Impeachment

Welp, it's been another year since I've written anything.  No worries though, if you know me personally, I'm sure you still know what I think about everything.  I have several topics on my mind, but thought I'd do an impeachment run down in case you were lucky enough to not have to watch or pay attention to it. It was quite an event!

Quick Timeline:

• Trump had a phone call with the new President of Ukraine in July. After the phone call, a whistleblower reported that they felt the phone call was inappropriate. They reported that the President had urged Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate the Biden's dealings in Ukraine and that he was withholding foreign aid until they publicly declared they were investigating the Bidens.  Here is a link to the declassified whistleblower complaint if you are interested in reading the whole thing- whistleblower complaint 
• Trump released the transcript of the call in question- July 25 Transcript
• The articles of impeachment brought against Trump were "Abuse of Power" and "obstruction of congress".  The House brought 12 witnesses in, however, they rejected some of the witnesses Republicans would have wanted to hear-including Joe and Hunter Biden as well as Devon Archer.
• The House found Trump guilty of impeachment down party lines- no republicans voted to impeach.
• Nancy Pelosi did not send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for over a month, even after refusing to wait for courts to officially subpoena witness who were claiming executive privilege to not have to testify.
• When the Senate finally received the Articles Of Impeachment, they voted to not hear any additional witnesses and quickly voted to acquit the President of charges. 

Key Players:

• President Trump
• Giuliani- Pres. Trump’s personal lawyer. Has been in Ukraine off and on looking into 2016 election interference as well as into the Burisma-Biden scandal
• Adam Schiff- led the Impeachment effort. Also seems very confused as to if he knows the whistleblower or not. Initial reports are that the whistleblower came to him first, and he suggested what to do, but during impeachment inquiry, he claimed he didn’t know who the whistleblower was.
• Whistleblower-hasn’t officially been named but we think he is one Eric Scaramucci
• Ukraine Pres. Zelensky- recently elected at the time of the phone call, trying to work with Trump to remove corrupt officials that surround him and get aid for his country
• DNC- Sent over operatives to Ukraine to get the “black ledger” used to prosecute one of Trump’s campaign officials. Alexandra Chalupa is the operative noted in this post (see *)

Trump's acquittal was expected in the Senate, as the Republicans control the Senate and while I agree with the acquittal verdict, I do wish that more witnesses would have been called.  Here's why - if witnesses had been called, we could have heard from Hunter and Joe Biden.  I think it would have been good to hear from John Bolton as well - although with his new book coming out, I imagine we'll hear more than enough from him anyways.  I was kind of hoping that they would call witnesses just to expose more of what is going on behind the scenes. The state department has some problems.

The main version of the story goes that Trump was wrong to ask Pres. Zelensky to look into corruption from the 2016 election as well as Joe and Hunter Biden because we have been told over and over again that the only corruption came from Russia and that the Biden thing is a "conspiracy".  The Biden issue is interesting to me, because as I learn more, it seems that there is actually quite a bit of evidence that the Biden's were involved in some shady dealings in Ukraine.  As far as the Russian interference claim, we do know for sure that Russia was involved in interfering in our 2016 election.  However, they were not the only ones. According to Politico in January of 2017,

"Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. A Ukrainian-American operative* who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.  The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia." Politico

In fact, in Ukraine, two people have actually been tried and convicted of interfering on behalf of the DNC in the 2016 election. According to the Kyiv Post, two Ukrainian actors who published the supposed "black ledger" on Paul Manafort did so at the behest of the DNC and in support of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"Two Ukrainian officials violated the law by revealing information about millions of dollars of alleged illegal cash payments to lobbyist and former chair of U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign Paul Manafort, a Kyiv district court said on Dec. 12....The court concluded that Artem Sytnyk, director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, and parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko acted illegally when they revealed that Manafort’s surname and signature were found in the so-called “black ledger” of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions".

 "In August 2016, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine published a report indicating that Manafort’s name was found in the ledger alongside a list of payments. It concluded that Manafort could have received more than $12 million from the Party of Regions since 2007.That revelation helped force Manafort to abandon his role as Trump campaign chair. However, it also proved controversial in Ukraine.After Trump’s November 2016 election, Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s office, said his agency could not prove the authenticity of Manafort’s supposed signature in the ledger. It also saw no grounds to press charges against Manafort." Kyiv Post

So to argue that Ukraine was not involved in our election is false.  During testimony, I felt like they were trying to push that point a lot.  I don't think Trump is saying that Russia was not involved, he is saying, however, that Ukraine was ALSO involved.  A lot of the testimony was very misleading in this point.

