Guiliani, Trump, and Ukraine

[Anonymous]

Hope for a response from someone with governmental expertise. Is it proper for the President's personal lawyer to be engaging with foreign governments on behalf of his client's interests? And if these are national interests, is it proper for the President's personal lawer to be handling them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hope for a response from someone with governmental expertise. Is it proper for the President's personal lawyer to be engaging with foreign governments on behalf of his client's interests? And if these are national interests, is it proper for the President's personal lawer to be handling them?

Sorry for the hijack, but I think the question is whether it’s appropriate for the president to ask (or even bribe) a foreign leader to investigate the president’s political opponent’s family.

[Anonymous]

Nothing is proper about how Trump handles the Presidency.

Nothing is proper about how he conducts himself as a human.

[Anonymous]

One strictly legal view is that a lawyer is a totally nonexistent entity without a client. A client must engage the lawyer. If the client is not able to engage a lawyer (like a juvenile or an incompetent person), then some rule or some law or some tribunal has to appoint a lawyer to act for the client.

If Giuliani purports to be the lawyer for the individual person, that is one role. That is NOT the same tile as being the lawyer for the office. Giuliani is NOT the lawyer for the President; he is the lawyer for Trump. Unless Giuliani is duly authorized to engage with a foreign sovereign on behalf of his personal client and solely for a reason that is directly a part of that representation, then Giuliani has no authority at all. He was NOT engaged by the US Government, and Governmental engagement of external lawyers is very strictly governed by statute.

[Anonymous]

I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

This has been investigated and debunked ( we can all agree that Hunter is not a savory character). The point is that Hunter is not running for President and Trump was trying to discredit his political opponent, using impeachable methods.

[Anonymous]

Well, if this doesn’t impeach him, nothing will. This is the smoking gun.

Impeachment is an essential duty we need to perform at this point, whether the President is removed from office or not.
We owe it to our own sense of justice and ethics. It’s not enough just to vote him out in 2020.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

This has been investigated and debunked ( we can all agree that Hunter is not a savory character). The point is that Hunter is not running for President and Trump was trying to discredit his political opponent, using impeachable methods.

I said nothing about Hunter.

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.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived

Lest you not believe the story, look at the video beginning at 1:20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

This has been investigated and debunked ( we can all agree that Hunter is not a savory character). The point is that Hunter is not running for President and Trump was trying to discredit his political opponent, using impeachable methods.

I said nothing about Hunter.

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.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived

Lest you not believe the story, look at the video beginning at 1:20.

So what? Trump is doing the same thing, and to his own country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

Because it’s a nothingburger, as you people like to say. The Ukrainian prosecutor was supposed to prosecute corrupt individuals within his Government. He didn’t do his job, which offended many law-abiding nations, including the U.S. We have no business funding blatantly corrupt regimes, so the money was withheld by the Obama administration. Perhaps you would prefer to see your tax money pissed away by corrupt countries, but most people wouldn’t. Now Trump is trying to spin this as comparable to his open bribery, and gratuitously bringing Joe Biden’s son into it. It isn’t the same at all, no matter what Fox tells you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

Because it’s a nothingburger, as you people like to say. The Ukrainian prosecutor was supposed to prosecute corrupt individuals within his Government. He didn’t do his job, which offended many law-abiding nations, including the U.S. We have no business funding blatantly corrupt regimes, so the money was withheld by the Obama administration. Perhaps you would prefer to see your tax money pissed away by corrupt countries, but most people wouldn’t. Now Trump is trying to spin this as comparable to his open bribery, and gratuitously bringing Joe Biden’s son into it. It isn’t the same at all, no matter what Fox tells you.

The bolded seems mildly significant.

It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.

The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

Because it’s a nothingburger, as you people like to say. The Ukrainian prosecutor was supposed to prosecute corrupt individuals within his Government. He didn’t do his job, which offended many law-abiding nations, including the U.S. We have no business funding blatantly corrupt regimes, so the money was withheld by the Obama administration. Perhaps you would prefer to see your tax money pissed away by corrupt countries, but most people wouldn’t. Now Trump is trying to spin this as comparable to his open bribery, and gratuitously bringing Joe Biden’s son into it. It isn’t the same at all, no matter what Fox tells you.

The bolded seems mildly significant.

It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.

The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html

I replied above - the Ukrainian gov could not find evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter.

The important concept here is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and Trump’s attempt at coercing/bribing a foreign power to bring down a political opponent is IMPEACHABLE. The Bidens are not, and never were, impeachable.

[Anonymous]

Plus one of Rudy’s meetings with a representative of Ukraine was arranged by the U.S. State Department. WTF?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Well, if this doesn’t impeach him, nothing will. This is the smoking gun.

Impeachment is an essential duty we need to perform at this point, whether the President is removed from office or not.
We owe it to our own sense of justice and ethics. It’s not enough just to vote him out in 2020.

The Senate won't impeach him for this.

And neither will Pelosi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the more appropriate question is .... Is it appropriate for Joe Biden to make funds to Ukraine contingent on the firing of a prosecutor.
This is quid pro quo.

Why is the media not looking into this?

Do you believe that it is U.S. policy to demand that foreign countries investigate all U.S. citizens who conduct business in their countries or is this only the policy for potential opponents of the President? Should we withhold funds from Saudi Arabia until they investigate Kushner? Panama, India, China, etc. and Trump? And on and on. U.S. assistance is not a bribe or extortion for political favors from foreign governments. The U.S. government has generally been on the side of protecting American citizens from political witch hunts overseas.