Yep, we can easily see how Trumplethinskins will react (Total Devotion Syndrome).

I'm gonna quote the super rad Parker Molloy on this one.
Trumpers really have lost their minds over this one. It seems like, at most, Hunter Biden introduced a business associate to his dad. That's not a crime anywhere on the planet.

Apparently, they're still running with the idea that Joe Biden worked to get rid of the prosecutor in order to protect Bursima, and this was part of it.
You know, the exact opposite of reality.

Of course it would be a nothingburger even if true, but that's not the point from the Republican mindset.

Like I've said over and over all the arguments from the Republican side are minor variations on the same argument. "It's not that I'm not as bad as you think I am, but the people who are criticizing me are as good as they think they are."

So when the Right is caught doing something bad their defense is to find something thematically similar, even if totally different, someone on the Left did.

If right now footage hits CNN of Eric Trump decapitating a hooker FoxNews would not stop until it found footage of Hunter Biden giving a homeless woman a haircut and present it as "See! See! He's doing something vaguely thematically similar if you squint really hard!"

"When Giuliani went to Ukraine in December to investigate Burisma and the Bidens, he interacted with “people tied to Russian intelligence,” the Washington Post reported Thursday night.

Intelligence officials feared Giuliani — a former federal prosecutor who is now a Trump lawyer and freelance White House investigator — was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, four former officials familiar with the matter told the newspaper.

Their warning to Trump, one of the officials told the newspaper, was: "Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine.”

Trump “shrugged his shoulders” at the warning, the former official said. “That’s Rudy,” the president said dismissively."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgdhp

Ha ha... TDS. Such a savage burn. It’s funny because 218,000 Americans are dead.

Do we actually know what the reality was? As far as I'm aware of the facts, Hunter was getting paid at least $50k per month by the Ukrainian company (Burisma) without having anything obvious to offer them other than the connection to his father who was handling the allocation of aid to Ukraine. The Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin was investigating Burisma. There were claims that Shokin was corrupt amid complaints that he wasn't making progress on the investigation of Burisma. Biden threatened to withhold aid unless Shokin was fired. Shokin was forced out in Feb 2016. The case against Bursima was dropped in 2017. In 2018 the decision to annul the case was overruled and the oligarch behind Burisma fled the country. Trump was then impeached over the phone call pushing Ukraine to investigate this.

Biden was accused of having a conflict of interest as his decisions directly benefitted the company that was paying his son $50k a month for no readily discernible reason. Biden claimed that there was no conflict because he never talked to his son about his overseas business. If these emails pan out, then we see in fact his son was connecting people within Burisma to Joe Biden, undermining Joe Biden's claims a bit.

I don't think it is exactly proved that Biden was doing anything corrupt here, but I don't understand your certainty that he wasn't.

Surprise, Surprise!

Another Trump associate pleads guilty to illegal lobbying!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...erate-with-u-s

Ah, yes. The old Conspiracy Theory Two-Step.

Profess ignorance about a topic: “Gosh, we don’t know much about what really happened”.

Then launch into your detailed conspiracy theory as if you’re just innocently spitballing off the top of your head.

I didn't claim to be ignorant about the topic. Pretty much everything I said can be found on the Wikipedia pages for Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch behind Burisma. Are any of the facts I claimed in my post controversial?

How about the Republican-led Senate report that found no evidence of any wrongdoing? Did that happen to come up during your diligent research?

At least one of your claims is certainly not a fact. Shokin was in fact not investigating Burisma.

I'm surprised you missed that on the Victor Shokin and Burisma Wikipedia pages.

Citation, please.

Also Shuttit before you open your mouth "Prove I'm wrong" isn't a citation.

Bottom line: Joe Biden was not the singular impetus in the firing of prosecutor Shokin. Ukrainian society orgs, the International Monetary Fund, the Obama administration, including the American Embassy in Ukraine, the European Union, foreign investors, etc., all wanted the corrupt Shokin out. So Biden wasn't performing a rogue operation in the Ukraine to help his son, but was delivering policy supported by Western and Ukrainian interests.

Yea, this. And the "claims that shokin may be corrupt" are kind of like "claims that Barry Bonds may have used steroids".

Wouldn't a more appropriate simile be "claims that Donald Trump may use spray tan"? :D

A citation for the claim that Hunter Biden moved to California prior to the alleged trip to the Delaware computer repair shop:

ps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/will-hunter-biden-jeopardize-his-fathers-campaign

Even if Biden did apply pressure to aid his son, I don't care. If the choice is who is less corrupt, Biden still wins (and already got my vote and financial donations).

