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"The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to formally proceed with the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The measure details how the inquiry will move into a more public phase. It was not a vote on whether the president should be removed from office.
This was the first test of support in the Democratic-controlled House for the impeachment process.
The White House condemned the vote, which passed along party lines.
Only two Democrats - representing districts that Mr Trump won handily in 2016 - voted against the resolution, along with all Republicans, for a total count of 232 in favour and 196 against."
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Trump Impeachment: House Votes to Formalise Inquiry
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Is that really YOU that is reading this?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @08:46PM (2 children)
And just in case you might not like the NY Times (since you are defending Trump):
Associated Press [apnews.com], which noted the controversy but also states the current prosecutor finds no reason to take action.
Bloomberg [bloomberg.com].
Reuters. [reuters.com]
Forbes. [forbes.com] Business Insider [businessinsider.com], if you don't like Forbes.
BBC. [bbc.com]
Deutsche Welle. [dw.com] and again [dw.com], although you might well feel Germany a little biased.
Now, to the meat of what you said that's flatly wrong:
Extortion on Biden's part is questionable. Biden was carrying out U.S. policy backed not just by the executive but also by State and all other relevant government agencies. It was all done quite publicly in the public view - you can find many contemporaneous news articles stating that the U.S. was going to call for exactly that and that the move was supported internationally. It's not like it was a phone call that was suddenly classified and placed into systems intended for national security matters. Also policy which was widely agreed upon by the International Monetary Fund, and European community (EBRD and EU) as well. Nobody unbiased has questioned that the Ukraine was (and still may be) suffering from corruption.
Where to begin... Mysterious, no. Burisma was clearly looking for a tie-in which might help them. That is not illegal. It's not nepotism like, say, employing your children as chief advisers in your administration. It's pretty much a given that children of Presidents (and similar officials) can do very well for themselves wherever they are. What is your evidence that the position was actually used corruptly?
Wrong. It was $1 billion in loan guarantees. That may seem like foreign aid to you, but it is quite different from funds that were appropriated and approved by Congress to be directly given to the country in question. Funds that the Executive Branch did not have discretion or choice as to whether they would be disbursed (what Trump ended up doing, and doing in a highly irregular method when the officials charged with that authority questioned the ability for the Executive to hold up the disbursement of those funds).
Wrong again. Prosecutor Shokin actually inherited the investigation into Burisma's founder Zlochevsky, did nothing with it, and if you read Shokin's Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], you'll see that the May allegations that he was investigating Burisma actively were debunked back in May - that investigation did not have activity during Shokin's time.
Wrong again again. The claims about Burisma were settled in 2017, by a different prosecution.
Wrong again again again again. Trump did not request, "investigation of corruption." He specifically requested investigation into what are known to be dead and debunked issues: Cloudflare, and specifically named his chief political rival for the next election. He asked this in the the context of a "favor" (a quid, if you will) in the context of having Congressionally approved military aid (a quo, if you will) and immediately after the Ukraine President stated he wanted to purchase U.S. Military armaments (another quo). That's quite different from what occurred previously, that discretionary aid was used as a bargaining chip in order to remove a prosecutor who was not doing his job effectively.
Now, shall we consider that Trump's method in doing so was to employ a personal lawyer who had no Congressionally-approved portfolio nor as an employee of the State Department, and seems to have established a shadow foreign policy apparatus for which the President then made the actual approved department (both AG and State) cooperate with? An unapproved invididual who now has two known associates under arrest for campaign finance law violations? No, I don't think we'll go there because that certainly does not help Trump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @06:55AM (1 child)
Cokehead son of VP with no experience or qualifications gets a job for somewhere between 50k and 180k per month, depending on reports. Take the low number for argument's sake. There is no amount of words that makes that not on its face, corrupt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:12PM
If you'd like to take that angle then you'd better be prepared to pay every public figure enough to support their children for life, because any job ever given to any politicians child might then be "corruption."
And even if "corrupt", not illegal. There was no crime present. And even if there was one the Republicans and the Ukraine government still have been unable to prove anything. Unsurprising because this is a dead and debunked issue.
Trump wasn't trying to get the dead horse beat so that justice would be served. Trump was trying to get a pot stirred up against his chief political rival and using the tools of statecraft entrusted to him for the sake of the nation's security to play his partisan political games. Or, if you like, he was seeking information to help him change the course of the 2020 election and not because he decided to wear his Superman Underoos that day. That's not just corrupt. That's illegal.
See the difference?