Aiming At Trump, Shooting Biden (Updated)

 

The left are preparing to shoot themselves in the foot in their effort to destroy Trump over Joe Biden and Ukraine.

The latest drama in four parts is playing out before us.  Part I is the “foreign collusion” by President Trump.  Part II is the progressive effort to impeach Trump for his legal acts.  Part III is the corruption surrounding Joe Biden that the left is about to bring to the top of the news cycle.  Part IV is yet another leak, likely of a top secret NSA intercept, that the left is trying — and failing — to launder through the whistle blower statutes.

Part I — President Trump’s Conversation With the President of the Ukraine

First the background.  Joe Biden has a problem with his family.  Biden aided and abetted his children to profit enormously off Biden’s position as Vice President in deals with both the Ukraine and China.  When, in 2016, the senior Ukrainian prosecutor was conducting a corruption investigation of a deal that implicated Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, then VP Joe Biden intervened, conditioning continued U.S. aid to the Ukraine on firing the prosecutor.   Ukraine’s president complied.  He fired the prosecutor, the investigation ended, and Ukraine received its U.S. aid.

 

Fast forward to July, of this year.  President Trump had a phone conversation with the President of Ukraine, and presumably, someone at the NSA was listening in.  This from the WSJ:

President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden ’s son, according to people familiar with the matter, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr. Trump’s potential 2020 opponent.

“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” if his lawyer’s assertions that Mr. Biden acted improperly as vice president were true, one of the people said. Mr. Giuliani has suggested Mr. Biden’s pressure on Ukraine to fight corruption had to do with an investigation of a gas company for which his son was a director. . ..

So let’s put this in perspective.  Trump asked the President of the Ukraine to restart a legitimate investigation that had been closed because Biden had the former prosecutor fired.  Trump did not ask that the Ukrainians invent this investigation out of whole cloth.  He did not request a specific outcome to the investigation.  He did not condition U.S. aid to the Ukraine on completion of the investigation or a specific outcome.

It may be a bit unseemly, but if this is all there is, then Trump has done nothing illegal.  And indeed, given, on one hand, the Deep State’s attempted coup against Trump, and on the other hand, the Deep State’s utter determination to ignore when possible, whitewash when not, the illegal acts and corruption of progressive political leaders, it is understandable why Trump would seek to have the Ukraine finish its own investigation into Hunter Biden.

Part II — Progressives’ Outrageous Outrage . . . Aimed At Their Own Foot

The progies are going nuclear on this — with the NYT leading the charge — claiming it is proof of Donald Trump “colluding” with a foreign power to influence the 2020 election.  As Fox News reports, “Democrats in Congress accused the president of trying to intimidate whistleblowers and demanded the administration hand over the complaint and a transcript of the call, while 2020 hopefuls renewed calls for impeachment.”  Speaker Pelosi called for a change to DOJ regulations to allow the DOJ to prosecute a President while in office.  And in the ultimate show of hutzpah, also from Fox News, there was this:

In a lengthy statement Friday evening, Biden said that if the reports were true “there is truly no bottom to President Trump’s willingness to abuse his power and abase our country.

“This behavior is particularly abhorrent because it exploits the foreign policy of our country and undermines our national security for political purposes,” Biden continued. “It means that he used the power and resources of the United States to pressure a sovereign nation—a partner that is still under direct assault from Russia—pushing Ukraine to subvert the rule of law in the express hope of extracting a political favor …” . . .

Suffice it to say, proggies who think they are on to something here that will destroy Trump are living in bubble made of impenetrable glass.  Will this look good for Trump?  Not particularly, but it poses no danger at all, based on what we know at the moment, to do him any long term harm.  But what it will do is give Trump a platform to direct all of the news at the corruption of Joe Biden.  That could turn into a real issue for Joe, given that it really does smack of criminality.

Part III — Joe’s Biden’s Corruption Problem

This from the World Tribune explains:

In an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity, Schweizer told host Sean Hannity: “This is the new corruption, Sean, and it’s not the corruption of $90,000 in your freezer. This is major amounts of money (billions). It involves foreign governments who want to influence our leaders, and the way they get around disclosures. The way they get around the law is they don’t give the money to the politician, they don’t even give it to their spouse – they give it to their kids or they give it to a sibling. And that’s a way that it avoids detection. The amounts of money are massive.”

Schweizer then got into some specifics related to Biden and his son Hunter: “For example, there are three major deals involving the Chinese government and family members, close aides of the Secretary of State John Kerry and the Vice President Joe Biden. … Basically, what happens is in 2013, Joe Biden flies to China to talk to them about very sensitive issues, the South China Sea, talking about trade issues, economic issues. Hunter Biden, his son, is with him on Air Force Two. Okay, that’s fine, that’s great. Here’s the problem: Ten days after they come back, after Joe Biden takes a pretty soft position towards the Chinese, Hunter Biden inks … what becomes a $1.5 billion [private equity] deal.”

That was “the first of three deals,” Schweizer explained. Along with the two other deals, they’re talking about “multiple billion-dollar” deals, none of which had to be disclosed, he said.

“Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world,” the summary of Schweizer’s book reads. “An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by U.S. law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals. President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.”

Appearing on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on March 20, Schweizer told host Laura Ingraham it is “crystal clear” that China was “buying off” Joe Biden, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, through his son.

“In December of 2013, Hunter Biden flies on Air Force 2 to Beijing, China, with his father. His father meets with Chinese officials, he’s very soft on Beijing. The most important thing that happens happens 10 days after they return. And that’s when Hunter Biden’s small, private equity firm called Rosemont Seneca Partners gets a $1 billion private equity deal with the Chinese government, not with the Chinese corporation, with the government. And what people need to realize is Hunter Biden has no background in China, he has no background in private equity, the deal he got in the Shanghai free-trade zone, nobody else had. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Blackstone, nobody had this deal.”

He continued, “[I]t’s very, very clear and that’s the first of a series of deals that Hunter Biden strikes with the Chinese government, so there’s no question, when you chart what Joe Biden is doing with China, the meetings he’s having, and the deals that his sign is procuring at the same time, that they are buying off Biden through his son. I think it’s crystal clear.”

Schweizer added that “this is the tip of the iceberg” of what was “going on while Joe Biden is vice president steering foreign policy.”

Biden’s role in the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in 2016 could prove to be a major issue for the former vice president.

Last year, during a Council on Foreign Relations event, Biden told the audience that he pressed President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin, including threatening to withdraw a $1 billion U.S. loan from Ukraine, which had been economically decimated due to its war with Russian forces since 2014.

“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 said he told Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a b—-, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden added.

Shokin had been working on a corruption probe that implicated the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, a company that employed Hunter Biden, as a board member, The Hill reported.

Shokin told The Hill that he had made “specific plans” for the probe, including “interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

The investigation ended shortly after Shokin was fired, and no charges were filed against any individuals of the company.

If this is what the progressive left wants to focus on for the next several months, I’m all for it.

Part IV — Another deep state action, this one with a twist

This leak of Trump’s phone call could seemingly only be from someone in the intelligence community with access to top secret NSA intercepts.  What we are seeing play out is exactly what played out over the past three years.  Indeed, this leak of an NSA intercept seems to be exactly what we saw in the Michael Flynn case.

The difference between now and then is that the progressives now probably sense that a good portion of America is getting more than a little angry at this one long attempted coup.  Thus, the progressives have tried to launder this leak through the whistle blower statutes to make it public . . . rather then having it leak into the news the way it already has.

Whoever leaked this phone call first filed a whistle blower complaint and pushed it through normal channels . . . with the leaks now coming fast and furious outside of channels, since Adam Schiff knows of the complaint’s existence and has been demanding a copy.  Schiff then would make this illicit leak into a legitimate public complaint and hold hearings, etc.

Ahhh, but there is a fly in the ointment.  Under the whistle blower statute, the complaint is handled internally by the agencies UNLESS . . . the complaint is of such a nature that it presents an “urgent concern” as defined in the statutory language.  If the complaint is deemed to present an “urgent concern,” then the law requires that it be shared with the Congressional intelligence committees — ie., Adam Schiff.

Joseph Maguire is the acting director of national intelligence.  According to the WSJ:

Mr. Maguire’s office consulted the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which determined that the allegation didn’t meet the statutory definition of an “urgent concern” requiring reporting to the intelligence committees, the Justice Department said.

Typically, opinions from the OLC are seen as binding on the executive branch, legal experts said, and it remains unclear how or whether Mr. Maguire could transmit the complaint to lawmakers now.

Suffice it to say, this is a major problem for Schiff and all other proggie Congress critters who want to make of this a cause celebre.  The only way this is getting out to the public is through more leaks from the Deep State and progressives.  Progressives think they are holding the key to unlock the door to impeaching Trump before 2020, or at least insuring that he loses the election.  It looks more to me like they are holding a hand grenade and the pin dropped out two seconds ago.


Update:  As I said, this is one the left is going to rue.  They have given Trump a platform to publicize the corruption surrounding Biden.  And within less than 12 hours of my publishing the above post, we get the first of what promises to be many salvos from Trump on this issue.

Ann Althouse has the rest of Trump’s morning comments on Biden in her post, Trump goes big on the offense in the Ukraine story.

And at American Thinker this morning, Thomas Lifson raises the thought that Trump, rather than taking advantage of a situation that has presented itself to torpedo Biden, actually orchestrated it all:

There is a conspiracy theory that has occurred to a number of conservatives: that this is really an operation meant to drive Biden out of the race because his corruption in Ukraine would torpedo him if he becomes the Democrat nominee. The theory is that only by first seeming to implicate Trump would the media leap onto the subject of Ukraine. Once the story is on the table, it will backfire, as Biden’s corruption becomes undeniable.

Read the whole post.  It comes with a George Soros twist.  That said, I find it a bit difficult to believe that the entire scenario playing out was a plan from its inception.  Regardless, there is no doubt whatsoever that the media can’t help themselves and that Trump is going to use this as an opportunity to bury Biden.

Update 2: