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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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That is possible, but it is not likely compared to a junkie failson ripping off clueless foreigners by selling influence with Dad he didn’t have and spending the money on blow and hookers.

We have no reason to believe that's the case. And that Biden went after the Ukrainian prosecution suggests he was involved in the corruption, if it was just his son doing stupid shit, he'd not have lifted a finger. Biden bragged on video about having the prosecutor fired!

And that Biden went after the Ukrainian prosecution suggests he was involved in the corruption

This is precisely what was in issue in the performative criminal investigation that Trump asked Zelenskyy to launch, and therefore in the first Trump impeachment. He probably didn't.

Biden bragged on video about having the prosecutor fired!

If Biden went after the prosecutor for other reasons, then it was stupid (because you shouldn't act where a conflict of interest exists, even if it is just for appearance's sake) but not corrupt. And there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that this is what happened - notably that the EU, the IMF, and the Ukrainian opposition all agreed that the prosecutor should be fired for slow-walking corruption prosecutions.

Rarely is it mentioned that Shokin was then replaced with a prosecutor who dropped those prosecutions entirely.

But there are a lot of corrupt politicians. Does tying aid to firing happen all of the time? Maybe — but it seems no one made that argument or at least no one that I’m aware of

Tying aid to progress in anti-corruption investigations happens all the time. According to a wide range of western-aligned institutions, the main way to speed up anti-corruption investigations was to fire the prosecutor who was slow-walking them.

Do you have sources on that? I know IMF ties funding to certain things, but wasn’t area of the US doing so (I thought it was military aid but could be mistaken).