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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
A few news articles I've read have mentioned that McCarthy announced the inquiry without a vote of the House because he thinks he wouldn't have the votes to get it to pass. The article you linked even quotes a Republican who says they'd vote against it. If McCarthy doesn't have the votes to even open an inquiry I'm skeptical he would have the votes to actually pass any articles they had drafted. It would be a pretty amusing end to this that Republicans spend all this time investigating Biden and aren't united enough to actually pass the articles that are the result of that investigation.
Somewhat amusingly Politico reports there's a Trump era Office of Legal Counsel memo that claims federal executive agencies can ignore subpoenas in impeachment inquiries unless those inquiries are opened in response to a vote of the House.
I think Republicans are making a category error. They think Ukraine and Lewinsky impeachments hurt the impeaching party because Americans don’t like impeachments.
The alternative explanation is Americans don’t like bullshit impeachments. Watergate helped democrats. Indeed, once the evidence mounted if the democrats didn’t do something it would’ve hurt them.
I imagine if the inquiry is able to put together a very strong case (there already is a very large amount of evidence — the inquiry will need to find a bit more hard evidence and put it together) republicans and even some democrats will be forced to vote to impeach.
Color me skeptical. What is the evidence, not currently known, that this inquiry will find that will convince the currently skeptical Republicans and Democrats to vote for articles of impeachment?
Bank records
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The best thread to pull on imo is probably Biden blackmailing Ukraine to fire Shokin during Shokin's Burisma investigation. With that, you have Biden on tape admitting he did withhold the aid, you have the FBI whistleblower stating the guy under investigation paid Hunter and Joe $5mil each, and you have the $5.2mil discrepancy between Joe's tax documents and government disclosures as likely leads. And I think that most people would agree that taking a $5mil bribe in exchange for blackmailing a US ally is pretty bad if they can find hard evidence.
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You are missing a lot of the data if you think it is only about the laptop.
Here is the case (ignoring everything else that adds to it).
A. The Biden family got paid (at least) roughly 20m for Hunter’s actions. Note “family.” Kind of weird that Hunter was so generous for his activity.
B. These payments alone generated 72 suspicious activity reports by banks. One or two is well odd. 72 is astounding.
C. We know Joe was aware of what Hunter was doing. Indeed, Joe met in person with a certain Russian oligarch that then paid Hunter 3M. Oddly, that oligarch hasn’t received sanctions like the rest.
D. Beyond just meeting, Joe using an alias emailed Burisma CCing Hunter.
E. Burisma was in trouble. They needed per two witnesses testimony help from DC. Hunter got Joe to talk to them (again with the alias)
F. The State Department internal emails show in the couple of months before Joe’s visit that they were impressed with Shokin and his anti corruption efforts. They were caught off guard when Biden strong armed Ukraine into firing Shokin. Likewise, the European Commission 9 days after Joe’s visit praised Shokin. The idea that it was general US policy to get Shokin fired simply wasn’t true. It appears Joe changed that policy and the only explanation was it benefited Burisma.
G. There was a credible informant who stated Joe was paid millions to make Shokin go away.
You put all of that together and it paints a picture of bribery.
In the tax law, if I perform services and tell you to pay my kid it is still income to me. Same principle here.
Other people in the family other than Hunter (including people not involved) got paid.
Re the meeting it was a private dinner. Not an event with a +1. https://nypost.com/2023/08/10/inside-dcs-cafe-milano-where-joe-biden-met-hunters-cronies/
I messed up my memory. Joe called the president of Ukraine with Hunter Cced after the call came in for help.
It isn’t hard to litigate. The state department determined internally that Shokin did enough to qualify Ukraine for funds. John Kerry was impressed. The turnabout was a surprise. Maybe there were internal discussions that disproved the written communications but Biden needs to show that (ie the burden has shifted).