The core problem is that Hunter Biden was put on the board of a Ukranian gas company despite having no experience in the Ukraine or the gas industry. Despite having just been discharged from the Navy Reserve for cocaine use. This happened at a time when his father was Vice President and specifically handling Ukraine relations.

That problematic appointment creates a ripe environment for speculation. Why was Hunter appointed if not to curry favor with the VP, his father? It really doesn't make sense any other way. A relatively reasonable person can make inferences that lead them to concluding that there was at least some motive for corruption on Burisma's part. Which, given the chain of events, a somewhat-less-but-still-reasonable interpretation is that there indeed was some corruption. I personally don't think there was, quite the opposite, in fact. I think there's plenty of evidence to show that Biden and the rest of the Western world wanted the prosecutor out because he wasn't pursuing obvious corruption, including that of Burisma.

But it's that problematic confluence of established facts that raises the question in the first place: Why was Hunter Biden on a board of company he had no experience with in a country he had no experience with? Because his father was in charge of Ukraine policy - there simply is no other answer.

What Hunter did or didn't do is the one side of the issue, and it is the next-to-irrelevant one: we are not voting for Hunter for President.

What voter should wonder is what Joe Biden did, and if what he did was according to the interests of the US and in accordance with State Department policy. Or if he put pressure to have US policy change to help his son's company.

Of course, we don't have to even ask these questions in the case of Ivanka and Jared, because we all know the answer.

A person on the board of a company has no experience in that industry? Just like on virtually every other board of directors out there? No, say it ain't so!

The tenuous link between things the Trumpers have to make in order to maintain their whataboutism is getting pathetic.

Oh, I absolutely agree. It's amazing to me that people who push the "Biden corruption" narrative don't see the obvious corruption happening right now in Trump's family. I think it's the simple fact that people on the GOP side are much better about getting their narratives, true or false, across than those on the Dem side. I'm surprised that Biden and his campaign hasn't been more vocal on this particular point given the focus on his son and himself.

Last I checked, Hunter Biden didn't have to have his security clearance forced through by Daddy so that he could work for Daddy when he would have been declared a security risk in any other circumstance.

Tricky.

Yes, this is indeed common in order to leverage connections and hijack prestige (see Theranos for an example of when it can backfire spectacularly). What I'm saying is that in this case, the close connection to the then VP overseeing that country's political relations is especially problematic. I mean, what would everyone say if Michael Pence (Mike Pence's son) was appointed to the board of some Russian company owned by a corrupt oligarch?

It's entirely possible that, far from those people not seeing the corruption in Trump's family, it's the reason for their pushing the "Biden family corruption" narrative.

Excellent chronicle, except I'd like to add that his cross-country trip was likely aboard a remote-controlled holographic plane under the direction of Dick Cheney.

The possible answer is mundane. Burisma was willing to pay Hunter's salary because having a Biden on the board would help turnaround its image and help attract needed investors.

Presumably any change he would make to their image would be as a result of a perceived connection to Joe Biden? That feels like almost the definition of conflict of interest. In any case, if these emails pan out, we have Hunter introducing people from Burisma to Joe... so the suggestion is that they were getting more for their money than just reflected glory.

Oh, is that how it "feels?" What a ******* crock. If trading on one's name constituted a conflict of interest...ever heard the name Trump?
It's been days and all that's been produced is an easily faked screenshot of a single e-mail and every aspect of the story strains credulity beyond the breaking point. In other words, this slander hasn't panned out. It's over except for the dishonest partisans who continue to pretend there was ever a credible story in the first place.

Are you familiar with Hunter Biden's credentials? He's led a flourishing career of his own, he's no Half Scoop.

Do you have a clue what Hunter's qualifications actually were? He has a Yale law degree and had a number of years of experience in various positions and companies.

Vox has a good summary and they don't pull punches.

Hunter Biden, the black sheep who got Trump impeached, explained (There is sarcasm there, I believe.)
That's quite different from Biden getting his son the job.

As another poster had suggested... it is not unusual for people to serve on the board of directors for companies they do not have experience in. In fact it is probably the norm. (I guess companies want to have directors with a wide variety of experiences.)

Now, lets consider Hunter Biden's experience, shall we? Before he joined Burisma, he:
- Graduated law school (So, decently educated)
- Became an executive for a financial organization
- Founded multiple businesses, including one that does venture capital and one that does investments/advisory
- Served on the board of Directors of Amtrak (after being appointed to the position by Bush, who was a republican the last time I checked.)

So Biden does appear to have significant qualifications to serve on the board of directors of Barisma.

