Talking Points Memo: “FBI and IRS agents in Cleveland and Miami on Tuesday raided the offices of a company tied to a Ukrainian oligarch suspected of pushing dirt on Vice President Joe Biden.”
“Vicki Anderson, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Cleveland office, confirmed the raids of Optima Management to TPM, declining to comment any further because the matter ‘is still under seal.’ Nobody was taken into custody, Anderson added. Optima Management is partly owned by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, per court documents filed in Delaware last year. Kolomoisky has faced a federal criminal investigation out of the Northern District of Ohio for at least a year. The oligarch told the New York Times in November 2019 that, were he the President of Ukraine, he would open the investigations into Biden that Trump and Giuliani have sought. The next month, associates and political allies of Kolomoisky’s met with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in Kyiv, offering the former NYC mayor a fabricated narrative about Biden. The meetings fueled suspicion that, in the words of one Western official based in Kyiv who spoke to TPM on condition of anonymity, Kolomoisky was ‘trying to become friends with Trump and Giuliani’ as the feds’ investigation of him progressed.”