House votes to formally open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

[The Barbarian]

Pointing out that Comer's own witnesses denied any evidence for crimes.

You're literally referring to statements made before current evidence was released.

You think more recent witnesses dispute that? Show us.

I already did...remember?

But you can't show us now? Хорошая попытка. ​

 

[The Barbarian]

One might think he'd be smart enough not to accuse others of doing exactly what has done : James Comer, Like Joe Biden, Also Paid His Brother $200K

"THAT'S DIFFERENT!!"

 

[The Barbarian]

What investigation was needed? They impeached him for inciting the crowd to attack them. It was all on tape in front of them.

Plus, many of the insurgents admitted in testimony that they did it at his orders.

 

[essentialsaltes]

So Trump was asking about Hunter Biden's false dealings.

Trump was not asking about anything. He was requesting "a favor" in exchange for military aid.

 

[stevil]

That's because Nixon just resigned before impeachment.

Bill Clinton DID perjure himself, but they decided his blatant sexual activities with underlings weren't important enough for a conviction.

Well, I presume they thought his affair was between him, his wife, and his mistress. Their personal business and not the business of the government or his employer. I mean, if I have an affair, it would be really odd if my employer got involved, investigated me and disciplined me. It seems to be the the realm of a person's personal life and not part of their work life.

Bill lying about it to Congress was perjury. . But really his affair was none of Congress'es business and it is understandable that he lied because he hadn't admitted it to his wife.
I certainly don't think that is worth kick someone out of the party for.

It seems D Trump has cheated on his wife heaps, and I certainly would never have expected anyone to call for him to be impeached for that.

 

[stevil]

Plus, many of the insurgents admitted in testimony that they did it at his orders.

Plus once he texted them to go home, they did so.
So why didn't he send that message 3.5 hours earlier?

 

[The Barbarian]

And the plan continues to fall apart...


Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday strongly indicated that House Republicans don't have enough evidence to impeach President Joe Biden.

"If there was a smoking gun I think we'd be talking about it," Graham said during an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press."

The South Carolina senator added that in any case he is "not worried about impeaching the president right now" before drawing attention to the change he hopes to see to border security.

Graham's comments follow House Republicans' vote\ to formalize an impeachment inquiry against the president concerning his son Hunter Biden's business dealings.

Some Senate Republicans have been critical of lawmakers' decision to do so, saying there is not enough evidence to warrant a formal impeachment inquiry against the president — which could trigger blowback for the GOP.

MSN

 

[The Barbarian]

Plus once he texted them to go home, they did so.
So why didn't he send that message 3.5 hours earlier?

Not hard to figure out. He waited until it was clear that the insurrection was not going to succeed. Then, it didn't matter.

 

[The Barbarian]

It seems D Trump has cheated on his wife heaps, and I certainly would never have expected anyone to call for him to be impeached for that.

Do it once, it's a problem. Apparently, republicans think that doing it time after time is perfectly O.K.

 

[USincognito]

So Trump was asking about Hunter Biden's false dealings. You presented the spin right here.

Oh the irony. What "false dealings"?

Donald was trying to shake Zelensky down to start an investigation.

 

[wing2000]

What compelling evidence came from the inquiry into the inquiry (IITI)?

Crickets.

Impeachment inquiries seem to have become normalized...it happened twice to the last President, once just for asking about Hunter's shady business dealings in Ukraine, and the other time because , even though he didn't go, and told the people at a rally to walk to the Capitol and"peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard, he was impeached for the riot that ensued. The Secret Service would not let him go.

Both impeachments failed; he was not convicted. An impeachment is an accusation, by the way, not a judgment.

Waiting for evidence to be presented is the thing to do here. Merely opening up an inquiry is just the start.

"Republicans allege that Biden's son Hunter has profited in business dealings with foreign entities by arranging access to then-Vice President Biden. They also allege that the president himself has profited." Two whistleblowers came forward from the IRS with a lot of bank records. Biden put Joe Biden on the phone with business associates 20+ times, and there are dozens of shell companies and payments to various Biden family members, and hundreds of emails.

Well...let's see what happens.

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-09-12/factbox-why-have-us-republicans-opened-an-impeachment-inquiry-into-joe-biden

Whatever happens, I doubt your narrative will be any more accurate than this post. The Senate had the evidence. The feckless Republican Senators refused to hold the POTUS accountable.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Pointing out that Comer's own witnesses denied any evidence for crimes.

If you look back to a year before that....you'll see almost nobody on the right talking about impeachment!

Great point. Why...if we look back to just after the 2020 election, literally nobody on the right is talking about these crimes!

It's almost as if as more evidence of the crimes has been revealed, more people agree on the impeachment....hmmmm....

You let me know if you can figure out what's happening here.

 

[stevil]

Depends on what you're going to consider "extortion".

