The Biden / Ukraine Scandal

[knapplc]

What happened between Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the Ukraine?

 

Rolling Stone

 

Quote

 

What Actually Happened Between Joe Biden and Ukraine, Explained

Now, this may be difficult to believe, but what actually happened between Biden and Ukraine is far more complicated than the president claims. In fact, it isn’t really that much of a controversy at all. Here’s a brief rundown of what inspired Trump’s latest efforts to get a foreign government to investigate one of his chief political opponents.

 

From February 2015 to March 2016, Viktor Shokin was prosecutor general of Ukraine. His ouster was the result of pressure from a large consensus of Western nations, including the United States, that were concerned Shokin was at the center of a lot of the country’s corruption. Their concern peaked when, in February 2016, Shokin’s own deputy prosecutor, Vitaly Kasko, resigned, citing the corruption and cronyism within the office. “The General Prosecutor’s Office has become a dead institution, which nobody believes is independent,” Kasko said at the time.

 

Biden was one of the leaders of the effort to remove Shokin, and a month after Kasko’s resignation, he threatened to withhold American loan guarantees from Ukraine so long as Shokin was heading the prosecutor’s office. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also threatened to withdraw financial support for Ukraine unless it cleaned up its corruption problem. Pretty much everyone recognized Shokin had to go, and a month later Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove him from office.

 

Nothing to see here, right? Not quite, according to the Trump administration. While Shokin was still in power, his office investigated a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma Holdings. Biden’s son, Hunter, was on the company’s board, a role for which he received payments of up to $50,000 per month. But according to CNN, at least one official in the prosecutor’s office said the investigation had been suspended by the time Biden threatened to withhold financial aid until Shokin was removed. The former vice president also did not appear to do anything to thwart other efforts, including those of the Obama administration, to investigate Burisma.

 

There also doesn’t seem to have been much legitimacy to Shokin’s investigation in the first place. According to tweets from Russia’s Crony Capitalism author and Ukraine expert Anders Åslund, the inquiry was likely nothing more than an effort to extort Mykola Zlochevsky, the company’s owner. “A prosecutor in Ukraine is usually a person who uses state power to investigate crimes, but after having done so the prosecutor goes to the culprit & extorts him or her, after which the prosecutor closes the case,” he wrote before noting that Shokin’s case against Burisma was quickly closed.

 

The same may have been true of Shokin’s successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who also investigated Burisma before closing the case 10 months later. “Lutsenko did not prosecute any serious criminal during his 3 years in office,” explained Åslund.

 

 

 

Business Insider

 

Quote

 

Here's the truth about the allegations involving Joe Biden's son and Ukraine drummed up by Trump and Rudy Giuliani

Hunter Biden worked for the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm that consulted for Burisma. Biden was in charge for the company's legal affairs with international companies, according to a press release, but Biden has disputed that characterization. At the time, Burisma's founder faced multiple investigations into alleged tax evasion and money laundering.

 

Hunter Biden later stepped down from the board in April 2019 when his term expired.

 

Joe Biden was part of a larger push coming from former President Barack Obama's administration for the Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be removed over concerns of corruption in his office. Biden acted as a vocal opponent of Shokin and has publicly detailed his threat to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from the country if Shokin wasn't fired.

 

But reports have since emerged showing there was not an active investigation into Hunter when the former vice president made the push for Shokin's firing. Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's prosecutor general, later said that he had no evidence of wrongdoing against either Biden.

 

Despite the absence of proven wrongdoing by the Bidens, the Trump administration has used the back-and-forth to obscure Giuliani's communications with Ukraine and growing concerns that Trump may have collaborated with a foreign power to gain political leverage.

 

After the report, Giuliani announced he was planning to travel to Ukraine to press president-elect Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue two investigations that could act as political leverage for Trump.

 

Giuliani eventually canceled his trip after facing widespread criticism for what appeared to be an attempt to push a foreign government to meddle in the 2020 US election, but Trump and his allies have continued claiming Biden was acting in his own personal interest.

