Moderating:
The discussion has once again veered from the topic of investigating Joe Biden into a discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. There are other threads within which to discuss Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Oh, look. Here’s one.
To all who are carrying on this discussion, please take it elsewhere. Thanks.
You repeatedly claim that there was a very low bar to launch an investigation into Trump, but you also seem to know almost nothing about the investigations into Trump.
What investigations into Trump are you talking about? What Democrats were involved?
Moderating some more:
This tactic of “Whataboutism” is also known as hijacking. I suggest you stop doing this.
It is possible to discuss the potential investigations into Joe Biden without invoking his son, Hunter, or investigations into Trump.
Not a warning this time. But it will be next time.
To all, please drop the side discussions you are being roped into. Thanks.
I believe you’re wrong. A piece of evidence is generally accepted as evidence. If the prosecution or the defence disagrees about whether evidence is valid, they’ll submit their arguments to the trial judge, who will rule whether the evidence is allowable and whether the disagreement of its accuracy can be put before the jury.
If Hunter Biden’s laptop hard-drive’s contents is put before a Congressional committee, the presumption should be that the copy sent to the FBI was a true copy. Opponents could argue that it’s a fabricated near-copy with inserted false evidence. But they’ll need to make their case for their argument. Congress isn’t a judicial court so they can accept whatever testimony they want. But they can’t, in theory anyway, presume that the evidence is false without reason.
I hope it’s permissible for me to state that I will no longer be posting in this thread. I had a contrarian argument that I hoped would be interesting for debate, but Aspenglow has disagreed with me,
You want 12A. 
Was it Gaetz? He came right out and said almost exactly that.
“Investigations first, and policy as a far, far diminished priority”
Moderating:
Your propensity to mischaracterize what is being said to you is a real problem. I did not disagree you could offer a contrarian argument. I said you needed to offer it in a thread about Hunter Biden, not one about Joe Biden.
I was going to issue a warning to you for the post you made previous to the one I’m responding to here. I’m going to let it go this once.
Please try to make sure you are on topic with future posts in any thread, not just this one.
What investigation do you feel “set a low bar?” The Mueller investigation, with its 23 indictments and multiple convictions? The Congressional investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election - which was way more damning than ? The investigation into Trump’s extortion of foreign President? The January 6th investigation?
The Hunter Biden investigation is pure trollery, just another extension of the Trump/ Republican “hit them back ten times harder” philosophy. It’s abuse and bullying posing as political strategy. I understand the desire for political revenge. I understand that the adult children of high level public officials are subject to a heightened level of scrutiny, even if there is no intersection between their lives and the professional and political careers of their parents. But putting the full force of the legislative branch into bullying and harassing the troubled adult child of a President is a shitty thing to do, and the people that are doing so are shitty people with no sense of decency.
It’s going to be a replay of the Durham investigation, because it will turn up nothing. Anything that happened while Joe Biden was in office as VP is well beyond the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution, and anything that happened after 2016 happened when Joe Biden was a private citizen and would’ve been perfectly free to engage in business deals, even though there’s no evidence that he did.
I don’t think there’s anything remotely criminal in even the worst allegations.
It’s not illegal to mention your famous father when you a negotiating a business deal, and it’s not illegal to introduce people to your father. And if it’s illegal to profit off your famous parent, one need to look no farther than the three oldest Trump children, who have never earned a dime that didn’t come from their father’s business or political enterprises. I’m just not sure what they’re going to prove.
Moderating:
I realize you are responding to questions posed earlier in the thread, but I don’t want to have to say this again: Please drop the Hunter Biden laptop hijack in this thread. There are other threads within which to discuss this issue.
I hate giving out warnings, but any more discussion on Hunter Biden or his laptop in this topic will result in them.
My guess as to how they are going to approach the question is to bang hard on uncontested facts that fit their their narrative, but largely leave the connections between the facts and how they prove Biden’s culpability to the inference of the audience.
So they will have witness after witness showing that Hunter had a laptop and that this laptop was Hunter’s
Witness after witness pointing out that Hunter was hired to a Ukraine firm (probably due to his name)
Witness after witness showing that Hunter was hired by a Ukrainian firm
Witness after witness showing that Biden fired a Ukrainian prosecutor.
