General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSo what exactly is Ghouliani accusing Hunter Biden of doing in Ukraine?
I think this is some phony b.s. to discredit Biden, somehow. Right now it seems pretty lame.
OnDoutside
(19,956 posts)narrative to bring Bidens numbers down.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)The ukrainian investigator responsible for the case was corrupt and repeatedly let criminals off the hook in other corruption-cases to the point where the US and the UK voiced their displeasure. The case against the company with Biden was eventually put on hold in 2014 or 2015 because no investigative work was getting done anyways.
In 2016 Joe Biden demanded that Ukraine get rid of that investigator.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)He--among many others--was on a board of a company that had been accused of certain corrupt acts. But Hunter Biden himself has never been directly accused of any corruption.
Then Vice President Biden goes out and demands the Ukrainian government get tougher on corruption (as it should--it's a major problem in the former Soviet states). The Ukrainian government ultimately fires its prosecutor general. One of the few companies that prosecutor general had investigated in the past was the company Hunter Biden was involved with.
So people accused VP Biden of somehow threatening the Ukrainian government over the investigation of the company his son did business with. But the problem was that by the time VP Biden made his statements, that prosecutor general had long abandoned his investigation of the company. So it was neither here nor there.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)srobertss
(261 posts)It was making the rounds of the right wing and I wanted to understand the narrative. It turns out to be very lame. His son Hunter was on the board of a Ukrainian company being investigated for fraud. The prosecutor in Ukraine who was doing the investigation was very corrupt and there was widespread recognition that he was causing problems for Ukraine. Biden was instrumental in getting this prosecutor removed. The right is claiming his motivation was to stop the investigation. Only trouble was, the investigation had been stopped at least a year prior to Bidens involvement. But that wont prevent them from using this.
Whats ironic is that Giuliani is now pulling the same kind of trick they accused Biden of. Trying to influence an investigation, only instead of trying to protect someone, theyre trying to attack someone. And Ukraine is very vulnerable to dangles of help from the US and easily influenced.
Wounded Bear
(58,653 posts)Gothmog
(145,225 posts)Link to tweet
As a result, when journalists seek the fire behind the smoke in the Biden-Ukraine tale, they often call to ask my opinion. Many are eager to flesh out what seems a satisfyingly simple conspiracy, but I have to tell them: It isnt true. The timeline doesnt work. The investigation into Burisma, Hunter Bidens employer, had ground to a halt long before the prosecutor was sacked. A subsequent probe into the companys owner was opened because of a request from Ukrainian legislators, not because of prosecutorial initiative. There is, in short, no there there; the bloggers are putting two and two together and coming up with 22.
Hunter Biden should not have taken the job; Joe Biden should probably not have boasted about bullying the president of another country. But those are judgment matters for them personally, not proof of conspiracy, and certainly not an affair worth destabilizing the fragile democracy of a new U.S. ally.
But that has not stopped Giuliani, who tweeted last week: how deep and how high did the alleged Ukraine conspiracy go? He was responding to a story in the New York Times (the Times apparently not failing on this occasion, since Trump retweeted the papers story), which analyzed the theories around the Bidens Ukraine connection. The article ticked all the journalistic boxes, giving father and son space to deny wrongdoing, but still raised a cloud of smoke for those shouting fire. If a major newspaper devotes 2,500 words to conflict-of-interest questions, then those questions presumably exist. How often do you beat your wife?