US President Donald J. Trump Impeachment Megathread - Democrats commit mass political suicide

On September 24th, 2019, Nanci Pelosi did what everyone expected was some exceptional political posturing -- initiating a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

The initial "charge," such as it was, was "betraying his oath of office and the nation's security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain." This, amusingly, was after it was discovered and widely reported on that the DNC had contacted the very same foreign power to attempt to tarnish Trump.

Specifically, this was all based on a rumor that Trump had asked the Ukraine to investigate how a prosecutor investigating Joe Biden's son for corruption had gotten fired, and withheld foreign aid until they had agreed. (He did ask the leader of the Ukraine to investigate what happened with the prosecutor, but did not hold up any foreign aid nor threaten anything of the like.)

Around this time, Trump did something they could not, and still cannot, understand: He publicly turned over all the documents. The transcript of the phone call they claimed showed him committing the crime of blackmailing the Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden for him was released, showing that Trump did nothing wrong. The only reaction the radical left had was arguing over the definition of "transcript" and spouting off a conspiracy theory about official state documents being edited.

At the same time, old video evidence of Joe Biden publicly bragging about blackmailing the Ukraine into NOT investigating his son came to light. Yes, this is exactly what they're accusing Trump of doing. The left is nothing if not subtle. Right after this, evidence came to light that Pelosi, Kerry, and Romney's kids had similar fake jobs in the Ukraine, getting paid ungodly amounts of money and embezzling US foreign aid to the Ukraine -- all things that Trump's Attorney General has openly discussed investigating.

By releasing the transcripts, the DNC was tripped up. Instead of being able to leak information from their secret investigation until November 2020, they were forced to play their hand publicly.

And they had no hand to play. The impeachment accusations came from second and third hand sources -- watercooler talk from Unelected Deep State Analysts with Trump Derangement Syndrome, outraged that President Trump refused to obey them when they felt they had a better idea as to how to run Foreign Affairs. Other allegations included that supposedly, the telepathic DNC members working in the state department knew what Trump was thinking (despite him literally saying the exact opposite) or could tell that Trump would do something even worse -- maybe something actually illegal -- in the future, and boy howdy, the imaginary Trump in their minds was a right bastard.

(As an aside, the name of the whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, has been censored across pretty much all social media, a test run of whatever censorship they're going to enact in the next few months to try and swing the election.)

At the same time, the DNC performed significant amounts of partisan political fuckery to do this all publicly, but unofficially -- preventing the GOP from bringing forth witnesses or questioning the DNC's witnesses, or even reading the double plus secret evidence the DNC supposedly had. Those GOP that did get access to the evidence have confirmed it's a 3 pound 5 ounce nothingburger.

The charges have since mutated, with them initially being changed to "bribery" -- as "bribery" focus groups easier and is easier to spew out on Twitter.

On December 18th, 2019, along party lines and with bipartisan opposition, they finally drafted their articles of impeachment -- first for "Abuse of Power" and second for "Obstruction of Congress." Neither are actually crimes nor are they impeachable offenses, even if they were true -- which the DNC has provided no evidence of, explaining that it's the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.

Narrator: It is not the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.

The "Obstruction of Congress" charge is particularly egregious, as they are claiming that Trump, by reaching out to the courts to act as mediators in his dispute over the rules with Pelosi, was obstructing her. In other words, Pelosi's stance is that the President must obey her, even if she's being a batshit insane drunk. Many legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, have pointed out that this is absolute bullshit.

The latest development as of this writing on December 21th, 2019, is that Pelosi is demanding that the GOP recuse itself, allowing the DNC to reshape the Senate in order to make the process "fair" -- by creating a Kangaroo court. The GOP is refusing outright, as the Senate's role during this is very specifically to take the charges and all the evidence gathered from the house -- which is none -- and vote yes or no on impeachment. They need 2/3rd majority to vote yes, and the DNC does not have the votes.

Pelosi is refusing to send over the articles of impeachment until the GOP allows her to stack the Senate against Trump, an act that Dershowitz as well as Noah Feldman, the DNC's own star legal expert witness, has said is unconstitutional and "a problem," as Trump isn't impeached until the articles have been filed. Meanwhile, the DNC has put the House on vacation until the new year, while the Senate is exploring options including forcing the articles over without Pelosi's ok. Trump and the Senate have both went to the SCOTUS to ask them if any of this is constitutional.

tl;dr: Trump may have found where the Swamp was embezzling US Foreign Aid. Many politician's children working fake jobs for huge amounts of money in the Ukraine, blatantly selling influence. This caused the DNC to freak out and try and headshot Trump. They missed. The Democrats appear to have committed political suicide, making Trump a Martyr and only realizing in the aftermath that they didn't actually get rid of him or even weaken him in any way. They also appear to realize they fucked up and are trying to slow walk it back, keeping the "he's impeached!" victory while not actually having to let anyone read the evidence or have a trial on it.


@Yotsubaaa did a great writeup here with links to various winner posts: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/nancy...kraine-phone-call.61583/page-135#post-5606264

And @Yotsubaaa did a new version very late on the 21st of December: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/presi...chment-megathread.61583/page-260#post-5754920

Which are too big to quote here.



https://archive.fo/oVGIv

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.

Ms. Pelosi’s declaration, after months of reticence by Democrats who had feared the political consequences of impeaching a president many of them long ago concluded was unfit for office, was a stunning turn that set the stage for a history-making and exceedingly bitter confrontation between the Democrat-led House and a defiant president who has thumbed his nose at institutional norms.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief speech invoking the nation’s founding principles. Mr. Trump, she added, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”

She said the president’s conduct revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

Ms. Pelosi’s decision to push forward with the most severe action that Congress can take against a sitting president could usher in a remarkable new chapter in American life, touching off a constitutional and political showdown with the potential to cleave an already divided nation, reshape Mr. Trump’s presidency and the country’s politics, and carry heavy risks both for him and for the Democrats who have decided to weigh his removal.

