US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Your right Rockstar I just wanted to play with the big boys I'll go back to my Xbox One game:

Get a PS4 and I'll kick your but on Grand Tourismo

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Oh boy you and Dowly are too funny. That's not what Shokin himself had said in a written sworn statement. Contrary to what the illustrious folks at USA Today wrote. Shokin believes he was canned on account of his investigation into Burisma and the Bidens. Its my opinion Biden with the blessing of the administration forced him out because of Freedom, Democracy, anti-corruption... err wait I mean he was looking into the Bidens relationship with Bursima.

Then ol' Joe had the gall to brag about it.





Shokins statement

https://www.scribd.com/document/4276...ent#from_embed

keypoints





Mr. Quatro it seems to me it goes much deeper then just a phone call. Welcome to the swamp. First step was to brand Shokin (who was actually doing his job) as a useless stooge to get him out of the way and have him sacked. Next step is to impeach Trump. Problem goes away.

Where to start...


The video, which I have seen before, often, starts with a little preamble stating Burisma was under investigation in 2006,,,

Point of fact 1: Hunter Biden did not join Burisma until 2014, eight years later, meaning he was not involved, in any way with the focus o the then investigation, which brings up...

Point of fact 2: Burisma was not under investigation in 2014 and had not been for several years; Burisma probably should have been investigated by the Ukrainian Prosecutor but wasn't, which brings up...

Point of fact 3: There were no investigations of Burisma by the Ukrainian Prosecutor Shokin in 2014 or at anytime prior to his ousting; he was, in fact, ousted for not conducting corruption investigation and dereliction of his responsibilities, which was a source of ire and frustration to the nations and entities the Ukraine was asking for aid, and they were loath to render further aid unless serious and strong effort to eliminate and/or curtail corruption was put in place, which leads to...

Point of fact 4: Joe Biden was not acting on a personal basis to block an investigation because there was no investigation to block; he was acting as a representative of the US, its allies, and international financial entities to force the Ukraine to up its fight against internal corruption, which included the ouster of an ineffective, and probably also corrupt, Shokin...

Point of fact 5: There has been no proof presented Shokin had any ongoing investigations into corruption in the Ukraine related to Burisma since he took office in February of 2015...


This is all facts that can be corroborated by a simple search of the web, ya know, homework; need some more fact checks other than mine? Let me help you:


Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine --

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...n-and-ukraine/

Our ruling

The viral image said that when Hunter Biden was serving as "a director to Ukraine’s largest private gas producer," his father "threatened to withhold $1 BILLION in U.S. aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire a prosecutor looking into" the gas company.

The image gets individual pieces of this assertion right -- Hunter Biden was a director of the company, and Joe Biden did leverage U.S. aid to fire a prosecutor. But it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with. In reality, there was widespread agreement in the West that the existing prosecutor had to go, and it’s not clear that the company would have benefited from his ouster anyway, given evidence that its cases had long been dormant.

That said, experts criticize the Bidens for their arrangement, saying it could have been a significant conflict of interest.

We rate the statement Half True.

Fact check: What Joe and Hunter Biden actually did in Ukraine --

https://www.axios.com/joe-hunter-bid...51759063c.html

The bottom line:

True: Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma raised conflict-of-interest concerns at the time. The State Department claimed in 2014 that there was no conflict, noting the younger Biden was a “private citizen.”

False: There's evidence Jo e Biden committed "corruption" of any sort in Ukraine, as Trump alleges.

Fact: Trump TV Ad Misleads on Biden and Ukraine --

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/fa...n-and-ukraine/

Initially, Ukraine’s then-president, Poroshenko, resisted pressure to fire Shokin, even after Biden and others demanded it.

“By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin’s removal as the start of an overall reform of the Procurator General’s Office,” Herbst testified. “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke publicly about this before and during his December visit to Kyiv; but Mr. Shokin remained in place.”

(Biden did not say when he made the threat to withhold U.S. assistance, but he addressed the Ukrainian Parliament in Kyiv on Dec. 9, 2015, and held out the prospect of future U.S. aid if the country rid itself of the “cancer of corruption.”)

