Trump’s Ukrainian Allies Had Prayer Breakfast Ties
"Active Russian agent" shared a breakfast table with members of Congress
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Two central figures in the effort by then-Pres. Donald Trump and advisor Rudy Giuliani to smear Joe Biden had ties to the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, event records show.
One is Andriy Derkach, the former member of Parliament who fled Ukraine for Russia. He was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020 for allegedly seeking to interfere in that year’s U.S. presidential election in his capacity as a Russian operative.
The other Ukrainian is Viktor Shokin. As recently as last year, Shokin appeared on Fox accusing Biden of getting him fired as a prosecutor, “because I was investigating Burisma,” the company at the heart of unfounded accusations against Biden and his son Hunter.
At the 2015 National Prayer Breakfast, Derkach was seated at a table along with U.S. members of Congress. Both he and Shokin attended in 2016, the same year Russian operatives Maria Butina and her handler, Alexander Torshin, were there.
Years later, Shokin and Derkach appeared with Giuliani in a One America News presentation boosting false Biden allegations. Giuliani had met with Derkach, pursued a business contract with Shokin, and tried to help Shokin get a visa.
Shokin’s removal from his position, Trump alleged, was pushed by Biden to thwart Shokin’s probe into Burisma. The Burisma narrative has been thoroughly debunked, even by Fox, and the international chorus that called for Shokin’s removal included Republicans.
Trump and Giuliani pressured Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy to say that Biden was under investigation, a potential political bombshell that could have damaged Biden’s 2020 campaign.
The long-running prayer breakfast was exposed as a venue for Russian influence back in 2018, when the FBI revealed that Butina and Torshin had used it for right-wing networking in 2016.
The attendance of Derkach and Shokin at that same breakfast has not been reported until now.
The event is run by the Fellowship Foundation, a secretive group also known as The Family. Although multiple news outlets identified the National Rifle Association as Torshin’s first U.S. connection, that’s not true. He attended his first known prayer breakfast in 2006, years before his initial NRA contact.
The Fellowship has a number of insiders and leaders supportive of Trump and even, at least until recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the Fellowship insiders who invited Derkach and Shokin don’t fall into one neat category when it comes to Russia.
Officially, the two were invited by an ostensible host committee, consisting of members of Congress.
But the committee was a front. The overwhelming majority of breakfast guests are chosen by The Fellowship.
Internal Fellowship records I obtained several years ago show that both Shokin and Derkach were invited by longtime Fellowship insiders.
Shokin attended at least the 2016 breakfast, lunch, and ancillary breakout sessions (where the real shadow diplomacy often occurs). Shokin was invited by Doug Burleigh and Michael Zhovnir in 2016.
It was Burleigh, the Fellowship’s longtime point man in Russia, who arranged for Torshin and Butina to bring ten Russian guests the following year. (In 2016, Butina and Torshin were formally submitted by former Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC).)
Burleigh is a Trump supporter who once predicted Trump and Putin would be friends. Zhovnir is a Fellowship insider based in Washington state, but with ties to Ukraine.
Derkach attended at least the 2015 and 2016 breakfasts. At the time, according to the Treasury Department, Derkach was “an active Russian agent.” The 2020 sanctions announcement said he had been for more than a decade.
At the 2015 prayer breakfast, Derkach shared a table with nine other people, including then-Reps. John Katko (R-NY) and Jackie Speier (D-CA), a Fellowship list shows.
Derkach was invited to the 2016 breakfast by Vladimir Gusinsky and both also participated in the lunch and breakout sessions. Gusinsky is a foe of Putin and the invitation came before the accusations of Derkach working for Russia became public.
Putin had arrested Gusinsky and seized his media outlets after Gusinsky supported a political rival and his company’s reporting raised questions about the official narrative around several 1999 terror attacks. Gusinsky, who is Jewish, fled Russia. He reportedly has been friends with Rupert Murdoch.
Fellowship records show that Gusinsky invited multiple members of the Israeli Knesset to the prayer breakfast, as well as members of Spain’s parliament.
Gusinsky has been a well-connected, active insider at the breakfast since the 1990s.
At the 2015 event, he was seated with then-House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); former Washington Post Publisher Don Graham and his wife, journalist and author Amanda Bennett; then-speaker of the Knesset Yuli-Yoe Edelstein; then-Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert; and Pres. Obama’s Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rabbi David Saperstein. At the same table was then-Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA), who had recently helped the Fellowship stand up its fledgling network in Guatemala.
According to a book by former Rep. Don Bonker (D-WA), a Fellowship insider who died last year, he brought Gusinsky, his client at the time, to The Fellowship in the ‘90s. Over the years, Gusinsky would pay for international guests to attend the breakfast. And helped choose the guests, the records show.
In 2009, after Gusinsky had fled Russia, Fellowship leader Doug Coe asked Gusinsky to arrange a junket on his private jet for the two of them along with Bonker, Burleigh and then-Rep. Joe Pitts (D-PA). They visited all 12 former Soviet republics, with U.S. embassies facilitating their trips, Bonkeer wrote.
According to Ukraine’s Pravda, Derkach is now a Russian citizen, and stands to be nominated to join the Federation Council of the Russian Federation. He is wanted by Ukraine for allegedly taking more than half a million dollars from Russia to work against his country.
Derkach is accused of seeking to hamper Ukraine’s integration into NATO and the European Union and to worsen relations with the United States.
Jonathan Larsen is a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC, CNN, ABCNews, and TYT. You can support his independent reporting with a paid subscription to his occasionally obnoxious newsletter, or by making a one-time donation.
This slimy prayer breakfast group really is a study in sucking the life and democracy out of our governing critters.
Grifters making their grifting plans.