Though the outcome is uncertain, it also raised the possibility that Mr. Trump could become only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached but later acquitted by the Senate. President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of a looming House impeachment vote.

It was the first salvo in an escalating, high-stakes standoff between Ms. Pelosi, now fully engaged in an effort to build the most damning possible case against the president, and Mr. Trump, who angrily denounced Democrats’ impeachment inquiry even as he worked feverishly in private to head off the risk to his presidency.

Mr. Trump, who for months has dared Democrats to impeach him, issued a defiant response on Twitter while in New York for several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, with a series of fuming posts that culminated with a simple phrase: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” Meanwhile, his re-election campaign and House Republican leaders launched a vociferous defense, accusing Democrats of a partisan rush to judgment.

“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “So bad for our Country! For the past two years, talk of impeachment had centered around the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told her caucus and then the country that new revelations about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s stonewalling of Congress about them, had finally left the House no choice but to proceed toward a rarely used remedy.

“Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” she told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol. Emerging moments later to address a phalanx of news cameras, Ms. Pelosi, speaking sometimes haltingly as she delivered a speech from a teleprompter, invoked the Constitution and the nation’s founders as she declared, “The times have found us” and outlined a new stage of investigating Mr. Trump.

At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress. And it occurred just a few days after Mr. Trump had ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Trump has confirmed aspects of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader in recent days, but he continues to insist he acted appropriately.

The president said on Tuesday that he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation, part of an effort to pre-empt Democrats’ impeachment push. But Democrats, after months of holding back, were unbowed, demanding the full whistle-blower complaint and other documentation about White House dealings with Ukraine, even as they pushed toward an expansive impeachment inquiry that could encompass unrelated charges.

President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.

Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats that Mr. Trump told her in a private call on Tuesday morning that he was not responsible for withholding the whistle-blower complaint from Congress. But late Tuesday, the White House and intelligence officials were working on a deal to allow the whistle-blower to speak to Congress and potentially even share a redacted version of the complaint in the coming days, after the whistle-blower expressed interest in talking to lawmakers.

Although Ms. Pelosi’s announcement was a crucial turning point, it left many unanswered questions about exactly when and how Democrats planned to push forward on impeachment.
 
Última edición:
Even if there was no quid pro quo, even if there is a treaty between the US and the Ukraine to help with criminal matters, it's still massively inappropriate and an abuse of his office to ask the Ukraine for help digging up dirty on his main political rival. How hard is that to understand?

By who's standards? The standards of the people that used the full unrestrained power of the US Inteligence Agencies against Trump? That corrupted the FISA court to spy on him? That Actively used Ukraine to try and drum up dirt on Trump? Biden was bought and sold by Russian Oligarchs. Kerry was bought and sold by Russian Oligarchs, all through Ukraine via their sons. We can now see the money.
 
I'm betting one of the many investigations has got them, dead-to-rights. Possibly someone made a deal. I could see the UK offering to cooperate in exchange for a very favorable trade agreement to soften the blow of a no-deal Brexit, for example.

If the moderates and center-left folks truly grasped magnitude of the Obama admin and CIA's perfidy, and the complicity of the democratic congress and media in aiding and covering it up, the democratic party is gonna get blown up like god-damn Krakatoa. We might even see the party fracture outright.

Ukraine is the lynchpin. After the coup, where the US installed the richest man in Ukraine to be their bulwark against Russia, they invested a whole lot of intelligence assets into running the country (read: pilfering the coffers) and started all sorts of money laundering and other operations there.

In this most recent election, where the comedian beat out the richest of the riches, that new guy is in the pocket of the 2nd richest man in Ukraine, but here's the deal, that guy, #2, is hiding out in hymietown Israel. So normally, where a fresh regime would just sandbag and stay uninvolved, Zion Don's good will with the Chosen is buying him an unnatural level of cooperation in a historically corrupt cesspit.
 
American campaign law prohibits American political campaigns from taking "a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value" from foreigners. Receiving dirt on opposition would count as a contribution of a "thing of value." Why are you not concerned that our elections, one of the most important and sacred institutions of our country, might be influenced by outside forces? I'm not talking about Russia hacking our election or absurd claims like that, I'm pointing to the president admitting he asked for foreign investigations into a political rival.


Simply put, I don't believe that there was any foreign interference in the first place. Zero Russian trolls, no Russian misinformation campaign, nothing. It was all drunk rednecks fucking around on Facebook and sharing memes. The Russiagate nonsense is just an excuse for the left getting out memed so badly that they lost the election.
 
Here’s a set of new twists in the unfolding Trump/Biden/Burisma story that rapidly morphed into an impeachment inquiry: First starters, it turns out Viktor Shoken — the former Ukrainian chief prosecutor who was fired in 2016 following threats by Joe Biden that the US would withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was replaced — is trying to get his old job back. By suing for it. Shokin is arguing that he was improperly fired and his case is going to be before Ukraine’s supreme court in a few days.

This isn’t the first time Shokin filed an appeal of his firing. Ukraine’s courts reject an earlier appeal in 2017. But Shokin refiled an appeal on September 2 of this year, citing unspecified “new circumstances.” Keep in mind that Giuliani has already been working on digging up this Biden/Burisma story in Ukraine for months before that September 2 appeal so the “new circumstances” are presumably related to this whole Trump/Giuliani initiative to make Shokin’s firing central to this political campaign against Biden.