Around this time, the International Monetary Fund also withheld financial assistance from Ukraine until it took steps to tackle corruption, and the anti-corruption group Transparency International Ukraine held Shokin “personally responsible for the breakdown in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.”

Olesia Koval, a spokeswoman for TI Ukraine, told us in an email that her group was “involved in the campaign against Shokin because of his ineffectiveness and sabotage of corruption fight, especially of the cases of grand political corruption and in particular Zlochevskyi’s case” — referring to Mykola Zlochevsky, president of Burisma.

In February 2016, Aivaras Abromavičius, the country’s economic minister, resigned to protest government corruption, prompting the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus to send a letter to Poroshenko urging him “to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.”

A month later, Shokin was removed from office.

We don’t doubt that Shokin believes he was a strong prosecutor who was unjustly removed from office, as his statement says. But he provides no proof.

The TV ad, in short, creates a false narrative about Joe Biden to discredit the impeachment inquiry, but it doesn’t have the “facts” to support its claim.

...and there are many, many more...


Now I have a few questions for you, Rockstar: you posted that little video clip to support your assertions; I noted the preamble and its statements, one one of which was:

In 2006 Ukraineian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, in his investigation of corruption involving Burisma Holdings, a natural gas comapny, identified Hunter Biden as the Recipient of over $3,000,000 from the company...

Shokin didn't take office until 2016, so how did he make his findings in 2006?...

There was no ongoing investigation into Burisma when Hunter Biden joined Burisma in 2014, nor when Shokin took office in 2016, nor during Shokin's tenure, nor when Shokin was ousted, so where did Shokin make his official identification of Hunter Biden?...

The preamble seems to imply Hunter Biden got a bulk payment of over $3,000,000 from Burisma; Biden was being paid $50,000 a month, totaling $600,000 per year which, given he spent a bit over five years on the board, accounts for a total payout of over $3,000,000 from Burisma and not a one time bulk pay out (incidentally, for major firms, getting $600,000 a year to serve on their boards is chump change; there are Directors on other boards who earned more tan Biden)...

So, given all the misstatements and falsely slanted claims in just that bit of video, how can you reasonably use it as a source of fact?


Methinks, someone needs to do a bit of his own homework...


Here's a little clip, just for you... :





As far as Shokin is concerned, well I ac see where you would blindly believe such a paragon of virtue:


Viktor Shokin: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia --

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shokin

Shokin was appointed Prosecutor General of Ukraine on 10 February 2015, replacing Vitaly Yarema. He was a controversial appointee due to his perceived role in blocking prosecutions against those accused of shooting demonstrators in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. As Prosecutor General, he was accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and hindering the fight against corruption in Ukraine.

Various street protests demanding Shokin's resignation were held. On 2 November 2015, there was an assassination attempt against him when an unidentified sniper fired three shots into his office, but was foiled by the bulletproof glass window. In response to a query from Ukrainian News Agency in late 2019, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) acknowledged that it is continuing to investigate the attempted assassination of Shokin. In March 2016 his office carried out a raid against one of Ukraine's leading anti-corruption groups, the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), claiming that it had misappropriated aid money. AntAC was a frequent critic of the Prosecutor General's Office under Shokin. In one notorious case, two of Shokin's prosecutors were caught with stashes of diamonds, cash and valuables in their homes, likely indicating bribery. Prosecutors from another department of Shokin's office were fired or reassigned when they attempted to bring a prosecution against the so-called "diamond prosecutors".

Through 2015 and early 2016, domestic and international pressure (including from the IMF, the EU, and the EBRD) built for Shokin to be removed from office. The Obama administration withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees to pressure the Ukrainian government to remove Shokin from office. His defenders nonetheless argued that he played an important role "balancing competing political interests". His Deputy Prosecutor, Vitaly Kasko, announced his resignation on 15 February 2016 denouncing the corruption and lawlessness of the Prosecutor's office.

