Impeachment

[Doomsought]

It's such a moronic reason to impeach too. Claiming he pressured Ukraine into something politically when Biden has bragged about doing the same thing except literally worse in every measure.

If I understand it correctly, they are trying to impeach Trump for what Biden did.

 

[CurtisLemay]

If I understand it correctly, they are trying to impeach Trump for what Biden did.

Shh! @Doomsought! Don't confuse them with the facts!

 

[Deleted member]

Official impeachment proceedings vote seems to have happened, if I’m reading things correctly. If so, I think the Democrats have just guaranteed a Trump landslide win in 2020.

Yes, impeachment proceedings have begun, and yes, this is an epic Democratic own-goal, though I think to some extent Trump intentionally baited them into it.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Well, it's not quite as petty as impeaching someone over getting a blowjob, but impeaching over allegations and rumors that haven't even been confirmed in the first place is still pretty bad. At the absolute best, they're jumping the gun on this massively.

It's such a moronic reason to impeach too. Claiming he pressured Ukraine into something politically when Biden has bragged about doing the same thing except literally worse in every measure.

Can you explain what you mean by Biden bragging about doing the same thing?

 

[CurtisLemay]

I will make another prediction. Tensions in the DC area are gonna be bad. Antifa and those that oppose them are gonna camp out on the Mall and it will be ugly. I just do not see this ending well.

 

[Bigking321]

Can you explain what you mean by Biden bragging about doing the same thing?

They are saying trump tried to influence Ukraine through withholding aid or somesuch?

There is a clip of Biden bragging about how he influenced Ukraine to fire their, attorney general I think, who was investigating his son, by threatening to withhold aid till the person was fired.

I may have a few details wrong but that's the gist of it.

Edit: someone went into more detail in the "Biden his time" thread.

 

[Deleted member]

It looks like they did this to protect Biden as the front-runner, which may ironically kill Biden’s bid since it’s so blatantly transparent.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Edit: someone went into more detail in the "Biden his time" thread.

This post, for anyone wondering:

https://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?threads/2020-dem-primary-biden-his-time.863/page-2#post-15820

I think going forward, we should all try to make sure everything we say here is as sourced and citable as possible, both to make it easier for others to get the same details we are, and to make sure whatever we do claim is factually correct.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Look, whether you like it or not Red Flag laws, on their own, are not a bad idea and were something that could get bipartisan support.

What Chrenshaw is trying to do is make it so that Federal level Red Flag laws are not abused for political and personal reasons like they have been in California.

The simple fact is that there are shooters who should never have been able to buy a gun, but because databases aren't being shared between organizations, slipped through the cracks. Red Flag laws may not be perfect, but they can stop some shootings and involve actual due process, due process the Chrenshaw is trying to ensure is upheld in the face of mob anger and hysteria.

Red Flag laws are a terrible fucking idea.


Guns save ten times the people they kill. Twenty if you dont count suicides, which you shouldn't.

 

[Deleted member]

This post, for anyone wondering:

https://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?threads/2020-dem-primary-biden-his-time.863/page-2#post-15820

I think going forward, we should all try to make sure everything we say here is as sourced and citable as possible, both to make it easier for others to get the same details we are, and to make sure whatever we do claim is factually correct.

Thank you. We don’t have debate rules and won’t, but doing this is just good policy and wise for many reasons.

 

[Cherico]

Read somewhere that there was a poll done recently that revealed that only 20% of Americans supported Impeachment. Since impeachment is inherently a political process ...

Seems to me like the Democrats are placating their lunatic fringe at the expense of all other political groups.

I don’t see how they survive this.

the tree once pruned grows to greater splender.

We are going through a political realignment, those historically have always sucked, the republican party collapsed first and is being rebuilt to be a populus party. Now its the democrats turn to collapse and be rebuilt. They can be rebuilt as some thing better or some thing worse but their not going to exit it the same way they came in.

 

[Aceraptor]

What Trump did is not nothing. There was a whistleblower complaint about the alleged actions. Alleging that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into manufacturing a scandal against a political opponent. He tried to withhold military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure the Ukrainian president into launching an investigation into Biden's son's company. The office of inspector general found it credible enough to refer to Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence. Who is required by law to report on the whistleblower complaint to congress within a week. He refused to follow the law citing that he was ordered by higher authority to not comply. And then overruled the Inspector General stating that the issue was not urgent even though he does not possess the authority to overrule the Inspector General.

Timeline: The Trump whistleblower complaint

President Trump’s administration was rocked this week by news of a whistleblower complaint filed early last month that detailed a troubling conversation Trump had with another world leader, r…

thehill.com

Partial timeline:

Spoiler

July 28: DNI Dan Coats exit announced

Aug. 8: Sue Gordon announces resignation

Aug. 12: Whistleblower files complaint
Thought it went unreported at the time, on Aug. 12, an anonymous member of the intelligence community filed a complaint with Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson, flagging multiple instances of the president's conversations with a foreign leader the whistleblower said were troubling. Of note was an undisclosed "promise" Trump reportedly made to that foreign leader during one or more conversations.