Witness after witness showing that Hunter was not a model citizen.
But not spend a lot of time trying to connect those facts, which is the weak/non-existant part of their case. That way to anyone who watches it will look that what they are showing at the time is nonconvertible proof, and so assume that the whole case is rock solid. If anyone tries to argue against it they will deflect towards one of these facts (are you saying that Biden didn’t actually fire a Ukrainian prosecutor?).
Also none of this will ever go anywhere near a court room. The Republicans have learned their lesson that even though they have seeded the courts with Ideologically conservative judges, these judges still believe for the most part in the rule of law and aren’t going to break the law just to give partisan advantage to the Republicans.
It only takes a simple majority in the House to impeach. It’s possible for the GOP to do that. I’m not sure how likely it is, because I think even they realize that impeaching him on something frivolous would backfire. But it’s technically possible.
They would need a 2/3 vote in the Senate to convict. They don’t even have a simple majority so it would go nowhere.
I think it depends on how desperate they are to fire up their base, balanced by how many independents they’d lose in the process. Maybe if Trump is out of the picture for whatever reason, it might be an attempt to get the MAGA folks behind DeSantis or whoever else gets the nomination in 2024.
It still hasn’t settled out how much of an advantage the Republicans will have in congress, but it’s not going to be much of a margin.
Just a small handful have enough integrity to not impeach on a purely political matter, and it doesn’t go through.
I almost wonder if the House Republicans would like to throw a whole lot of impeachments up to the Senate in order to run out the legislative clock in the upper house.
IIRC from the Trump impeachment trials, when an impeachment is before the Senate, the afternoons are dedicated to the trial itself. If the Senate can’t conduct business during this time, they can’t confirm more judges or executive branch appointments (which is where the action will be for the next couple of years - if legislation doesn’t go through under unanimous consent, it’s not going through at all).
I don’t know for sure if the time the Senate is sitting in trial is counted on the legislative clock or not. If not, the House could gum up the works by successive impeachments of Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas, you name 'em.
I wanna point out that there is no such investigation, and there might not even be one. A divided GOP and a razor thin majority does not lead to instant crap fake investigations.
I think this thread is premature and based upon the ravings of a few diehard MAGAs who thought there would be a “Red tsunami” and thus carte blanche to do anything and everything.
If an investigation is thrown up to the Senate, are they required to take it up? Or can they say “We’ll get around to it” and do other stuff?
On the one hand, MTG isn’t going to be Speaker.
On the other hand, McCarthy pivoted to become a Trump toadie after initially berating him for the Jan 6 insurrection and saying (privately) that he should resign.
In the days after the January 6 insurrection, top House Republican Kevin McCarthy was ready to dump Donald Trump. “I’ve had it with this guy,” he said, and pondered whether to ask him to resign, the New York Times reported.
It didn’t take long for McCarthy’s anger to subside. By the end of the month, he was with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, taking a picture together that made clear the now-former president was back on good terms with his party. While some Republicans never lost sight of the serious threat the January 6 insurrection posed to American democracy, many have since taken to downplaying the deadly attack on the Capitol, as today’s CNN report about McCarthy’s meeting with officers who fought the rioters makes clear.
I’m not sure where McCarthy stands as far as Trump goes. He hasn’t confirmed whether he’s supporting Trump’s new presidential campaign. I think he’s trying to see which way the wind blows.
For his part, Trump publicly supported McCarthy as Speaker.
So, is Kevin a MAGA guy? I think he’d be one if he felt it was politically expedient. He doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid made by squeezing the dye out of a red baseball cap, but he might potentially side with them if he felt he needed to.
They announced that there would be investigations after the election. It’s linked in the OP.
I don’t think that’s how it works. The investigation is done by the House, full stop. For example, the Senate didn’t have any part of the January 6th stuff.
The Senate has its own ability to conduct investigations.
Now, an impeachment would go up to the Senate for a vote if one were to pass the House, but that’s a completely different animal.
Ah, ok I misread “impeachment” as “investigation” in another post.