Impeachment hearings

[_mikwut]

Hi Doc,

mikwut wrote:
I believe in God.


No. You found your asshole messiah and love him for being who he is.

- Doc

And your just a dick plain and simple.

mikwut

[_honorentheos]

Markk, Zlochevsky was and is known to be corrupt. That's not news. The entire point of the timeline was to show that the investigations into him were being held up by the Office of the Prosecutor General and interfered with by corrupt Ukrainians kleptocrats whose history and ties go back into the early 2000s. Shokin, Yanukovych, Poroshenko, Lutsenko - they all were tied up in the same corruption issues as Zlochevsky.

You aren't paying attention to what is going on by getting distracted because Hunter Biden was hired onto the board of Burisma. Yeah, that was dumb, and yeah that looks bad. Hell, it could even be bad in that it could be part of why Biden advocated for the US supporting Ukrainain gas expansion in addition to fostering their independence from Russia. Or it could be that Biden knew this was a needed move and it affected the behavior of his son, etc. But Biden conveying the message that Shokin needed to go is CLEAR as it gets an act that was against protecting Zlochevsky and works against that narrative.

[Guest]

Res,

If it applies provide a case. You are providing a circle. It has to be criminal but it isn't criminal but then has to be law enforcement but congress has never been found by appellate or supreme court that it is law enforcement.

C'mon. Bring a case your a lawyer. You have access to lexis, I have checked precedent. It doesn't exist.

This isn't my bad.

mikwut

It is your bad, and you keep making it worse.

You’ve been arguing how the statute works for pages now without any case law. It is completely disingenuous for you to demand that I come up with a case to support my argument from the plain language of the statute.

You’ven caught doing exactly what you were chastising others on the board for doing — not reading the statute. And now your’re blowing smoked to conceal the hypocrisy.

What you’ve failed to do, twice now, is explain why the definition is not relevant. And claiming an argument as circular is not the same as proving that it is.

[_Icarus]

Schweizer has been criticized for incorrect reporting and conclusions not supported by facts, including in his second book Friendly Spies. Two Sunday Times reporters trying to follow-up on his reporting discovered that meetings described by Schweizer did not check out, that named sources did not exist or could not be found, and that there was no Paris Sheraton Hotel during the time period when the meetings allegedly took place. Schweizer admitted he overreached in attacking Hillary Clinton's purported role in approving a Russian uranium deal and falsely claimed that then-Secretary of State Clinton "had veto power" to stop the Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency (Rosatom) from purchasing Uranium One. During a May 5, 2015, Politico podcast interview, Schweizer admitted that "veto is probably not the best word" and "what I meant by veto power was as we explain the process, you know, if somebody objects it kicks in the special investigation." In a 2015 NBC interview Schweizer said that Hillary Clinton did not support a nuclear deal with India in 2006 and that she voted for it in 2008, after donations to the Clinton Foundation. PolitiFact rated Schweizer's claim "False". -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sch ... and_errors

Supposedly “nonpartisan” reporter Peter Schweizer is keynoting a Republican fundraiser

Supposedly “nonpartisan” reporter Peter Schweizer, who has propelled negative stories about Democratic candidates into outlets such as The New York Times, is set to appear as a paid speaker for a Republican fundraiser.

Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Republican megadonors Rebekah Mercer, who is GAI’s chairwoman, and Robert Mercer gave GAI $500,000 in 2018. The organization was co-founded by Stephen Bannon, who closely tied GAI to Breitbart.com before he left both organizations to work for President Donald Trump in August 2016. Schweizer is currently a senior contributor for Breitbart.

Schweizer and GAI notoriously advanced shoddy research into the media regarding the Clintons during the 2016 campaign. They have again attempted to do that with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, with Schweizer earning a New York Times op-ed that inadequately described him as simply “an investigative journalist” and author.

Schweizer is now further tying himself financially to the Republican Party and Trump. He is scheduled to keynote a February 21 fundraiser in Washington state for the Snohomish County Republican Party, which is, in part, dedicated to electing “Republican candidates to federal, state, county and municipal offices.” A flyer for the event identifies Schweizer as “the "President of the Government Accountability Institute and a best-selling author.”

The party announced Schweizer’s appearance on November 26 and touted his books about the Clintons and Bidens. A few days later, the party sent $10,450 to All American Entertainment, which helps book Schweizer for appearances, as the “1st installment for keynote.”

Prior speakers for Snohomish’s annual fundraiser have included former Turning Point USA official Candace Owens, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, and Fox News’ Pete Hegseth. Fox News’ Lawrence Jones was originally scheduled to headline the Schweizer event but according to the party he had to cancel because of “a new Fox News employee Policy. Employees can no longer speak at political organizations.” (Fox News has inconsistently enforced that policy.)