Now, that’s quite a notable development in this story in an of itself in terms of getting a sense of the goals of at least some of the players on the Ukrainian side of this story. Because if Shokin wants his old job back, he and his backers are going to have a big incentive to make his firing sound as improper as possible. Which means Shokin and his Ukrainian allies are going to have a a big new incentive to further the narrative being put forth by Rudy Giuliani and the Trump team that Shokin’s firing was largely an attempt to protect his son Hunter Biden from the Burisma investigation.

But that’s not the only court case Shokin is involved with at the moment involving the Biden/Burisma story. Shokin was also asked by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash — who is currently in Austria fighting a US extradition request — to testify in Firtash’s defense. What did Firtash ask Shokin to testify about? Well, Shokin argued that he didn’t find an evidence that Firtash had committed any crimes in Ukraine and viewed the case against him as politically motivated. According to Austrian law, extradition isn’t allowed if the case is considered politically motivated.

But Shokin also went on provide a sworn testimony to the Austrian court that his own firing was related to the Biden/Burisma investigation. In Shokin’s affidavit, he bluntly states, “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holding.” He also asserts that Biden had intervened in Decemmber of 2015, when Shokin was still in office, and prevented Dmitry Firtash from returning to Ukraine. That’s presumably the basis for why Biden’s actions in Ukraine were part of this extradition hearing. So Firtash’s extradition defense now hinges on the argument that Biden was engaged in primarily politically motivated interventions in Ukraine and the key supporting evidence of that argument is the assertion that the firing of Shokin was primarily due to pressure from Biden over the Burisma investigation.

Shokin’s sworn affidavit in Firtash’s case has already shown up a recent piece in The Hill by John Solomon. Keep in mind Solomon has a track record of coming up with real investigative lead while simultaneously being a ‘go-to’ guy for Republicans who want to inject disinformation into the media. So his pieces are almost always an interesting mix of truth and fiction. In this latest piece, Solomon sets out to butress the underlying claim that Shokin’s firing really was done primarily to protect Burisma. The thrust of the argument centers around documents showing Burisma’s lawyers moved to meet with Ukrainian officials immediately after Shokin’s firing. But the piece also includes the newly sworn affidavit from Shokin in the Austrian court case where Shokin asserts that then-President Poroshenko asked him to look into the Burisma investigation and consider the possibility winding it down but Shokin refused. Solomon’s piece quotes the following Shokin testimony:

...
“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.
...
So Viktor Shokin is out to prove he was fired over Burisma in Ukraine’s courts in both a case before the Ukrainian Supreme court but also in this Austrian court case to help Dmitry Firtash.

Note that Paul Manfort and Firtash have a business history with each other. They both explored a venture to redevelop the Drake Hotel in New York about a decade ago.

But there’s another more significant fun-fact related to Dmitry Firtash and Paul Manafort: Firtash is a long-time business partner with Sergei Lovochkin(Lyovochkin)! Lovochkin was not only the lead financier of Paul Manafort’s ‘Habsburg Group’ lobbying effort to pull Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and into an EU trade association, but circumstantial evidence points towards Lovochkin and Manafort playing some sort of role in orchestrating the violence that fueled the Maidan protests following Viktor Yanukovych’s pull out of the trade association negotiations.

GOP political consultant Sam Patten — who had previously worked for Cambridge Analytica and formed a consulting firm with Konstantin Kilimnik — ended up pleading guilty to acting as a straw-purchaser of Trump Inauguration tickets for $50,000 on behalf of Lovochkin.

One of the goals of the scheme by Giuliani and Trump to push for a reexamination of Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election is to find evidence that Paul Manafort was falsely smeared in 2016 (with the release of the “black ledgers”) in a joint Ukraine/DNC operation run by Alexandra Chalupa. So we probably shouldnt’ be too surprised to learn that one of Lovochkin’s closest allies, Dmitry Firtash, was using his court extradition hear to promote Viktor Shokin’s narrative about his firing.

But there’s another big new twist related to this that relates to Shokin’s assistance of Firtash’s legal defense against extradition to the US: it turns out Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been the only ‘independent’ actor working for Trump on promoting the Biden/Burisma story. We’re now learning that the husband and wife team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing — frequent guests of Fox News — have been working with Giuliani on his Ukrainian adventures too. And both diGenova and Toensing have also recently sign up for Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense in his extradition case.

So Giuliani’s team working on digging up/creating dirt on Biden in Ukraine is literally part of Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense team in his extradition case. It was in that extradition case that Firtash had Shokin testify that, yes, he was fired over the Burisma case, an argument he’s making in his own legal case in front of the Ukrainian Supreme Court to get his job back. And the closest ally of Firtash just happens to be Sergei Lovochkin who also happened to one of Paul Manafort’s closest allies in Ukraine. Lots of twists.

