Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
pete, come on. there is video of biden saying he threatened to withhold aid unless they fired the prosecutor. it’s on video. biden was laughing and bragging, and he’s done. he was then only one with a great chance to beat trump, and he’s done.
this whole thing doesn’t seem suspicious to you?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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A timeline from Ukraine's 2014 revolution to President Donald Trump's push for a Ukrainian probe of former Vice President Joe Biden.
February 2014 Ukraine is thrust into violent revolution, with thousands of anti-government protesters marching on the capital, Kyiv. As a result, the country's government is overthrown and its pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is removed from office. He remains exiled in Moscow.
April 2014 Vice President Joe Biden leads a U.S. delegation to Kyiv tasked with rooting out corruption and advocating for Ukraine to diminish its reliance on Russian oil. The Obama administration had pledged aid money to support a fledgling Ukrainian administration recovering from a revolution that ousted the country's previous leader.
"You have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now," Biden told the Ukrainian parliament during the first of several post-revolution visits to the country. "And with the right investments and the right choices, Ukraine can reduce its energy dependence and increase its energy security."
May 2014 Within months of his dismissal from the Navy Reserves after testing positive for cocaine, the vice president's son, Hunter Biden, joins the board of Burisma, Ukraine's premier oil and gas company.
Hunter Biden and his associate at a business entity called Rosemont Seneca Partners -- where Hunter Biden was a managing partner -- both obtained board seats around the same time. According to banking records reviewed by ABC News, Seneca Partners began collecting $166,666 payments each month.
May 2014 The Obama White House deflects questions from ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl about potential conflicts of interest in light of Hunter Biden's new role at Burisma and the vice president's diplomatic role with Kyiv.
During a daily press briefing, press secretary Jay Carney said, "Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president."
March 2016 Viktor Shokin is fired as prosecutor general, Ukraine's most senior law enforcement position.
The circumstances surrounding Shokin's 2016 dismissal have become central to the debate in 2019 over whether the vice president inappropriately called for Shokin to be fired.
In an interview with ABC News in April 2019, Shokin said he believed Biden pressured the government to fire him because he was leading an investigation into Burisma. But the assertion that Biden acted to help his son has been undercut by widespread criticism of Shokin from several high-profile international leaders, including members of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, who said Biden's recommendation was well justified. Once Shokin was removed, the European Union's envoy to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, lauded the decision as "an opportunity to make a fresh start."
Dec. 1, 2017 In a press release, Burisma announces that all charges against the company and its president, Mykola Zlochevsky, were dropped by the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office.
Jan. 23, 2018 During an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, the former vice president touted his record of fighting corruption by boasting about his threat to withhold a billion dollar U.S. loan guarantee to Kiev if Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko failed to "take action against the state prosecutor" -- referring to Shokin.
"'I'm going to be leaving here in six hours,'" Biden recalled telling Poroshenko. "'If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch, he got fired."
April 2019 Hunter Biden's directorship at Burisma expires and he decides not to renew his seat.
"In this political climate," he said in a statement to ABC News, "where my qualifications and work are being attacked by Rudy Giuliani and his minions for transparent political purposes, I have decided not to renew my directorship."
April 25, 2019 Joe Biden launches his 2020 presidential campaign.
Early May 2019 Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, announces plans to go and then abruptly cancels a visit to Ukraine to convince the Ukrainian government to reopen an investigation into Joe Biden's role in the dismissal of Shokin.
In a spate of television interviews on Fox News, Giuliani predicted that, "there's no way [Biden] gets from here to the election without this being investigated."
May 16, 2019 Ukraine's prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, tells Bloomberg that he had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son, Hunter.
"I do not want Ukraine to again be the subject of U.S. presidential elections," Lutsenko said. "Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws -- at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing. A company can pay however much it wants to its board."
June 2019 Responding to questions about his son's foreign business dealings, Joe Biden's campaign for president tells ABC News exclusively that if Biden wins the White House he will issue an executive order on his first day in office to "address conflicts of interest of any kind."
July 2019 In an interview with The New Yorker, Hunter Biden said he only had one interaction with his father about joining Burisma: "Dad said, 'I hope you know what you are doing,' and I said, 'I do.'"
In a statement to ABC News a month earlier, Hunter Biden said, "at no time have I discussed with my father the company's business, or my board service. Any suggestion to the contrary is just plain wrong."
Sept. 19, 2019 The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, "about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe" into Joe Biden.
The July phone call with Zelensky is the subject of a whistleblower complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General in August, which is now tied up in a dispute between the director of national intelligence and House Democrats about whether Congress should have access to the details of the complaint.
Sept. 21 and 22, 2019 Joe Biden spends the weekend defending himself from Trump. In a statement, the Biden campaign called on the president to release the transcript from his July phone call with the Ukrainian president.
Biden also told reporters that he and his son never discussed Hunter Biden's business with Burisma, despite Hunter Biden's comments to The New Yorker in July that he and Joe Biden had discussed the matter once.
Sept. 23, 2019 During a visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, Trump doubles down on the Bidens' actions in Ukraine.
"The one who's got the problem is Biden. If you look at what Biden did, Biden did what they would like to have me do, except there's one problem, I didn't do it," Trump said. "What Biden did is a disgrace, what his son did is a disgrace."
Meanwhile here in Trumplandia, the Trump family business which Trump still controls is working worldwide with foreign governments.
Ivanka Trump gets initial approval from China for 16 new trademarks—including for ‘voting machines’
Trump is the only president for at least 40 years who has not liquidated his business assets or put them in a blind trust.
The Department of Justice has adopted a narrow interpretation of a law meant to bar foreign interests from corrupting federal officials, giving Saudi Arabia, China and other countries leeway to curry favor with Donald Trump via deals with his hotels, condos, trademarks and golf courses, legal and national security experts say.
For 150 years justice department lawyers have interpreted the clause in a way that barred any foreign payments or gifts except for ones Congress approved. But filings by the department since June 2017 reveal a new interpretation that "… would permit the president – and all federal officials – to accept unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official."
The justice department stance now closely parallels arguments made in a January 2017 position paper by Trump Organization lawyer Sheri Dillon and several of her law partners. On 11 January 2017, just days before he was sworn in, Dillon said Trump isn’t accepting any payments in his “official capacity” as president, as the income is only related to his private business. “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office,” Dillon said.
A chief focus of critics and the emolument lawsuits has been the Trump International Hotel which has become a mini mecca for numerous foreign delegations – including ones from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and the Philippines – who have used it for overnight stays and various meetings.
The hotel is leased from the GSA for 60 years and located on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House. The IG’s report this January said the lease should have been reviewed again with Trump’s election to determine if it was in violation of the emoluments clause.
Critics of Trump’s ongoing ties to the Trump International and his business empire also note that some countries with major political and business problems in Washington have frequented his properties. “It appears that President Trump may be benefiting from foreign use of his properties designed to influence his decisions,” said the former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards.
Trump claims that profits from foreign influences are being donated, but defines profits in such a way as to launder the money.