Pam Bondi, Trump, and Trumpworld are lying about Hunter Biden and Bursima
This is about one of his most bizarre and transparent whoppers. It's one his lawyers are actually trying to sell to the U.S. Senate as part of his impeachment defense.
Ukraine and its tradition of political corruption play a central role in President Trump's impeachment trial. Mr. Trump claims that his illegal withholding of military aid from Ukraine to get President Zelensky to announce a new investigation into the firm on whose board Hunter Biden, the son of the man who will likely be Mr. Trump's opponent this November, served was motivated primarily by his concern about corruption in that country.
And now, Republicans want Hunter Biden to testify before the Senate if witnesses are called to testify in the trial. Doing so would serve two purposes for the president. First, it would be an opportunity to create the impression that there was good reason for Mr. Trump to demand such an investigation beyond his selfish political interests. But secondly, regardless of whether or not Hunter Biden's testimony would help make that point, it would embarrass the elder Biden and damage his candidacy. It would create the impression that Hunter Biden must have been involved in something sinister, and the president's managers would do everything in their power to encourage that impression despite the absence of evidence to that effect.
From there, it would simply be a matter of repeating Mr.Trump's proven lie that Joe himself had used his position to protect Hunter from potential prosecution. The facts not only refute such a suggestion but render it ridiculous. But the Bursima legend isn't about facts. It's about innuendo based on flat-out lies.
Politifact fact-checks the president's claims here. And CNN does so here.
Trump attorney Pam Bondi showed a video of this statement by the former vice-president to the Senate. In it, Mr. Biden discusses his role in the dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. But there are several things she conveniently neglected to mention.
First, Shotkin was not the crusading prosecutor out to expose the bad guys Mr. Trump would like us to think he was. Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Washington Post last July that "Shokin was not investigating. He didn't want to investigate Burisma... and Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation." During the period in which Vice-President Biden was agitating for Shokin's dismissal, Shokin's office had suspended its investigation of Bursima!
Far from being fired because he was too close to getting the goods on Joe Biden's son, Shokin was fired because he was corrupt, and refusing to investigate the very firm on whose board Hunter Biden sat!
It wasn't just Joe Biden who had a problem with Shokin. It was also the U.S. government and the International Monetary Fund as well as various European governments, and also Ukrainian activists (including Kaleniuk) agitating for their government to clean up its act. Then-American ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Piatt said at the time, "Rather than supporting Ukraine's reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the prosecutor general's office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform." Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were among the members of the Senate who sent a letter to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urging him to pursue an investigation of Shokin and his office.
It bears repeating: Shokin was fired because he was blocking the investigation of Bursima's admittedly corrupt head and founder, Mykola Vladislavovich Zlochevsky! If Joe Biden had been trying to protect Hunter, facilitating an investigation into the firm on whose board Hunter sat would have been the last thing he would have done!
Finally, the clincher- another fact Mr. Trump and his supporters conveniently fail to mention, and a rather significant one: long before Mr. Trump made his infamous telephone call to President Zelensky of Ukraine, Ukraine had already investigated the connection between Hunter Biden and Bursima and had cleared him of any wrongdoing. Shokin's successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, said in May 2019 that he had concluded that Hunter Biden had not violated Ukrainian law and that he had seen no evidence of wrongdoing of any kind by the former vice-president's son. He repeated his statement in September of last year. The current Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Ruslan Riaboshapka, reopened the investigation into Bursima but emphasized that Hunter Biden was not a target of the investigation and that he had no reason to believe that Biden was guilty of any wrongdoing.
Is Hunter Biden a sleazeball? Yes, he is; his personal life is not one of which to be proud. But that doesn't make Mr. Trump's made-up charges any the less slander or his allegations any less baseless. And even if they had been true, not only was Joe Biden's behavior inconsistent with trying to cover up for Hunter but the exact opposite of what he would have done if that was his goal!
Was the appointment of Biden to the Bursima board due to Joe Biden's influence? Probably. Did even the Obama administration have misgivings about the vice-president's son serving on the board of a notoriously corrupt corporation? Absolutely. Did Hunter Biden's own law partners urge him not to accept the job because of Bursima's poor reputation? Certainly. Should Hunter Biden have agreed to sit on Bursima's board? No way. Should Joe have had the good sense to do everything in his power to dissuade Hunter from accepting the position, rather than probably enabling it? Without doubt. The entire incident reflects a clear and severe failure of judgment by both Bidens despite better counsel by those to whom they should have listened.
But I'll say it again: Hunter Biden's involvement with Bursima had already been investigated by Ukraine before President Trump made his telephone call to President Zelensky, and cleared Hunter Biden of any wrongdoing. Two consecutive prosecutors general of Ukraine have publically stated their satisfaction with that outcome. President Trump was trying to get Ukraine not to investigate the matter for the first time, but to reopen an investigation which had already taken place and reached a conclusion with which, however much Mr. Trump might dislike it, the Ukrainian government was satisfied.
If President Trump wants to charge Mr. Biden with bad judgment, that would be perfectly reasonable. Of course, at this point, after all the bad judgment he has displayed since taking office, I'm not sure that it's a charge he'd be wise to make.
Mr. Trump's phone call was about sticking it to Joe Biden, and the entire affair is the result of Mr. Trump's by now well-established pattern of talking through his hat and freely lying about his political opponents or anyone else it serves his interests at the moment to discredit. The affair says a great deal more about why Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States than about Joe Biden.
The bottom line: once again, President Trump is playing fast and loose with the facts, counting on the American people and most of all his own supporters not to do their homework, and trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. It's become an almost every day occurrence, and I never would have believed that a president could get away with such behavior so consistently and for so long. No previous president could have, certainly this often and to this extent. But then, no previous president would have even tried.
And every time we let him get away with it, we are as much to blame as he is.
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