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Originally Posted by jwb
I'm not positive but I don't think paying a third party to dig up dirt is actually illegal in any way.
But it's an abuse of power as president to use your powers to extort a foreign govt to smear a political rival for personal gain. It's that simple. Freezing the aid in the manner which he did for leverage was also illegal.
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The DNC aren't a government entity, an extension of the Justice Department, or anything of the sort. What they did was clearly illegal. At least if you are telling me that what Giuliani did was wrong.
Secondly, if you actually dive into the specifics of the timeline regarding the aid, it's been documented that over half of it was actually released to them on July 31st (to the tune of around 125 million), The second half of it, which was called Tranche 2, was released on September 12th. So was anything actually "held up" or did the media just run with the story based on hearsay from a lot of people who didn't actually know?
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Originally Posted by jwb
I agree that he's done worse. Nixon also did worse than Watergate. A lot of it is a political calculus.
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We can actually thank Nixon for Trump's acquittal in some ways. He resigned and then was subsequently pardoned before Articles could actually be passed against him. The ambiguity that situation created has benefited Clinton and now Trump.
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Originally Posted by jwb
I agree Biden being on the board of that company seems like classic nepotism and even corruption. That doesn't actually justify what Trump did. That's what you're missing. If he launched an official investigation through the justice dept that would have its own sort of political implications and obstacles, but it would not have been the subject of an impeachment trial. When you send your thugs to do your dirty work covertly and then lie about it and try to cover it up every step along the way, that's something different.
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So are you saying that utilizing third parties to gather dirt on your behalf is an impeachable offense and but not illegal?
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Originally Posted by jwb
As for this alternative history narrative that this whole thing was to punish the Ukraine for meddling in our elections while basically ignoring the Russians who did the actual hacking, what is the direct connection between Hunter Biden being on Burisma and this supposed interference by the Ukrainian government?
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It isn't alternative history. Russia just wasn't the only country that tried to meddle in our election process in 2016. Their motivations were to prop themselves up for leverage with Russia, since Clinton looked like she would win in a landslide.
However, Russia has already been punished by the Trump administration with nastier sanctions (among other things). If your curious about some of those specifics, Noam Chomsky has been interviewed a few times on the subject and talks extensively about it.
The DNC digging around in Ukraine and Hunter Biden / Joe Biden using Burisma as a way to launder government money back into the U.S. are separate incidents that occurred in the same general window of time.
Mykola Zlochevsky, Burisma's CEO (who was also one of the former government officials approached by Chalupa when she was digging around for the DNC) also happens to be the guy who personally appointed Hunter Biden to his board of directors to "protect" the company from prying eyes. It was only after he was appointed that Burisma's lawyers got to meet with the State Department and then Shokin got fired.
There are other people that serve as intersection points between these two different series of events, but either way it justifies the idea that there was more to look into, corruption-wise, than what actually was done back in 2016.
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Originally Posted by jwb
like I said this is beyond naive. Are you under the impression that Biden would decide to run and then announce it the next day or something? It was well known he would most likely be running. It was well known Sanders and most likely Warren would also be running. The announcement just marks the official start of the campaign. ****, i knew Hilary would be running in 2016 since she lost to Obama in 08. I should start some sort of psychic hotline I guess.
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Nobody in early 2018 knew if he was actually going to run or not. There was a CNN poll in late 2017 where people were asked how they felt about him as a potential candidate, but it got mixed results. At the same timeframe your talking about, Trump was tweeting about Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and his potential presidential run.
When I saw what Parnas wrote about that early 2018 dinner they had, like why Trump decided to fire his Ukrainian ambassador ("she's a holdover from the Clinton administration"), it made it look like that Biden's name came up afterward when Trump was already looking into Ukraine prior to learning about Hunter Biden's ties with Burisma.