NYT: Biden's son's dealings with Ukraine and Trump/Gulliani plan to capitalize

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Trump's personal lawyer is conspiring with a foreign govt for advantage over a rival candidate

Talking Points Memo (subscription normally needed, but it's also on their RSS feed):

Fast forward to today. Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer has been meeting with Ukrainian officials repeatedly and dangling the possibility of better relations with President Trump if they will reopen the investigation into the Hunter Biden-affiliated company. Let’s repeat that. The President’s personal lawyer is going abroad and using the lure of better treatment from President Trump to get them to reopen an investigation that could damage the man who is possibly Trump’s presidential competitor next year.
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Giuliani and Trump have asked Attorney General Bill Barr to get the material Ukrainian prosecutors have assembled and start his own investigation in the US.
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I don’t think we need to assume that Hunter Biden is the cleanest guy in the world. I have no idea. We know that lots of Americans were making money in semi-lawless Ukraine over the last decade. The idea that Biden was doing anything to help his son seems extremely strained. But that’s not really the point. The President’s private lawyer, unbound by any government regulation or responsibilities, is practicing unauthorized foreign policy on the President’s behalf, the goal of which is to use the President’s power to get other countries to attack his political enemies at home. Both Trump and Giuliani are then asking Bill Barr to open companion investigations targeting Trump’s political enemies.

This is how corrupt, broken states operate, banana republics. Everything we’ve seen from Bill Barr tells us he will happily participate in this kind of corruption. Meanwhile, Giuliani spends lots of his time visiting foreign capitals in the last 18 months, nominally on private business. We have almost no visibility into what most of those visits are about. This is one example. What other stuff don’t we know about?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime-beta/the-threat-of-bill-barr-lawlessness-is-much-worse-than-you-think