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President Donald Trump - Formal Impeachment Inquiry Announced
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Outlaw Pete wrote: »No, it wouldnt change anything Trump has done, or what he is *alleged* to have done, but it would go a long way to destroying the nonsense narrative that Trump only asked Zelensky to look into him and his father's Burisma related activities because he might be on the ballot come 2020.
Disingenuous Pete is disingenuous.0 -
Outlaw Pete wrote: »No, it wouldnt change anything Trump has done, or what he is *alleged* to have done, but it would go a long way to destroying the nonsense narrative that Trump only asked Zelensky to look into him and his father's Burisma related activities because he might be on the ballot come 2020.
No it wouldn't, Pete. What would go some way to doing that would be a list of ten other foreign companies, possibly with other Americans on their boards, on which Trump expended an equal amount of energy trying it get investigations started. How many of those are there?
I'd settle for half a dozen, even.
What's that? None?
Thought so.0 -
The truly scary part in all this is that the Dems might actually be daft enough to put Biden on the 2020 ticket. They've backed themselves into a corner here. Biden will have to stay in the race as long as these proceedings continue. They will probably go on past the primaries.
Whatever about this whole dog and pony show going on in the house if they actually put him up for election they will almost certainly lose.
These proceedings really are a terrible idea for the Dems as I wanted to see a strong candidate come up and get the Donald out of office by the ballot."Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
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When the closed door stuff was going on the GOP were up in arms about the secrecy of it all and the need for it to be out in the open yet at the very outset of the open hearings GOP member Mike Conway is wanting to make a motion for the whistleblower to be supeoned for behind closed door questioning by the committee.0
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No it wouldn't, Pete. What would go some way to doing that would be a list of ten other foreign companies, possibly with other Americans on their boards, on which Trump expended an equal amount of energy trying it get investigations started. How many of those are there?
I'd settle for half a dozen, even.
What's that? None?
Thought so.
Can you show half a dozen Americans who are on camera bragging about withholding 1 billion in aid and getting a prosecutor fired who happened to be investigating a company their son was on the board of?"Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
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The truly scary part in all this is that the Dems might actually be daft enough to put Biden on the 2020 ticket. They've backed themselves into a corner here. Biden will have to stay in the race as long as these proceedings continue. They will probably go on past the primaries.
Whatever about this whole dog and pony show going on in the house if they actually put him up for election they will almost certainly lose.
These proceedings really are a terrible idea for the Dems as I wanted to see a strong candidate come up and get the Donald out of office by the ballot.
Imagine that is why Patrick has joined the race and Bloomberg seems likely to jump in. There is a degree of blood in the water. Thought at this stage of the game, the herd would have thinned considerably.0 -
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Hande hoche! wrote: »Imagine that is why Patrick has joined the race and Bloomberg seems likely to jump in. There is a degree of blood in the water. Thought at this stage of the game, the herd would have thinned considerably.
Exactly, they are running a very shoddy campaign so far IMO. I just can't see the angle they are working with this entire thing."Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
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To keep reality straight for everyone else,
"Shokin -- in the eyes of U.S. leaders, their Western allies, the International Monetary Fund and many Ukrainians -- wasn’t that he was being too aggressive about corruption, but that he was being far too lax. In May, Bloomberg News reported* that prosecutors in Ukraine had shelved the investigation into Zlochevsky by 2015, meaning Hunter Biden didn’t stand to benefit from the prosecutor’s ouster. Vitaliy Kasko, who pursued the case against Burisma’s owner as deputy prosecutor and is now first deputy prosecutor in the new government, told Bloomberg News that there had been no U.S. pressure to close that case. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also told Bloomberg News that Biden never asked him to close any cases."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-09/on-bidens-and-ukraine-wild-claims-with-little-basis-quicktake
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline-in-ukraine-probe-casts-doubt-on-giuliani-s-biden-claim
*Timeline in Ukraine Probe Casts Doubt on Giuliani’s Biden Claim
By Stephanie Baker and Daryna Krasnolutska
May 7, 2019, 12:00 AM EDT Updated on May 7, 2019, 11:37 AM EDT“There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” Kasko said in an interview last week. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”
Kasko’s assessment adds a wrinkle to one of the first political intrigues of the 2020 election season. It undercuts the idea that Biden, now a top Democratic presidential candidate, was seeking to sideline a prosecutor who was actively threatening a company tied to his son. Instead, it appears more consistent with Biden’s previous statements that he was pressing for the removal of a prosecutor who was failing to tackle rampant corruption: According to public reports and internal documents from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, U.S. officials had expressed concern for more than a year about Ukrainian prosecutors’ failure to assist an international investigation of Zlochevsky.U.K. Probe
Questions about the potential Ukraine conflict resurfaced with recent reports of a video in which Joe Biden described how he’d threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine unless its leaders dismissed Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. The New York Times reported on May 1 that Hunter Biden had a stake in the outcome because at the time he was on the board of Zlochevsky’s company, where he was paid as much as $50,000 a month for his work.