Ok, first, here’s an article about Viktor Shokin suing to get his old job back by arguing that he was improperly fired over the Burisma investigation:

Irish Times
Ukrainian ex-prosecutor in Trump scandal tries to regain top job
Trump claims Shokin was fired at behest of Biden to shield his son
Daniel McLaughlin
Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 19:23
The former Ukrainian prosecutor general at the heart of a scandal that has prompted a bid to impeach US president Donald Trump is going to court to try to win back his old job.
Viktor Shokin was sacked as Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016, due to what Mr Trump claims was pressure applied to Kiev by then US vice-president Joe Biden, who hopes to be the Democrats’ challenger in next year’s presidential election.
Mr Trump suggests that Mr Biden wanted to stop Mr Shokin investigating Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, where his son Hunter Biden was a director.
Anti-corruption experts in Kiev reject that allegation as nonsense, but a July phone call in which Mr Trump repeatedly pressed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Mr Biden and his son has led Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry.
White House memo
A White House memo of their conversation showed that Mr Trump told Mr Zelenskiy, in apparent reference to Mr Shokin: “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.”
Documents on the website of the Ukrainian supreme court show that Mr Shokin’s appeal against dismissal is scheduled for October 3rd.
He argues that then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and the country’s parliament acted incorrectly in firing him. A court rejected his first appeal in 2017, and the court documents say his latest appeal is a response to unspecified “new circumstances” that have come to light.
Ukrainian media say the appeal was filed on September 2nd, before the current scandal around Mr Trump erupted following a complaint by a whistleblower in the US intelligence services.
However, for several months Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has urged Ukrainian officials and Mr Zelenskiy’s aides to look into whether Mr Biden targeted Mr Shokin to shield Burisma and his son from scrutiny.
...
Western capitals welcomed his removal in March 2016, with the European Union’s envoy to Kiev at the time, Jan Tombinksi, calling it “an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general’s office” amid “a lack of tangible results of investigations into serious cases”.
———
“Ukrainian ex-prosecutor in Trump scandal tries to regain top job” by Daniel McLaughlin; Irish Times; 09/26/2019
He argues that then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and the country’s parliament acted incorrectly in firing him. A court rejected his first appeal in 2017, and the court documents say his latest appeal is a response to unspecified “new circumstances” that have come to light.”

Unspecified “new circumstances” have come to light. That was the basis for Shokin’s September 2 new legal appeal to get his old job back. It’s hard to imagine those “new circumstances” didn’t involve the Giuliani initiative.

But as the following piece by Josh Marshall points out, it’s not just a Giuliani initiative. Now we’re learning that tv celebrity right-wing hack lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have also been working with Giuliani on this Ukrainian scheme...at the same time the two are were recently hired for Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense team in his extradition case. The same extradition case where Shokin recently testified that he felt his firing was due to pressure from Biden over the Burisma investigation. And Shokin’s sworn affidavit in Firtash’s Austrian case making these claims has already shown up in John Solomon’s reports in The Hill. It’s some remarkable coordination between the Trump team, Firtash, and Shokin:

Talking Points Memo
Editor’s Blog
Full Picture Coming Into View
By Josh Marshall
September 29, 2019 1:38 pm
Chris Wallace reported this morning on Fox News that two other names you’ll know have been working with Rudy Giuliani on his mission to strong-arm Ukraine into intervening in the 2020 election and help exonerate Paul Manafort: the husband and wife team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The two are frequent Hannity guests and at various points have been reported to be either joining or working with the President’s legal team. In this sense, working with Giuliani — the President’s so-called “private lawyer” — makes a fair amount of sense.
...
As I noted yesterday, material that has been surfacing from The Hill’s “opinion” reporter John Solomon and then echoed by Giuliani seems to originate with one of Ukraine’s richest and most powerful oligarchs who is a former business partner of Paul Manafort and had to flee Ukraine after the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He is in Austria, fighting extradition to the United States to face bribery charges.
His name is Dimtry Firtash.
Viktor Shokin is the “fired prosecutor” at the center of all these stories. As part of Firtash’s effort to avoid extradition from Austria to the United States, he asked Shokin to swear out the affidavit in which Shokin accuses Biden of getting him fired to protect his son Hunter. (There is no evidence any of this happened. There was no investigation of Hunter Biden or the company on whose board he sat at the time Shokin was fired.)
So to review, former Manafort business partner Firtash asks Shokin to swear out an affidavit in which he accuses Biden. The affidavit quickly gets into the hands of Giuliani and Solomon. And who just recently went to work for Firtash’s legal team? None other than diGenova and Toensing, as reported just this week by the Kyiv Post and other publications.
...
———-

Full Picture Coming Into View” by Josh Marshall; Talking Points Memo; 09/29/2019
“So to review, former Manafort business partner Firtash asks Shokin to swear out an affidavit in which he accuses Biden. The affidavit quickly gets into the hands of Giuliani and Solomon. And who just recently went to work for Firtash’s legal team? None other than diGenova and Toensing, as reported just this week by the Kyiv Post and other publications.”

Again, the coordination of all this is pretty remarkable.

Now, here’s the Kyiv Post article about Shokin testifying in Firtash’s defense. Shokin explicitly said in his affidavit, “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings,” and claims that Biden also intervened to prevent Firtash’s return to Ukraine in December of 2015. The article also notes that Austrian law doesn’t allow extradition in cases that are considered politically biased. So establishing that Biden was engaged in politically motivated interventions in Ukraine are central to Firtash’s legal defense against extradition to the US. And as the article also reminds us, Firtash also happens to be be the business party of former vice president Sergei Lovochkin, a key figure in understanding the nature of Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine

Kyiv Post
Ex-Prosecutor General Shokin defends oligarch Firtash
By Bermet Talant.
Published Sept. 27 at 8:16 pm
Viktor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor general at the center of the whistleblower scandal that launched an impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump, has given testimony in support of Ukrainian gas tycoon Dmytro Firtash, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. on bribery charges.
In a sworn affidavit, Shokin comes forward with more allegations against former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. He claims that Biden pressured the administration of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko not only to fire him to protect Biden’s son, but also to illegally block the return of oligarch Firtash to Ukraine.