Your comment that it must be activity after he became president is risible. Some but not all of this info was known before the election. So we have in fact learned NEW facts; our understanding has evolved. Moreover, at the time of the election you had 50 intelligence agents claiming it was Russian disinformation and on that basis social media quashed the story. Now we know that was all bullshit (and in part engineered by Biden’s campaign). So no we aren’t limited to what happened after Joe took the presidency and suggesting that is almost per se bad faith
Contra your statement, Devon Archer testified Biden was there the entire dinner. The oligarch thanked Hunter for making the introduction afterwards. Archer could go to jail if proven to lie.
The IRS wanted to investigate why Valerie Biden — Joe’s sister — received what appears to be a large sum from Hunter.
No your standard is bullshit. The age of the allegation doesn’t matter. The only question is did participate in a bribery scheme. You can’t say the American people knew these facts and voted for it anyhow when (1) they didn’t know all of the facts and (2) the literal deep state colluded with Biden to unjustly and inaccurately label the info misinformation. If Joe participated in a bribery scheme, he cannot be president. This is basic stuff. Demanding absurd specifics (ie that Joe specifically directed money) is absurd. All that matters is that he knowingly participated.
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You do understanding being a guy? Most of us want to have a legacy or pass on our genetic heritage - basically have ourselves exists in others our descendants. That is why men care about making far more money than we could ever spend in a lifetime so that our children have money to reproduce.
Hunter getting money is as beneficial to an old guy like Joe (probably more for tax reasons) than Joe getting money directly.
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Until recently you knew it was a bribe because people don’t just send you money to be their friend but lacked some elements.
Where is the MSM on this case? I had never heard that every other big player in Ukraine including Kerry praised Shokin days before the firing. The research and article was done by the NYPost, it should have been in the WaPo or NYT like in 2016.
As the saying goes. Democracy dies in Darkness.
This isn’t just a bribery case. That is treason. Joe knew official US policy was developing Ukraine and that involved fighting off corruption was in US and their allies interests. He then took money and sacrificed US interests.
Days before the December meeting at which Biden is supposed to have demanded the firing.
By the time Shokin is actually fired in March, essentially everyone has turned against him. There is timestamped publically-available information that the EU, the IMF, Victoria Nuland, Shokin's deputy Vitaly Kasko, Radio Free Europe (US government-owned), the Kyiv Post and various Ukrainian good-government groups all praised the firing when it happened.
The 2-3 month gap between Biden demanding Shokin be fired within 6 hours and the time Shokin was actually fired is inconvenient for both the pro- and anti-Biden theories of the case, as is the fact that the proximate cause of Shokin going was Kasko resigning on February 15th.
An even more bizzare complication is that Shokin applied for a freezing order against Zlochevsky's personal assets (the founder of Burisma, although he had sold most of his shares and was no longer an executive by the time Hunter Biden joined the board) on 4th February. As far as I can see, this was the first public move in the Zlochevsky/Burisma investigation since Shokin was appointed.
That seems consistent with Joe changing policy instead of the other way around.
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So, your position is that Biden asked for the firing in December and three to four months later, Shokin was fired due to a change in public opinion, almost as if a whisper campaign had changed something behind the scenes. Some good luck that Biden was out ahead of the pack in thinking Shokin should go.
As far as I can see, there are basically three narratives consistent with the publicly-available information.
As I was trying to say in my earlier post, none of these are particularly plausible. But whatever Joe Biden's motives were for making the demand in December, it was neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of Shokin's firing in March. Something else was going on.
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Ya the time gap is interesting. But it’s not that long. I believe at the end you left off that Shokin froze assets of the Burisma boss.
Of course there always was a simple solution to this if Joe was acting in good faith. He could have told Hunter to resign. And I don’t see how Joe wouldn’t have the power to strongman Hunter into resigning.
Ex-boss. The Burisma investigation related to crimes committed while Zlochevsky was boss, but Zlochevsky had sold Burisma before Hunter Biden joined the board. The UK SFO unfroze Burisma's UK accounts in 2015. The pro-Biden theory is that this is because the evidence of corporate criminality against Burisma (as opposed to personal criminality against Zlochevsky) was thin. The anti-Biden theory is that this is because Shokin's predecessor had failed to file necessary paperwork.
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