Giuliani was also involved in Venezuelan policy:
Two guesses:
Bonus guess: John Bolton knows someone at the Washington Post.
I’ll go 95%, 20%, and 10% as far as likelihood of those guesses being correct and ever being demonstrated to be true. 95%, 20%, and 30% if we remove the “demonstrated” component.
If 100 people testify that Trump is Satan it won’t matter. I don’t know why they are arguing over witnesses. Just get it over with since the outcome is known.
The main (and perhaps only) remaining objective now is to get it over with in such a way as to do maximal damage to Trump and Republicans in general, as discussed in the Pelosi Strategy thread.
If the President wants Dave to carry out government business, how does that square with the appointments clause?
Wait - are you saying that Hunter Biden’s business dealings make Joe Biden corrupt, but Javanka’s business dealings are totally above board?
Have they actually accused him of any crimes, officially? I’ve only seen outrage that Biden was on the Board.
So here’s a thought that’s kept me up nights more than once.
My fondest hope is that this process finally convinces a healthy majority of non-brainwashed voters that the entire GOP has betrayed American democratic ideals and needs to be purged from power to the greatest extent possible next Election Day. I realize that’s a pipe dream.
My more realistic hope is simply that a Democrat wins the White House.
Now, what if the impeachment trial somehow turns against Trump but the GOP manages to hang all the ugliness on Trump and his immediate circle? Now Pence is the incumbent running against Biden or Warren. He fires Barr, Miller and a couple of others, and the GOP pushes a narrative along the lines of “everything real Americans love about Republican values without those corrupt assholes embarrassing us anymore.”
I’d almost rather Trump stay president another year. Am I overthinking this?
Trump didn’t get into the Oval Office because of “Republican values.” He got in because so many Americans are dupes who lost their critical thinking ability through constant watching of dipshit TV like The Apprentice and Fox, which Trump exploited. Pence might try to replicate that con job himself, but he doesn’t have the same facility in doing it, so he wouldn’t win the election.
That’s my fear – that enough Americans are dupes without the critical thinking ability to understand that it was only the sleaziness of the GOP that allowed Trump to rise to political prominence in the first place. They might just swallow a narrative that tells them Trump sold them out, but Pence and the GOP are still better than those socialist Democrats.
I think that’s what they’re trying to get Mitt Romney to say. I think enough Americans are still getting duped by the Southern Strategy.
Then sell them a better narrative. It doesn’t have to be true or realistic or achievable at all: this is electoral politics. Sell them a thousand points of light on a star-spangled future of chickens in every pot and pot in every household. Sell them a country of jet-packs and hoverboards and hologram computer displays and mansions and penthouses and limos with robot drivers. Sell them everything they never knew they wanted but that they absolutely should have. “Trump hasn’t delivered, the GOP hasn’t delivered; our folks are ready to go and they won’t let you down!”
very, very few Trump 2016 voters are not going to vote for him in 2020. Only way the Dem wins is to get more voters than in 2016 in places like Wisconsin, Penn, etc.
Bolding mine.
I know you’re being semi-facetious, but this is the core message I think can win next year. “They promised to replace Obamacare with something better. What did you get? Nothing. Because the GOP is all talk.”
I don’t think officially, but the theory, as I understand it, seems to be that payments made to Hunter while working for a Ukrainian company were really intended for Joe, who was therefore getting rich off Ukraine.
Problems abound with this, of course:
There’s no actual showing of payment to Joe Biden
There’s no actual showing that Biden did anything in response to this (This, by the way, explains why the conspiracy theorists play loose with the facts regarding Biden’s demand that a prosecutor be fired)
Favoritism towards Hunter is just plain ole’ fashioned nepotism/influence peddling, which they all do. While there is something rather seedy to see here, it’s not actually criminal.
Where are your intended audience going to hear about all this wonderful stuff? They’re all exclusively watching Fox News, and that fine enterprise is going to share nothing of the kind with them. We gotta somehow get rid of Trump, the Republican party, and that shameful propaganda machine. We’ll be lucky if we get one out of three. 
Better said than I would have managed.
It’s the usual Trump Republican way: Imply that something is illegal, turn it into a snarl term, then ride that misdirection for all it’s worth. Examples: “Benghazi,” “unmasking,” “socialist.” Same old retread. Joe Biden “corruption” is just this election season’s “But her emails!”
I’m not convinced that it’s even that sleazy. I think the inferences put everything in the worst possible light.
Burisma never paid Hunter Biden directly. Payments were made to Rosemont Seneca, a capital management firm that Biden co-owned. They paid Biden. Rosemont Seneca had multiple clients other than Burisma.
The Republicans would like you to think that the only legitimate function of a board member is to advise on either the core operation of the business or provide advice on corporate governance and they are big on pointing out that Hunter Biden did not have a background in either energy or corporate governance. But there is a third reason that someone might be invited to join a board, and that is for their ability to solicit investors and investments. Which is quite possibly something that H Biden was good at. Remember, he has a law degree and worked as an executive and a lobbyist for several years before his dad was VP.
And although the 50K a month figure has been bandied about, that is also misleading as Biden was not paid a regular amount on a regular basis. He was paid the kind of variable amounts typical for someone working on commission or doing piecework consulting.
I understand the Bidens desire not to get dragged into this controversy that should not be about them. But I actually suspect that Hunter Biden’s payments were directly linked to either work he performed or investments he solicited and that they really aren’t that sleazy at all.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Biden, simply because the difficulties and dangers of doing business in Ukraine, Russia and other countries not governed by the rule of law are very well known and there are serious risks balancing the potential outsized rewards. Businessmen in these countries have been persecuted, jailed and even murdered and anyone doing business in these countries knows that.
Then, I also have to mention for the umpteenth time that the prosecutor Joe Biden helped fire was assisting the owner of Burisma in financial crimes by burying an investigation he was supposed to be rigorously pursuing. So he took an action that worked against his son.
Ironically, another reason a Ukrainian company might want somebody like Biden on its board is to demonstrate fealty to western norms such as above board business practices, rather than the corrupt cronyism the country was fighting to escape. Note that they also hired the former President of Poland for a board position. This would be important for a company seeking international recognition and foreign investment. Merely being a lawyer makes Biden qualified to help with this, which can certainly be termed “corporate governance”.
I don’t think you guys have covered the full stupid of what the republicans are alleging against the Bidens.
What they’ve implied on FOX news is:
Joe Biden pressed for Shokin to be fired because he was investigating Burisma. Slight problem with this theory: it’s the opposite of what happened. Shokin wasn’t doing anything to investigate corruption, so Biden et al pushed to have him removed; the new prosecutor then subsequently opened investigations into Burisma and other companies, finding no wrongdoing on Biden’s part.
Crowdstrike – and Ukraine working with the democrats against Trump.
This is just as solid, coherent, and has just as much supporting evidence as QAnon.
It’s also necessary to add a Todo: hypothesize some connecting line between Biden and this nonsense.
So if Hunter were to take the stand, at least one point of interest is how far down the rabbit’s hole will the republicans go? Will they appeal to these theories, knowing legally they are complete bullshit but might make sense to their base living in a bubble of ignorance?
As far at they need to to get the job done.
Yes.
Sigh.
This part is truly baffling.
So Ukraine/CrowdStrike, working on behalf of Hillary Clinton, hacked her emails, and leaked them, much to her embarrassment and frustration, all while Trump crowed about it, because this was going to be used - at some amorphous time after the election was over - as evidence (relentlessly challenged) to frame Russia and discredit Trump.
Did I get it about right?