Aug. 15: Coats, Gordon exit, Maguire steps in as acting DNI

Aug. 26: Whistleblower complaint is forwarded to Maguire
By law, Atkinson was given 14 days to review the whistleblower complaint and make a determination on whether it was credible and of "urgent concern." Apparently finding both to be true, Atkinson forwarded the complaint to Maguire, who had one week to deliver a report on the whistleblower claim to Congress.

Sept. 2: Maguire misses congressional deadline
Sept. 2 passed, and Maguire declined to issue a report on the whistleblower claim to members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which Democrats have since said was a violation of the law.

Sept. 9: Atkinson alerts Congress
Taking matters into his own hands, the inspector general penned a note to lawmakers including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, alerting them to the existence of the whistleblower complaint and accusing Maguire of failing to issue a report to Congress.

Sept. 10: Schiff writes back, demands complaint
Schiff wrote to Maguire the next day, accusing the acting DNI of breaking the law by failing to issue the report on the whistleblower's complaint to Congress. In his letter, Schiff demanded more information about the contents of the complaint.

Sept. 13: DNI responds
In a letter several days later to Schiff, Atkinson's general counsel Jason Klitenic explained that the matter was judged to not be of "urgent concern" after consultation with the Justice Department.
Schiff subpoenaed Maguire to provide his committee with the whistleblower complaint, writing in his own letter to Maguire that "you have neither the legal authority nor the discretion to overrule a determination by the IC IG."

The youtube video of Russia Today (a quite blatant mouthpiece for the Russian government) is pushing the angle that Biden pressuring Ukraine into firing the federal prosecutor was corruption to try to protect his son from investigation. What Russia Today does not mention is the context of the situation where Biden was sent to get the prosecutor fired. The prosecutor was considered corrupt by multiple European nations and international organizations.

MYRE: Well, why don't we go back to the early days of 2014? Ukraine is having these massive protests, and they culminate with the ouster of the pro-Russian president. And in his place, we get a pro-Western president. And the Obama administration wants to work with the new president, but Ukraine has been riddled with corruption. And so the U.S. position is shared with European governments and international institutions. They're willing to provide assistance, but they want the country to clean up its act. And Vice President Joe Biden becomes the point man and a frequent visitor to Ukraine.

So Biden became the front man in trying to get a prosecutor widely seen by multiple nations and international organizations as corrupt and not actually investigating corruption pushed out of the way so that a new prosecutor can be brought in to do something about the corruption issue. If it wasn't Biden it could have easily been another person.

Truth, Lies, and the Nonsense Trump-Biden-Ukraine False Equivalency - The Bulwark

Watching the media cycle around President Trump’s apparent abuse of power—and the underlying Biden nontroversy in Ukraine—gives me a frustrating, helpless feeling. It’s like when you’re watching a horror movie and the psychopath with a chainsaw is creeping up on some clueless dupe and you...

thebulwark.com

2015 speech by the US Ambassador to Ukraine:

We have learned that there have been times that the PGO not only did not support investigations into corruption, but rather undermined prosecutors working on legitimate corruption cases.

For example, in the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people. Officials at the PGO’s office were asked by the U.K. to send documents supporting the seizure.

Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result the money was freed by the U.K. court and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.

The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters should be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should—at a minimum—be summarily terminated.

Ukraine Ousts Viktor Shokin, Top Prosecutor, and Political Stability Hangs in the Balance (Published 2016)

Mr. Shokin had been criticized for turning a blind eye to corruption, but political observers said he played an important role in balancing competing interests.

www.nytimes.com

The United States and other Western nations had for months called for the ousting of Mr. Shokin, who was widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite. He was one of several political figures in Kiev whom reformers and Western diplomats saw as a worrying indicator of a return to past corrupt practices, two years after a revolution that was supposed to put a stop to self-dealing by those in power.

As the problems festered, Kiev drew increasingly sharp criticism from Western diplomats and leaders. In a visit in December, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said corruption was eating Ukraine “like a cancer.” Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, which props up Ukraine financially, said last month that progress was so slow in fighting corruption that “it’s hard to see how the I.M.F.-supported program can continue.”

So no, this is not making a mountain out of a molehill. Trump administration subverted the established process of whistleblowers by preventing the briefing of Congress of the contents of the whistleblower complaint. The information we are seeing about the complaint seems to suggest that the complaint was about Trump and Ukraine, and if it was true that Trump was trying to create a scandal for a political opponent by pressuring another nation, its a big no-no and outright corrupt use of his office.