I would posit that making foreign aid conditional (in ways that could shape public opinion) is treading that same line. It may not be calling for a foreign entity to full blown investigate, but it's still tantamount to "Money for PR" (good or bad)

There are things that are legit and in the country's best interests and there are things that are just friendly endorsements or opinion comments, and there are things that are unethical, illegal or anti democratic. It depends on the specific situation.

For instance, if a president is more amicable to a particular foreign leader, and as a result, that foreign leader says some kind things about them or some unkind things about their opponent, it's basically achieving the same ends.

Well, no.
I mean if there is a press conference and a foreign leader says, I like Trump or I like Biden or whatever, that is fine.
But if Trump or Biden says to that foreign leader, I'm not going to give your country aid unless you get on camera and say that you like me. Then that is really not on.
But it's worse if they say, I'm not going to give you these anti tank missiles that congress has signed off on unless you publicly announce a criminal investigation into my political opponent. That's way over the line. And it get's worse when the ambassador is fired just for insisting that proper procedures are followed, and when Trump's personal attorney is there pretending to do official USA work as if he is a state official.

I'm not sure how you can think that what happened is similar to simply a foreign leader saying they like the USA president.

Example, when Justin Trudeau (a member of Canada's liberal party, and a person who American Democrats seem to think quite fondly of is doing co-interviews with Obama, and taking thinly veiled swipes at Trump, that would have the propensity of shaping the minds of some US voters as much as a would-be Ukrainian investigation into Biden.

Justin is allowed to say whatever he wants. His words are not controlled by USA.
But did Obama coerce him into saying any of this stuff? Did he withhold aid or something contingent on the public decree of swipes on Trump?

Presidents have done variations of this scheme...if you look at the link below (which delves into your other question).

George HW Bush lied about knowledge of the Iran Contra deal (which many credit with his victory because if he had acknowledged it, it would've shaped voter opinion), and then preemptively pardoned the people who could've blown the lid off, which brought any further investigations to a screeching halt.

Unfortunately Presidents are allowed to lie in front of the press.
Unfortunately Presidents are allowed to unilaterally pardon people. D Trump pardoned people that refused to help the FBI investigate him. No one impeached D Trump for that.

I would disagree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States

There's been a lot of sketchy dealings over the years, some involving the president's staff, some involving the presidents themselves, many of which are way more troubling than the Clinton/Lewinski situation.

I'm reading through that. It takes a lot of time. So far I haven't found anything by USA presidents that are anywhere near the level of what D Trump was impeached for. But I'll continue looking.

As you noted before, in the US we don't have the luxury of doing a "hot swap" for another party member like you do in parliamentary systems.

You get to vote for the party, we have to vote for the person.

Yeah, I find the USA voting for a person and their VP as quite odd. I think you guys give way too much power to your president and the consequences are quite dire.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Unfortunately Presidents are allowed to lie in front of the press.
Unfortunately Presidents are allowed to unilaterally pardon people. D Trump pardoned people that refused to help the FBI investigate him. No one impeached D Trump for that.

I'm reading through that. It takes a lot of time. So far I haven't found anything by USA presidents that are anywhere near the level of what D Trump was impeached for. But I'll continue looking.

I thought we were talking about abuse of power more broadly speaking.

Given that the first impeachment was:
The first impeachment of Donald Trump (45th President of the United States) began on December 18, 2019, during the 116th United States Congress, when the House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

If you're looking for a perfect feature parity example of someone doing the exact same things Trump did to a "T", then know I'm not aware of any.

I guess it depends on how we're quantifying "level" when you say "to the level of what D Trump did".

To me, I would say what George HW Bush did in my prior example is a greater level of abuse of power. (lying about having knowledge and involvement in one of the biggest national scandals in history as a means to win an election, and the preemptively pardoning people as a means of stopping the investigation as to not be officially implicated)


And we've have presidents who've been complicit in literally overthrowing foreign governments and installing puppet regimes in order exploit other nations (to keep our economy strong...presumably to look good for reelection and keep their own approval numbers high).

I guess it's all a matter of perspectives, but to me

"Investigate Biden's kid and find something so he looks bad and it'll help me win" isn't more egregious than the presidents of central and south American countries dying left and right under mysterious circumstances in the 70's and 80's, only be to be replaced by people who were conveniently friendly to US economic interests which led to politicians in the US being able to tout strong economic numbers (therefore helping their electability)

United States involvement in regime change in Latin America - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yeah, I find the USA voting for a person and their VP as quite odd. I think you guys give way too much power to your president and the consequences are quite dire.

I've said on a couple of occasions there's strong points in the parliamentary system that I wish we had. (it could be better if both the upper and lower house were voted on instead of the upper house being appointed...but I'm nitpicking)

The one aspect I really like about the parliamentary system (at least the way I've seen in it practice when I've observed how Canada's works) is that it organically takes care of the some of the concerns people have with regards to people sticking around at the job for too long "past their prime" so to speak.

I've seen the way PMs have to get in energetic exchanges and think on their feet for a rapid back-and-forth floor discussion, and by the nature of the system, it's a "younger person's game" so to speak.

While we have national debates on whether or not we need a maximum age limit on some positions, the parliamentary system (by the high-paced, high-energy nature of the spirited debate) takes care of that problem, and if there's someone still doing it at 75, you can rest assured they're one of the spry ones otherwise they won't last long there.

 

[stevil]

I thought we were talking about abuse of power more broadly speaking.

Given that the first impeachment was:
The first impeachment of Donald Trump (45th President of the United States) began on December 18, 2019, during the 116th United States Congress, when the House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

If you're looking for a perfect feature parity example of someone doing the exact same things Trump did to a "T", then know I'm not aware of any.

I'm not needing something to be exactly like for like.
But trying to steal elections is obviously more important than something like funneling tax payers money into your own bank account via insisting military travel and govt travel stay at Trump properties.

Forcing a foreign leader into publicly announce an investigation (despite any supporting evidence) in to a political opponent in the lead up to an election) is much more important than hearing a foreign leader say nice stuff about you and bad stuff about your opponent.

I guess it depends on how we're quantifying "level" when you say "to the level of what D Trump did".

Presidents don't get impeached on everything. We are talking about what rises to the level important enough for an impeachment.
You were saying that Trump's first impeachment was sour grapes, But I content that it was on a very serious matter, more serious than most things USA presidents have done before. Certainly more serious than Bill having an office affair.

To me, I would say what George HW Bush did in my prior example is a greater level of abuse of power. (lying about having knowledge and involvement in one of the biggest national scandals in history as a means to win an election, and the preemptively pardoning people as a means of stopping the investigation as to not be officially implicated)

I don't know much about this. I'll look into it. I haven't been looking at what goes on in USA quite so much as I do today.
But from what you say, these seems up there.
Why didn't Dems try to impeach him for this? Anyway, I'll look into it further.

And we've have presidents who've been complicit in literally overthrowing foreign governments and installing puppet regimes in order exploit other nations (to keep our economy strong...presumably to look good for reelection and keep their own approval numbers high).

Attacking Iraq based on false claims of WMD while all along yourselves having the most WMD than any other country is a bit rich really.
But is it a USA crime to start wars and invade other countries?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I don't know much about this. I'll look into it. I haven't been looking at what goes on in USA quite so much as I do today.
But from what you say, these seems up there.
Why didn't Dems try to impeach him for this? Anyway, I'll look into it further.

They did introduce one motion for impeachment in 1991 (that didn't go anywhere), but ironically it wasn't for that, it was for something that today's republicans would call "woke"

https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-resolution/86

Impeaches George Herbert Walker Bush, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors, including: violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution by putting U.S. soldiers in the Middle East who are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American, as well as basing their military service on the coercion of a system that denies viable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens;

Attacking Iraq based on false claims of WMD while all along yourselves having the most WMD than any other country is a bit rich really.
But is it a USA crime to start wars and invade other countries?

Ethically, I would say yeah... it's criminal to encourage regime change

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Crickets.



Whatever happens, I doubt your narrative will be any more accurate than this post. The Senate had the evidence. The feckless Republican Senators refused to hold the POTUS accountable.

We shall see the results of this, just as we saw the results of impeaching the last President. TBD

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

What investigation was needed? They impeached him for inciting the crowd to attack them. It was all on tape in front of them.

But he did not tell the crowd to "attack" anyone. That is false. In fact, he is on record, both at the speech, and on Twitter three times (that old Twitter/Biden arm removed) as saying to remain peaceful. To make your voices "peacefully and patriotically heard".

 

[JustOneWay]

But he did not tell the crowd to "attack" anyone. That is false. In fact, he is on record, both at the speech, and on Twitter three times (that old Twitter/Biden arm removed) as saying to remain peaceful. To make your voices "peacefully and patriotically heard".

He called them to Washington saying it will be wild, then told them to go to the capitol and fight like heck.

They did. End of story, This talk of not telling them to attack is ridiculous.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

He called them to Washington saying it will be wild, then told them to go to the capitol and fight like heck.

They did. End of story, This talk of not telling them to attack is ridiculous.

Every politician uses that "fight like hell" phrase. It's only considered literal if Trump uses it. When Maxine Waters and innumerable others did, it was just a figure of speech. No to the two standards.
Did a segment get out of control and riot? Yes. Did Trump make that happen or encouraging rioting or violence? No, unlike what the left encouraged for BLM and antifa all the way through 2020, by the way.