Schweizer has previously been portrayed as “nonpartisan.” Breitbart.com claimed in 2018 that “Schweizer has garnered praise from conservatives and progressives alike for his reputation as a nonpartisan deep-dive investigative journalist.” (In reality, numerous reporters have criticized his shoddy work.)

After The New York Times received criticism for publishing Schweizer in October, a Times spokesperson said that his “op-ed makes an argument that nonpartisan government watchdogs would make, arguing in favor of a law that would prohibit self-dealing by those with government connections.” Breitbart celebrated the Times’ “nonpartisan” description in a post.

Schweizer previously worked for Republicans, including President George W. Bush and former Govs. Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. He also headlined Republican fundraisers in 2012.

[_honorentheos]

“Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing,” the notes from the interview stated. The notes also claimed Shokin was told Biden had held up U.S. aid to Ukraine over the investigation. https://nypost.com/2019/10/02/ex-ukrain ... be-report/ (Giuliani notes on interview with Shokin January 2019)

Zlochevsky’s Burisma group was supplying Poroshenko with natural gas. This is believed to be part of a deal that included Burisma providing free gas to Poroshenko's company, Pishivka Glass, who would "pay" for the gas but the money would be sent back to Poroshenko in a laundering scheme.

The case you reference above is one where Zlochevsky was accused of embezzlement, that then was turned into a tax evasion case. He supposedly paid $80 million to have his assets unfrozen as a bribe to Poroshenko. Yuriy Lutsenko was the PG who closed the case. That happened in January 2017. The September 2016 date is when Zlochevsky was removed from the most-wanted list, not when a case was closed against him. Lutsenko, the source for all of the accusations Trump believed regarding the Bidens, was the one responsible. You know how the corruption in the Ukraine worked? Just like the above. Bribes and leverage, moving money up and around the powerful while the people of Ukraine paid the actual cost. If that doesn't make sense to you, watch the damned Godfather or Goodfellas or something.

Seriously. You're focused on suspected impropriety on the part of the Bidens in the face of obvious, massive, historically entrenched corruption and siding with a couple of the most dirty parties. Unless the person is Vitaly Kasko, who is back in the PG office as Deputy Prosecutor General under the reforms started by President Volodymyr Zelensky as of September, or David Sakvarelidze there is almost every reason to assume the person being referenced is deeply tied into the corruption issues going back decades.

[_mikwut]

Res,

It is your bad, and you keep making it worse.

You’ve been arguing how the statute works for pages now without any case law. It is completely disingenuous for you to demand that I come up with a case to support my argument from the plain language of the statute.

You’ven caught doing exactly what you were chastising others on the board for doing — not reading the statute. And now your’re blowing smoked to conceal the hypocrisy.

What you’ve failed to do, twice now, is explain why the definition is not relevant. And claiming an argument as circular is not the same as proving that it is.

Ok. I'll play. 1) because there is no case or precedent to establish your definition as actually including a member of congress. 2) Because in other areas of the code a "member of congress" is separately defined as a "United States Official." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/115 So you would be trying to add, when your definition does not specifically state, an already defined party to a separate and different definition outside of what they are already defined as. That ambiguity is unconstitutional until defined clearer. You know that. That would require some kind of serious case law to include those definitions rather than the code just stating law enforcement officer and any united states official. And I am saying that doesn't exist. 3) The plain meaning of law enforcement officer does not comply with our understanding of congress. When interpreting statutes the plain meaning is given weight over ambiguity.

Further, the part of the code I linked is close in kind to the infraction at issue between us. It doesn't make sense for the separate definitions to exist there but not in your portion of the code. It would have simply included United States Officials.

mikwut

[_honorentheos]

April 21, Vice President Biden landed in Kyiv for meetings with Ukrainian officials, bringing with him terms for a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program to assist the Ukrainian natural gas industry.

Here's an article from that date - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukra ... HK20140421

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will announce a package of technical assistance focused on energy and economic aid distribution during a two-day visit to Ukraine that began on Monday, a senior administration official said.

Biden is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the country since the crisis with Russia erupted months ago.

His trip is largely symbolic. But during talks with Ukrainian leaders on Tuesday he will announce U.S. assistance, primarily of technical know-how to boost energy efficiency as well as production in Ukrainian natural gas fields and extraction of “unconventional” gas resources, a senior administration official told reporters traveling on board the vice president’s plane.

A U.S. team was also in Ukraine to help deal with the issue of securing gas flows from EU countries such as Slovakia and Hungary in the event that Russia cuts off Ukraine’s supply, the official said.

Kiev gets about half of its gas from Moscow and a large proportion of Europe’s gas is pumped from Russia via Ukraine. The United States is pushing Ukraine and the European Union to diversify their energy supplies and become less reliant on Russia.