...
A highly unpopular prosecutor general, Shokin was fired in April 2016 after months of demands from the country’s pro-reform and anti-graft community for his failure to investigate the corruption of fugitive President Victor Yanukovych’s regime. Yanukovych was ousted in the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014 and fled to Russia.
But Trump and his personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have been pushing a different narrative: “tough corruption fighter” Shokin was fired at the request of Biden in order to protect his son Hunter Biden’s employer, oil and gas extraction company Burisma Holdings, from prosecution.
The accusations against the Bidens are not supported by any available evidence.
“I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings,” Shokin said in the affidavit.
In Shokin’s words, then-President Poroshenko asked him several times to wind down the investigation into Burisma, but he refused. Then Poroshenko asked him to resign because Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in subsidies for Ukraine until he was removed from office.
Shokin clamed this was not the only time Biden exerted his influence over Poroshenko and Ukrainian officials.
He claims that Biden pressured the Ukrainian administration to block the return of Firtash to Ukraine in December 2015, when Shokin was still in office.

Oligarch Firtash was accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of conspiring to bribe officials in India with $18.5 million for a permit to develop titanium mines in the eastern coastal Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The produced titanium was supposed to be sold to Boeing, an airplane manufacturer with headquarters in Chicago.
Arrested in Vienna in 2014, Firtash has been fighting extradition to the U.S. with varying degrees of success. Most recently, an Austrian court and the country’s justice minister allowed his extradition to stand trial in Chicago. His lawyers have appealed.
Previously, in April 2015, an Austrian judge rejected his extradition. After that, Firtash planned to come to Kyiv to address the Federation of Employers, an organization he chaired, on December 2, 2015.
However, according to Shokin’s testimony, Ukrainian officials did everything to prevent this from happening “under intense pressure of Biden.”
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that Firtash would be arrested immediately upon return to Ukraine. In addition, he mobilized the Azov Battalion, a far-right nationalist organization which is widely believed to be subordinate to Avakov, to patrol the Kyiv airports as an intimidation technique. The government also closed Ukrainian airspace to private jets.
But Shokin claimed there was no evidence that Firtash had committed any crime.
“I would have never allowed the general prosecutor office (sic) to be used for political purposes of unfounded criminal prosecution of a person in the absence of sufficient evidence that such crimes had been committed,” Shokin said in the affidavit.
Firtash was a close ally to Yanukovych and is still a business partner of the ex-president’s chief of staff, Serhiy Lovochkin. In his early days, he allegedly worked with organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich and profited from a murky scheme to resell Turkmen gas.
As he grew his influence and fortune through close alliances with politicians, Firtash privatized gas distribution networks and monopolized the fertilizer market. According to an investigation by Ukrainian journalists, he de-facto controls a state-owned chemical plant in Sumy.
Daria Kaleniuk, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on facebook that Shokin’s affidavit may be used by Firtash’s lawyers as evidence of political subtext in his prosecution.
According to Austrian law, extradition is impossible if the prosecution is politically motivated.
Recently, the oligarch’s defense team hired two attorneys connected to Trump, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. Both have advanced the idea that Ukraine interfered in the U.S. election and other related claims in the media.

———-
“Ex-Prosecutor General Shokin defends oligarch Firtash” by Bermet Talant; Kyiv Post; 09/27/2019
“In a sworn affidavit, Shokin comes forward with more allegations against former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. He claims that Biden pressured the administration of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko not only to fire him to protect Biden’s son, but also to illegally block the return of oligarch Firtash to Ukraine.”

As we can see, in addition to arguing that he didn’t think Firtash committed any crimes and the charges against him were politically motivated under pressure from Biden, Shokin’s own grievances against Biden are being used to argue that the case against Firtash was also politically motivated:

...
“I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings,” Shokin said in the affidavit.
In Shokin’s words, then-President Poroshenko asked him several times to wind down the investigation into Burisma, but he refused. Then Poroshenko asked him to resign because Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in subsidies for Ukraine until he was removed from office.
Shokin clamed this was not the only time Biden exerted his influence over Poroshenko and Ukrainian officials.
He claims that Biden pressured the Ukrainian administration to block the return of Firtash to Ukraine in December 2015, when Shokin was still in office.

...
Previously, in April 2015, an Austrian judge rejected his extradition. After that, Firtash planned to come to Kyiv to address the Federation of Employers, an organization he chaired, on December 2, 2015.
However, according to Shokin’s testimony, Ukrainian officials did everything to prevent this from happening “under intense pressure of Biden.”
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that Firtash would be arrested immediately upon return to Ukraine. In addition, he mobilized the Azov Battalion, a far-right nationalist organization which is widely believed to be subordinate to Avakov, to patrol the Kyiv airports as an intimidation technique. The government also closed Ukrainian airspace to private jets.
But Shokin claimed there was no evidence that Firtash had committed any crime.
“I would have never allowed the general prosecutor office (sic) to be used for political purposes of unfounded criminal prosecution of a person in the absence of sufficient evidence that such crimes had been committed,” Shokin said in the affidavit.
...
According to Austrian law, extradition is impossible if the prosecution is politically motivated.
...
Keep in mind that when Shokin asserts that the blocking of Firtash’s return to Ukraine in December 2015 was done under pressure from Biden, that actually supports the argument that Biden was primarily acting on behalf of US policy during this period unless there’s some reason to assume Firtash’s case involves Burisma.

And as the article note, Firtash remains a business partner of former vice president Sergei Lovochkin, one of the central figures in Paul Manafort’s history in Ukraine:

...
Firtash was a close ally to Yanukovych and is still a business partner of the ex-president’s chief of staff, Serhiy Lovochkin. In his early days, he allegedly worked with organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich and profited from a murky scheme to resell Turkmen gas.
...
Recently, the oligarch’s defense team hired two attorneys connected to Trump, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. Both have advanced the idea that Ukraine interfered in the U.S. election and other related claims in the media.
...
Might Lovochkin, one of Manafort’s closest partners in Ukraine, also be working on this Trump/Giuliani/deGenova/Toensing/Firtash/Shokin operation to create and exploit a narrative around the Biden/Burisma case? Given his proximity to so many of these characters, at this point it would be surprising if he wasn’t involved.
 