And Biden's action in Ukraine during his tenure as Vice President was not improper. He was merely the pointman in a international pressure against the widely regarded as corrupt prosecutor general.

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

Look, y'all, I get it's fun to gloat when victory seems secured, but are there any articles that support the claim of the demorats having gone ahead with their impeachment procedure?

EDIT: nvm, it's all over the news. Wow, they really don't get how this will rally the republican base, do they?

 

[Nyarlathotep]

e: This guy deleted his tweet so here's a screenshot

 

[Cyan Saiyajin]

Honestly I disagree that the Dems are in trouble, oh the current batch are, but given that people including I do not want a single party government. All its going to take is a charismatic politician that has nothing to do with the current shitstorm to come in after the 2020 election and not go as far left as the current batch. In fact its entirely possible that is the strategy at this time. Allow further division and extreme elements in the Dems to burn themselves out on a weak election cycle. And then bring in a new person next election cycle.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

There was a whistleblower complaint about the alleged actions.

except it wasn't actually a whistleblower. the guy who went to the press had no firsthand knowledge of the call, or what was said in the call.

 

[Thatguythere]

Snip

I've heard this dog and pony show before. We probably won't get answers until next week due to the chaos unleashed. Although I have to ask: How is what Biden did NOT Bribery or blackmail? He's dictating to a foreign Nation that's already been designated for aid, that unless they fire this guy, the aid won't come in? Because that sounds alot like interfering in a foreign nations Judicial process.

Granted I think this whole thing is overblown for the simple fact EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY, does this. The whole entire Treaty with Egypt is based on the very principle! And that was Carter who made it! Bloody Peanut-farmer Carter made a treaty bribing Egypt with $2billion a year not to attack Isreal!


And before you say "Yeah, but he wanted dirt on Biden" where the hell do you think the evidence against Manafort came from? Nobody would give two flying F's about Manafort if he hadn't been involved with Trump. The man would still be doing the exact same thing he's been convicted of. Along with the thousands of others who do it. Except the Special Council used their position to pressure a foreign power to *Gasp* investigate Manafort! Hell, if the original rumors on Manafort that spiked him were released because of pressure from Obama, then isn't that interfering in the 2016 election!?

And where is the evidence he WANTED DIRT ON BIDEN? It's all speculation so far on what's in the mystery box! Feels like 2016 Election Night coverage all over again.

Oh, also this Article in the WaPo. Lots of interesting bits and links in there. Apparently Trump was beaten to the punch in threatening Ukraine by three Dem senators. Go figure.

 

[Bacle]

I've heard this dog and pony show before. We probably won't get answers until next week due to the chaos unleashed. Although I have to ask: How is what Biden did NOT Bribery or blackmail? He's dictating to a foreign Nation that's already been designated for aid, that unless they fire this guy, the aid won't come in? Because that sounds alot like interfering in a foreign nations Judicial process.

Granted I think this whole thing is overblown for the simple fact EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY, does this. The whole entire Treaty with Egypt is based on the very principle! And that was Carter who made it! Bloody Peanut-farmer Carter made a treaty bribing Egypt with $2billion a year not to attack Isreal!


And before you say "Yeah, but he wanted dirt on Biden" where the hell do you think the evidence against Manafort came from? Nobody would give two flying F's about Manafort if he hadn't been involved with Trump. The man would still be doing the exact same thing he's been convicted of. Along with the thousands of others who do it. Except the Special Council used their position to pressure a foreign power to *Gasp* investigate Manafort! Hell, if the original rumors on Manafort that spiked him were released because of pressure from Obama, then isn't that interfering in the 2016 election!?

And where is the evidence he WANTED DIRT ON BIDEN? It's all speculation so far on what's in the mystery box! Feels like 2016 Election Night coverage all over again.

Oh, also this Article in the WaPo. Lots of interesting bits and links in there. Apparently Trump was beaten to the punch in threatening Ukraine by three Dem senators. Go figure.

Ace is used to Whitehall, where those sources are uncritically accepted and touted as 'Trustworthy' and 'Beyond Reproach', while real investigative journalism like Project Veritas is suppressed and citing/supporting them is punished.

So reality matters less to him than what helps the Progressive/Dem narrative.

 

[Battlegrinder]

What Trump did is not nothing.

What Trump did hasn't even been confirmed as actually having happened in the first place.

There was a whistleblower complaint about the alleged actions. Alleging that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into manufacturing a scandal against a political opponent. He tried to withhold military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure the Ukrainian president into launching an investigation into Biden's son's company. The office of inspector general found it credible enough to refer to Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence. Who is required by law to report on the whistleblower complaint to congress within a week. He refused to follow the law citing that he was ordered by higher authority to not comply. And then overruled the Inspector General stating that the issue was not urgent even though he does not possess the authority to overrule the Inspector General.