Biden arrived in Kiev as an agreement reached last week to avert wider conflict in Ukraine began to falter.

Keep in mind that the major issue at this time was the Obama administration's stance of supporting Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression just a month before when they annexed Crimea and began sponsoring violent uprising in Eastern Ukraine including Russian troops going on "vacation" to Ukraine to fight during their leave. Russia was the major source of Ukrainian as well as European oil at the time which was obviously of strategic as well as tactical concern.

See this article for more information on that so you can contextualize why all of NATO might be interested in helping the Ukraine exploit its own oil reserves: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/does-russi ... sanctions/

Dated March 4, 2014: A large portion of Russian oil bound for Western Europe passes through Ukraine. And twice in the past decade, in 2006 and 2009, Russia has turned off natural gas shipments to Ukraine during disputes over gas prices. That in turn created shortages in some EU member nations.

In response, the EU has attempted to come up with alternatives to its current dependency on Russian oil and gas. The so-called "Nabucco" pipeline, for example, was a plan to bypass Russia by having a pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Europe, from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. But that project was shelved last June, when gas producers in Azerbaijan opted for a different plan.

[_honorentheos]

Markk -

If you are serious about digging into this issue, I can't recommend Moneyland enough as a place to start getting the bigger picture as you try to make sense of the bit stories coming out of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/ ... -oligarchs

Along with his friend, the anti-corruption activist Roman Borisovich, the journalist Oliver Bullough has recently been acting as a guide on London “Kleptocracy Tours”. Adapting the open-top bus principle, groups of sightseers are taken on a journey through the capital that showcases the north London mansion complexes owned by Russian oligarchs, the Eaton Square fantasies purchased by Middle Eastern political dynasties, the £100m apartments bought off-plan by corrupt African politicians and others who have extracted their billions in countries that have next to no financial accountability and have found ways to hide them in the luxurious square footage of Kensington and Belgravia.

This meticulously researched and fantastically disturbing book is effectively the global version of that tour. Bullough traces the ways in which, over the last three decades, a criminal elite of politicians and “businessmen” have been able to move their thieved fortunes around the world, through offshoring and shell companies, and have seen those fortunes settle in the places that have the highest-paid lawyers and accountants. Some economists’ estimates put the amount of money secreted in this way at $20tn (£15tn). Bullough calls the new world in which the kleptocratic class exists and does not exist Moneyland – a shifting Brobdingnag of “Maltese passports, English libel, American privacy, Panamanian shell companies, Jersey trusts, Liechtenstein foundations”, all designed to keep knowledge of outrageous fortune out of the sight of tax officials and tax-paying voters.

There are 100,000 properties owned offshore in England and Wales. As he gathers knowledge about some of them, Bullough finds himself in a kind of permanent alternative reality. “The building where I buy my morning coffee is owned in the Bahamas. The place I get my hair cut is owned in Gibraltar. A building site on my way to the train station is owned in the Isle of Man. If we spent all of our time trying to puzzle out what is really happening [in our cities] we’d have no time to do anything else…” Partly because “I am a journalist and all journalists are fascinated by crooks”, Bullough makes it his business to expose at least a few parts of this puzzle, the dizzying creation of a self-interested “services industry” in western democracies that has contrived to turn the globe into a money-laundering opportunity.

He begins in Ukraine, before the revolution, at the presidential palaces of Viktor Yanukovych, which after his overthrow became a ghoulish tourist attraction, a glimpse behind the gold-encrusted doors of the new world order. By 2014, it’s alleged that Yanukovych and 45 of his cronies owned assets equivalent to half of the national economy. In theory, as a public servant, Yanukovych, now in exile in Russia, had never been paid more than $2,000 a month. Clutter became an issue. Picasso vases, 14th-century icons and Russian masterpieces were stacked up in Yanukovych’s garage. Papers that he tried to destroy as he fled the country by dumping them into the harbour were fished out by protesters and dried in a sauna. They offered a blueprint for the ways in which a country could become a racket to enrich its government.

[_canpakes]

Your answer, then, is that Trump didn’t have the Bidens investigated because he knew they were corrupt.

If that’s your claim, then it would seem sensible to have Trump investigated for his complicity in this corruption.

Why do you need to twist what I have been writing?

I said several times that in my opinion, there is more than enough evidence to warrant an investigation, and Trump obviously felt the same way, if I remember correctly he might have even said that.

You say that he knew about some corruption. But he didn’t engage his own DoJ to investigate. Looks like he’s complicit in wanting this to stay under wraps.

I wonder how much Trump was paid by Burisma to keep quiet. ; )

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Honor,

Have you watched The Laundromat? Amazeballs.

- Doc