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So the Republican speaker of the house has decided to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s business dealings with hunter. I have serious doubts that this will go very far as democrats still control the senate. This looks like an attempt to stir up the base for re-election season.
I personally see this as a big distraction as we have a lot of very serious problems that need to be addressed. BRICs, Taiwan, Ukraine, inflation, and
I am convinced Biden is guilty of corruption so I like the impeachment. I do not believe it’s primarily about pumping up the base. The Dems are running on Trump being a criminal. Impeaching Biden helps with the moderates so they have him impeached as a criminal too. The average median voter who thinks about the election a week or two before the election will be bombarded with all the bad stuff Trump has done. Which ya some of it was bad and stupid and the files at Mar-Lago feels like a valid case to me. The point of impeaching Biden is to have it one the record the evidence he was taking bribes all over the world and at a decent probability forced Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to make his family money. He want get convicted in the Senate but for that median voter there will be a stack of bad things Trump did and a stack of bad things Biden did and the median voter will either have to choose a candidate on a different issue or stay home instead of voting for Biden.
I don’t make the rules and the GOP doesn’t either. The election the country wants is the guy who loses goes to jail. Perhaps, we have more important things but I’m not a member of the party that ran two impeachments.
Inflation would be easy to deal with. Last decade government spending averaged 21.5%. Since COVID it’s been around 24%. If we just returned to last decades spending my guess is inflation would fall back to last decades inflation and interest rates would fall back to last decades interest rates.
But I do disagree with those saying it’s all an optics show. The election will come down to in all likelihood getting 50k votes in the right places. Impeach we must.
The problem is that it isn't clear that the Republicans will have the votes for impeachment, and a failed impeachment attempt could be more detrimental than no attempt at all. With Trump's first impeachment, the evidence that he did what he did was conclusive; the only question was whether such behavior merited removal from office. With a Biden impeachment, the question is whether he did anything at all, and there are serious questions as to whether the Republicans have any real evidence. I'm reminded of the famous Lionel Hutz line: "We have plenty of hearsay and conjecture, those are... kinds of evidence". This is actually a true statement, but hearsay and conjecture aren't generally admissible in a court of law, and even with the relaxed standards of an impeachment hearing, it's still pretty shitty evidence. Let's look at the Burisma evidence:
-Hunter Biden, Joe's fuckup son, gets a seat on the Burisma board despite being unqualified
First, Hunter wasn't publicly known as a fuckup when he got that seat; his personal problems wouldn't become common knowledge until years later. And while Hunter didn't have any oil and gas experience, his resume wasn't horrible. Board seats aren't necessarily given to people within an industry; just look at Exxon Mobil's board. He was on the Amtrak board, owned a lobbying firm, worked as a consultant for MBNA, worked for the Department of Commerce, served on the board of the World Food Program, and co-founded a number of investment and venture capital firms. Not the greatest resume, but it's not like they picked him out of the gutter.
-He was selected because of his political connections
This is probably true, but it's still conjecture. Unless you can get former Burisma insiders to testify that this was the case or find documents to that effect, you're jumping to conclusions. Without this kind of evidence, you'd have to lay your foundation very carefully to have a 50/50 shot at being permitted to ask a jury to reach this conclusion in a real trial.
-Joe's ultimatum was the result of pressure from his son
Now you're not only past the point where any judge would let you ask a jury to draw that conclusion, but Joe can counter pretty easily. the prosecutor in question was notoriously corrupt, and had been the subject of calls for action for months from half of Europe. To suggest that the factor that tipped the scales toward Joe's involvement was motivation from his son being able to keep his cushy paycheck is a stretch. Biden's actions were public, and he would have needed the backing of the rest of the executive branch. You're going to have Obama administration officials up there outlining the entire process by which it was determined that this ultimatum should be made, and it's highly unlikely that any of them are going to testify that Hunter Biden had anything to do with it. Then you add in the fact that the Hunter's selection predated Shokin and the investigation predated Hunter and that the Obama Administration was supposedly concerned that Shokin was deliberately slow-walking the investigation to extract bribes and were frustrated to the point they considered launching their own investigation.