Hunter Biden joined the board in April 2014, two months after U.K. authorities requested information from Ukraine as part of a probe against Zlochevsky related to money laundering allegations. Zlochevsky had been minister of environmental protection under then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in February 2014 after mass protests.
After the U.K. request, Ukrainian prosecutors opened their own case, accusing Zlochevsky of embezzling public funds. Burisma and Zlochevsky have denied the allegations.
The case against Zlochevsky and his Burisma Holdings was assigned to Shokin, then a deputy prosecutor. But Shokin and others weren’t pursuing it, according to the internal reports from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office reviewed by Bloomberg.
In a December 2014 letter, U.S. officials warned Ukrainian prosecutors of negative consequences for Ukraine over its failure to assist the U.K., which had seized Zlochevsky’s assets, according to the documents.
Those funds, $23.5 million, were unblocked in 2015 when a British court determined there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the continued freeze, in part because Ukrainian prosecutors had failed to provide the necessary information.No Action
Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015. Over the next year, the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund criticized officials for not doing enough to fight corruption in Ukraine.
Shokin took no action to pursue cases against Zlochevsky throughout 2015, said Kasko, who was Shokin’s deputy overseeing international cooperation and helping in asset-recovery investigations. Kasko said he had urged Shokin to pursue the investigations.
The U.S. stepped up its criticism in September 2015, when its ambassador to Ukraine, during a speech, accused officials working under Shokin of “subverting” the U.K. investigation.
Kasko resigned in February 2016, citing corruption and lawlessness in the prosecutor general’s office.
The U.S. plan to push for Shokin’s dismissal didn’t initially come from Biden, but rather filtered up from officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. Embassy personnel had called for U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine to be tied to broader anti-corruption efforts, including Shokin’s dismissal, this person said.
Biden’s threat to withhold $1 billion if Ukraine didn’t crack down on corruption reportedly came in March. That same month, hundreds of Ukrainians demonstrated outside President Petro Poroshenko’s office demanding Shokin’s resignation, and he was dismissed.
Shokin has denied any accusations of wrongdoing and declined to provide immediate comment for this article. In an interview with the Ukrainian website Strana.ua published on May 6 [2019 - article was updated], Shokin said he believes he was fired because of his Burisma investigation, which he said had been active at the time.
In October 2017, Burisma issued a statement saying Ukrainian prosecutors had closed all legal and criminal proceedings against it.No Convictions
Earlier this year, Ukraine’s current prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, met with Trump attorney Giuliani, and the two discussed the Burisma investigation, according to Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan.
Sargan said the prosecutor general hasn’t reopened the case into Burisma or Zlochevsky, contradicting a claim in the New York Times that the Ukrainian prosecutor is scrutinizing millions of dollars of payments from Burisma to the firm that paid Hunter Biden. Ari Isaacman Bevacqua, a Times spokeswoman said, “We stand by our reporting, which is detailed and well documented.”
Ukraine’s incoming president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is likely to appoint his own top prosecutor to replace Lutsenko. Under Poroshenko, Ukraine hasn’t convicted any high-ranking officials of corruption.
Giuliani has been pressing for greater scrutiny of the Biden matter. “Biden conflicts are too apparent to be ignored and should be investigated quickly and expeditiously,” Giuliani tweeted, sharing a link to the Times’s story.
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1123931549353771010?s=200 -
I wonder if they will get anything to stick on him, seems to be the republicans are trying to drag the arse out of it and stall.0
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Why?
So you can insult me the same way you do Pete?
I'll think I'll pass on that one as I don't want to play that silly game.
Pete just repeats the Trump point of the day which often contradicts tomorrow's point of the day. It's unfortunate that his nonsense is so easily pointed out but that's just how he is. It happens to a lot of people when they go full trump. You should never go full trump.