Schiff's letter doesn't back up the claim that the DNI can't overrule the IG, a claim that I also find logically dubious. If the DNI is supposed to investigate complaints forwarded from the IG, that should mean they have the authority to deem said complaints off base, otherwise what else are they supposed to do, just be the IG's rubber stamp?

Looking at the law being cited, 50 U.S.C. 3033, the DNI's position seems valid enough, this whistleblower, even if it's true (and given how many anonymous reports about this administration have turned out to be bullshit, I wouldn't count on that), is not complaining about anything that the DNI is actually responsible for. Subsection K.2 says the DNI must transmit reports to congress when they recieve a report regarding problems with programs or activities "within the responsibility and authority of the DNI". The president's actions, any actions, are neither. It does not say, as Schiff tries to claim it does, that the DNI is only supposed to forward complaints, that the DNI can't consulted the justice department, or that the DNI must forward all complaints regardless of subject matter or relevance, in fact the same section that Schiff cites is very explicit in regards to what the DNI is and is not required to forward.

The youtube video of Russia Today (a quite blatant mouthpiece for the Russian government)

It's funny how fast the press stops being sacrosanct once it starts saying things you don't like. RT has biases and issues, sure,but that's the same with any similar organization, and BBC News is government funded but somehow they're not an arm of the British government and RT is.

is pushing the angle that Biden pressuring Ukraine into firing the federal prosecutor was corruption to try to protect his son from investigation. What Russia Today does not mention is the context of the situation where Biden was sent to get the prosecutor fired. The prosecutor was considered corrupt by multiple European nations and international organizations.

So Biden became the front man in trying to get a prosecutor widely seen by multiple nations and international organizations as corrupt and not actually investigating corruption pushed out of the way so that a new prosecutor can be brought in to do something about the corruption issue. If it wasn't Biden it could have easily been another person.

So, what? It's ok to pressure other countries and meddle in the affairs of their judiciary, as long as you don't do so unilaterally? I don't see how that lets Biden off the hook or puts Trump on it, by that logic if Trump and Putin had both agreed this needed to happen and had elected to have Trump do it, would this have been fine?

Stuff

Bacle. Not helping.

 

[Husky_Khan]

It is pretty funny that the mainstream media on television mentions that the reason for impeachment is because of Trump telling Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden but having watch the NBC Nightly News the last two days and the coverage of the story this morning on CBS (ugh the most news television I've seen in ages) they haven't expanded on the why of the Bidens and their involvement in the Ukraine.

The faux non-partisan Politifact website said the allegations were half true in regards to the Bidens and Ukraine... basically concluding that there's no evidence that Joe Biden 'knew' of Hunter Biden being made a Director of the large Ukrainian company in question and that it had been investigated by local and foreign agencies as recently as when Hunter Biden was a member of the company.

PolitiFact - Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine

Editor's Note, Sept. 23, 2019: This story was first published May 9, 2019; we have since published additional coverage t

www.politifact.com

We found wide agreement among Ukraine policy experts that Hunter Biden’s decision to become a director for Burisma presented a serious conflict of interest.

"It’s not a crime, but it is a lapse. It’s troubling," said Lincoln A. Mitchell, an adjunct research scholar at Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies who has written about governance in the former Soviet Union.

Pifer, who expressed reservations about the arrangement to the New York Times in 2015, said subsequent developments have only confirmed those concerns.

"It was a mistake for Hunter Biden to join the Burisma board, particularly given that the vice president was the senior U.S. official engaging Ukraine," Pifer said. "Hunter Biden should have been more mindful of his father's position."

And Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin professor who previously headed the university’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, said Hunter Biden’s hiring echoes the strategy common within Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, in which powerful interests try to secure influence on foreign policy by leveraging family members and associates of key leaders.

"Calling Hunter Biden a private citizen ignores the obvious links to the vice president," Herrera said. "Conflict-of-interest rules should have applied. If Biden is working for the Obama administration on Ukraine, his son should not have been on the board of a company there that could be affected by U.S. policy spearheaded by his father."

Here's a middling article about it from the mainstream media at the time, a year before Biden decided to nobly interfere and bully the Ukrainian government with Western backing.

Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch (Published 2015)

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.”

www.nytimes.com

Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.

But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.

“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”

Mr. Pyatt went on to call for an investigation into “the misconduct” of the prosecutors who wrote the letters. In his speech, the ambassador did not mention Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma.

But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.
“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”

...

Ryan F. Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, said that Hunter Biden would not comment for this article.

It is not known how Mr. Biden came to the attention of the company. Announcing his appointment to the board, Alan Apter, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker who is chairman of Burisma, said, “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”

Joining the board at the same time was one of Mr. Biden’s American business partners, Devon Archer. Both are involved with Rosemont Seneca Partners, an American investment firm with offices in Washington.