On 16 February 2016, Shokin submitted a letter of resignation, although the next day an official of the prosecution office stated, "As far as I know he has taken a paid leave". On 19 February 2016 presidential press secretary Sviatoslav Tsegolko wrote on Twitter that the presidential administration had received an official letter of resignation from Shokin. On 16 March 2016 an official of the prosecution office stated that Shokin had resumed his work. On 28 March, protesters called for Shokin's firing, after his office was authorized by a Kiev court to investigate AntAC. Shokin was formally dismissed in a parliamentary vote on 29 March 2016. The European Union praised Shokin's dismissal due to a "lack of tangible results" of his office's investigations, and also because people in Shokin's office were themselves being investigated. Following his dismissal Shokin went into retirement.

Shokin is a corrupt, self serving liar who would say anything or do anything to keep in power (remind you of anyone?... ), so any statement he makes should be taken with a big sack of salt; he lied when he was in office, and is lying now when he tries to rewrite his history to make himself out as a "victim"...






<O>

[Rockstar]

Thats it, just another wall of text of petty arguments and distractions? You want to talk about corruption in 'the' Ukraine start 'the' Ukraine politics thread then. This is the U.S. politics thread.

Let me clarify, My argument has nothing to do with Shokin and allegations of corruption. I posted the video for the sole purpose of showing Joe Biden bragging to an audience that it was he who pressured the Ukraine government to sack Shokin. In my opinion that admission of guilt gives some credence to Shokins sworn statement before a European Court which states he was fired because of Biden/Obama administration threatening to withhold U.S. dollars from 'the' Ukraine if Poroshenko did not bend to their will.

Democrats, in their self-described impeachment inquiry, essentially have accused President Trump of doing what Biden has admitted doing.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/09/ukrainia...gating-hunter/

If you ask me it stinks of hypocrisy,

[Dowly]

I'm sure one of you can tell which law(s) Biden broke by threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine unless they sack Shokin.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Thats it, just another wall of text of petty arguments and distractions? You want to talk about corruption in 'the' Ukraine start 'the' Ukraine politics thread then. This is the U.S. politics thread.

Let me clarify, My argument has nothing to do with Shokin and allegations of corruption. I posted the video for the sole purpose of showing Joe Biden bragging to an audience that it was he who pressured the Ukraine government to sack Shokin. In my opinion that admission of guilt gives some credence to Shokins sworn statement before a European Court which states he was fired because of Biden/Obama administration threatening to withhold U.S. dollars from 'the' Ukraine if Poroshenko did not bend to their will.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/09/ukrainia...gating-hunter/

If you ask me it stinks of hypocrisy,

That's it? Just another dodge to avoid actually giving an answer or defense of your argument(s)? Kinda weak and pathetic...

Regarding Shokin's 'sworn statement' and its 'credence': I'm sorry, I didn't know you never heard of perjury; Shokin, like Trump, has a long track record of lying and distorting facts, so his probity is next to nil, particularly when he is acting or speaking in his own self-interest...

I also find it interesting you used as cite WND, a website known for conspiracy theories and blatantly false statements; in fact, the article actually cites someone who makes the well-debunked claim there was an active investigation into the Bidens; unless you've got some sort of real-life, provable evidence to back up your citing of an article making that claim, all you've really done is weakly tried to bolster your argument with a severely weak cite...


Regarding this being not being the "Ukrainian Politics Thread", well it should be pointed out you and the other Trump apologists/worshipers are the ones who constantly carp, bitch, moan and groan about the Bidens and the Ukraine as a pathetic effort to deflect from actually addressing the real issue of Trump's equally pathetic and desperate attempt to finagle a reelection win for himself by violating the law and exercising a blatant abuse of Presidential power solely for his own ends. There is a vast difference between using the power to withhold a benefit for the purpose of advancing, in concert with US allies and concerned international economic entities, the cause of eliminating a corrupt prosecutorial system, headed by Shokin, before entrusting any further funds and aid to the Ukraine goverment and abusive and illegal exercise of the same power solely to advance a private, self-interested political goal to try and salvage political survival; so spare us the the faux indignation, man up, and defend your arguments with actual verifiable facts and logic...


Regarding an admission of "guilt", well, to use the argument of some one else on this thread, there is no crime to be guiltyy of since neither Biden actually personally profited from the expulsion of Shokin and, other than the previously established and continuing contractual compensation to Hunter Biden for his position a a Director of Burisma, there is no evidence of either Biden having profited from Shokin's dismissal; there also has been no actual evidence Joe Biden acted solely to derail any investigation of either himself or his son; in true and documented fact, there was no ongoing investigation of the Bidens and there had been no investigation of Burisma in the several years prior to Hunter Biden joining the Board. I defy and challenge you to document, with actual provable facts, your claim there was an actual crime off which either Bide could or would be felling any guilt over or which either the Ukrainian or US legal systems could hvae prosecuted either of the Bidens. I will wait patiently for your reply, although I suspect I will not receive a direct reply to my challenge...


Regarding Joe Biden boasting: Biden was tasked by the White House, in concert with and the backing of US allies, to exercise powr and influence to rid the Ukraine of an existing corrupt, Shokin-led, Prosecutor's office; that he did and with firmness and resolve; he was given a job and he did it to completion and with the desired result; I don't know about other people, but if I were given a high profile, high stakes task and I accomplished it, I think I might want to give myself a pat on the back or take a victory lap. The funny thing about you and others decrying Biden's justified boasting is all of you Trump-Huggers are only too eager to praise Trump when he boasts, even when his boasting is grossly exaggerated, or he boast about accomplishments done by others as his own, or boasts about accomplishments that never really happened, i.e.. he lies; if Trump had achieved the expulsion of corruption in the Ukraine (instead of furthering it with himself and his minions), and then started boasting about it, you guys would be praisng him and singing him hosannas for "standing up for 'Merica" and showing how "powerful" the US is on the world stage...

"If you ask me it stinks of hypocrisy"...


Instead, I guess you have to settle for pathetic little attempts to paint lipstick on the pig that is Trump and his administration...

...not to mention the shambles of his "foreign policy": given what Trump and his minions have "accomplished", a room full of chimps with Ouija boards could have made a more cogent, cohesive, and coherent set of policies than the Ketone Kops of DC currently in the White House...


To summarize:

Biden acted, under White House authorization, to advance the interest and causes of the US' foreign policy, succeeded in doing so, without violating any laws and with out tangible of intangible personal gain (other than bragging rights);

Trump acted, in his own self-interest with only a very thin and highly questionable veneer of "foreign policy" interest, to coerce and strong arm the leader of a foreign country, through an illegal and un-Constitutional exercise of Executive power, solely to buttress his filling reelection campaign and his foundering administration, leaving him, not with bragging rights, but with the right to keep silent, the right to an attorney, etc....


Biden: assigned duty well done

Trump: asinine self-interest very poorly, and illegally executed...







<O>

[u crank]

One does not have to break any laws to be involved in questionable behaviour. Nepotism is not a crime. Optics in politics is everything.

Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company — headed by a former government minister investigated for possible corruption — in 2014, at the same time his father was leading U.S. efforts to crack down on corruption in that country.

Coincidence? Maybe or perhaps it is exactly what it looks like.

Joe Biden wants to be President. This kind of thing will only get worse for him.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...r-2020-1475897

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...eat-ban-066394

But that doesn’t mean the Bidens’ behavior isn’t a legitimate problem for Democrats. Indeed, Biden has been taking political hits over of the intersection of his family’s financial dealings and his own political career for some four decades. Yet he has done nothing publicly to inoculate himself from the charge that his career is corruptly enriching his family, and now that is a serious liability.

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/09/...-family-money/

[August]

From one of U-Cranks links:

Joe Biden’s younger brother told potential business partners that the former vice president would help their firm land business with court systems and would incorporate their health care model into his 2020 presidential campaign, according to new allegations made in a court filing in Tennessee. The allegations are consistent with others made over the years that relatives of Biden have sought to enrich themselves off of his public service. But they go further, representing the first explicit claims that James Biden offered to have the former vice president use his clout to further private business interests.

No crime huh? What if Joe Biden did actually use his clout to further his families private business interests? Is that a legitimate reason for a sitting administration to investigate a *potential* political opponent?

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by August

From one of U-Cranks links:

And the very next paragraph reads:

The allegations come in sworn declarations made by executives at firms suing Biden’s brother that were filed in federal court on Friday. They do not allege any wrongdoing by Joe Biden or indicate that the former vice president had knowledge of his brother’s alleged promises.