It's possible that you could do better than Pete. You shouldn't bind yourself to Pete's level - I think that you have it within you to be better than Pete.
You shouldn't be afraid of that, Spread your wings and fly - don't feel like you're in Pete's shadow.
Be your own man and have some balls.0 -
No it wouldn't, Pete. What would go some way to doing that would be a list of ten other foreign companies, possibly with other Americans on their boards, on which Trump expended an equal amount of energy trying it get investigations started. How many of those are there?
I'd settle for half a dozen, even.
What's that? None?
Thought so.
I have addressed this point multiple times already:
First of all, if US citizens are alleged to have been involved in corruption within a foreign country there are channels available to deal with that. The two countries involved would still cooperate though, but just at a much lower level. However, we're not talking about any individual here, we are talking about someone who was the last US Vice President and so of course an investigation into the activities of such a high profile individual as that (along with his son) would require the heads of state of both countries to have a discussion about it before then delegating it to people within their respective justice departments.
Again, imagine if shortly after Obama came to power a video had surfaced of Dick Cheney bragging about firing a top Ukraine prosecutor. A prosecutor who had recently investigated a corrupt gas company which a member of Dick Cheney's family sat on and a made a fortune from and which he had lobbied the US State Dept on behalf of with regards to having their corrupt reputation expunged.
Does anyone really believe congress would try and impeach Barack Obama had he asked Zelensky to look into the activities of Dick Cheney under the same circumstances? Not a hope. What would happen is the media would be going nuts to find out who the disgruntled republican Bush holdovers were that were leaking information about Obama's calls and demanding that they be prosecuted.0 -
Yes. There are...Outlaw Pete wrote: »First of all, if US citizens are alleged to have been involved in corruption within a foreign country there are channels available to deal with that.The two countries involved would still cooperate though, but just at a much lower level.
Yes
No.However, we're not talking about any individual here, we are talking about someone who was the last US Vice President and so of course an investigation into the activities of such a high profile individual as that (along with his son) would require the heads of state of both countries to have a discussion about it before then delegating it to people within their respective justice departments.Again, imagine if shortly after Obama came to power a video had surfaced of Dick Cheney bragging about firing a top Ukraine prosecutor. A prosecutor who had recently investigated a corrupt gas company which a member of Dick Cheney's family sat on and a made a fortune from and which he had lobbied the US State Dept on behalf of with regards to having their corrupt reputation expunged.
He would have referred it off to the DOJ and left it alone. If the DOJ needed cooperation from a foreign intelligence agency, the State Department is there for that, not to mention hundreds of CIA field offices around the world.
Obama is the defacto leader of the Democrat party, for the incoming President to go micromanaging prosecutions into Republican leaders would have been seen immediately as the farce it would have been.Does anyone really believe congress would try and impeach Barack Obama had he asked Zelensky to look into the activities of Dick Cheney under the same circumstances? Not a hope. What would happen is the media would be going nuts to find out who the disgruntled republican Bush holdovers were that were leaking information about Obama's calls and demanding that they be prosecuted.
Congress would have absolutely impeached Obama, and several congressman expressed a desire to do just that during his Presidency for a host of reasons. Even pretending for a minute that the DNC Congress did not, and all other facts were the same, the GOP congress that came back in 2010 and then controlled Congress for 6/8 years of Obama's presidency, certainly would have. The roles will have been reversed but the merits will have remained the same.
Anyway, it's all your speculation and opinion; a whataboutism.0 -
Which is a great segue for this recap on Republican Talking Points, digest version:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/14/confused-by-impeachment-defense-strategies-republicans-yeah-so-are-they/On the quid pro quo:
There is no quid pro quo.
You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo.
We do quid pro quos all the time.
On the value of hearsay:
Testimony from second-hand witnesses is hearsay, which is unreliable.
The anonymous so-called whistleblower had no firsthand knowledge.
The whistleblower must be forced to testify.
On the format of hearings:
The Democrats are working in a secret bunker in the Capitol basement.
Transcripts cannot substitute for live testimony because of body language.
The Democrats are staging a televised “show trial.”
On Trump’s view of aid to Ukraine:
Trump holds a deep-seated, genuine and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine.
Trump has always been skeptical about foreign aid and doesn’t want to give any to Ukraine.
