is it impeachable to ask ukraine to investigate political adversaries?

[Pete F.]

THE RUSSIAN-FUELED COMEBACK

So how, then, did 15 Trump-branded projects break ground between 1998 and 2012?

Given that Trump has defied decades of political tradition by assiduously refusing to release his tax returns, it’s difficult to truly get to the bottom of his finances. But the public record is more than enough to demonstrate that the answer, in part, lies with Russia.

With the collapse of the Russian economy in 1998, Russian oligarchs who had made their fortunes buying up formerly state-held assets now sought to stash their money in international real estate. The Trump Organization offered an appealing haven for several reasons, ranging from its ostentatious gold-plated aesthetic to its reputation for lax reporting standards. As a result, several Trump-branded projects from 1998 onward received significant financing from sources with ties to Russia, most notably the Bayrock Group, a real estate company headquartered in Trump Tower and founded by the Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official Tevfik Arif, and Deutsche Bank, one of the few major financial institutions to still lend to Trump and which paid $630 million in penalties in 2017 for involvement in a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme.

Russia also provided many of the buyers for Trump-branded real estate. According to a Bloomberg investigation into Trump World Tower, which broke ground in 1998, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.” Reuters, meanwhile, has reported that “at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.”

And the Trump Organization reportedly welcomed the clientele. For example, a 2013 article in The Nation about the influx of Russian money in Miami real estate noted that Elena Baronoff, a Russian American socialite once described on the cover of a Russian magazine as “the Russian Hand of Donald Trump,” operated a real estate company out of the lobby of the city’s Trump International Beach Resort that catered to Eastern European buyers. The New Republic has also extensively documented how the Trump Organization actively sought Russian buyers, so much so that the area around Trump Sunny Isles in Florida became known as “Little Moscow.” Though these transactions are not inherently suspect, they demonstrate that the Trump Organization was sufficiently aware of its reliance on Russian money to actively cultivate relationships with Russian clients.

Some of the individual deals have attracted attention, most notably the Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev’s 2008 purchase of one of Trump’s mansions in Palm Beach. He paid a reported $95 million for it—$53 million more than Trump paid for it four years earlier. The transaction has received scrutiny from investigators, particularly because, though Trump justified the price increase by claiming he had “gutted the house” and spent $25 million on renovations, there were few apparent alterations. Such rapid and unexplained increases in price are frequently cited as red flags for money laundering through real estate. According to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the transaction is one of several special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are investigating for “potential money laundering or other illicit financial dealings between the president, his associates, and Russia.” Rybolovlev drew additional attention for his behavior during the final months of the 2016 election, during which his private plane was spotted on separate days in Las Vegas and Charlotte within hours of Trump’s arrival in each city. A spokesman for Rybolovlev dismissed the incidents as a coincidence, and Trump has denied meeting Rybolovlev; a White House official described questions about their relationship as a conspiracy theory. In November 2018, Rybolovlev was arrested in Monaco on apparently unrelated charges of corruption, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Trump SoHo, which broke ground in 2007, typifies how the Trump Organization benefited from financing coming out of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Much of the project’s financing came from the Bayrock Group. Several reported funders of the project, including Arif, Tamir Sapir, and Alexander Mashkevich, hail from the former Soviet Union and have reported ties to the current Kremlin. Some have also faced allegations of corrupt and criminal behavior, ranging from money laundering to smuggling to involvement in a prostitution ring. For example, in 2009, Sapir pleaded guilty to illegally importing animal parts. Mashkevich has been repeatedly accused of bribery and money laundering on projects in Kazakhstan, and settled a case in 1996 without admitting guilt. The same can be said for some of the property’s clientele. For example, Viktor Khrapunov, who formerly served as mayor of Almaty, Kazakhstan, went on trial in July 2018 for allegedly purchasing condominiums in the building using money stolen from state coffers and laundered through a network of offshore shell companies while serving as the country’s energy minister. As of this writing, the case is ongoing, and Khrapunov has denied any wrongdoing.
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[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report made it clear that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling in the election, encouraged it and hoped to benefit from it.

Mueller's report made it clear that there was "insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy" (quote from the report).

Mueller was prohibited by DOJ rules from indicting Trump.

It was his responsibility to determine, and so state, if there was sufficient evidence to do so. Otherwise there was no reason for his investigation. It was not meant to be evidence gathering for Congress. Congress doesn't need his investigation for that. It does its own gathering and it can impeach for any reason it chooses if it has the votes to do so.