[Skybird]

Tit for tat:

Next time a clan boss of organised crime is sued for lets say murder and drug dealing, and appears befor the court, his defender will demand that the son of the police president is to be investigated for alleged - well, for alleged anything. Wrong parking, for example.

Make justice grrreat(tm) again!

[August]

Originally Posted by Dowly

And the very next paragraph reads:

Of course not. Such statements are not the objective of the lawsuit and it might open the plaintiffs to charges of attempted bribery of a public official. Doesn't mean it didn't happen and we both know that if this was Don Jr. we're talking about you'd be talking a different tune.

[Mr Quatro]

In a bit of humor this morning:

Breaking News

Mayor of Pocahontas backs Joe Biden, not Elizabeth Warren

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/may...hl1lgUaSLQkZ7s

The mayor of Pocahontas, Iowa is not backing who you might think.

Dick Gruber, mayor of the northwest city in Iowa, announced this week
that he is backing former Vice President Joe Biden for the 2020, rather than closest rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

[u crank]

As the current impeachment story makes its' way to a predictable conclusion the left wing media is once again hyperventilating in their usual well rehearsed manner. Skepticism about all that they have to say is easy to come by. If their past record is any indication you know that they can't be trusted. Like the saying goes..."if you don't feel like you are being manipulated, you are being manipulated".

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone lays out a pretty good case for why these people should not be trusted. Ever.

Christopher Steele became famous in the United States as the author of a “dossier” that claimed Russians had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting” Donald Trump “for at least 5 years.”

Now Steele is back, claiming that the Russians have been cultivating the Tories and Boris Johnson for . . . five years.

You can’t make this stuff up. The only thing comparable would be Iraqi defector Ahmed Chalabi lobbying for a sequel invasion after the WMD hunt came up empty, and having the same humiliated media figures and politicians reach for pompoms all over again.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...sanity-909539/

The same type of media echo chamber is likely at it again.

The resulting viral furor spurred Buzzfeed to publish the entire dossier, so Americans could “make up their own minds.”

In this way, the dossier was published without ever going through a vetting process. For all the talk of hacking, this was a true Trojan-horse penetration of the American news media system (not that most media companies minded, of course).

The original source of this madness was Steele, and the media and political figures who leaned with all their might into this phony narrative — especially the ones who knew it originated as Clinton campaign research — should be as embarrassed as the newspapers and news networks who pushed the WMD hunt.

The WMD affair showed what happens when we don’t require sources to show us evidence, when we let political actors use the press to “confirm” their own assertions, when we report on the journey of rumors instead of the rumors themselves, and most especially when we lionize intelligence and law enforcement figures, who usually turn out to be just as craven and unreliable as the rest of us.

When we let stuff like this go, the public sees us as fools, at which point it doesn’t matter whether what we write is for or against any politician, because nobody believes us anyway. Is this really the industry standard we’re gunning for? Are we never going to own up to this one?

[Rockstar]

OK vienna, here's the jist of the matter let e make it easy for you,


1. Shokin in a sworn statement says he was investigating Burisma of which Don Jr. was a board member of.



2. In that sworn statement Shokin says Trump Sr. put pressure on the Ukraine president to sack Shokin.



3. Shokin gets sacked and because of upcoming elections little Don Jr. disappears.


4. New Trump friendly prosecutor in the Ukraine says everyone move along now, nothing to see here!


5. Trump Sr. is video tapped bragging in front of a gathering at the Council of Foreign Affairs how he was the one that got Shokin fired.


6. Now, the admission of Trump Sr. seems to me a need to dismiss the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, V.M. Shokin, as a condition for allocating appropriate financial assistance to Ukraine.


Did I miss something?


In your treasure trove of study, law and facts, besides the underlying stench of hypocrisy, what would you say 6# qualifies as?

[mapuc]

As I see it or understand it

it's two different cases

1. Trump Ukraine case
2. The Joe Bidens son case

Both are related to Ukraine.

and in both cases they should be prosecuted if there have been a violation in some of your laws.

Markus

[Catfish]

^ good you did not live through the Nicaragua times.