Trump Leveraging Ukraine Military Aid For Dirt On Joe Biden

[Fort Fun Indiana]

She hired an Aneeican firm.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that a career lawyer understood the law, while a career conman, surrounded by criminals, did not.

Not sure what the confusion is, here

 

[Zorro!]

Wrong.

Another lie debunked-Biden & the Ukraine

Shit, even rightwing media is admitting this is a problem for trump...

Trump Whistleblower Complaint: The Obvious Problem with Rudy Giuliani's Spin on Ukraine | National Review

You don't want to be objective here, you want to hit trump.

It's bullshit. Nothing to do with trump and everything to do with bullshit tactics being used these days.

It has to stop.

LOLOL

Dumbfuck, I posted a link to a hardcore rightwing site. Even some on the right can see trump is wrong. Open your blinders

A hardcore ani-Trump site:

Donald Trump -- Conservatives Should Stand against Him | National Review

And that means what.... that they're not a hard core rightwing site? Not everyone sees this as you do. Not even everyone on the right.

An anti-Trump site takes an anti-Trump view, and this surprises you.... why again?

 

[Zorro!]

Trump is desperately trying to divert attention from whistleblower to Joe Biden. It won't work.

You've got him now!

 

[Lakhota]

If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.

 

[Faun]

Well maybe he played a part but the DNC and the Hillary campaign did pay for the phony Steele dossier and the corrupt and Trump spying Obama Administration did have Steele on the payroll from what I've heard so far.
.

The Steele dossier was ordered initially by a Republican trump political rival....so get off that soap box....

Uh, no, it wasn't.

David Corn reported in 2017that a trump rival initially ordered the dossier. Hillary picked it up after the rival stopped payment. The rival was never named.

The Dirty Truth About the Steele Dossier

Actually, what Corn said was....

A veteran spy has given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) “It started off as a fairly general inquiry,” says the former spook, who asks not to be identified.​

And yes, the rival was named. It was the Washington Free Beacon. And Steele was hired after they dropped Fusion GPS.

My point is....the initial funding did not come from Hillary
And she did not initially order the dossier.

"This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. "

There's no evidence Hillary ordered the dossier. There's no evidence she even received a copy of it before the election. But Fusion GPS did not hire Steele until after Hillary hired them.

 

[Paul Motter]

Trump is desperately trying to divert attention from whistleblower to Joe Biden. It won't work.

ABC News already explained the whole clusterflock - Biden's son was accused of conning the Ukraine out of $83-million/month working as an "Natural Gas" consultant.

In fact, Son Holden Biden had just come out of a treatment center for cocaine addiction and has no experience at all in the natural gas field. Daddy Joe made sure the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Holden was fired before he allowed the U.S. to give Ukraine its regular $1-billion stipend - and then Joe bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations on exactly what he did. According to lawyers this is bribery, or extortion (take your pick) in return for an act that covers up a crime.

 

[Polishprince]

If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.

LOL.

This is like the 9000th time the libs "had the goods" on Trump and he will be gone by the end of the week.

"If" seems to be the prevailing word here. Anything is possible "if" something else happens.

 

[Faun]

You realize of course that the Ukrainian President is coming to Washington next week, and that the Congress Leaders can meet with him directly and get his version of events. That's precisely WHY Trump reinstated the aid. Failure to give the promised aid to the Ukrainians would have exposed his extortion...

Say who? WaPo is reporting that the secret source says there was no quid pro quo. Except for Biden of course, Biden bragged that he, with Obama's baclking threatened to withhold a Billion US taxpayer olloars unless they fired the prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden, and they fired him. Are you claiming that Biden and Obama committed a crime? Impeachable offenses?

... the Russia investigation...

That was a sham cooked up by Hillary and Obama partisans in the DOJ and IC.

... The American people do NOT want foreign leaders investigating American political rivals of the sitting American President...

What Biden brags about sounds to me like it's worth an investigation, why wouldn't we cooperate?