 

 

 

 

The Intercept

 

 

Quote

 

A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True.

Viral rumors that Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine in 2016, which spread last week from the pro-Trump media ecosystem to the New York Times, are “absolute nonsense,” according to Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption activist. That evaluation is backed by foreign correspondents in Kiev and a former official with knowledge of Biden’s outreach to Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in a popular uprising in 2014.

 

In an interview with The Intercept, Daria Kaleniuk, an American-educated lawyer who founded Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, expressed frustration that two recent front-page stories in the New York Times, on how the conspiracy theory is being used to attack Biden, failed to properly debunk the false accusation. According to Kaleniuk, and a former anti-corruption prosecutor, there is simply no truth to the rumor now spreading like wildfire across the internet.

 

The accusation is that Biden blackmailed Ukraine’s new leaders into firing the country’s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation he was leading into a Ukrainian gas company that the vice president’s son, Hunter, was paid to advise.

 

The truth, Kaleniuk said, is that Shokin was forced from office at Biden’s urging because he had failed to conduct thorough investigations of corruption, and had stifled efforts to investigate embezzlement and misconduct by public officials following the 2014 uprising.

 

Properly debunking this particular conspiracy theory is easier said than done, though, since it is set in Ukraine, a country with byzantine political intrigue at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. The rivalries between political factions in Kiev are so intense that even the country’s new anti-corruption agencies are at each other’s throats.

 

There is no question that Biden did, during a visit to Kiev in late 2015, threaten to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Shokin was dismissed. But the vice president, who was leading the Obama administration’s effort to fight corruption in Ukraine, did the country a favor by hastening Shokin’s departure, Kaleniuk said, since he had failed to properly investigate corrupt officials.

 

 

 

Discuss!

[Danny Bateman]

There doesn't seem to be a lot of there there. But of course it's going to be thrust on the public as much as possible, ironically, by an incredibly corrupt administration looking for something to deflect attention to.

 

It's disappointing to see people who should know better using it to say "You know what, let's be fair and investigate Biden, too." There are enough other reasons to dislike him. Don't take Trump and Giuliani's bait and lend them legitimacy.

[Apsu]

The Ukraine scandal will not result in the impeachment of Trump, nor will Hunter Biden be indicted. But it will further dirty the record of Joe Biden. Too many powerful people have their political lives at stake, and deals will be made to keep the truth hidden. The Crimea will remain part of Russia, and the best we can hope for is a peaceful resolution in the Donbas.

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/here-dirt-trump-wanted-about-bidens-and-why-zelensky-doesnt-want-give-it-him

 

Quote

In order to understand why Ukraine’s President Voldomyr Zelensky doesn’t want the dirt about Joe Biden to become public, one needs to know that Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings was, at least partly, Zelensky’s boss and benefactor until Zelensky became Ukraine’s President, and that revealing this would open up a can of worms which could place that former boss and benefactor of both men into prison at lots of places.

 

[Cdog923]

 

[RedDenver]

This story paints Hunter Biden as a black sheep of the family, and Joe Biden as having done nothing wrong at all. Perhaps more of a poor choice of messenger to have sent to Ukraine:

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Quote

 

By getting Shokin removed, Biden in fact made it more rather than less likely that the oligarch who employed his son would be subject to prosecution for corruption.

 

As the former Reuters correspondent Oliver Bullough explains in his book “Moneyland,” just weeks before Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in May 2014, ostensibly “to strengthen corporate governance,” Britain’s Serious Fraud Office had frozen $23 million of Zlochevsky’s assets in a money laundering investigation. (Zlochevsky and Burisma have denied all allegations of corruption.) At the time, Bullough writes, “The White House insisted that the position was private matter for Hunter Biden unrelated to his father’s job, but that is not how anyone I spoke to in Ukraine interpreted it. Hunter Biden is an undistinguished corporate lawyer with no previous Ukraine experience. Why then would a Ukrainian tycoon hire him?”

