The Dude Speaks!

[morgan]

[HanSolo]

It's crazy isn't it?

[Deleted User 670]

Biden didn't strong-arm Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was investigating the Ukraine gas company that his son worked for. The US as well as the EU were trying to get Shokin fired because he was corrupt.

EU diplomats working on Ukraine at the time have, however, told the FT that they were looking for ways to persuade Kiev to remove Mr Shokin well before Mr Biden entered the picture.

“All of us were really pushing [former Ukrainian president Petro] Poroshenko that he needs to do something, because the prosecutor was not following any of the corruption issues. He was really bad news,” said an EU diplomat involved in the discussions. “It was Biden who finally came in [and triggered it]. Biden was the most vocal, as the US usually is. But we were all literally complaining about the prosecutor.” 

https://www.ft.com/content/e1454ace-e61 ... 5a370481bc

Without pressure from Joe Biden, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, Shokin would not have been fired, said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kiev.

"Civil society organizations in Ukraine were pressing for his resignation," Kaleniuk said, "but no one would have cared if there had not been voices from outside this country calling on him to go."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 785620002/

Both Biden and Trump pressured the Ukrainian government about corruption prosecutions, and both used the leverage of American government money to try to force action. If the situations are the same, that raises tough questions for partisans on both sides: If what Biden did is okay, how did Trump overstep? And conversely, if everything Trump did was on the up-and-up, how can the president claim that “if a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did ... they’d be getting the electric chair by right now”?

The reality is that despite the facial similarities, the situations are not the same. The differences are important to understand morally, legally, and politically. There is still more to be learned about both the Biden and, crucially, the Trump cases, and new information could change the picture, but as it stands now, the essential difference is that Biden’s intervention was aimed at fighting corruption in Ukraine, while Trump’s appears to have been engaging in it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

The story begins in spring 2014, when Hunter Biden, then–Vice President Joe Biden’s son, took a seat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural-gas company, not long after the fall of Kremlin-tied President Viktor Yanukovych. Burisma’s owner was Mykola Zlochevsky, who’d been a minister in the Yanukovych government. In February 2015, Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and said he would investigate Burisma.

But the international community came to view Shokin as too weak on corruption, despite his promises to investigate wrongdoing. The United States, the International Monetary Fund, and others pressured Ukraine to investigate corruption more thoroughly, but Shokin took no serious action. In December 2015, Biden was in Kyiv, where he was scheduled to announce a $1 billion American loan to the Ukrainian government.* Biden told a version of the story himself, in which he condensed the actual sequence of events, at a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

[29again]

Would you happen to have a link to something that states that the US, the EU, the UK, et al wanted Shokin gone that was written before 2019? We have blogs and alt-news that speaks of how liked or disliked various politicians and officials are, and how the people feel about them. Where is something similar from Ukraine? I can find links all over that state this years after the fact. Where is something contemporaneous?

Biden didn't strong-arm Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was investigating the Ukraine gas company that his son worked for. The US as well as the EU were trying to get Shokin fired because he was corrupt.

EU diplomats working on Ukraine at the time have, however, told the FT that they were looking for ways to persuade Kiev to remove Mr Shokin well before Mr Biden entered the picture.

“All of us were really pushing [former Ukrainian president Petro] Poroshenko that he needs to do something, because the prosecutor was not following any of the corruption issues. He was really bad news,” said an EU diplomat involved in the discussions. “It was Biden who finally came in [and triggered it]. Biden was the most vocal, as the US usually is. But we were all literally complaining about the prosecutor.” 

https://www.ft.com/content/e1454ace-e61 ... 5a370481bc

Without pressure from Joe Biden, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, Shokin would not have been fired, said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kiev.

"Civil society organizations in Ukraine were pressing for his resignation," Kaleniuk said, "but no one would have cared if there had not been voices from outside this country calling on him to go."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 785620002/

Both Biden and Trump pressured the Ukrainian government about corruption prosecutions, and both used the leverage of American government money to try to force action. If the situations are the same, that raises tough questions for partisans on both sides: If what Biden did is okay, how did Trump overstep? And conversely, if everything Trump did was on the up-and-up, how can the president claim that “if a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did ... they’d be getting the electric chair by right now”?

The reality is that despite the facial similarities, the situations are not the same. The differences are important to understand morally, legally, and politically. There is still more to be learned about both the Biden and, crucially, the Trump cases, and new information could change the picture, but as it stands now, the essential difference is that Biden’s intervention was aimed at fighting corruption in Ukraine, while Trump’s appears to have been engaging in it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

The story begins in spring 2014, when Hunter Biden, then–Vice President Joe Biden’s son, took a seat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural-gas company, not long after the fall of Kremlin-tied President Viktor Yanukovych. Burisma’s owner was Mykola Zlochevsky, who’d been a minister in the Yanukovych government. In February 2015, Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and said he would investigate Burisma.

But the international community came to view Shokin as too weak on corruption, despite his promises to investigate wrongdoing. The United States, the International Monetary Fund, and others pressured Ukraine to investigate corruption more thoroughly, but Shokin took no serious action. In December 2015, Biden was in Kyiv, where he was scheduled to announce a $1 billion American loan to the Ukrainian government.* Biden told a version of the story himself, in which he condensed the actual sequence of events, at a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

[Deleted User 670]

The Atlantic, August 2016
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ne/496841/

But Biden is not just glad-handing; he’s testing the waters for what is possible—and pushing leaders to do what he sees as both in the U.S. and their own nations’ interests. He described, for example, a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko—whom he calls “Petro”—in which he urged Poroshenko to fire a corrupt prosecutor general or see the withdrawal of a promised $1 billion loan to Ukraine. “‘Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars,’” Biden recalled telling him. “‘It’s OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.’” Poroshenko fired the official.

CNN uncovered a letter dated February 12, 2016, in which Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Mark Kirk (R-IL), along with several Democratic senators, called for Ukraine’s then-president to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” Four days later, Shokin resigned (although he didn’t officially leave until the following month when Ukraine’s Parliament voted him out).


https://www.vox.com/2019/10/3/20896869/ ... an-johnson

Portman, Durbin, Shaheen, and Senate Ukraine Caucus Reaffirm Commitment to Help Ukraine Take on Corruption
February 12, 2016 | Press Releases

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on European Affairs spearheaded a letter expressing concern to Ukrainian President Poroshenko regarding the recent resignation of Minister of Economy Aivaras Abromavi?ius, who has alleged that corruption remains a dire challenge within the Ukrainian political system.
. . .
Full Text of Letter
Dear President Poroshenko,

As members of the U.S. Senate Ukraine Caucus and strong supporters of your government, we write to express our concern regarding the recent resignation of Minister of Economy Aivaras Abromavi?ius‎ and his allegations of persistent corruption in the Ukrainian political system.

During the past year, Mr. Abromavi?ius and his team implemented tough but necessary economic reforms, worked to combat endemic corruption, and promoted more openness and transparency in government. He was known to many of us as a respected reformer and supporter of the Ukrainian cause. Minister Abromavi?ius‎’s allegations raise concerns about the enormous challenges that remain in your efforts to reform the corrupt system you inherited.

We recognize ‎that your governing coalition faces not only endemic corruption left from decades of mismanagement and cronyism, but also an illegal armed seizure of territory by Russia and its proxies. Tackling such obstacles to reforms amidst a war and the loss of much of southeastern Ukraine’s economic productivity is a formidable challenge -- one which we remain committed to helping you overcome.

Succeeding in these reforms will show Russian President Vladimir Putin that an independent, transparent, and democratic Ukraine can and will succeed. It also offers a stark alternative to the authoritarianism and oligarchic cronyism prevalent in Russia. As such, we respectfully ask that you address the serious concerns raised by Minister Abromavi?ius‎. We similarly urge you to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's office and judiciary. The unanimous adoption by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Basic Principles and Action Plan is a good step.

We very much appreciate your leadership and commitment to reform since the Ukrainian people demonstrated their resolve on the Maidan two years ago, and we look forward to continued cooperation in the future.
https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom ... tment-help

Lagarde Says Ukraine Must Reform or Risk IMF Program Failing
By Daryna Krasnolutska
February 10, 2016, 6:36 AM EST Updated on February 10, 2016, 5:15 PM EST
“Without a substantial new effort to invigorate governance reforms and fight corruption, it’s hard to see how the IMF-supported program can continue and be successful,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Wednesday in a statement. “Ukraine risks a return to the pattern of failed economic policies that’s plagued its recent history. It’s vital that Ukraine’s leadership acts now to put the country back on a promising path of reform.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... am-failing

EU hails sacking of Ukraine’s prosecutor Viktor Shokin
Political crisis continues as deals on a new coalition and premier prove elusive
Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 18:41
The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine’s scandal-ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country’s political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister.

Ukraine’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to fire Viktor Shokin, ridding the beleaguered prosecutor’s office of a figure who is accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and stymying moves to root out graft.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/e ... -1.2591190

Would you happen to have a link to something that states that the US, the EU, the UK, et al wanted Shokin gone that was written before 2019? We have blogs and alt-news that speaks of how liked or disliked various politicians and officials are, and how the people feel about them. Where is something similar from Ukraine? I can find links all over that state this years after the fact. Where is something contemporaneous?

Biden didn't strong-arm Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was investigating the Ukraine gas company that his son worked for. The US as well as the EU were trying to get Shokin fired because he was corrupt.

EU diplomats working on Ukraine at the time have, however, told the FT that they were looking for ways to persuade Kiev to remove Mr Shokin well before Mr Biden entered the picture.

“All of us were really pushing [former Ukrainian president Petro] Poroshenko that he needs to do something, because the prosecutor was not following any of the corruption issues. He was really bad news,” said an EU diplomat involved in the discussions. “It was Biden who finally came in [and triggered it]. Biden was the most vocal, as the US usually is. But we were all literally complaining about the prosecutor.” 

https://www.ft.com/content/e1454ace-e61 ... 5a370481bc

Without pressure from Joe Biden, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, Shokin would not have been fired, said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kiev.

"Civil society organizations in Ukraine were pressing for his resignation," Kaleniuk said, "but no one would have cared if there had not been voices from outside this country calling on him to go."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 785620002/

Both Biden and Trump pressured the Ukrainian government about corruption prosecutions, and both used the leverage of American government money to try to force action. If the situations are the same, that raises tough questions for partisans on both sides: If what Biden did is okay, how did Trump overstep? And conversely, if everything Trump did was on the up-and-up, how can the president claim that “if a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did ... they’d be getting the electric chair by right now”?

The reality is that despite the facial similarities, the situations are not the same. The differences are important to understand morally, legally, and politically. There is still more to be learned about both the Biden and, crucially, the Trump cases, and new information could change the picture, but as it stands now, the essential difference is that Biden’s intervention was aimed at fighting corruption in Ukraine, while Trump’s appears to have been engaging in it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

The story begins in spring 2014, when Hunter Biden, then–Vice President Joe Biden’s son, took a seat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural-gas company, not long after the fall of Kremlin-tied President Viktor Yanukovych. Burisma’s owner was Mykola Zlochevsky, who’d been a minister in the Yanukovych government. In February 2015, Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and said he would investigate Burisma.

But the international community came to view Shokin as too weak on corruption, despite his promises to investigate wrongdoing. The United States, the International Monetary Fund, and others pressured Ukraine to investigate corruption more thoroughly, but Shokin took no serious action. In December 2015, Biden was in Kyiv, where he was scheduled to announce a $1 billion American loan to the Ukrainian government.* Biden told a version of the story himself, in which he condensed the actual sequence of events, at a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598705/

[29again]

Thanks.