From April 2019:

Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn't resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.​

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.​

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.​

Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.​

The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.​

Ukranian officials began looking into why this investigation was shut down, and offered information to US Attorney General Bill Barr.

[A]s Biden's 2020 campaign ramped up over the past year, Lutsenko — the Ukrainian prosecutor that Biden once hailed as a "solid" replacement for Shokin -- began looking into what happened with the Burisma case that had been shut down...

Lutsenko said some of the evidence he knows about in the Burisma case may interest U.S. authorities and he'd like to present that information to new U.S. Attorney General William Barr, particularly the vice president’s intervention.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Biden had correlated and connected this aid with some of the HR (personnel) issues and changes in the prosecutor's office," Lutsenko said.​

Ukraine did in fact re-open the case -- without any bidding by Trump.

... here are good and valid reasons why Trump attempting to extort the Ukrainian government for his own political gain, is an impeachable offence....

It's an impeachable offense against... Trump?!?!!

Trump urged the Ukranians to look into a case of official corruption and unethical exertion of political pressure openly boasted of by Joe Biden himself and the guy who needs investigating is... Trump?!!?

By the way: the Deep State source who illegally leaked this to the media (of course) doesn't even allege there was any quid pro quo -- just what xhe claims was an improper "urging" of action.

It's now illegal and impeachable for a president to urge a foreign leader to open a corruption probe?

The things one learns from our very educated and very rational NeverTrump Genius Brigade.

NO Quid Pro Quo....

No Crime for Trump...

Now Biden on the other hand is in deep shit because his Quid Pro Quo has been admitted to on tape and from official transcripts from about 9 different officials. But its Trump who is wrong for investigating a DEMOCRAT LIAR....

Liberal logic is absent here... They got there wittle fewings hurt....

Biden Used U.S. Aid as Weapon to Force Ukraine to Fire Prosecutor Looking Into His Son’s Business.

MORE:

Joe Biden recently admitted he used his position as vice president to get an investigation squashed that had been launched into his son’s crooked business.

One of the things liberals say that makes Joe Biden qualified to become president is that he has foreign policy experience, but one of Uncle Joe’s stories about that experience is getting another look because it appears that Biden admitted using U.S. foreign aid as a weapon to stop an investigation into his son’s shady business dealings.

Biden himself seemed to have confirmed that he used his position as vice president to force the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was looking into son Hunter Biden’s business.

Biden forced Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was going to investigate the corrupt oligarch his son Hunter worked for by threatening to withhold $1B. Biden brags about it on video


Jim Hanson

✔@Uncle_Jimbo
· Sep 20, 2019

Replying to @Uncle_Jimbo


Trump has every right to ask a foreign leader to investigate corrupt actions of a former US VP

It would be wrong to let Biden slide because he is running for office again. His abuse of power previously is a matter that deserves investigation regardlesshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/europe/corruption-ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-biden-ties.html …


Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch
As the vice president aims to curb corruption in Ukraine, Hunter Biden sits on the board of a Ukrainian company accused of having “illicit assets.”

nytimes.com

It's not been proven Biden did that for his son...

Biden openly admits that he forced the firing of the prosecutor that was investigating his son and leveraged $1B in US aid to get him fired.

... trying to make it appear that Biden acted alone and only when Shokin was fired...

Biden claims that he and Obama acted in concert.

There's reporting that the U.S. was after Ukraine's prosecutor general's office for a year leading up Shokin's removal. And not for investigating Burisma Holdings, but for refusing to take actions against them. In 2014, the U.K. froze Burisma's assets due to apparent corruption. In early 2015, a British court reversed that because the prosecutor general's office refused to turn over related documentation from an ongoing investigation of their own. Shokin was installed but according to news reports, he left the investigation on hold. It was lack of transparency and corruption in Ukraine's prosecutor general's office which prompted the U.S. government, led by Biden, to use a billion dollars of loan guarantees as leverage to get Ukraine to replace Shokin. And that was merely to replace him -- it wasn't to shut down an investigation.

 

[iceberg]

The Steele dossier was ordered initially by a Republican trump political rival....so get off that soap box....

Uh, no, it wasn't.

David Corn reported in 2017that a trump rival initially ordered the dossier. Hillary picked it up after the rival stopped payment. The rival was never named.

The Dirty Truth About the Steele Dossier

Actually, what Corn said was....

A veteran spy has given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) “It started off as a fairly general inquiry,” says the former spook, who asks not to be identified.​

And yes, the rival was named. It was the Washington Free Beacon. And Steele was hired after they dropped Fusion GPS.

My point is....the initial funding did not come from Hillary
And she did not initially order the dossier.

"This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. "

There's no evidence Hillary ordered the dossier. There's no evidence she even received a copy of it before the election. But Fusion GPS did not hire Steele until after Hillary hired them.

There's no evidence trump colluded with the Russians but the left won't drop that shit.

We live in a fucked up world we've created these days.

 

[iceberg]

If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.

That's it. Trump just shit himself. The end is here.

Fucking morons.

 

[Faun]

A President asking a foreign leader to investigate his rival in exchange for something is not the same as someone doing research.

In exchange for what? You don't know, do you?

Also, Hillary violated the law by paying money to a foreign agent for the dossier.

She paid an American firm. What law says she couldn't do that?

She used an American firm to hide where the money was really going.

She hired an Aneeican firm. Your insinuation that she hired them to hire Steele is baseless and unfounded.

Actually she laundered the payments through a law firm and reported her efforts to dig up dirt from Kremlin linked to use against Trump as "legal services".

And the DOJ and FBI concealed her funding from the FISA court so they could illegally spy on the Trump campaign.

Great, then Horowitz's investigation was able to prove your claims?

 

[Zorro!]

If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.

How many times have we heard that?

Here, you vouch for NR. Here's a guy worth listening to on these matters:

Trump Whistleblower Claim: Congress Should Investigate | National Review

The New York Times produced a report by no fewer than eight of its top journalists, joining the seven (and counting) who are working it for the Washington Post, which broke the story.

It stems from — what else? — anonymous leaks attributed to former intelligence officials. While the media purport to be deeply concerned about Trump-administration law-breaking in classified matters, there is negligible interest in whether the intelligence officials leaking to them are flouting the law.

Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump’s private lawyer, has been open about urging Ukraine to pursue an investigation against Biden. When he was Obama-administration vice president, Biden claims to have pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of a natural-gas company that Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the company’s board of, and his law firm was lavishly compensated by.

Congress seems wholly uninterested in examining Obama-administration and Clinton-campaign dealings with Ukraine in 2016, when our government encouraged Kiev to investigate Paul Manafort, and a leak about a claim of lavish cash payments to Manafort resulted in his removal as Trump’s campaign chairman.

Section 3033(k)(5)(G) (of Title 50, U.S. Code), an “urgent concern” relates to specified problems involving intelligence activities and classified information that are within the responsibility of the Director of National Intelligence.

Section 3033 Does Not Apply to the President

The whistleblower incorrectly believed President Trump’s conversation with the unidentified foreign leader qualified as an “urgent concern” as defined in the statute. On August 12, the whistleblower reported the matter to IGIC Atkinson. Atkinson concluded that the complaint did indeed spell out a Section 3033 urgent concern and incorrectly, applied the statute to the president.

Atkinson thus notified Joseph Maguire, the acting DNI. Maguire did not believe the matter met the Section 3033 definition because it related to an activity by someone not under the authority of the DNI (the president). Consequently, Maguire correctly declined to pass the complaint along to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Meanwhile, current and former intelligence officials continue to leak like sieves in their years-long campaign against the sitting president. The existence of the complaint, the report of it to the IGIC, and the acting DNI’s refusal to alert Congress became known to the media and to Chairman Schiff. The chairman is claiming that the Trump administration is violating the law by failing to notify Congress of an urgent concern, as mandated by Section 3033.

