2019 American Political Scene

[TopHatter]

Is the Biden campaign going onto the rocks?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...ton-nunes-says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...VsX?li=BBnba9I

Probably. He's also showing signs of cognitive slippage, although not nearly as badly as Trump.
Not like it matters, none of the Dem candidates have a chance in hell come 2020.

But, of course that's not nearly as interesting as Trump blackmailing a foreign leader to investigate a political rival in exchange for military aid.

Trump says he didn't, which means he absolutely did.

And of course there's the other senile old fool, Giuliani, who's kept a low profile lately, only to pop up again on CNN and remind us all that Trump hires only the "best" people.
This time he lied through his teeth (as usual) about Ukraine and then immediately confessed that he was indeed lying.

This "administration" continuously reaches for new lows and manages to succeed.

[surfgun]

Tophatter, any thoughts on Joe as VP extorting Ukraine?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KCF9My1vBP4 In Joe’s own words.

[TopHatter]

Tophatter, any thoughts on Joe as VP extorting Ukraine?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KCF9My1vBP4 In Joe’s own words.

RT? Really? Wow...Russian propaganda channel is the best you can do. Not really surprising though.

My thoughts are, it looks like RT is doing its usual job supporting Trump.

No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. Some of his former associates, moreover, said Mr. Biden never did anything to deter other Obama administration officials who were pushing for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities — and potentially to start its own investigation — into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for possible money laundering and abuse of office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/u...?module=inline

[TopHatter]

Trump hopes 'they release' his call with Ukraine's president, in which he says he talked about both Joe and Hunter Biden and 'corruption taking place'

While speaking to reporters Sunday morning outside the White House, President Donald Trump said he discussed both former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, in a phone call with Ukraine's president that has become the latest international scandal to plague Trump's administration. Trump said he hopes "they release" the call.

"The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place," Trump said, per tweets from White House correspondents. "It was largely the fact that we don't want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son creating to [sic] the corruption already in the Ukraine."

Joe Biden has issued a statement asking for Trump's administration to release a transcript of the July 25 call, "so that the American people can judge for themselves." Multiple news outlets reported Friday that Trump pressured President Vladimir Zelensky eight separate times to investigate Hunter Biden on the call.

Trump's call with the Ukrainian president concerns Hunter Biden's business dealings and is likely the subject of a whistleblower complaint about a "promise" made to a foreign government

Previously, Trump declined to answer whether he discussed Joe Biden in the call. At a campaign stop in Iowa on Saturday, Biden said "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings." Trump told reporters he thought that was a lie.

"I mean give me a break, he's already said he spoke to his son and now he said yesterday very firmly. Who wouldn't speak to your son? Of course you spoke to your son," Trump said.

The president also said he'd have "no problem" with his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, talking to Congress about his interactions with Ukraine. Giuliani reportedly met with top Ukrainian officials to discuss an investigation into Hunter Biden, who served on the board of directors of a Ukranian natural gas company from 2014 to April 2019.

Days after Hunter Biden began his tenure on the board of the natural gas company in Ukraine, then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to the country and urged the Ukranian government to reduce its dependency on Russia for natural gas, suggesting that the US could provide technical expertise to expand domestic production.

Critics of the diplomatic move said the US was attempting to maneuver open access to the Ukraine's shale gas reserves, and suggested that Hunter Biden's role exhibited a conflict of interest. Also, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion of loan guarantees if the then-Ukranian General Prosecutor was not fired from his position.

Giuliani has stated that the prosecutor was fired for investigating the company Hunter Biden served on the board of for corruption. Trump espoused that same viewpoint, but reports indicate that the prosecutor was fired due to his failure to pursue corruption investigations.

Trump tweeted a quote from Laura Ingraham's Fox News segment Sunday morning stating that "The real story involves Hunter Biden going around the world and collecting large payments from foreign governments and foreign oligarchs." In the same tweet, he claimed that "Hunter made a fortune in Ukraine and in China. He knew nothing about Energy, or anything else."

The president's call with Ukraine has become a matter of congressional interest, starting with a whistleblower complaint filed to the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who Trump praised to reporters on Sunday, calling him a "great gentleman" who is "only going to do what's right."

Read more: Biden demanded Trump release transcripts of a call where he reportedly badgered Ukraine's leader to investigate his son 8 times

Federal law required Maguire to submit the complaint to Congress within seven days, but Maguire did not comply. His failure to submit prompted the original recipient of the complaint to report his inaction to the Senate and House intelligence committees, which he did in a letter that did not offer details on the complaint's substance.

Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff has suggested that, in failing to submit the complaint and taking the unusual step to consult with the Justice Department, Maguire was "engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible 'serious of flagrant' misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of the law."