The second issue that President Trump and President Zalensky discussed was investigating corruption in Ukraine. In the transcript, the Biden's do get brought up and Trump says that he would like the President to look into why Biden fired the prosecutor he did.  The media has continued to push the narrative that this is a "conspiracy theory" as well and that there is no evidence of wrong doing by the Biden's.  This again, is false.  The timeline of events is important to know here to explain why there is ample reason to suggest that Biden is engaged in inappropriate dealings in Ukraine (as well as China but that's a whole other story). The information that I have researched leads me to believe that this is in fact, a matter of national importance and not one of Trump being petty over the election.

Joe Biden was appointed point man to Ukraine when he was Obama's VP and in March 2016, he had a visit in Ukraine where he later told a group of people that he got a prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold a billion dollars in aid if the government refused.  Wait...so he did what they accused Trump of? I thought that was a terrible thing...but only if they think you did...not if you actually are on video talking about it? Because here is Biden in his own words-

Joe Biden brags about getting prosecutor fired

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko. 'Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time' ”. 

What Biden doesn't mention in this clip, however, is that his son Hunter was on the board of the Burisma Gas company in Ukraine at the same time and it was being investigated by the prosecutor that Biden wanted fired.  In fact, Hunter was put on the board (with zero experience), pretty close to the same time Joe Biden was appointed the point man in Ukraine.  Biden was appointed in February of 2014, and amazingly, Hunter was approved to be on the board (along with John Kerry's stepson, weird huh?) in May of 2014.  An article by John Solomon in the Hill gives a lot of good detail to this issue if you want to read deeper The Hill.  Another resource I used was a book called "Secret Empires" by Peter Schweizer. It dives into corruption from multiple politicians, but I will only discuss Joe Biden for the purpose of this discussion.  It's a good book though if you want to read it!

The scandal Trump is referring to in the July 25th phone call is the fact that under the Obama administration, there was $1.8 billion dollars that was sent to Privat Bank in Ukraine and then disappeared. Interestingly enough, the owner of Privat Bank is a man named Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi, who also seems to be the primary owner of Burisma Natural Gas. A man by the name of Mykola Zlochevsky is reported by a lot of sources to be the owner, however, there is a trail of evidence that leads to the company being sold and bought by Privat Group, who is owned by Koloimoyski. MR Online The other consideration with Kolomoyskyi is that he was on a U.S. Travel Visa ban list for “murders and beheadings”. Also, just prior to Hunter Biden joining the board of Burisma, it had been under investigation by London authorities for money laundering. The Blaze

It seems interesting to me that the Bidens joined this company with people who were already suspected (if not known) for corrupt practices. Why as the Vice President, would you let your son join this company? Unless, there was another reason.

Corruption is deep, and the Bidens are right in the thick of it. I don't buy the argument that Trump was doing this because of the election. I think he is onto something and that he should follow the leads he has. It is difficult to follow leads, however, when the media and the Democratic party are in lock step. According to Politico,

"Joe Biden’s campaign issued a memo to media outlets on Monday warning them against spreading “false accusations” driven by President Donald Trump and Republicans against the former vice president. The memo, released a day before the start of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, says there is “no evidence” for disproven claims pushed by the president that Biden sidelined a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating an energy company that his son, Hunter, held a high-paid position with."

All right, so here are my final thoughts. Any campaign that is warning the media not to look into something is suspicious. We are constantly hearing that Trump is not allowing free speech to people in the media, but then we have years of investigations based on the media story and it goes nowhere. Maybe, just maybe, we should look into this narrative and see if maybe something else is going on. There is so much more than I even put in here which is insane! Do I think that the July 25th phone call was "perfect" as Trump asserts? No, he probably shouldn't have mentioned Joe by name. However, do I think it was impeachable? No. The evidence against Joe and Hunter Biden is something we should investigate. This is a national issue and I hope that someone in Congress and the Attorney General will actually dive in and see where this goes.