Chairman Schiff’s claim is wrong. Section 3033 does not apply to a president’s negotiations with or commitments to foreign powers, or to a president’s sharing of classified information with foreign powers. To repeat, the statute applies to intelligence activities by government officials acting under the authority of the DNI. The Trump administration can not correctly be accused of law-breaking for declining to follow Section 3033.

In our system, the conduct of foreign policy is a near plenary authority of the chief executive. The only exceptions are explicitly stated in the Constitution (Congress regulates foreign commerce, the Senate must approve treaties, etc.). Congress may not enact statutes that limit the president’s constitutional power to conduct foreign policy; the Constitution may not be amended by statute.

If the express terms of a statute do not apply its provisions to the president, then the statute is deemed not to apply to the president if its application would conflict with the president’s constitutional powers. Section 3033 does not refer to the president. By its terms, it applies to intelligence-community officials. And, in any event, it may not properly be applied to the president if doing so would hinder the president’s capacious authority to conduct foreign policy.

When a Republican is in the White House, "progressives" are enthralled by laws that, in effect, empower bureaucrats — here, “intelligence professionals”– to second-guess and otherwise check the president’s power to direct the executive branch. That is not our system.

In conducting foreign affairs, the president may make commitments to other foreign leaders (subject to the Constitution’s treaty clause). The president, unlike his subordinates, also has the power to disclose any classified information he chooses to disclose.

There has been a three-year campaign by current and former government officials to undermine the Trump presidency by lawless leaks of politicized intelligence.

The fact that Biden may end up being Trump’s rival in the 2020 election does not immunize him from investigation. If he used his political influence to squeeze a foreign power for his son’s benefit, that should be explored.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

There's no evidence trump colluded with the Russians

Of course there us. Lots of it. What i think you meant to say is that we have no evidence of criminal conspiracy. Always happy to help.

 

[Faun]

Shit, even rightwing media is admitting this is a problem for trump...

Trump Whistleblower Complaint: The Obvious Problem with Rudy Giuliani's Spin on Ukraine | National Review

You don't want to be objective here, you want to hit trump.

It's bullshit. Nothing to do with trump and everything to do with bullshit tactics being used these days.

It has to stop.

LOLOL

Dumbfuck, I posted a link to a hardcore rightwing site. Even some on the right can see trump is wrong. Open your blinders

A hardcore ani-Trump site:

Donald Trump -- Conservatives Should Stand against Him | National Review

And that means what.... that they're not a hard core rightwing site? Not everyone sees this as you do. Not even everyone on the right.

An anti-Trump site takes an anti-Trump view, and this surprises you.... why again?

I didn't say I was surprised. Who knows what led you to such an erroneous conclusion. I also note you avoided my question.

 

[Faun]

Trump is desperately trying to divert attention from whistleblower to Joe Biden. It won't work.

You've got him now!

Maybe, that remains to be seen. Recall, it took Republicans some 4 years and many tries to get Clinton.

 

[Faun]

If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.

Abuse of power, if true.

 

[Bush92]

Ukrainians = freedom fighters...Putin = bullisht.

 

[Lakhota]

Trump has been completely stonewalling Congress, but that will eventually come to an end - and so will the Trump presidency. The truth will prevail in the end.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Ukrainians = freedom fighters...Putin = bullisht.

I'm sure it frustrated trump that he had so little sway over the current ukrainian leadership. The Putin puppet is no longer in power. Looks like trump got fooled by having so many criminal foreign agents firiendly to the former putin puppet administration around him. Oops!

 

[Zorro!]

Trump is desperately trying to divert attention from whistleblower to Joe Biden. It won't work.

You've got him now!

Maybe, that remains to be seen. Recall, it took Republicans some 4 years and many tries to get Clinton.

That blew up in the GOP's faces. They LOST seats. The 1998 elections were the first time since 1822 in which the president's party gained seats in the House during the president's second mid-term.

This marked only the second time since the Civil War in which the president's party gained seats in the House of Representatives in a midterm election.