Now, would he have been hired if he wasn't related to Joe Biden? Maybe, maybe not. I do admit that having someone even remotely related to the presidency would add a little prestige to the company.
Now, would he have been hired if he wasn't related to Joe Biden? Maybe, maybe not. I do admit that having someone even remotely related to the presidency would add a little prestige to the company, which would be more than enough justification to hire him, even if Joe Biden wasn't going to be influenced as a results. (Despite insinuations from the MAGAchuds that he was some unemployed loser living in Joe Biden's basement before he was hired by Barisma, Hunter certainly was more than successful by that point in his career.)

:dl:

You're still going there?

:dl: :dl:

If some people hadn't made such a poor effort to launder the information through a fabricated story, there might have been some merit to investigate the content of the emails.

But this story isn't just Fake News, it is Fabricated News.

But... but... his emails!!

I don't think it is fair to compare Hunter to the Trump kids. Neither Barron nor Tiffany have carreers based off of their father's name, yet.

it’s a private company anyway right? Whether or not they’re making bad hiring decisions is entirely up to them. Real question is what did Joe Biden do. And if the best you got is an email that Rudy Giuliani found in a water logged computer he got from a MAGA nut, well, LOL at you for believing that

Okay, so let's say this is all true, and Burisma did act with the intention of gaining influence over VP Biden. Fine.

That's an act of corruption by Burisma, not Biden.

Just because they hired his kid, is no reason he has to suddenly fall all over himself to start providing them with corrupt favors. "Do this or we'll fire your kid!" "Go ahead, you've already paid him $250,000 dollars, he can live on that for quite some time!"

Unless you can point to an act committed by VP Biden that is clearly corrupt, there's still nothing there. And after years of investigations backed by the president of the United States, the only evidence anyone has provided is this weaksauce "Oh, why did they hire him?" speculation. Their evidence for corruption is so weak that just this week they've started pushing obviously forged e-mails as evidence.

An e-mail that, even if it's real (it isn't), doesn't even provide evidence of wrongdoing.

As I very clearly said, I don't see any evidence that there was corruption on the Bidens' part. My point is that 1)It can, at the very least, create an appearance of impropriety which could have been avoided (and which was a concern for the Obama Admin at the time) and 2)Someone who is otherwise reasonable but not very well informed and/or partisan (which is, realistically at least half of America) can see the surface-level story, without digging for specifics like we here always do, and reach their own conclusions. "Biden pushed for the removal of the prosecutor looking into Burisma? Sounds fishy." Ignorant, yes.

I agree completely: There is no evidence of actual corruption on the Bidens' part. That doesn't matter much to a lot of Americans because 1)They don't care enough to dig deep or 2)They just want their side to win by any means necessary.

If they have been fabricated, that's good. The Biden campaign can safely state that unequivocally. The denials I've seen up until now have been non-denial denials, but maybe I've missed them actually claiming the emails are fake?

Are you including the quote from the second release of quotes from these emails:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...head-firm.html

Weirdly Googling that quote returns almost no hits. It's as if it's not being reported.

It looks like the emails are starting to edge closer to Joe Biden. Maybe this is as far as it goes, in which case he'll likely be OK.

No you haven’t missed it. The Biden campaign hasn’t given this nonsense the time of day, rightfully so. It’s very apparent that it’s very stupid

Sure. Hillary's emails were supposedly hacked and released by the Russians and as far as I'm aware we never found out that they had been altered. Maybe the laptop was stolen and dropped off at the store by a Russian in a Biden mask? I don't know or care. The question is whether the emails are genuine. If they aren't it seems like it would be really easy for the Biden campaign to prove. Maybe they are waiting until the right moment to do that and are letting him go all in on this? It's possible. What ever happens the next few weeks are going to be entertaining.

What I find weird is that despite several posters explaining to you that Shokin was not investigating Burisma, as well as the sources you yourself said you got your info from also telling you that, here you are repeating the claim.

How do you prove a screenshotted email from someone else's account is false? Or did the "second drop of emails" have more than a picture of a single email?

eta: scrolling through that report of a report of a report that you linked to, not one email was from Hunter Biden, nor were any actual emails released. Yet you still fall for this?

Hunter Biden's computer is at the FBI. No it's at Rudy's attorney's office. And it's just the hard drive. Hunter left a 12 minute video of himself having sex while smoking crack on the laptop. And it's been found at a shop in Delaware. Hunter lives in California. Elena Baturina sent Hunter Biden 3.5 million! Or at least she sent the money to someone or some corporation that sounds like Hunter Biden.

Did they need to make up so much crap at NY Post and Foxnews? Simply posting the forged email might have done something.