"In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees..."
"... sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. '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,"' Biden recalled telling Poroshenko. 'Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,' Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat."
From "Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived," an article in The Hill from last April.
That's something I quoted in my previous post, but I wanted to repeat it very conspicuously and say very clearly that I think the current Ukraine story is an effort to pressure Biden to get out of the way so this issue will die. Biden's candidacy puts Obama at risk!
ADDED: I googled Biden's threat quote and see it in several places in the last day. First, at Red State, "Stop The Tape! How Has Joe Biden’s Scandal Suddenly Become President Trump’s Scandal?":
From "Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived," an article in The Hill from last April.
That's something I quoted in my previous post, but I wanted to repeat it very conspicuously and say very clearly that I think the current Ukraine story is an effort to pressure Biden to get out of the way so this issue will die. Biden's candidacy puts Obama at risk!
ADDED: I googled Biden's threat quote and see it in several places in the last day. First, at Red State, "Stop The Tape! How Has Joe Biden’s Scandal Suddenly Become President Trump’s Scandal?":
While speaking to a group of foreign policy strategists, Biden boasted about threatening to hold back $1 billion in U.S. aid... The Hill’s John Solomon reported in April that rather than pressuring Poroshenko for six hours, Biden had been pressuring him for “several months in late 2015 and early 2016.”...In National Review, there's this from Jim Geraghty — "What to Make of the Trump–Whistleblower Kerfuffle":
[It is] reasonable to ask questions of Joe Biden starting with why did he try to get Shokin fired while he was investigating Burisma? Does he think it was appropriate for Hunter and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while [Joe Biden] served as point man for Ukraine policy? Did Biden know about the Burisma probe? (Of course he did.) And does he believe it was ethical of him to use his position to have the prosecutor fired?...
In 2018 appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, former Vice President Biden described the time that he threatened to withhold foreign aid from the Ukrainian government unless they fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin....And here's Ace of Spades, "Joe Biden Bragged That, With Barack Obama's Permission, He Threatened To Withhold Billions in Aid to Ukraine Unless They Fired a Prosecutor Investigating His Son's Company./And Now, The Deep State Refashions This as a Trump Scandal":
The argument from the Obama administration was that Shokin was resisting efforts to reform Ukraine’s judicial system and had done a poor job investigating corruption of the previous regime. The European Union and Ukrainian parliament were happy to see Shokin go....
Maybe the Obama administration had good and legitimate reasons to want to see Shokin replaced. But sending the vice president to strongarm the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who’s investigating his son’s company stinks to high heaven and reeks of corruption.
Clearly, Biden doesn’t think he did anything wrong; he was still telling the story about getting the prosecutor fired last year..
Trump urged the Ukranians to look into a case of official corruption and unethical exertion of political pressure openly boasted of by Joe Biden himself and the guy who needs investigating is... Trump?!!?...IN THE COMMENTS: Meade wrote:
It's now illegal and impeachable for a president to urge a foreign leader to open a corruption probe? The things one learns from our very educated and very rational NeverTrump Genius Brigade.
I wonder if Obama and Biden will also be prosecuted for sending out their agents to enlist the UK and Australia into a covert op against their party's opponent in the 2016 election...?
"In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko"For reference, here's Biden's storytelling about threatening CornPop:
Ukrainian President Petro "CornPop" Poroshenko.
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