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https://apple.news/APEuOPHP2TWqeUTR_h8QypA
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
This is just grandstanding via toxoplasma. "The Dems impeached Trump so we've got to impeach Biden!" In the conversations I've had with people on this site who think there's a huge scandal here, I've never heard of any solid evidence about direct bribery other than the wishy-washy "money for the big guy" statement. On the point of "meetings for money", nothing Hunter did was worse than what Kushner flagrantly did during Trump's admin, and nobody even really questioned that. House Repubs haven't been able to get any better evidence after months of searching. There's basically 0 chance that they can convince 18 dem Senators to flip.
How is that wishy washy? You have to contort yourself into a pretzel to come to any other conclusion.
Because Republicans haven't been able to find any evidence to verify it despite looking very hard for years now.
This is just an incorrect statement.
They have found plenty of evidence. They haven’t found a smoking gun. But they also haven’t had complete access to bank records.
They've found evidence that Joe has taken meetings/calls with people at the request of his son, but not that anything ever came of these, or that Joe ever benefitted monetarily. Republicans have had subpoena power for years and have had a full investigation going for at least several months, and still haven't found the bribery part of the whole "bribery scandal."
Isn’t what you described like the definition of bribery. Hunter gets paid and Joe talks to the business associates?
There’s a question of whether Joe did anything bad for the money like say fired the prosecutor at their request.
But it’s clearly been established that the Bidens were paid for access to Joe and Joe gave them access while he was the VP. That’s bribery.
That's lobbying. The professional lobbying industry is rife with legal-but-sleazy cash-for-access schemes. It is completely legal, and SOP in DC, for a government official to meet with people because they hired a lobbying firm that donates to their campaign/hires their failson for a cushy job/promises to hire them for a cushy job after they leave office/block-books a large number of rooms in their hotel at an above-market rate. A lot of this stuff can't be banned, because petitioning the government is 1st amendment protected activity.
The difference between selling influence and selling access is hard to prove, but it is critical to bribery law. It also matters to the situational ethics of the DC swamp - selling a policy change for cash is against the "Code" even if you manage to do it in a way which skirts bribery law.
It’s bribery when the VP personally financially benefits from the arrangement. It’s allowed for campaign contributions. Being that the VP did personally financially benefit its bribery. Also, first amendment doesn’t apply to Burisma.
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