You're going to have weeks of this on TV, witness after witness who has direct knowledge of what really went on with the Shokin debacle while McCarthy is going to call who, exactly? Some of Hunter's old drinking buddies who say that he definitely gestured toward the fact that this whole international debacle was really about Hunter's salary? It won't convince the MTGs of the world, but it may convince a dozen or so guys from swing districts who are up for reelection and can't be seen as in the thrall of the MAGA wing of the party. I'm not saying this is how it plays out but it's damn risky. At least the Dems knew they could get an impeachment.
I don’t think you’ve been keeping up with the news. Emails have surfaced from the state department praising the AG’s efforts. The idea they wanted him gone simply appear untrue.
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No, whether it was impeachable was also and remains a question.
Thank you for pushing back on this “consensus”.
The depth of corruption in Ukraine may result in two Presidents’ impeachments, both disputed by each side, and I dearly hope and pray it doesn’t end in WWIII.
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People who think this proves anythng don't understand how corporate boards work. Especially for a relatively young company, board memberships are largely about creating appearances. That is why the former president of Poland was on the board of Burisma, and why Theranos added people like George Schultz to their board. And that is even more the case in in a country with high levels of corruption, like Ukraine; putting big names on the board makes investors think the company has connections and the advantages that come with that. What Burisma needed from Hunter Biden was the appearance of advantage, not so much actual advantage.
People who think that the fact that the practice is widespread proves anything doesn't understand how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act works. This is 100% illegal if we catch companies with a suitable US presence doing it for children of foreign politicians.
It is illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to have a relative of foreign politician on the board of a US company?
Depends on details. See also.
From your link: "Officials are trying to establish whether the bank hired young workers from prominent, well-connected Chinese families in order to curry favor and win business."
Yes, that is obviously improper. But that begs the question, right? The assumption that if a company puts a famous "unqualified" name on its corporate board, it must be for an improper purpose, is highly naive.
The assumption that if a company puts a famous "unqualified" name on its corporate board, it must be for a proper purpose (and that saying that you're simply getting "appearance" benefits is a magical incantation which guarantees that it's a proper purpose), is highly naive.
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Most 1st world countries have laws like FCPA which prohibit their companies from bribing 3rd world governments, with broad extra-territorial application and broad definitions of bribery. It isn't per se illegal to put a relative of a foreign politician on your board, but if you do it in a notoriously corrupt country then you are going to be spending some time helping the police with their enquiries into precisely what your motives were.
The reverse case - a 1st world politician accepting a bribe from a 3rd world company - comes under domestic bribery laws which are far harder to convict under - basically you either need a quo that is so outrageous that no honest politician could have delivered it, or smoking gun evidence linking the quid to the quo.
The people who write the laws think have a much lower prior on a domestic politician accepting a bribe than on a foreign politician accepting one.
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I agree with that, but it still means he got the seat because his surname was "Biden". If he was "Hunter Morrissey" with the same résumé, would he have been picked? Hard to know because hindsight is always right.
But then again, "trading on your connections" is another way of saying "networking", and we're all supposed to network for the sake of our careers!
Yes, no one doubts that he got the job because of his name. That is my point: As is often the case in corporate boards, it is the name that the company is paying for.
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He wasn’t just “networking” or “trading connections” he was at a bare minimum using his name as a sort of mafia style protection. The prosecutor in Ukraine or the President of Ukraine isn’t going to want to go after a firm with Hunter on the board because they would assume if they built a case they would be getting a phone call being told to drop the case. Which according to the Ukranian prosecutor he did get that phone call to back off.
Networking is like I have a smart friend who would be perfect for your company to get their work done. What Hunter was doing was promising political protection. Otherwise known as corruption.
