ... - Washington Examiner

Donald Trump Jr. spoke with Fox News host Sean Hannity about his emails about materials from Russia that would undercut Hillary Clinton. (Screenshot)

Donald Trump Jr.s 2016 meeting with a lawyer tied to the Russian government prompted a resolute response from Fox News host Sean Hannity: Democrats looked for dirt on the Republican nominee, too. And they were willing to turn to a foreign government to get it.

"Democrats, the mainstream media, are hysterical over the story," Hannity said July 11. "But they have completely ignored an example of actual election interference."

Hannity went on to summarize a January 2017 article from Politico headlined "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire." The story details the work of a Ukrainian-American consultant to the Democratic National Committee who looked for compromising information about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort had provided extensive political guidance to deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

According to Politico, the pro-Western administration that replaced Yanukovych preferred Clinton over Trump and was eager to help the consultant.

For Hannity, this was a direct parallel to the Trump affair, and he asked people to consider, "which was worse."

"Now that you have evidence from both sides, you have to decide for yourself," he told his viewers.

Are the two episodes basically the same?

No one has all the facts, but we can compare the details that we do have. The cases have similarities and differences.

The similarities

Benjamin Wittes, editor of the respected Lawfare blog, told us he doesnt think the comparison is frivolous.

"If everyone is running around with the assumption that its illegitimate to work with a foreign government in a campaign, then its perfectly fair to ask what was the relationship between the Clinton campaign and the Ukrainians," Wittes said.

The American intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in the election with the goal of defeating Clinton and helping Donald Trump. According to Politico, some Ukrainian officials were happy to accomplish the same thing, except they preferred Clinton over Trump.

Politico reporters said that top Ukrainian diplomats deny any interference, but they cited a former Ukrainian embassy staffer who said that he had been told to "research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia."

He said he coordinated with the key person in the Politico story, a Ukrainian-American consultant to the DNC named Alexandra Chalupa. Chalupa told Politico that she took it on herself to dig into Manaforts past and reached out to the embassy. She had a network of sources in Washington and Ukraine, and as she learned things, she would sometimes share them with colleagues at the DNC.

By the summer of 2016, more and more journalists were interested in Manafort, and Chalupa said she and people at the embassy would guide them in the right direction.

The Politico articles point was that Ukraine preferred Clinton. From what it reported, Chalupas efforts produced no specific result. The most significant revelation came from a Ukrainian lawmaker who held a news conference to disclose an accounting book that purportedly showed over $12 million set aside for Manafort by the party of the deposed president. The ledger emerged from an anti-corruption investigation.

The pressure grew and in mid August, Manafort stepped down from the campaign.

At the end of the day, information emerged from Ukraine that disrupted the Trump campaign. Taking the Politico report at face value, at least some Ukrainian officials helped in that process.

By contrast, private emails acquired by the Russians and distributed through Wikileaks and DCleaks, in conjunction with a false news disinformation campaign, disrupted the Clinton campaign.

The differences

If the broad outlines are similar, some key elements distinguish these episodes from each other.

The Politico article highlighted a major one.

"Russias effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (and) involved the countrys military and foreign intelligence services," the article said. "Theres little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine."

So, according to American intelligence agencies, the Kremlin shaped and directed the email hacking of Democrats and subsequent distribution. In contrast, a variety of actors on the Ukrainian side responded to American queries and provided public documents.

Which leads to the other big distinction: The Russians got their materials through cyber-attacks, while the only telling document revealed by a Ukrainian lawmaker was the product of an official investigation.

"Theres a difference between dealing with the embassy and dealing with a covert intelligence operation," Wittes said. "Are you dealing with government records, or are you dealing in stolen dirt?"

To be clear, we do not know if the hacked emails had any ties to contacts the Trump campaign did or didnt have with Russians. But hacked emails are different from the results of a public investigation.

Taking that difference one step further, there was nothing inherently illegal in the quest for information on Manafort and how that might link Donald Trump to Russia. Wittes noted that from a research perspective, since Manaforts work took place in Ukraine, "you pretty much have to go to the Ukrainians to get that."

Other details also separate the two narratives.

Ukraine is seen as an ally to the United States, while Russia is at best a competitor and often called an enemy.

Lastly, the stories from Trump associates have changed over time as more press reports emerge. In the case of Donald Trump Jr., he first said he never represented the campaign in any meetings with Russians. Then he said there was a meeting, but it was about adoption laws. Then he said it was about Clinton, but it represented ordinary opposition research.

Its best to think of both stories as moving targets. The more they are explored, the more we will learn.

But to paraphrase Hannity, you have the information. You can decide how similar these stories are.

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Trump and Russia, Clinton and Ukraine: How do they compare? - PolitiFact

July 12, 2017 BerlinLost in all the attention focused on President Putin's presumed meddling in the 2016 US election is the changing state of Russia's ongoing undeclared war on Ukraine. But in his brief stop in Ukraine on Sunday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson brought it to the fore, scoring a judo flip on the Russian judo master.

The big question last week was the West's worry that President Trump might reach a strongman deal with Putin that would sacrifice Ukrainians to Moscows dominance in return for a vague promise of Russian restraint in, say, Syria.

But this week, the big question belongs to Putin, who now fears that Ukrainians continuing enthusiasm for Western democracy and rule of law might sway his own Russian subjects.

As a Newsweek headline put it, Despite Cozy Trump-Putin Summit, Tillerson Zaps Russia, Backs Ukraine.

In other words, Putins military brashness when he started his undeclared war on Ukraine in 2014 by annexing Crimea has become a vulnerability in 2017. The West, which has struggled to confrontPutins attacks on Europes 70-year-old system of peace and integration, is rediscovering its own resilience. Putin, meanwhile, is rediscovering the fundamental weakness of his country's economy and politics, exposed by Ukraine's defection from centuries of East Slav fraternity with Russia.

Within Russia, jingoist pride in seizing neighboring countries' territory is losing some of its mobilizing power. Alexei Navalnys nascent campaign to challenge Putin in the next presidential election is gaining strength, and while Mr. Navalny does not opposes Russias intervention in Ukraine, the growing popularity of an independent challenger to Putin would have been unthinkable during the euphoria of Crimean annexation.

Putin, an old KGB hand who doesn't understand the self-organizing power of Ukraines vibrant civil society, may attribute it to manipulation by Ukrainian and Western secret services. Yet he himself was the one who united Ukrainians in a historically unprecedented anti-Russian identity through his war, at a cost of more than 10,000 dead and 1.8 million Ukrainian refugees. By now, even Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country (who long mistrusted western Ukrainians), are converging with their compatriots for an overall 57 percent who hold "cold" or "very cold" feelings toward Russia.

Tillerson achieved his over-the-shoulder flip by making four points in Kiev.

First, he said Washington will not lift the financial sanctions it imposed on much-needed Western investment in Russia until Russia returns the territory they seized from Ukraine.

Second, he signaled that the US is finally bringing its muscle to the desultory Minsk peace talks on the separatist eastern Donbas that is in fact controlled by 5,000-10,000 rotating Russian troops. He also said that Moscow must take the first step in stopping violations of the cease-fire agreements of 2014 and 2015.

Third, Tillerson brought to Kiev Kurt Volker, his freshly minted special envoy for peace negotiations in Ukraine. Mr. Volker is a protg of Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, and, like Mr. McCain, publicly endorsed delivering defensive weapons to Kiev in 2014 and campaigned against letting Putin [call] NATOs bluff.

Volker wont be calling for NATO action against Russia, but he will surely revive the debate about providing high-tech defensive weapons to Ukraines surprisingly robust Army.

Fourth, Tillerson is now reviving the alliance between the Wests financiers of the pro-Western regime in Kiev and the embattled young reformers in Ukraines parliament, media, and civil society. In the absence of existing democratic institutions, this is the only engine that might make deep enough reforms to break the business-political collusion that has not yet been rooted out in Ukraine. The reformers provide the intelligence; the West withholds money if reforms continue to be blocked. Tillerson publicly warned President Petro Poroshenko and other oligarchs that if they do not clean old judges out of the courts and guarantee rule of law, Western investors will stay away.

Pointedly, Tillerson met first with reformers, including Mustafa Nayyem, the Afghan-Ukrainian who started the Maidan demonstrations that toppled the old regime in 2013.

Tillersons gamble could, of course, be halted by one contrary3 a.m.tweet from his boss. But until that happens, the secretary of State is creating a new fait accompli on the ground in Ukraine that is no doubt catching the Kremlins attention.

Elizabeth Pond is aformer European Bureau Chief for The Christian Science Monitor.

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In brief visit, Tillerson changes the conversation on Ukraine - Christian Science Monitor

European Council President Donald Tusk is due to arrive in Kiev on Wednesday night for high-level meetings | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

The summit is supposed to be a milestone on the road to integration, but the Dutch object to the idea of automatic EU membership.

By David Stern

7/12/17, 7:02 PM CET

Updated 7/12/17, 7:42 PM CET

KIEV A summit between top Ukrainian and European Union officials to take place over the next two days in Kiev is likely to end without a final joint communiqu because of Dutch objections over wording that the EU acknowledges Ukraines European aspirations.

European Council President Donald Tusk, Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini were due in Kiev on Wednesday evening for a private working dinner with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ahead of formal meetings on Thursday.

The summit caps a series of milestones on what many in Ukraine hope is a road to full European integration: Last month Ukrainians received the right to travel to Europes Schengen zone without a visa, and on Tuesday the EUs 28 member countries ratified a deep and comprehensive economic agreement between the bloc and Ukraine.

But on Wednesday, according to a European diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity, four weeks of negotiations over the language of the summits final communiqu ended in an impasse.

The absence of a final statement especially one confirming the countrys European destiny could prove an embarrassment for Kiev, as it is highly unusual for a high-level meeting of this sort to end without a joint declaration.

According to officials who declined to be named, the Dutch said they could not support the communiqu as written, since their parliament had approved a Europe-Ukraine trade deal earlier in the year with the provision that it did not lead to automatic EU membership for Kiev.

A spokesperson for the Dutch government said he could not confirm this information.

The language that Europe acknowledged Ukraines desire to join the European Union was originally a part of a statement at the EUs 2015 Eastern Partnership summit in Riga, Latvia.

We are backtracking on something that we have already signed with Ukrainians, said one person with direct knowledge of the negotiations. Juncker and Tusk are coming to Ukraine just to hold a press conference.

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Dutch block aspirational communique at EU-Ukraine summit - POLITICO.eu

Pavel Sheremet was a journalist of rare caliber, one whose reporting exemplified the best practices in the countries he covered: Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Despite threats and attacks during his career, Sheremet was not afraid to take on authorities. It was for this reason that CPJ honored him with an International Press Freedom Award in 1998.

When a car bomb killed Sheremet on July 20, 2016, the journalism community lost not only a colleague but an ardent supporter. His eloquent style and pursuit of truth is what led CPJ in 2005 to ask Sheremet to lead a conference in Moscow highlighting impunity in the murders of journalists in Russia. It was a perfect fit. For years, Sheremet demanded answers to the disappearance and presumed killing in 2000 of his colleague and friend, Belarusian cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky, and he spoke passionately in Moscow about the need to fight for justice, ask tough questions, and demand answers. Sheremet was able to infect everyone present with his belief that when working together, truth will out and justice will prevail. Now, more than 10 years later, CPJ is demanding answers into Sheremets murder.

(Olena Prytula)

Sheremets death took place at a divisive time in Ukraine. In 2016, CPJ documented attacks and hostility against journalists who covered the government critically or questioned its handling of the conflict with Russia-backed separatists. Nationalistic groups verbally assaulted or threatened journalists reporting from the east. In some instances, government and security officialsincluding the Interior Minister overseeing the department investigating Sheremets murdernot only stood by, but cheered the attackers on.

Against that backdrop, the murder of such a prominent figure sent reverberations through Ukraines press corps. Independent journalists there say they continue to dig into sensitive topicscorruption, abuse of office, the war in the eastbut at an increased sense of peril. Ukrainska Pravdas editor-in-chief, Sevgil Musayeva-Borovik, told CPJ, I fear for the safety of my colleagues ever since [Sheremets death]. After this murder, you want to be careful. I dont know how long this feeling will last. Yevgeny Kiselyov, a Russian journalist and International Press Freedom Awardee, added, A journalist can be killed as an edifying lesson to others. It says, Dont try too much.

Continue reading the rest of the story here.

This article was originally published on cpj.org and is part the Justice Denied: Ukraine comes up empty in probe of Pavel Sheremet's murder report.

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Ukraine must prove its commitment to credibly investigating Sheremet's murder - HuffPost