A now (suspiciously deleted, read the intro) Lev Parnas text/document dump discussed here:
has a text message from Rudy Giuliani date stamped 3/12/2019 talking about corruption, which includes:
“I need Porochenko And the AG on the record about the Ambassador and Biden.” Biden’s campaign did not start until April 25th 2019:
This shows the intent was to fight corruption, not to weaken a political rival. Game Over.
And Biden’s announcement came as a complete shock to the world, nobody could have foreseen it and competing campaigns spent no time whatsoever contemplating how to respond to a potential Biden campaign.
Read your own cite. The Wikipedia article about Biden’s campaign contains numerous references to Biden discussing running beginning as early as December 2016 and continuing until he announced officially.
Is this a parody, or is this for real? You think that April 25, 2019 is the first time that anyone considered that Biden was running for president in 2020?
Here you go, an article from a month ahead of that about Biden’s run. So, by your argument that dates are all that matters, this shows the intent was to weaken a political rival, not corruption.
So in order to prove the intent portion of this state of mind crime, we need to assume Trump even heard things Biden discussed, and believed Biden would finally decide to run after hearing those unofficial discussions.
And what if the Ambasssdor later decided to run for president? She’s in the same sentence as Biden. Heck, there’s still time for her to announce her candidacy. Then you’ve got Trump again!
The only surprise would have beef if Biden announced that he would not run.
Game over, man.
Game. Over.
I mean, if only we had some evidence that Trump was aware that Biden was discussing running for president before that. That would be pretty devastating for your hypothesis.
Well my psychic told me that back in January 2019, Biden was thinking “Trump might investigate me, I better start talking about running for President”. So now Trump is exonerated again.
If you consider his posting history he’s quite consistent in posting the worst takes on the SDMB. Could be he just isn’t breaking kayfabe, but almost certainly real.
This is irrelevant. If a President is concerned about illegal actions (such as corruption) by US citizens, then the correct response is to notify US law enforcement authorities. Asking another country, especially one known for corruption, to look into it, is simply not legitimate. It’s not credible that Trump asked a corrupt country to investigate a political opponent (and running or not, Biden is a political opponent of Trump) for any legitimate reason. If he was legitimately interested in investigating corruption, he would have referred it to the DOJ and/or other US law enforcement.
I don’t think the relevant law even mentions “political opponent”. Nor do i think it describes a “legitimate” procedure. And I don’t think it lays out a way of classifying a country as corrupt. But go ahead, quote it if it does.
Biden is running? Since when? 
Some of us actually served this country, and believe in the ideals it aspires too. Those ideals include more than lip service to the letter of the law – they require public servants to actually act for the interests of the country and put aside their own personal interests, including their own personal political interests. If you can conceive of a legitimate reason for a US president to ask a country with a history of corrupt law enforcement to investigate a political opponent, rather than referring such a concern to US law enforcement, then please go ahead. Otherwise, I will go by the oath I took when serving the country and stick to the basic notion that public servants should put the interests of the public ahead of their own, and to do otherwise is corrupt.
Are you going to comment on the fact that your entire premise hinges on the dubious point that Trump was unaware that Biden would be running for president before he announced on April 25, 2019 and that has now been thoroughly debunked?
You keep emphasizing “political oponent”. The whole point of this thread is that Biden was not officially a political oponent when Giuliani (and therefore we infer Trump) was asking for a statement about Biden. Now why a statement? I guess you would say something like “To give Biden bad press, nothing more. And therefore the only intent could be the corrupt maligining of a political oponent”. But the Ambassador is in the same sentence. Why malign her in the press? I can’t think of a reason. I can think of an alternative reason to request a statement though. It is because Ukriane is perceived as corrupt (by you too, as you write). If Trump thinks Ukraine is corrupt, and wants to fight corruption (it is part of his job), then a good strategy would be to get them to publicly announce it. Then they have public pressure to actually do it. Without a public announcement they are less likely to follow through.
There’s no such thing as “officially a political opponent”. All Democrats are political opponents of Trump (aside from the very rare Democrat who supports Trump). The Democratic party is the opposition party to Trump.
This still doesn’t make sense and doesn’t explain why Trump thought the proper course of action was to ask a country known for corruption to do it rather than US law enforcement.
The bottom line is this – the proper route for US officials to refer concerns about corruption by US citizens is US law enforcement agencies, period.
Also, as we learned from multiple witnesses, Trump didn’t actually care about an investigation, only the announcement of an investigation.
Again you are inferring a state of mind. In my previous post I show why one might ask for an “announcement” without corrupt intent. If they announce it, there is more pressure for them to actually do it. If the words were “make a public vow” to do it, instead of “announce” that would be more clear. On top of that, why would he want them “on the record” about the Ambassador? The President can remove an ambassador at will, so there is no need for a public sentiment campaign in regards to her.
Again, you are inferring a state of mind that Trump was unaware that Biden was going to run for president despite contemporaneous evidence that he made quite clear that he was well aware. Because obviously he was aware.