The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

[Sheilbh]

I imagine it'll fail and Trump will very much run on his acquittal by Senate Republicans. I doubt it'll even get 50+ votes in the Senate given their majority.

But I do think there's an institutional point, which goes against the politics for the Democrats, which is that if he doesn't get impeached for this conduct, what is the point of impeachment as a procedure? I mean if nothing happens it's just a constitutional bauble, surely and actually what is the limit on any President's conduct?

[Oexmelin]

Precisely. This is why the process will require extraordinary levels of Constitutional pedagogy that I am not sure anyone in the Democratic party - or in the current political class, has the capacity to conduct.

[alfred russel]

Isn't this anti-democratic*? Sure Trump is corrupt and disregards the laws of the country, but that was obvious during the campaign and the people elected him anyway.

*At least the kind of democracy where the candidate that gets less votes wins.

[Malthus]

Precisely. This is why the process will require extraordinary levels of Constitutional pedagogy that I am not sure anyone in the Democratic party - or in the current political class, has the capacity to conduct.

I doubt any quality of pedagogy is capable of transforming Republican politicians into persons who put country above party.

[Malthus]

Isn't this anti-democratic*? Sure Trump is corrupt and disregards the laws of the country, but that was obvious during the campaign and the people elected him anyway.

*At least the kind of democracy where the candidate that gets less votes wins.

No, because democracy requires the rule of law to function.

[The Minsky Moment]

Isn't this anti-democratic*?

Is it anti-democratic for a President to misuse executive power to harm a rival campaign for office?  Absolutely yes.

[Admiral Yi]

One thing absent from this discussion is what, if anything, Joe actually did vis a vis Ukraine.

[Sheilbh]

One thing absent from this discussion is what, if anything, Joe actually did vis a vis Ukraine.

Here we go:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/23/fact-checking-president-trumps-wild-jabs-joe-biden/

[Admiral Yi]

Here we go:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/23/fact-checking-president-trumps-wild-jabs-joe-biden/

I think I'm paywalled.

[The Minsky Moment]

What Biden did or didn't do is irrelevant to the question of the propriety of Trump's conduct.

However, what Joe actually did was carry out administration policy.

[Sheilbh]

You asking me to steal, Yi?

[Admiral Yi]

You asking me to steal, Yi?

I'm giving you information. 

[Barrister]

One thing absent from this discussion is what, if anything, Joe actually did vis a vis Ukraine.

Well, his son Hunter it does seem a little fishy.  Why is some american lawyer appointed to the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, and paid handsomely for his work?

However nothing really touches to Joe.  Joe Biden did ask for the head prosecutor in Ukraine to be fired, but that was part of overall US (and EU) policy, as it was felt this prosecutor was not going after corruption charges.

[Sheilbh]

The core point:

Fact-checking President Trump's wild jabs at Joe Biden
By Salvador Rizzo
May 23

We've published three fact checks about former vice president Joe Biden in the month since he joined the presidential race. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.

In recent days, President Trump has targeted Biden with accusations large and small, including a head-scratching claim that Biden, as a young child, "deserted" his native state of Pennsylvania and a more serious accusation that Biden, as vice president, improperly pressured the Ukrainian government to oust the country's top prosecutor to benefit his son, Hunter Biden.

Here's a look at four Trump claims about Biden and the Obama administration, all of them misleading.

The Facts
Trump bashed Biden in a May 19 interview on Fox News and in a May 20 campaign rally in swing-state Pennsylvania, where the Obama-Biden ticket won in 2008 and 2012 and where the Trump-Pence ticket won in 2016.
"Look at Joe Biden ... he calls them [Ukrainian government leaders] and says, 'Don't you dare prosecute. If you don't fire this prosecutor' — the prosecutor was after his son — then he said, 'If you fire the prosecutor, you'll be okay. And if you don't fire the prosecutor, we're not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees,' or whatever he was supposed to give. Can you imagine if I did that?" (Fox News interview)

Trump and his allies — especially his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani — have been suggesting for weeks that Biden improperly used his influence as vice president to get Ukraine to sack its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in 2016.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general's office had opened an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company owned by an Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky.

Hunter Biden, a lawyer and businessman, joined Burisma's board in April 2014 and left last month. The New York Times reported May 1 that he was "paid as much as $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company."

Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine in March 2016 (it was not a phone call, as Trump claimed) and said the United States would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees (not $2 billion, as Trump claimed) unless Shokin was removed (it was not a demand to stop the Burisma prosecution, as Trump claimed, and there's no evidence Shokin "was after" Hunter Biden).

The vice president's trip was part of a longer push by the United States, Western allies and nongovernmental organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The goal was to promote reform in Ukraine and remove a prosecutor who allegedly was turning a blind eye to corruption.

There's a dispute going on between Bloomberg and the Times over some aspects of this complex story. (Here's Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple on their back-and-forth.) One area of dispute is whether the Burisma probe was ongoing while Biden was pushing for Shokin's ouster. "There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky," Vitaliy Kasko, a former official in the prosecutor general's office, told Bloomberg News in an article published May 7. "It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015."

For the purposes of fact checking Trump's statement, though, we note that neither news organization is asserting that Biden pushed to oust Shokin to get his son out of a jam.

Bloomberg reported that "the U.S. plan to push for Shokin's dismissal didn't initially come from Biden, but rather filtered up from officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation" and that, in the same month Biden traveled to Ukraine, "hundreds of Ukrainians demonstrated outside President Petro Poroshenko's office demanding Shokin's resignation, and he was dismissed."

The current prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, was quoted in a May 16 report, also by Bloomberg, saying "he had no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or his son."

"Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws — at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing," Lutsenko told Bloomberg. "A company can pay however much it wants to its board."

"No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general's dismissal," the Times reported. "Some of his former associates, moreover, said Mr. Biden never did anything to deter other Obama administration officials who were pushing for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities — and potentially to start its own investigation — into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for possible money laundering and abuse of office."

A lawyer for Hunter Biden told The Fact Checker that Hunter Biden never discussed Burisma or the investigations with Joe Biden. That's consistent with previous statements from the Biden camp.

The Biden campaign sent us an editorial published by Ukraine's Kyiv Post on May 17. It says: "The Biden narrative is too complicated to rehash here. But suffice it to say, it has been refuted by countless experts and anti-corruption activists. In 2016, Biden indeed pressured Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, its ineffective, weak prosecutor general. In doing so, he called for a decision supported both by Ukrainian reformers and Kyiv's Western partners. No conspiracy here."

However, there is a separate question of whether Biden created the appearance of a conflict of interest with his Shokin-must-go campaign.

"Joe Biden has publicly stated that he pressured Ukraine's president to fire the state prosecutor, or possibly lose a billion dollar U.S. loan guarantee," a Trump campaign spokesman said. "Biden's pressure on Ukraine's leadership came while his son, Hunter Biden, was on the board of Burisma."

Referring to the Times article, the spokesman added: "There is reporting showing that an investigation by Ukraine's prosecutor into Burisma was ongoing while Joe Biden was engaged in his pressure campaign."

[The Minsky Moment]

Joe Biden did ask for the head prosecutor in Ukraine to be fired, but that was part of overall US (and EU) policy, as it was felt this prosecutor was not going after corruption charges.

One of the criticisms of Shokin (the Ukranian prosecutor) was that he was NOT going hard after the gas company that Hunter Biden was involved with.