 

Indeed, hiring the vice president’s son might have seemed to Zlochevsky like a way to protect his business from scrutiny by international investigators. But the facts show that the Obama-Biden administration strenuously opposed the decision by Ukrainian prosecutors to let Zlochevsky off the hook.

 

 

[Apsu]

40 minutes ago, Cdog923 said:

 

 

People who hate Trump see things one way, and people who hate Biden see it a different way. Despite being a Republican, Dowd is on record as agreeing with Hillary that Trump supporters were "deplorables". Analysis from independents would be much preferred to people who already have preexisting biases.

[knapplc]

Here's an independent.

 

 

 

 

Anyone is welcome to show that there's any "there" there with this Biden thing.

 

Anyone.

 

Really.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Danny Bateman]

17 minutes ago, Apsu said:

 

People who hate Trump see things one way, and people who hate Biden see it a different way. Despite being a Republican, Dowd is on record as agreeing with Hillary that Trump supporters were "deplorables". Analysis from independents would be much preferred to people who already have preexisting biases. 

 

What does that matter? Knapp's OP laid out the facts of the situation quite well.

 

If a group of people look at the facts of a situation and arrive at an incorrect conclusion due to bias, we shouldn't take into account their political leanings or act like only independents with no biases matter.

 

We should acknowledge that they're morons.

[Nebfanatic]

44 minutes ago, Apsu said:

 

People who hate Trump see things one way, and people who hate Biden see it a different way. Despite being a Republican, Dowd is on record as agreeing with Hillary that Trump supporters were "deplorables". Analysis from independents would be much preferred to people who already have preexisting biases.

Or you could look at the facts and see Trump is using a nothingburger to distract from the fact he is the most corrupt president in recent history. But go on with your 'independence'

[commando]

45 minutes ago, knapplc said:

Here's an independent.

 

 

 

 

Anyone is welcome to show that there's any "there" there with this Biden thing.

 

Anyone.

 

Really.

kasparov has a unique ability to keep his eye on the real issues and not let the chaff obscure him from the facts.

[Apsu]

I wouldn't call Garry kasparov neutral, he is on record as an enemy of Putin and a friend of the Clintons.

I will admit so being biased myself, believing there to be sufficient dirt on both Trump and Biden.

A bit later on after the babies go to bed I will find what I believe to be an accurate summary of the situation in Ukraine.

[BigRedBuster]

Just because someone is friends with someone or expresses an opinion, doesn’t mean their reporting is biased. 

[Nebfanatic]

16 minutes ago, Apsu said:

I wouldn't call Garry kasparov neutral, he is on record as an enemy of Putin and a friend of the Clintons.

I will admit so being biased myself, believing there to be sufficient dirt on both Trump and Biden.

A bit later on after the babies go to bed I will find what I believe to be an accurate summary of the situation in Ukraine.

So are the 3 knapp posted all inaccurate? Are all the other sources I'm looking at inaccurate because almost any source that isn't kissing trumps butt say this thing with Biden is practically nothing and been covered already. The only reason we are talking about it is because its Trumps latest distraction.

[Apsu]

49 minutes ago, Danny Bateman said:

What does that matter? Knapp's OP laid out the facts of the situation quite well.

 

It did lay things out quite well, with a few assumtions thrown in... like assuming that this was about any real effort to clean up corruption. it was a war of influence, and a favor was done to remove an opponent.

 

Quote

Biden was one of the leaders of the effort to remove Shokin, and a month after Kasko’s resignation, he threatened to withhold American loan guarantees from Ukraine so long as Shokin was heading the prosecutor’s office. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also threatened to withdraw financial support for Ukraine unless it cleaned up its corruption problem. Pretty much everyone recognized Shokin had to go, and a month later Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove him from office.