New Democrat Debate Tonight!

I agree. Rick. You do have trouble with common sense.

Rick wrote: I've come to the conclusion that it's hopeless trying to talk common sense with these people. If Trump's son made that much money for doing nothing with no experience in the industry and Trump threatened to hold back aid until the prosecutor was fired, Trump would be impeached because THAT is corruption. But it doesn't matter to them, they will deny and say nothing was wrong and claim there was some extensive investigation, which there was not. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

That's not what happened. Biden did not hold back aid to benefit his son, and you know it. You are just parroting the Republican talking points. I know it's fun, and makes you feel better, to distract away from Trumps criminal activity, but Biden did nothing wrong. He was the messenger for not only the American government, but several other countries as well. I'm sure you have read about this.

koobookie wrote:

Rick wrote: I've come to the conclusion that it's hopeless trying to talk common sense with these people. If Trump's son made that much money for doing nothing with no experience in the industry and Trump threatened to hold back aid until the prosecutor was fired, Trump would be impeached because THAT is corruption. But it doesn't matter to them, they will deny and say nothing was wrong and claim there was some extensive investigation, which there was not. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

That's not what happened. Biden did not hold back aid to benefit his son, and you know it. You are just parroting the Republican talking points. I know it's fun, and makes you feel better, to distract away from Trumps criminal activity, but Biden did nothing wrong. He was the messenger for not only the American government, but several other countries as well. I'm sure you have read about this.

You really believe what Joe and Hunter Biden are doing is all above board? Or do you feel like you have to defend the family because they are Democrats? The Biden's didn't get all that money because of their talent, they got it because of their connections to government and aid programs. Are you at least willing to agree that both sides are crooked?

koobookie wrote:
That's not what happened. Biden did not hold back aid to benefit his son, and you know it. You are just parroting the Republican talking points. .

HUH?? When did I say he held back the money? I did not. The point is that Biden threatened to hold back the money unless the prosecutor who was investigating the corrupt company his son was a board member of was fired. This isn't a Republican talking point... your worthless sources probably didn't show you the video of making the quid pro quo threat. Do you dispute the fact that Biden made that threat? If you don't dispute it, why is that not worse than Trump asking Ukraine to investigate that obvious corruption but NOT threatening to hold back aid? Trump never threatened to hold back aid and Biden did... those are indisputable FACTS. I look forward to your evidence that what I just said is untrue.

Is it time for President Obama to have a sit down with Joe Biden and tell him to withdraw from the race? His speeches are becoming incoherent and the other night he bit his wife on stage. Time to find Grampa Joe a nice assisted living center?

Do you remember the food for oil scandal? This is just SSDD.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/0...e-corruption/598804/

..."And Hunter Biden was hardly the only prominent American who did well for himself during Ukraine’s transition. Another Burisma director was Cofer Black, George W. Bush’s CIA counterterrorism chief. The Republican operative and future Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort worked for Yanukovych. So did Obama White House Counsel Gregory Craig. The millions he was grossing were paid by an oligarch allied with Yanukovich and routed to Craig’s firm, Skadden Arps, through a confusing series of offshore accounts. At the time, Craig was a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I was just joining that organization, as the first senior fellow working on international corruption. (His work for Yanukovych was not widely advertised.)"...

Clearly politically connected Americans were selling their influence to Ukraine and it was tied up with foreign aid. Sad to see foreign aid that is supposed to help out poor nations, instead be diverted right back to American politicians in a huge kickback scheme.

ScienceChic wrote: No matter how many times that lie gets re-stated, it will not make it true.

• Viktor Shokin was NOT investigating Burisma
• Shokin was fired because he was helping continue corruption
• Joe Biden making the demand to fire Shokin meant Burisma was more likely to face investigation, not less
• Joe Biden's threat to withhold money if Shoin wasn't fired was the right thing to do - it eleminated a corrupt prosecutor

This story is a recap of the original (which is linked within) of the original story about Ukraine and Biden. NOTE THE DATE OF 2015 OF THE ORIGINAL STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION.

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.
James Risen, September 25 2019

It’s strange to see my journalism twisted, perverted, and turned into lies and poisonous propaganda by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and their enablers. But that’s what has happened to a news story I wrote four years ago.

In 2015, I wrote a story for the New York Times about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine. Many observers now seem to think this suddenly hot story came out of nowhere this year, but that is not true.

In December 2015, I was an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the Times. That month, I published a story reporting that Vice President Joe Biden had just traveled to Ukraine, in part to send a message to the Ukrainian government that it needed to crack down on corruption.

Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma in April 2014, the same month that British officials froze Zlochevsky’s London bank accounts containing $23 million. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, was conducting a money-laundering investigation and refused to allow Zlochevsky or Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer, and another company owned by Zlochevsky access to the accounts.

But the British money-laundering investigation was stymied by Ukrainian prosecutors’ refusal to cooperate. The Ukrainian prosecutors would not turn over documents needed in the British investigation, and without that documentary evidence, a British court ordered Britain’s Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase – not lessen — the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.

NOTE THE DATE OF 2015 BEFORE THE ELECTION.
* U.S. Ambassador Upbraids Ukrainian Prosecutors Over Anticorruption Efforts
By RFE/RL (RadioFreeEurope RadoLiberty), September 25, 2015 17:49 GMT

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine has accused the country’s Prosecutor-General’s Office of obstructing efforts to combat corruption and shielding its own employees from graft investigations.

“Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor-General’s Office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform,” Pyatt said in the September 24 speech.

He called for an investigation of officials within the Prosecutor-General’s Office who he says stymied efforts to pursue tens of millions of dollars in “illicit assets” that former Ukrainian official Mykola Zlochevskiy held in Britain.

Pyatt said that “those responsible for subverting the case” against Zlochevskiy “should -- at a minimum -- be summarily terminated.”

Since his appointment by Poroshenko in February, Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin has faced accusations of stalling high-profile corruption cases against allies of Yanukovych.

Follow up story with more detail linked in the first article I posted above:
A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True.
Robert Mackey, May 10 2019, 4:52 p.m.

The original NY Times story:
Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch

Come on SC, I know you have to be smarter than this. Do you really believe that Biden would have threatened to hold back 1 billion dollars if his son was not on the board of the corrupt company being investigated? Of all the corrupt countries, businesses, and prosecutors in the world, Biden had to demand a quid pro quo in this case? That is the true definition of the term... you do this and I will give you that... doing do it and you don't get it. So simple yet such blatant hypocrisy.

SC,
Please enlighten me as to why a company would put an American, Hunter Biden, on its board of directors. Surely they knew that he had zero experience in the oil industry, was thrown out of the U.S. Navy for cocaine usage
. Maybe they knew that he was going to bless his father Joe Biden with a grandchild, albeit out of wedlock. However Hunter denied the child until DNA testing proved the strippers charge. Yet he continues to fight child support saying that he is bankrupt. Query, did his money go up his nose?
Personally I believe that Hunter Biden is as pure as wind driven cocaine, oops I mean snow. Oops, again. snow could be read as heroin.