Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump withheld Congressionally allocated military funds from an ally in order to force them to start a bogus investigation of Biden's son. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia - remember?

This is 100% indefensible, so don't even try.

Did Maddow tell you that?

Maddow has been right about almost everything because she uses really journalists and experts as sources.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump withheld Congressionally allocated military funds from an ally in order to force them to start a bogus investigation of Biden's son. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia - remember?

This is 100% indefensible, so don't even try.

Did Maddow tell you that?

I don't know where you grew up, but where I'm from, the American President doesn't shake down foreign leaders to force them to get him dirt on his political opponents.

Joe Biden intended to spend Friday talking about climate change and his long-standing support for the gay and lesbian community.

Instead, he was thrust into the center of the latest White House scandal — that President Trump allegedly urged the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son Hunter.

Suddenly, Biden faced two dueling realities: The president he is hoping to defeat next year — and who he describes as morally unfit for office — is under scrutiny for behavior some view as treasonous. But the story is inextricably linked to Biden’s son, pushing one of the topics that Biden is least comfortable discussing into the spotlight.

The challenge of taking advantage of this political moment without becoming ensnared was evident by how Biden responded to the news Friday afternoon. First, he reacted defensively in an exchange with reporters in Iowa. Then later, in a formal statement from his campaign, he forcefully denounced Trump’s actions.

“Not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertions. Not one single one,” Biden told reporters in Iowa on Friday afternoon, referring to the allegations related to his son, after initially ignoring shouted questions.

“And so I have no comment,” he said. “Except the president should start to, uh, be president.”

But two hours later, Biden’s campaign released a written statement that was far more robust. While his initial response was to defend his family’s honor, his second statement focused on Trump’s behavior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is not allowable for a junior employee to take it upon him/herself to second guess the president.
This complaint, isn’t one.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

The coverage suggests Giuliani reached out to new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team this summer solely because he wanted to get dirt on possible Trump 2020 challenger Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in that country.

Politics or law could have been part of Giuliani’s motive, and neither would be illegal.

But there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.

Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.

Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.

That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.

“I didn’t even know who he (Yermak) really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them (the two State officials) what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”

So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy.

Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?

According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.

The Ukrainians say their efforts to get their allegations to U.S. authorities were thwarted first by the U.S. embassy in Kiev, which failed to issue timely visas allowing them to visit America.

Then the Ukrainians hired a former U.S. attorney — not Giuliani — to hand-deliver the evidence of wrongdoing to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, but the federal prosecutors never responded.

The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me. The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/462422-missing-piece-to-the-ukraine-puzzle-state-departments-overture-to-rudy

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump withheld Congressionally allocated military funds from an ally in order to force them to start a bogus investigation of Biden's son. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia - remember?

This is 100% indefensible, so don't even try.

Did Maddow tell you that?

Anonymous wrote:

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 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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump withheld Congressionally allocated military funds from an ally in order to force them to start a bogus investigation of Biden's son. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia - remember?

This is 100% indefensible, so don't even try.

Did Maddow tell you that?

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?

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?

The coverage suggests Giuliani reached out to new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team this summer solely because he wanted to get dirt on possible Trump 2020 challenger Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in that country.

Politics or law could have been part of Giuliani’s motive, and neither would be illegal.

But there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.

Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.

Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.

That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.

“I didn’t even know who he (Yermak) really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them (the two State officials) what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”

So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy.

Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?

According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.

The Ukrainians say their efforts to get their allegations to U.S. authorities were thwarted first by the U.S. embassy in Kiev, which failed to issue timely visas allowing them to visit America.

Then the Ukrainians hired a former U.S. attorney — not Giuliani — to hand-deliver the evidence of wrongdoing to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, but the federal prosecutors never responded.

The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me. The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump withheld Congressionally allocated military funds from an ally in order to force them to start a bogus investigation of Biden's son. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia - remember?

This is 100% indefensible, so don't even try.

Did Maddow tell you that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are correct: Ukrainians didn’t find the evidence because they never investigated.

Anonymous wrote:

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.