I’m cherry picking just like you did.
Trump obviously needs to listen to the Chicken Littles or he wouldn’t be “miserable” and “intolerable” I don’t think.
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That could easily backfire on them. They been painting him as some sort of worthless wastrel, without either an energy or corporate governance background, totally unfit to serve on the board of a corporation.
But its possible young Biden did bring substantial value to Burisma. From his background, it sounds like his experience was in raising capital and soliciting investment. You know, sales. And he might have been really good at it.
I think the Pubs best strategy is to paint him out to be a totally useless wastrel without letting him testify. It’s possible he is competent and well spoken and people will see that he brought value to Burisma. I don’t know either way, I’ve never heard him speak. But this could backfire bigly.
The interesting thing about the Hunter Biden whataboutism: when you listen to the charges, here’s what he’s being accused of: being on the board, and being compensated, while being Joe Biden’s son.
That’s it. Nobody has actually suggested anything untoward has taken place; it’s just “Hunter Biden! A bazillion dollars for being on the Burisma board!! Horrors!!!”
Fewer than 3.
What?
They don’t have to have substance; it’s enough to get an investigation going. It’s the implication of corruption that would be enough to discourage participation in actually making the effort to follow the race and make the effort to drive to the polls, stand in line, and vote.
I’ve mentioned before, and I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to get any play, but Hunter served on the Amtrak board of governors previous to Burisma. Appointed by Bush.
He seems like a wastrel even still, lol.
“He had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.” - Gordon Sondland
That quote from Sondland’s testimony should put an end to the idea that there was a legitimate anti-corruption reason for any of this.
It should, but it probably won’t.
How did the documents get released? Presumably Trump and Pompeo didn’t want them released. Did the FOIA request slip through the cracks? Did a lower-level State Dept. official pre-empt his superiors? Did Pompeo decide to obey the law for fear of a prison term? Is this the “deep state” fighting back?
I read through all 100 pages, there’s hardly anything in them. The “bombshells” appear to be discussions about phone calls between Pompeo and Giuliani, and copies of 1 or 2 of Pompeo’s schedules that showed 20 minute blocks of time carved out for Giuliani. It’s interesting, those schedules were basically full 8 hour days of 20 minute phone calls dealing with people and subjects all over the map, with 15 minutes in between presumably for someone to brief him on the next call’s topic. Being secretary of state sounds like my worst nightmare.
Anyway, if they were aware of the release they probably didn’t care, I’m not sure if Pompeo has stipulated that he talked to Rudy at some point but it doesn’t seem like anyone on Trump’s defense team disputes it. In fact, they would just say it adds legitimacy to what Rudy was doing.
It corroborates Sondland’s testimony - that’s one thing. But we’re probably just getting started. More to follow.
The extension is that Joe shut down a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma in order to keep Hunter’s gravy train flowing. Whether or not Hunter was qualified is irrelevant to that accusation, but also if Hunter were squeeky clean it would lessen the impact of Joe’s alleged interference.
Not that any of this actually matters, but Hunter’s lack of qualifications and the bad optics of him being on a foreign board are at least factual, and iirc prominent democrats were aware of and displeased with the bad optics when it was going on. In a sea of bullshit, criticizing Hunter’s role with Burisma is one of the few things Republicans are doing that’s got any connection to reality.
This is regular Americans fighting back. Any American could have made the FOIA request, but it so happened that American Oversight did. From their website, here is who they are:
There has never been a legal leg to stand on for the State Department or others to withhold these or any other requested documents. They literally ignored the letter of the law in failing to provide them to Congress in response to subpoenas. That was bad.
Anyway, American Oversight filed their FOIA request and a Federal judge ordered the State Department to comply with the request and release the documents by midnight last night. A lot of people (including me) were holding their breath, watching to see if the administration would ignore a judge’s order. Up to now, they haven’t. And they didn’t. So they are still responding to the courts, if nothing else. If they had ignored the court’s order, then we really would be just another authoritarian system.
It’s why Moscow Mitch is working so feverishly to pack the courts with their lackeys. They want the veneer of a democratic republic without actually having one. They want people in judicial positions who will rubber stamp their authoritarian actions so they can point and say, “See? We’re doing it by the book!” when in fact, they are already ignoring many Constitutional mandates as they choose.
What I love about documents is that their evidence is irrefutable. Trump Republicans can try to shade the meaning of testimony from witnesses, pretend the witnesses are partisan or liars, dirty up their reputations. But documents always speak for themselves.
You are right that Trump and Pompeo didn’t want them released, even if, as steronz points out, this tranche doesn’t reveal a ton. But AO indicated they have “dozens” of FOIA requests outstanding, so there is more to come. For me, the important thing is that AO forced the State Department to comply with the law.
I also think it’s big news when a little over a month ago we’ve gone from the Trump “administration” defense of, “Whut? Secretly and illegally withhold military aid for political favors to subvert another election?” to documentary confirmation that the top State Department official was colluding with unofficial Giuliani and his now-indicted henchmen to undermine our official national security interests against the work and policies of his own people.
Regarding Republican support for Trump, fear of tweets is one thing. However, the editor of the National Review, Rich Lowry had an interesting interview with Vox reporter Sean Illing. His comments explicitly explain the rest of Trump’s support from modern Conservative Republican to me.
In short, as with autocratic world leaders, Trump is a useful idiot. They might prefer more useful and less idiot, but they will work with what they got…
And this is simply untrue. Joe Biden was tasked with the official Obama administration’s goal of pursuing more corruption in Ukraine, not less. Biden was dispatched to oversee the Ukraine’s firing of Ukrainian Inspector General Shokin because he was corrupt. In fact, the investigation into Burisma under Shokin had gone dormant at the time Joe Biden aided in Shokin’s firing.
There was no active investigation into Burisma at the time. The idea was to get a new Ukrainian IG who would investigation more corruption, not less.
This was not only the goal of the United States, but also the goal of other Western European governments.
A good CT debunker explanation can be found here. (New York Times) That link also takes on the stupid Crowdstrike crap and Hunter Biden China connections. It’s a good read.
I don’t disagree that Hunter Biden leaned on his father’s reputation to get his Burisma board position. But if we’re worried about nepotism, we could easily look at Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Andrew Giuliani who now works as Trump’s “sports liaison,” and William Barr’s son-in-law, Tyler McGaughey, who now works in the White House Counsel’s office.
The argument completely ignores that if you impeach Trump, Elizabeth Warren does not become President and that Pence would be even more in line with what he’s looking for.
Well, seems like Trump was asking for a bribe, while simultaneously committing extortion.
Super-genius Devin Nunes is threatening to sue the media for reporting on what Lev Parnas is saying about helping out on one of Nunes’ junkets to gather conspiracy theories.
Note, Nunes isn’t talking about suing his buddy Parnas for defamation. No, he wants to sue the media for reporting on what Parnas is saying.
Of course, there’s a reasonable chance that Parnas is lying. He’s really no more trustworthy that Nunes, after all.
Generally agree but a lot of Americans just didn’t like Hillary and Bill, period. There was 25 years of conspiracies about them.
Bill was in office one year when this wackjob was produced.
Except that didn’t really happen either. There was no investigation of Burisma. The prosecutor Biden worked to have fired (Shokin) wasn’t investigating Burisma. He wasn’t investigating any of the corruption in Ukraine. He was taking bribes NOT to in investigate corruption. That’s why the US wanted him fired. This story that Biden’s son was being investigated is totally false.