It's best to assume that Shokin is corrupt, as is Burisma Holdings, and literally every other person and or entity in Ukraine.
You don't have to manufacture or coordinate anything. They're all slimy as frogs eggs.

The tree they hung Paul Mannafort from has many many branches.
 
Here’s a set of new twists in the unfolding Trump/Biden/Burisma story that rapidly morphed into an impeachment inquiry: First starters, it turns out Viktor Shoken — the former Ukrainian chief prosecutor who was fired in 2016 following threats by Joe Biden that the US would withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was replaced — is trying to get his old job back. By suing for it. Shokin is arguing that he was improperly fired and his case is going to be before Ukraine’s supreme court in a few days.

This isn’t the first time Shokin filed an appeal of his firing. Ukraine’s courts reject an earlier appeal in 2017. But Shokin refiled an appeal on September 2 of this year, citing unspecified “new circumstances.” Keep in mind that Giuliani has already been working on digging up this Biden/Burisma story in Ukraine for months before that September 2 appeal so the “new circumstances” are presumably related to this whole Trump/Giuliani initiative to make Shokin’s firing central to this political campaign against Biden.

Now, that’s quite a notable development in this story in an of itself in terms of getting a sense of the goals of at least some of the players on the Ukrainian side of this story. Because if Shokin wants his old job back, he and his backers are going to have a big incentive to make his firing sound as improper as possible. Which means Shokin and his Ukrainian allies are going to have a a big new incentive to further the narrative being put forth by Rudy Giuliani and the Trump team that Shokin’s firing was largely an attempt to protect his son Hunter Biden from the Burisma investigation.

But that’s not the only court case Shokin is involved with at the moment involving the Biden/Burisma story. Shokin was also asked by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash — who is currently in Austria fighting a US extradition request — to testify in Firtash’s defense. What did Firtash ask Shokin to testify about? Well, Shokin argued that he didn’t find an evidence that Firtash had committed any crimes in Ukraine and viewed the case against him as politically motivated. According to Austrian law, extradition isn’t allowed if the case is considered politically motivated.

But Shokin also went on provide a sworn testimony to the Austrian court that his own firing was related to the Biden/Burisma investigation. In Shokin’s affidavit, he bluntly states, “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holding.” He also asserts that Biden had intervened in Decemmber of 2015, when Shokin was still in office, and prevented Dmitry Firtash from returning to Ukraine. That’s presumably the basis for why Biden’s actions in Ukraine were part of this extradition hearing. So Firtash’s extradition defense now hinges on the argument that Biden was engaged in primarily politically motivated interventions in Ukraine and the key supporting evidence of that argument is the assertion that the firing of Shokin was primarily due to pressure from Biden over the Burisma investigation.

Shokin’s sworn affidavit in Firtash’s case has already shown up a recent piece in The Hill by John Solomon. Keep in mind Solomon has a track record of coming up with real investigative lead while simultaneously being a ‘go-to’ guy for Republicans who want to inject disinformation into the media. So his pieces are almost always an interesting mix of truth and fiction. In this latest piece, Solomon sets out to butress the underlying claim that Shokin’s firing really was done primarily to protect Burisma. The thrust of the argument centers around documents showing Burisma’s lawyers moved to meet with Ukrainian officials immediately after Shokin’s firing. But the piece also includes the newly sworn affidavit from Shokin in the Austrian court case where Shokin asserts that then-President Poroshenko asked him to look into the Burisma investigation and consider the possibility winding it down but Shokin refused. Solomon’s piece quotes the following Shokin testimony:


So Viktor Shokin is out to prove he was fired over Burisma in Ukraine’s courts in both a case before the Ukrainian Supreme court but also in this Austrian court case to help Dmitry Firtash.

Note that Paul Manfort and Firtash have a business history with each other. They both explored a venture to redevelop the Drake Hotel in New York about a decade ago.

But there’s another more significant fun-fact related to Dmitry Firtash and Paul Manafort: Firtash is a long-time business partner with Sergei Lovochkin(Lyovochkin)! Lovochkin was not only the lead financier of Paul Manafort’s ‘Habsburg Group’ lobbying effort to pull Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and into an EU trade association, but circumstantial evidence points towards Lovochkin and Manafort playing some sort of role in orchestrating the violence that fueled the Maidan protests following Viktor Yanukovych’s pull out of the trade association negotiations.

GOP political consultant Sam Patten — who had previously worked for Cambridge Analytica and formed a consulting firm with Konstantin Kilimnik — ended up pleading guilty to acting as a straw-purchaser of Trump Inauguration tickets for $50,000 on behalf of Lovochkin.

One of the goals of the scheme by Giuliani and Trump to push for a reexamination of Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election is to find evidence that Paul Manafort was falsely smeared in 2016 (with the release of the “black ledgers”) in a joint Ukraine/DNC operation run by Alexandra Chalupa. So we probably shouldnt’ be too surprised to learn that one of Lovochkin’s closest allies, Dmitry Firtash, was using his court extradition hear to promote Viktor Shokin’s narrative about his firing.

But there’s another big new twist related to this that relates to Shokin’s assistance of Firtash’s legal defense against extradition to the US: it turns out Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been the only ‘independent’ actor working for Trump on promoting the Biden/Burisma story. We’re now learning that the husband and wife team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing — frequent guests of Fox News — have been working with Giuliani on his Ukrainian adventures too. And both diGenova and Toensing have also recently sign up for Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense in his extradition case.

