Ukraine’s government insists that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden or his father.
...
“We don’t know how major players in the United States would turn any statement” on the issue of corruption, says Bohdan Yaremenko, a senior lawmaker in the ruling party of President Zelensky. “If we would try to make an emphasis on this issue right now, we would sound like we are trying to contradict President Trump and Republicans.”
It's not just that. It was illegal for him to withhold aid at all, whatever the motivation. — Michael
President Donald Trump says he lifted his freeze on aid to Ukraine on Sept. 11, but the State Department had quietly authorized releasing $141 million of the money several days earlier, according to five people familiar with the matter.
If Trump didn't have the power to withhold or release aid, then it seems to me that there was no quid pro quo from Trump. I find it difficult to believe that no one told Trump that he doesn't have the legal standing to make such a request in exchange for military aid that he was offering. Maybe that is why he ended up telling Sondland that he didn't want anything and that there was no quid pro quo.State Department lawyers found the White House Office of Management and Budget, and thus the president, had no legal standing to block spending of the Ukraine aid. — Michael
That's not what happened. It's actually the opposite. — Michael
Right, so then Trump wants the Ukranians to launch an investigation into the very same company that the Obama Admin had issues with, it's just that now Hunter Biden is on the board of the company that the Obama Admin wanted to investigate and his father is a political rival to the sitting president, and they withheld critical military aid in exchange for those investigations. That raises even more eyebrows and is even more of a reason to investigate the relationship between Burisma and the Bidens. The fact is that this investigation doesn't just help Trump. Blaming Trump for asking questions that everyone with an objective mind should be asking is hypocritical.However, Shokin was not fired for investigating Burisma, but for his failure to pursue corruption investigations — including investigations connected to Burisma. And Biden wasn’t alone in the effort to push Shokin out, but rather was spearheading the Obama administration’s policy, which represented a consensus among diplomats, officials from various European countries, and the International Monetary Fund that Shokin was an impediment to rooting out corruption in his country — Michael
No. He just doesn't care about torture... if the voters think that torture works, he goes with it. After all, in the debate the moral stand wasn't touched, just the effectiveness of the interrogation method (see the wording... by Trump himself).
Potentially help Trump or refuse to investigate possible of corruption to help Biden.
Given that there's no evidence that the Bidens have anything to do with any corruption at Burisma, how would refusing to investigate possible corruption help Biden?
And how does investigating help Trump anyway?
Surely announcing criminal corruption investigations into a candidate would hurt that candidate’s campaign. — NOS4A2
But this wouldn’t be announcing an investigation into a candidate. It’s an investigation into a Ukraine company, and they explicitly say that there’s no evidence that either Biden has anything to do with it.
Ukraine’s government insists that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden or his father.
...
“We don’t know how major players in the United States would turn any statement” on the issue of corruption, says Bohdan Yaremenko, a senior lawmaker in the ruling party of President Zelensky. “If we would try to make an emphasis on this issue right now, we would sound like we are trying to contradict President Trump and Republicans.”
Your own source is refuting this conspiracy you’re alleging - a conspiracy that Trump is using in an attempt to justify his illegal withholding of aid to leverage the announcement of an investigation into his rival.
During a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, Ryaboshapka told reporters that there are more than a dozen criminal cases in Ukraine that involve Zlochevsky or his company. They will all be reviewed in due course, he added.
Ignoring them is not much of an option for Ukraine. “We cannot not investigate it just because it will benefit Trump or hurt Biden,” says the official, who believes, “It’s a case of corruption.” But given how radioactive the Burisma case has become in Washington, the government is not eager to pursue it in the midst of the U.S. presidential race. “We can do it after the elections,” the official tells TIME. That might be one way to thread Volker’s needle.
Even getting that far will be a success IMO, if only as a symbolic gesture to American's and the rest of the democratic world. — VagabondSpectre
Trump — NOS4A2
It’s a corrupt company that payed the son of that candidate over $50,000 a month while that candidate was vice-president of the US and the point man in Ukraine. — NOS4A2
Fears that the president wanted to “seek dirt on his political opponent” for the purposes of “influencing the 2020 election” were fabricated from thin air, made up. — NOS4A2
The political motives of Trump were, again, invented whole-cloth and without evidence, but continued to play a role on the thinking of these bureaucrats — NOS4A2
What we learned beyond what we already knew is that insubordination exists at the highest levels of our government. Unelected, career bureaucrats, spend much of their efforts frustrating the foreign policy of the president. Though professing their love and duty to US/Ukraine relations, their actions only further threw these relations into peril. — NOS4A2
Unelected, career bureaucrats, spend much of their efforts frustrating the foreign policy of the president. Though professing their love and duty to US/Ukraine relations, their actions only further threw these relations into peril. — NOS4A2
Is it not true, that the Department of justice in the USA should have been the ones Trump was pushing to investigate Biden?
I mean, surely if the Trump presidency had genuine concerns and if the DOJ had genuine concerns about Biden's conduct; then surely the DOJ would be the ones to investigate it? Why is the president of the united states asking another country to investigate a politician from here? A DOJ investigation would have the authority to request the assistence of the Ukrainian authorities into investigating bidens Ukraine connection no? Why the attempts at secrecy and why not trust our own DOJ and Judicial system? What happened to America first?
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