Military aid to Ukraine has substantially improved under Trump.
On the July 25 phone call:
Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president was perfect.
Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president sounds exactly like what Joe Biden did.
What the Bidens did was horribly corrupt, and both Joe and Hunter should be forced to testify.
On the significance of the whistleblower:
Whoever gave information to the whistleblower is close to a spy and could be executed for treason.
Almost everything the whistleblower said was “sooo wrong.”0 -
No insults from you in this post and so I'll reply to it ..mcmoustache wrote: »There's a legal framework already in place for investigating US citizens getting up to shenanigans abroad.
Joe Biden is not your average US Citizen, he was afterall Vice President of the United States in the last administration, and so while normal channels might be fine for requesting a country to investigate the alleged corruption of a Joe Bloggs, high profile political figures are a different matter entirely.It's the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act and investigations can be run by the DOJ and the DOE.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the current Attorney General of the DOJ, one William Barr? And isn't that precisely who the POTUS said he was going to have call Zelensky with regards to the investigations?
I believe it was:"..I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it..."
So while you waffle about 'that's not how this works' you then in fact implied that Trump should have done the very thing he did do, which was arrange for the DOJ to look into it.0 -
Joe Biden is not your average US Citizen, he was afterall Vice President of the United States in the last administration, and so while normal channels might be fine for requesting a country to investigate the alleged corruption of a Joe Bloggs, high profile political figures are a different matter entirely.
So if I get your contributions in the thread correctly:
1) Joe Biden should be investigated like any regular citizen
2) Joe Biden should be investigated not like any other citizen; not through normal channels but specially and personally by the President and his political appointees, not nonpartisan career professionals
3) It's a sham that Trump is being investigated
Exactly what about "high profile political figures" warrants a different criminal investigations approach outside of normal apolitical channels (with the obvious exception of Impeachment)? Please, explain that theory to me.0 -
The Sideshow Bob defense takes a new low
“Okay. Here’s the problem, yeah, of course, Nancy, it’s in the Constitution, we can read: ‘The president may be impeached for bribery, treason, high crimes and misdemeanors,'” Ingraham snarked, before unveiling her own unique defense of Trump’s conduct. “Even assuming the Democrats’ strained and ridiculous interpretation of the facts — and I do not assume them —but just for the sake of their argument, attempted bribery is not in the Constitution.”
https://www.mediaite.com/news/laura-ingraham-defends-trump-attempted-bribery-is-not-listed-as-impeachable-offense-in-the-constitution/0 -
That's an awfully broad axe to cleave: the State Department makes foreign policy decisions, I would imagine, numerous times per day. Some of those policy decisions benefit the world...
lol Yeah, they were all incidental benefits I'm sure :PAnd he is also running for President of the United States in the 2020 election.
Biden is not above the law because he's running for office.all that Paul Manafort nonsense yes, but I'm confused why you'd bring this up:
No you're not one bit confused and the wall of text you posted in an obvious effort to obfusticate and undermine the point makes that clear. You just want to try and make it appear as if Trump asking Zelensky to look into certain Ukrainians, and the part they played in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, was just him chasing a right-wing conspiracy theory. Well, it wasn't. Yeah, the server talk is nonsense, but Trump was on the money otherwise.
For example, Trump said to Zelensky: "I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people" and this is a clear reference to Serhiy Leshchenko who Zelensky had been getting advice from for a period of time this year (but apparently is not now). This is someone who was instrumental in the 'black ledger' coming to the fore and he was also a source for the Steele Dossier.
Now this is where you run off and Google this stuff and then come back and cut & paste the MSM's view of all this right-wing conspiracy theory stuff, but that's to miss the point, which is that even if Serhiy is as straight as a die, and Chalupa too, all above board, that doesn't mean that Trump is doing something wrong asking Zelensky to look into it.That's quite a bit fascist Pete. And your sentiments, while a completely natural response of frustration, are dangerously unethical if acted upon.
I was being hyperbolic.
I see Yovanovitch is up today. Another 'Heard it from a friend whooo' witness. Should be fun. No doubt the democrats will (again) milk the "Well, she's going to go through some things" comment Donald J made on the call.0 -
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Still not an honest broker I seeOutlaw Pete wrote: »Biden is not above the law because he's running for office.