So Giuliani’s team working on digging up/creating dirt on Biden in Ukraine is literally part of Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense team in his extradition case. It was in that extradition case that Firtash had Shokin testify that, yes, he was fired over the Burisma case, an argument he’s making in his own legal case in front of the Ukrainian Supreme Court to get his job back. And the closest ally of Firtash just happens to be Sergei Lovochkin who also happened to one of Paul Manafort’s closest allies in Ukraine. Lots of twists.

Ok, first, here’s an article about Viktor Shokin suing to get his old job back by arguing that he was improperly fired over the Burisma investigation:


He argues that then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and the country’s parliament acted incorrectly in firing him. A court rejected his first appeal in 2017, and the court documents say his latest appeal is a response to unspecified “new circumstances” that have come to light.”

Unspecified “new circumstances” have come to light. That was the basis for Shokin’s September 2 new legal appeal to get his old job back. It’s hard to imagine those “new circumstances” didn’t involve the Giuliani initiative.

But as the following piece by Josh Marshall points out, it’s not just a Giuliani initiative. Now we’re learning that tv celebrity right-wing hack lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have also been working with Giuliani on this Ukrainian scheme...at the same time the two are were recently hired for Dmitry Firtash’s legal defense team in his extradition case. The same extradition case where Shokin recently testified that he felt his firing was due to pressure from Biden over the Burisma investigation. And Shokin’s sworn affidavit in Firtash’s Austrian case making these claims has already shown up in John Solomon’s reports in The Hill. It’s some remarkable coordination between the Trump team, Firtash, and Shokin:


“So to review, former Manafort business partner Firtash asks Shokin to swear out an affidavit in which he accuses Biden. The affidavit quickly gets into the hands of Giuliani and Solomon. And who just recently went to work for Firtash’s legal team? None other than diGenova and Toensing, as reported just this week by the Kyiv Post and other publications.”

Again, the coordination of all this is pretty remarkable.

Now, here’s the Kyiv Post article about Shokin testifying in Firtash’s defense. Shokin explicitly said in his affidavit, “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings,” and claims that Biden also intervened to prevent Firtash’s return to Ukraine in December of 2015. The article also notes that Austrian law doesn’t allow extradition in cases that are considered politically biased. So establishing that Biden was engaged in politically motivated interventions in Ukraine are central to Firtash’s legal defense against extradition to the US. And as the article also reminds us, Firtash also happens to be be the business party of former vice president Sergei Lovochkin, a key figure in understanding the nature of Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine


“In a sworn affidavit, Shokin comes forward with more allegations against former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. He claims that Biden pressured the administration of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko not only to fire him to protect Biden’s son, but also to illegally block the return of oligarch Firtash to Ukraine.”

As we can see, in addition to arguing that he didn’t think Firtash committed any crimes and the charges against him were politically motivated under pressure from Biden, Shokin’s own grievances against Biden are being used to argue that the case against Firtash was also politically motivated:


Keep in mind that when Shokin asserts that the blocking of Firtash’s return to Ukraine in December 2015 was done under pressure from Biden, that actually supports the argument that Biden was primarily acting on behalf of US policy during this period unless there’s some reason to assume Firtash’s case involves Burisma.

And as the article note, Firtash remains a business partner of former vice president Sergei Lovochkin, one of the central figures in Paul Manafort’s history in Ukraine:


Might Lovochkin, one of Manafort’s closest partners in Ukraine, also be working on this Trump/Giuliani/deGenova/Toensing/Firtash/Shokin operation to create and exploit a narrative around the Biden/Burisma case? Given his proximity to so many of these characters, at this point it would be surprising if he wasn’t involved.
I truly applaud the info gathering and detailed explanations. These are the kinds of things the democrats should have been doing from day one.

that said, even if its true... so? Anytime a democrat alleges something or says something, I believe the opposite to be true until proven otherwise. it's my default position... and they only have themselves and their inability to admit fault/not lie to blame.
 
American campaign law prohibits American political campaigns from taking "a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value" from foreigners. Receiving dirt on opposition would count as a contribution of a "thing of value."

As far as I know, the idea that oppo research could be considered a “thing of value” under campaign finance law has never been ruled on in court. Given that the relevant statute pertains to finance specifically, it would be a stretch. How do you assign monetary value to a piece of oppo research? Recall that this is what they tried to get Don Jr. on back in early 2017, and it went nowhere.
 
There is no way Manafort is clean.

The problem is that the only reason he got hit was due to being Trump's campaign manager, and that is naked bullshit. It's Xi Jiping-tier selective anti-corruption enforcement.
 
As far as I know, the idea that oppo research could be considered a “thing of value” under campaign finance law has never been ruled on in court. Given that the relevant statute pertains to finance specifically, it would be a stretch. How do you assign monetary value to a piece of oppo research? Recall that this is what they tried to get Don Jr. on back in early 2017, and it went nowhere.

It has been one more in the list of criminal statutes twisted to attempt to lawyer Trump into having committed a crime (obstruction, anyone?). It doesn't get as much discussion, but it has been infuriating watching the media simply present all of their fanciful theories as to how Trump broke the law as matter-of-fact, and merrily skip past the reality that there is no legal precedence for any of them.

It's the core of the most egregious tactic adopted by his opposition: that it is acceptable to invent brand-new legal theories and standards of behavior to try apply to Trump and only Trump. None of which ever have or would stand in any actual court, and even if they somehow could, it is clearly selective, politically-motivated prosecution when this is the first time is has been applied. Never mind the obvious, ludicrously unfair standard of expecting Trump or his lawyers to adhere to such rules that they have no way to know are in effect. Ignorance of the 're-interpreted' law is no defense, comrade.