The Atlantic, August 2016
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ne/496841/

But Biden is not just glad-handing; he’s testing the waters for what is possible—and pushing leaders to do what he sees as both in the U.S. and their own nations’ interests. He described, for example, a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko—whom he calls “Petro”—in which he urged Poroshenko to fire a corrupt prosecutor general or see the withdrawal of a promised $1 billion loan to Ukraine. “‘Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars,’” Biden recalled telling him. “‘It’s OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.’” Poroshenko fired the official.

CNN uncovered a letter dated February 12, 2016, in which Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Mark Kirk (R-IL), along with several Democratic senators, called for Ukraine’s then-president to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” Four days later, Shokin resigned (although he didn’t officially leave until the following month when Ukraine’s Parliament voted him out).


https://www.vox.com/2019/10/3/20896869/ ... an-johnson

Portman, Durbin, Shaheen, and Senate Ukraine Caucus Reaffirm Commitment to Help Ukraine Take on Corruption
February 12, 2016 | Press Releases

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on European Affairs spearheaded a letter expressing concern to Ukrainian President Poroshenko regarding the recent resignation of Minister of Economy Aivaras Abromavi?ius, who has alleged that corruption remains a dire challenge within the Ukrainian political system.
. . .
Full Text of Letter
Dear President Poroshenko,

As members of the U.S. Senate Ukraine Caucus and strong supporters of your government, we write to express our concern regarding the recent resignation of Minister of Economy Aivaras Abromavi?ius‎ and his allegations of persistent corruption in the Ukrainian political system.

During the past year, Mr. Abromavi?ius and his team implemented tough but necessary economic reforms, worked to combat endemic corruption, and promoted more openness and transparency in government. He was known to many of us as a respected reformer and supporter of the Ukrainian cause. Minister Abromavi?ius‎’s allegations raise concerns about the enormous challenges that remain in your efforts to reform the corrupt system you inherited.

We recognize ‎that your governing coalition faces not only endemic corruption left from decades of mismanagement and cronyism, but also an illegal armed seizure of territory by Russia and its proxies. Tackling such obstacles to reforms amidst a war and the loss of much of southeastern Ukraine’s economic productivity is a formidable challenge -- one which we remain committed to helping you overcome.

Succeeding in these reforms will show Russian President Vladimir Putin that an independent, transparent, and democratic Ukraine can and will succeed. It also offers a stark alternative to the authoritarianism and oligarchic cronyism prevalent in Russia. As such, we respectfully ask that you address the serious concerns raised by Minister Abromavi?ius‎. We similarly urge you to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's office and judiciary. The unanimous adoption by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Basic Principles and Action Plan is a good step.

We very much appreciate your leadership and commitment to reform since the Ukrainian people demonstrated their resolve on the Maidan two years ago, and we look forward to continued cooperation in the future.
https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom ... tment-help

Lagarde Says Ukraine Must Reform or Risk IMF Program Failing
By Daryna Krasnolutska
February 10, 2016, 6:36 AM EST Updated on February 10, 2016, 5:15 PM EST
“Without a substantial new effort to invigorate governance reforms and fight corruption, it’s hard to see how the IMF-supported program can continue and be successful,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Wednesday in a statement. “Ukraine risks a return to the pattern of failed economic policies that’s plagued its recent history. It’s vital that Ukraine’s leadership acts now to put the country back on a promising path of reform.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... am-failing

EU hails sacking of Ukraine’s prosecutor Viktor Shokin
Political crisis continues as deals on a new coalition and premier prove elusive
Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 18:41
The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine’s scandal-ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country’s political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister.

Ukraine’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to fire Viktor Shokin, ridding the beleaguered prosecutor’s office of a figure who is accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and stymying moves to root out graft.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/e ... -1.2591190

Would you happen to have a link to something that states that the US, the EU, the UK, et al wanted Shokin gone that was written before 2019? We have blogs and alt-news that speaks of how liked or disliked various politicians and officials are, and how the people feel about them. Where is something similar from Ukraine? I can find links all over that state this years after the fact. Where is something contemporaneous?

Biden didn't strong-arm Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was investigating the Ukraine gas company that his son worked for. The US as well as the EU were trying to get Shokin fired because he was corrupt.