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When the least corrupt interpretation plausible is that Vice President's crackhead son accepted six or seven figure payments or no-show jobs to intentionally create the appearance of a corrupt bribe scheme in a country where the Vice President was leveraging American spending to have prosecutors removed, this is still a huge scandal by any reasonable interpretation.
I know this is a waste of time, but:
And what, Hunter is just so earnest that he failed to notice that his employment was based on creating the appearance of the ability to influence the highest level of American politics? I said the least corrupt plausible interpretation, which doesn't imply willingness to accept an utterly ridiculous level of obliviousness to the implications of accepting payments from a corrupt company in Eastern Europe.
No, I did not say he doesn’t notice. I actually said the exact opposite in #2 above.
The point is that those who think that there must have been a bribe, because why else would Burisma want an "unqualified" person on their board, are being very naive.
This wasn’t just any board. It was of a company under investigation for corruption. It wasn’t some trinket maker. They needed a very specific thing - a person able to give them political protection.
This wasn’t even say a Theranos looking to add a name to get investors to look at their investment pitch and renting legitimacy. It was a firm looking specifically to not have their assets seized and go to jail.
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It also ignores the fact that Hunter at minimum delivered on the access to his dad. And his dad arranged a call with the company using an anonymous email. Mr. Peters has a lot of explaining to do.
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Being cynically blunt, isn't it true that being related to/the mistress of powerful people both gives you the opportunity to do favours, and encourages people to be nice to you so that you can do favours for them?
I'm reading a lot of biographies of figures in the Tudor courts recently, and it's a recurring theme: people using connections to old school friends, neighbours, distant relations and former employers/servants to send what are practically begging letters, often accompanied by a present, to ask for "so I hear that this job is going now... any chance of considering me/my son/my useless brother that the family needs to get a soft job for?"
I don't think the Ukrainians are unique in making that kind of assumption; I know if I heard that So-and-so's cousin got a nice quango job, or a former top civil servant has moved to work for private industry in the field they formerly oversaw, I'd be making the same kind of assumptions in my own country 😁
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It also seems utter bullshit. This dumb crack addled son was able to pull a fast one on both his father and hardened Eastern European oligarchs? Come on.
Hunter didn't pull a fast one on Joe. Joe is familiar enough with politics to know that Hunter was selling access to him, and happily continued to meet with Hunter's "clients" in order to facilitate Hunter's scheme. On Joe's part this is sleazy, but it is neither unusual nor illegal - selling access to politicians is what professional lobbyists do for a living, and meeting with clients of a lobbyist who donates to your campaign/hires your relative/might hire you after you leave office is SOP for DC swamp creatures. On Hunter's part it is a FARA violation and, it seems, tax evasion. (But FARA is almost certainly unconstitutional).
If you believe the official story (that Burisma hired Hunter as an "OK name" to make them look more respectable for a possible future US floatation) then no fast one was pulled - having Hunter on the board got them the access they were paying for. If Hunter did pull a fast one on Burisma then this would not be surprising - lobbyists promising influence but only providing access is an extremely common scam.
FWIW, if someone told me they could buy me the VP of the US for a mere 5 million USD, I would consider the offer too-good-to-be-true.
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McCarthy has been tactical his whole reign. If he doesn't have the votes he won't call a vote.
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FARA violation may be the most directly provable. Hunter wasn’t registered and there is hard evidence Joe spoke to his foreign business partners.
That being said the standard of proof for impeachment isn’t reasonable doubt. Which makes conjecture not a problem. On fire the judge they have better evidence than Trumps rape verdict. It’s he said she said where Hunter was getting paid and the prosecutor in charge of the corruption probe Joe said he fired him. But again the standard isn’t reasonable doubt.
Also fairly certain Burisma insiders have said why they hired him and from memory I believe that was the top guy.
It will be up to McCarthy to whip up the votes. And likely career suicide for anyone unwilling to convict. Plus any GOP campaign money would be cut off if they don’t.
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