One of our two parties has begun discarding any pretense of respecting the Rule of Law.
 
American campaign law prohibits American political campaigns from taking "a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value" from foreigners. Receiving dirt on opposition would count as a contribution of a "thing of value." Why are you not concerned that our elections, one of the most important and sacred institutions of our country, might be influenced by outside forces? I'm not talking about Russia hacking our election or absurd claims like that, I'm pointing to the president admitting he asked for foreign investigations into a political rival.
Yeah, let's talk about that.

Getting dirt on a political rival from a foreign power is a thing of value. Getting a trade deal in place with a foreign power is a thing of value as well. Both help a politician get re-elected, the question is who benefits. If the ToV is a personal gift to the person, i.e. a bribe, that is wrong. If the ToV is a matter of policy that benefits other Americans, that is not wrong.

As an American, the Steele dossier, the Russiagate investigation, and the circumstances surrounding them concern me. I want an investigation into their origin because all evidence points to a political effort designed to unseat a legitimately elected public official in the United States (i.e. an attempted coup.) That investigation requires coordination with foreign governments which will result in ToVs that by definition benefit me and the candidate himself.

The fact Trump is running against Biden is secondary to concerns about political tampering. This is a question of confidence in our government and the election process. How does this get investigated if the President gets impeached every time he talks to a foreign leader? How does this get investigated if every piece of information is considered a ToV and thus an treasonous act?

It's a Kafkatrap. He's damned for looking into it, he's damned for not looking into it. Someone orchestrated a political smear job that involved foreign intelligence agencies - which is treason - and Trump is wrong for pursuing it because it could impact a political rival. Who was likely involved in constructing the dossier in the first place.

Bullshit.
 
Maybe he should have handed it off to someone else.

Like a special prosecutor.

The left likes special prosecutors, don't they?
Maybe.

But a Special Prosecutor's powers are limited to domestic issues. He has no power, for instance, to compel a foreign government to hand over records, sit for a deposition, compel a foreign bank to hand over financial records, etc.

A Special Prosecutor would need the President to coordinate with other governments who are often hostile to revealing information they might find embarrassing. Arm-twisting is sometimes necessary to get them to come to the table.

In some people's eyes, involvement of the President would be evidence of a larger conspiracy, using the Special Prosecutor's office to dig up dirt on a political rival by exerting influence on a foreign power.

Like I said, it's a Kafkatrap. The perfect form of treason.

EDIT: And here's part of why I say that.

Schiff sent a staffer on a trip to the Ukraine funded by the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council is funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation and Burisma - the company that appointed Hunter Biden to the board.

You can't make this shit up. Trump is being accused by a group that also controls the investigation into him. Anything he does will be treated as a criminal act because his judges are the criminals.
 
Última edición:
Apparently the same week that Adam Schiff was posting that August 28th Tweet about the military aid thing, he was also sending a House Intelligence staff member to the Ukraine to meet with the former President just 12 days after the "whistleblower" complaint hit his desk. The unusual part about it is that he authorized the travel all the way back on July 22nd, which puts this way before he received the actual complaint or should even have known about it.

The odds that Schiff wasn't actively involved in drafting and organizing this complaint are rapidly approaching 0%.
 

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American campaign law prohibits American political campaigns from taking "a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value" from foreigners. Receiving dirt on opposition would count as a contribution of a "thing of value."

Doesn't read that way to me. 11 CFR § 100.52 does allow that "services" can be a "campaign contribution", but only if provided at a rate other than normal market value. Evidence of a crime as stipulated by a treaty between two countries does not have an ordinary market value. In practical terms justice might have a commodity nature to it, but that's a flaw in the system brought on by corruption - in theory it's supposed to be equal and free.

Why are you not concerned that our elections, one of the most important and sacred institutions of our country, might be influenced by outside forces? I'm not talking about Russia hacking our election or absurd claims like that, I'm pointing to the president admitting he asked for foreign investigations into a political rival.

You can't have it both ways. If he asked for the information, he's not being influenced by outside forces - he is the "force" doing in the "influencing".
 
American campaign law prohibits American political campaigns from taking "a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value" from foreigners. Receiving dirt on opposition would count as a contribution of a "thing of value." Why are you not concerned that our elections, one of the most important and sacred institutions of our country, might be influenced by outside forces? I'm not talking about Russia hacking our election or absurd claims like that, I'm pointing to the president admitting he asked for foreign investigations into a political rival.
If it means we can remove them all I'm down. If it means we just remove Trump then it's just not worth it.
 
In the past the republicans have been idiots, but the current mess is 100% democrats fault. It's not the Senate or the house, it's the DNC attempting a coup.

The usual suspects wanting to attempt a coup, and Pelosi offering them enough rope to hang themselves.

I have long doubted Pelosi's worth as any kind of leader, but she has certainly shown she knows how to play the game. Only real question this time is will there be enough time after the whole thing falls apart to pull back out of the crazy nosedive. Any establishment Ds are most likely going to commit as little as possible to the affair, just enough to look like they're invested in seeing Trump get brought down, but they won't stake anything on it that will lead to them not having a chance at another term. Pretty much like the New Green Deal went down.

Again, I don't trust Pelosi one bit, I think she's an awful human being, but I also don't think she's a true believer in this impeachment attempt or likely to follow the rabid progressives any more than she needs to in order to see them step directly onto a political landmine and get blown skyhigh. Then she'll scurry back to the center to rally the party and move them back from the ledge everybody has just been sprinting towards. If there's one thing I can trust her to do, it's to be as pragmatic as she can afford.
 
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