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by detbuch

It was his responsibility to determine, and so state, if there was sufficient evidence to do so. Otherwise there was no reason for his investigation. It was not meant to be evidence gathering for Congress. Congress doesn't need his investigation for that. It does its own gathering and it can impeach for any reason it chooses if it has the votes to do so.

Just keep supporting Putin’s Puppet

Successful obstruction leads to insufficient evidence.

Mueller’s report suggests his obstruction of justice investigation was heavily informed by an opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion that says a sitting president cannot be indicted – a conclusion Mueller’s team accepted.

“And apart from OLC’s constitutional view, we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” Mueller’s team wrote.

That decision, though, seemed to leave investigators in a strange spot. Mueller’s team wrote that they “determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes.” They seemed to shy from producing even an internal document that alleged the president had done something wrong – deciding, essentially, that they wouldn’t decide.

“Although a prosecutor’s internal report would not represent a formal public accusation akin to an indictment, the possibility of the report’s public disclosure and the absence of a neutral adjudicatory forum to review its findings counseled against determining ‘that the person’s conduct constitutes a federal offense.’ ”
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[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

I'd rather Bill Clinton lie about oral sex 1,000 times than Trump sell out America's national security for illegal election assistance even once, how about you?
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About me? I don't subscribe to your opinion that Trump sold out our national security. It certainly hasn't been proven so. Actually, it appears to me that he has, and is further trying, to bolster national security with his border policies, strengthening our military, placing more financial responsibility on the EU for its own protection instead of merely draining our resources, attempting to create more equitable trade policies which also entail more protection of our intellectual properties from Chinese forms of theft, trying harder than past presidents to prohibit NK's drive to become a nuclear threat as well as ergo Iran's, assisting Eastern Europe's protection, and unleashing our own economic potential with tax and deregulation policies.

Ultimately, for me, it's not about Clinton or Trump. It's about who is most willing to protect our national sovereignty. Who is least likely to continue the destruction of our constitutional system. Who is most likely to preserve our uniquely American values, our American notion of individual liberty, our notion of unalienable rights, and who is most likely not to lead us into what I consider irrational notions of what and who we are as human beings.

All that requires paying attention to more than the personalities of the President. All of that requires that the body politic, our citizens, are clearly aware of those basic, fundamental issues, rather than being distracted by surface likes or dislikes, current fads and fancies, fetishistic devotion to individual and group differences promoting each of them to an icon of unalienable behavior which must be granted the legal permission to require the rest of us to serve them as they wish.

It requires that, at core, we all have a principle that unites us. Not a person, not a savior . . . a principle. The who that is ultimately responsible is not Clinton or Trump. The who is us. We may be divided into various factions, but the clusters of factions that merge into the two main adversaries are those who desire the sovereign, bottom up, constitutional system on which we were founded, and those who want a global union based on top down Progressive, socialist, communist views that we are best served by a basically all-powerful governing bureaucracy.

Frankly, this politically biased debating on what a horrible person Trump is, or, for that matter who Clinton or any other flawed human acting as a politician is, devolves into sickening hate rants. They are tiresome, boring, destructive, and off the mark. They don't discuss the proverbial heart of the matter.

Frankly, I don't want to participate in irrational character assassinations. It is stupid, non-productive, nauseating.

I would rather discuss things that matter. If you want to have a civilized discussion on the nature of government and which type you prefer and why, I'm in.

And when I vote, I will do so on the basis of what is the most likely choice available that most possibly will maintain what we have left of the Constitutional American Republic.

Regardless of whose pussies the candidate has touched.

[Pete F.]

Good luck with the chosen one
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[Pete F.]

Trump's daughter works at the WH
Her husband works at the WH
Rudy's son works at the WH
Barr's son in law works at the WH
Barr's daughter works at Treasury
Trumps sons do foreign business
His daughter is getting Chinese patents and Saudi grants
But sure let's talk about Biden
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[Pete F.]

The central fact is this: the President corruptly abused his office to coerce a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election. His White House then tried to cover this up and got caught. That's the story.

[Pete F.]

The fact is there is more evidence connecting Jim Jordan to the Ohio State sex scandal than there is evidence connecting Joe Biden to any Ukraine scandal.
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[detbuch]

I don't watch TV, but I saw this guy on a Fox youtube video covering the various questions re the whistleblower stuff, including, for example, the notion of Trump withholding Ukraine aid before the phone call. It's almost 17 minutes, so not too long. And a VERY interesting analysis: