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Slow morning, eh?
For some time now, we've been discussing the implications of Hunter Biden's laptop, and whether the information it contained was relevant to our political system. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we know that the FBI knew about the laptop's contents roughly a year in advance of the 2020 election, and used its official access with the major social media companies to prepare their censors to perceive the story as Russian disinformation. Then when the story actually broke in the press, the FBI successfully pushed the social media companies to censor it.
From the laptop information itself, we know that for quite a while now, Hunter Biden has been engaged in various grifts, selling purported access to his father in exchange for lucrative sinecures with various foreign corporations, selling "art" for amusingly inflated values, and so on. The supposition on the Red side has been that this grift implicated Biden as well, and Trump's attempts to have that theory investigated led directly to his first impeachment. The laptop emails backed this story with evidence, with Hunter referencing how "the big guy" was getting a significant cut of his grift money, and one of his associates confirming that "the big guy" was in fact Joe Biden.
Blues on the other hand claimed that there was no reason to suppose any corruption was happening. While Hunter was obviously a junkie fuckup grifter, and was obviously making his money claiming to peddle influence, there was no evidence of actual payments going to Joe, so this was all meaningless. My impression of the previous threads is that even those here who thought Hunter was paying Joe, assumed that there would be no formal exchange of money, but rather quid-pro-quo.
Now it appears that Hunter Biden has been paying rent to live in his father's residence in Delaware, to the tune of $49,901 per month. For completeness' sake, it must be mentioned that this is the same residence where Joe was found to be improperly storing classified documents, alongside his Corvette. While it seems doubtful that the files would be of interest to a junkie who prospers by peddling influence for foreign corporations, it's a detail that does add a touch of piquancy to the overall narrative.
So this appears to me to be pretty open-and-shut. Joe Biden is corrupt, selling influence to foreign corporations in China and Eastern Europe through his son Hunter. Hunter collects the money, then kicks a large slice back to Joe through rent, and quite possibly other, yet undiscovered "repayments". Trump was impeached when he attempted to have these activities investigated, while the FBI sat on the information they were given, and engaged in a protracted disinformation and censorship campaign to keep that information from leaking elsewhere. That information does in fact lead to provable direct payments from Hunter to Biden.
Impeachment when?
[EDIT] - ...Or perhaps not! @firmamenti points out that while Hunter is apparently living in the residence and renting an office space for 50k, the office space is not specified to be in the residence, and very well could be an entirely separate location entirely unconnected to Biden. The hunt continues...
This makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me so much of those times that the Democrats would push narratives about Russia and Trump. I remember making arguments at length that regardless of whether or not Trump was 'polite' the office of the presidency should still command respect; I thought these were strong arguments and maybe I still do. When are we going to try to be a more uniting force instead of continuing to hunt down scandals involving relatives?
Kushner being sent to build peace in the middle east was unorthodox in the appearance of nepotism, but in unorthodox times we need unorthodox solutions. I dare call this preoccupation on Biden's spawn obsessive. You're trying to hold 'the system' to a consistency it never had. Trump did things that angered the left and that made me glad, but as I think about a divided country I feel some shame for embracing that power, for now I see in you someone who is angered, much as the left was, over trivial, irrelevant, and imagined corruption.
Do you need to be told that Trump lost, get over it? Do you need to be told to look to the future and not the past? What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?
You can't tolerate corruption like that.
... you think it's normal that Biden bragged about having Ukrainian prosecuted fired for investigating Burisma, the company that was paying off Hunter Biden ?
This is just corruption. In any western European country, that'd cause the government to resign. Ministers there resign over some piddly plagiarism nonsense, or minor oversights. Even in eastern Europe it'd be a major scandal and probably require new elections.
Probably Bundestag MPs also had their children employed by Burisma.
https://www.uawire.org/news/german-deputies-advise-poroshenko-to-consider-changing-of-the-prosecutor-general
And some guy from SBU who accused Shokin of corruption and demanded his resignation also had dealing with Burisma.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/11/12/7088525/
And members of Kharkiv Human Rights Group...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/01/7/7094715/
And dozens of Ukrainian MPs...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2015/12/22/7093387/
... and that proves what? That Biden jr. being paid off is okay ?
No, that disproves your assertion that Shokin was fired on behest of Biden Sr because the latter wanted Shokin not to investigate his son. Of course, you could say that it WAS the real reason, and Biden just used reputation of Shokin being a corrupt prosecutor for plausible deniability in getting him fired. But then argue accordingly, not just put it as an undeniable fact.
Also Hunter Biden didn't commit any crime according to Ukrainian law by working there. Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, most likely did - but then it was during presidential term of Yanukovich, a figure very much beloved by some on American far right and far left, deposed by the evil CIA.
Yeah, it looks like Shokin was fired because he wasn't investigating the 'right' people.
**It still doesn't explain to me why you think politicians getting paid off by through their family getting cushy sinecures in foreign countries is remotely okay. **
It's okay in Ukraine. We get that, it's why Ukraine is that way.
In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.
No, this is business as usual in the UK, France, the USA and more. You usually don't hear about it it because of how accepted it is. And that is because compared to corruption in Pakistan, China and yes Ukraine and so on it is tiny. There is no non-corrupt country but most of the wealthy Western ones have fairly minimal levels like said Hunter Biden issues. The amount of effort it would require to eradicate is just not worth it. And of course it's not like elites whose families benefit from it would want to. Even if they are temporarily on the other side of it for short term political gain. Trump does it even more directly with Jared and Ivanka and so on. It isn't exceptional, it is the norm.
Putting relatives of people with power on boards and in cushy executive positions is endemic almost everywhere. That might not make it ok, but please do not underestimate how common it is in "normal" countries.
As an eastern European, we used to look up to Germany when it came to political culture, and they seem fairly intolerant with corruption.
Do they do this too ? Or is e.g. Schröder involvement in Gazprom only a scandal because it's politically advantageous to bash Russians ?
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Says a person from Slovakia 😩
Our graft is these days mostly limited to 15-20% cost inflation on government contracts. Your president is a an actor whose show was funded by an oligarch, who among other things,stole how many billion $ from Ukrainians by running a bank and giving out loans to friendly companies.. Was it 2 or 5 billion ? They still haven't bothered to wipe that shit off the internet. We had shit like this in mid to late 1990s. That was .. quite some time ago.
If these days Ukraine was as corrupt as Slovakia, you'd probably be as prosperous as Poland what with the better climate, natural resources and sea access.
Now, Slovakia isn't a normal country, but at least half of the parties wouldn't tolerate something like this, and it definitely wouldn't fly anywhere in western Europe.
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