Starting Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the complaint involved Trump's phone call with Ukraine, and in particular, a "promise" he made. Link
_________________

Trump "hopes" they release the call. Translation: That transcript will never see the light of day if Trump has anything to say about it.

Trump would have "no problem" with Giuliani talking to Congress about his interactions with Ukraine. Translation: Same deal. Rudy will talk to Congress over Trump's dead body.

[surfgun]

The link was used for Biden’s own words. Do you believe said video has been tampered with or created out of whole cloth?
Or do you have no thoughts on the extortion question?

[TopHatter]

The link was used for Biden’s own words. Do you believe said video has been tampered with or created out of whole cloth?
Or do you have no thoughts on the extortion question?

Were you unable to read the quote from the NYT article I linked?
Or is "No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal" too ambiguous for you

[TopHatter]

Unblock whistleblower's complaint on President Donald Trump's call to Ukraine over Biden

Just as the aftershocks of the special counsel's Russia investigation seemed to have settled, the latest tremblor out of the Oval Office is whether the president used the levers of his foreign policy toward Ukraine for political gain.

A confidential whistleblower report might provide an answer. But once again, the nation's grinding democratic processes are falling short of providing Americans what they need to decide whether Donald Trump did something wrong.

Short of someone violating the law by leaking that whistleblower complaint, or the whistleblower risking retaliation by bravely going to Congress, there's no quick or certain process for the public to learn its contents.

There is, however, a steady drip of news media reports, and a few admissions by Trump himself on Sunday.

According to The Washington Post and The New York Times, a whistleblower complaint filed with the intelligence community's inspector general focused on a promise Trump made during a phone call on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. (This happened to be the day after Robert Mueller's much-anticipated congressional testimony.) During that conversation, Trump asked the Kiev leader to investigate a key political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Biden's son Hunter, regarding the younger Biden's past business dealings in Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal later buttressed this reporting, revealing that Trump pressed Zelensky about eight times during their call to open the inquiry.

Still unclear is whether there's any connection between Trump's desire for dirt on the Bidens and $250 million in U.S. military aid for Ukraine, which has been engaged in a five-year civil war with pro-Russian separatists. The aid was inexplicably delayed, then released soon after Congress raised concerns about the whistleblower complaint.

Was a meeting with Zelensky or the promise of Ukrainian assistance somehow, by inference or otherwise, made contingent on Kiev investigating Biden? If true, that would be a gross abuse of presidential power.

Trump acknowledged Sunday that he spoke with Zelensky about a Biden investigation, defending the conversation as appropriate and "perfect." His defenders, meanwhile, fanned out on the morning talk shows to dispense a confusing smokescreen of unproven allegations against the Bidens. [Yep, right here on WAB too. It's like a zombie army lol - TH]

All the while, the unnamed whistleblower's account languishes in the dark.

The intelligence community's inspector general, Trump appointee Michael Atkinson, was so troubled by the report that he deemed it of "urgent concern."

The law requires that an urgent-concern whistleblower complaint "shall" be turned over to Congress. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, blocked this. His legal response, supplied by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, is that the alleged target of the complaint — presumably Trump himself — is not a member of the intelligence community, so the urgent-concern requirements for the whistleblower law are not applicable.

That justification is painfully reminiscent of the legal gymnastics Mueller employed when he concluded that he was barred from saying whether Trump broke the law by obstructing justice in the Russian influence investigation, but that he also couldn't "exonerate" him.

A system of checks and balances guaranteed by the Constitution should inform the American people when their president violates the law or commits an impeachable offense. That system is being stretched to the breaking point.

Now it's up to members of Congress — not just Democrats but also Republicans who claim to believe in the rule of law — to get to the bottom of this latest tawdry tale by holding hearings, obtaining transcripts, and finding a way to gain access to the whistleblower complaint or that person's testimony. Link
_____________________

[GVChamp]

Is the Biden campaign going onto the rocks?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...ton-nunes-says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...VsX?li=BBnba9I

As of now, Biden is still the front-runner. Warren might have momentum after the first few states (which are whiter, where Warren does really well), but it's way, way, way too early to stay Biden is out.

OTOH, there's a clear top 2, and chances for anyone else are long at best. Sanders keeps shedding, Harris and Booker are weak, Mayor Pete can't get ahead, and everyone else is on life support.

[surfgun]

Crack team at NYT’s found no evidence of Democrat wrong doing? Will wonders never cease.
So obviously you do not have your own opinion on the matter? Unless the NYT’s forms your opinion?

[TopHatter]

Crack team at NYT’s found no evidence of Democrat wrong doing? Will wonders never cease.
So obviously you do not have your own opinion on the matter? Unless the NYT’s forms your opinion?