Show me anyone, anywhere on this thread who has said otherwise?No you're not one bit confused and the wall of text you posted in an obvious effort to obfusticate and undermine the point makes that clear. You just want to try and make it appear as if Trump asking Zelensky to look into certain Ukrainians, and the part they played in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, was just him chasing a right-wing conspiracy theory. Well, it wasn't. Yeah, the server talk is nonsense, but Trump was on the money otherwise.
For example, Trump said to Zelensky: "I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people" and this is a clear reference to Serhiy Leshchenko who Zelensky had been getting advice from for a period of time this year (but apparently is not now). This is someone who was instrumental in the 'black ledger' coming to the fore and he was also a source for the Steele Dossier.
Now this is where you run off and Google this stuff and then come back and cut & paste the MSM's view of all this right-wing conspiracy theory stuff, but that's to miss the point, which is that even if Serhiy is as straight as a die, and Chalupa too, all above board, that doesn't mean that Trump is doing something wrong asking Zelensky to look into it.
Obvious projection is obvious
I was being hyperbolic
is that your new euphemism for Triggered?0 -
Show me anyone, anywhere on this thread who has said otherwise?
When you keep highlighting that he's running for office, the implication of that is that such people are in some way above the law and that running for president gives them some kind of immunity, even if it's just an immunity from the POTUS being able to request that another country, in conjunction with the US, take a look at their activities should they appear to have done something untoward within another country.
Nope, running for office should not give you immunity from investigation of any kind.
Should be found that a POTUS orchestrated events and called an investigation into someone running for office when there was nothing to justify doing so, and that therefore it was done purely for political motives... well then that is a horse of a different colour and that for sure should not be allowed, and dare I say it, should be impeached over it.
In other news:
https://twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/11951589311415623680 -
You’re just circling the argument about the same point: of course a candidate can be investigated. Of course a president can start an inquiry into something. But neither of them, running for office, can solicit something of value from a foreign government. That’s how it is. It’s irrelevant so happens that the thing of value is an investigation. I can own a gold plated rolls Royce and I can run for President but if Putin offers me one while I’m running for President that’s an illegal bribe; nobody is telling me I don’t have the right to drive a car - this is what it sounds like your argument boils down to in terms of your fallacy.0
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Only thing wrong with that narrative is, it never happened.0
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Outlaw Pete wrote: »Only thing wrong with that narrative is, it never happened.
You’ve already decided the outcome of the inquiry seemingly
I mean no disrespect to the role of the devils advocate but so far I’ve remained disappointed by the strength of the effort. I don’t thinks that’s your fault; nobody in DC seems confident in their ability to defend Trump against the allegations and public exhibits either0 -
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I mean we’ve already had well-meaning good ol boy Republicans try to shift to “okay it happened and it’s bad but it’s not impeachable” before Trump whipped them back.0
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You’ve already decided the outcome of the inquiry seemingly
What are you on about?
You said Trump can't solicit something of value from a foreign government and I'm saying that is not what happened, it's just spin, a democrat talking point, little else.
You no doubt will say 'But it's of value to Trump if Biden is investigated as he's his political opponent' but that's purely incidental. As I said to you, if a president can be shown to have called for an unjust investigation into a political opponent, that's a different matter, as there would then be a case for suggesting the investigation was only being requested for personal gain, but as it stands now: there is NOTHING to suggest there wasn't sufficient grounds for asking Zelensky to look into the situation with the Bidens and Burisma.I mean we’ve already had well-meaning good ol boy Republicans try to shift to “okay it happened and it’s bad but it’s not impeachable” before Trump whipped them back.
Well, in a general sense, he had a point given that it was what Biden did when he withheld aid until a prosecutor was fired.0 -
Join Date:Posts: 70779
Discuss the topic, not other postersmcmoustache wrote: »Pete just repeats the Trump point of the day which often contradicts tomorrow's point of the day. It's unfortunate that his nonsense is so easily pointed out but that's just how he is. It happens to a lot of people when they go full trump. You should never go full trump.
It's possible that you could do better than Pete. You shouldn't bind yourself to Pete's level - I think that you have it within you to be better than Pete.
You shouldn't be afraid of that, Spread your wings and fly - don't feel like you're in Pete's shadow.
Be your own man and have some balls.0 -
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There are no games to play if you stick to the facts.
If you object to my posts by all means report them
Isn't this whole enquiry about finding the facts? Until then everything else is just opinion. Unless you know something the rest of us are not privy to?"Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
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