Bring me some evidence. Go ahead, I'll wait. Then I'll give you an opinion on the matter. As of right now, there is no evidence, just the usual innuendo and deflection from Trump and his pack of idiots.

[surfgun]

I heard Joe Biden publicly brag in his OWN Words, that he had extorted a government to fire on of their officials. Let me paraphrase- You have six hours to fire him. As I get on AF2 back to the states and your government does not do as I demand those loan guarantees/aid will be gone.

[tbm3fan]

Tophatter, any thoughts on Joe as VP extorting Ukraine?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KCF9My1vBP4 In Joe’s own words.

Bwahaha, although I gotta give you some points for actually having the nerve to post such monumental bullshit...

[tbm3fan]

I heard Joe Biden publicly brag in his OWN Words, that he had extorted a government to fire on of their officials. Let me paraphrase- You have six hours to fire him. As I get on AF2 back to the states and your government does not do as I demand those loan guarantees/aid will be gone.

LMAO, are you talking about a man so dirty and corrupted that he should join good old Viktor in Russia?

[surfgun]

Okay, I’ve got it, the majority of the World Affairs Board is cool with VP Joe Biden running cover for his crack head son and extorting a foreign government to do it. No ambiguity here.

[Bigfella]

Okay, I’ve got it, the majority of the World Affairs Board is cool with VP Joe Biden running cover for his crack head son and extorting a foreign government to do it. No ambiguity here.

No, the majority of sane members of WAB haven't descended so far into the pit of fanaticism that they take the word of a serial sexual predator and fraudster and his legion of online propagandists at face value.

Biden's intervention was unwise and a conflict of interest, but defining it as an effort to protect his son requires a level of ignorance that can only be achieved through careful practice or a serious brain injury.

Shokin was an extremely controversial figure in Ukraine before Biden said a word to anyone, and with good reason:

Viktor Shokin had much bigger issues than the corruption case against Mykola Zlochevsky. Almost immediately after he was appointed, he started to cause almost irreparable harm to Ukraine’s legal system.

For starters, he failed to prosecute any prominent members of the Yanukovych regime or anybody in the current government. He constantly blocked reform to Ukraine’s broken legal system. He was in charge of implementing the 2014 law on prosecution which the European Union had asked Ukraine to do for years.

The law aimed to reduce to role of prosecutors who “were absurdly superior to judges in the Soviet legal system that persisted in post-Soviet Ukraine” according to Atlantic Council. It also called for a reevaluation of all prosecutors in order to weed out the more corrupt and incompetent ones. Shokin manipulated the process so that the old system mostly remained the same and minimal, ineffective changes were implemented.

He was the largest obstacle to judicial reform in Ukraine. It wasn’t just Joe Biden calling for his ouster, it was the United States government and the European Union.

Steven Pifer, a career foreign service officer who was ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton, told Politifact that “”virtually everyone” he knew in the U.S. government and virtually all non-governmental experts on Ukraine “felt that Shokin was not doing his job and should be fired. As far as I can recall, they all concurred with the vice president telling Poroshenko that the U.S. government would not extend the $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine until Shokin was removed from office.””

The European Union also called for him to be fired and celebrated his removal. “This decision creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general’s office. I hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office . . . becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust,” said Jan Tombinski, the EU’s envoy to Ukraine, in a statement at the time.

https://heavy.com/news/2019/09/joe-biden-ukraine/


So, pretty much everyone who knew the first thing about what was happening in Ukraine wanted Shokin removed. No evidence they were trying to cover up for their children.

There is, however, another even larger wrinkle in this little smear. It looks like Shokin wasn't actually investigating Biden's son. In fact, part of the reason for US pressure on Shokin was because he wasn't helping the UK investigation into the case involving Biden's son. Oh, and the mass protests to remove Shokin. That too :

“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.”.....

....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....

....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.

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.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-s-biden-claim

So, it turns out that Biden was pressuring the Ukrainian government to remove a guy who not only wasn't prosecuting the case against his son, but wasn't prosecuting much corruption at all, much to chagrin of the US Government, the EU and a few people in Ukraine. Oh dear.

For the record, I'd be happy enough to see the back of Biden, but watching Trump's drone swarm take their morning does of lies and charge forth to do combat once again is as nauseating a spectacle as it is possible to find in the democratic world this side of British politics. Watching supposedly intelligent Americans regurgitate propaganda that would make a Chinese '50 cent army' member wince while pretending to represent 'individuality' and constitutional government is positively scary. Just at the moment the world needs positive models of democratic government the two great progenitors of modern democracy are shitting on the dinner table & insisting it is chocolate mousse.

I wish people still had a sense of shame.