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Devon Archer testified that Burisma wanted Hunter to take care of the prosecutor who was causing a problem. Joe Biden then took care of the prosecutor. Pretty closely tied.
If the argument is “well this didn’t really harm the US” maybe but maybe not. This is the corruption we know but there could be more and corruption is bad per se.
Again Trump was indicted for correctly sniffing out the corruption of the Biden’s and using government power to bring it to the forefront. How was what Trump did harmful to US policy? Is that really the only standard?
We are now stating “presidents or vice presidents can accept bribes as long as it doesn’t harm the US?”
I don’t believe you really believe that.
That's not what Trump was indicted for.
Then maybe if the idea that I'm making a pro-bribery argument beggars belief you should consider that your interpretation of what I'm saying was flawed.
Just now realized we were talking last each other. I was referring to the impeachment as the indictment (which is what an impeachment is — it is an indictment)
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Then why was the constant, repeated, over-and-over-again refrain that Trump's actions were "contrary to the interest of the United States"? This was incessant, and we have the tapes. Law professors spilt barrels of ink on the topics of possible mixed-motives, the proper method by which either the courts or an impeachment proceeding should determine "the interest of the United States", etc. This was perhaps the single dominant topic/question of the impeachment. They felt like they needed to show that his actions were contrary to the interests of the United States, and their method of doing so was to roll out bureaucrat after bureaucrat (who theoretically report to Trump) to say, "Well, actually, we decided what was in the interest of the United States, and what Trump did went against that."
Trump was indicted in New York for business record falsification, Florida for the documents case and DC/Georgia for election interference, denial, conspiracy, whatever. Replace those with whatever words you like so we don't have to haggle over how to describe those indictments.
Trump was impeached by the house, but not the senate, for the Ukraine dealings. Setting aside the absurd way zeke is describing those events (the burisma investigation was reportedly dormant at the time, there were compelling reasons to push for the ouster of the prosecutor completely unrelated to Burisma, everyone who testified to the senate claimed there was no connection between the Bidens nor was Joe influenced by his son's business interests - all this despite the best efforts of a Republican controlled investigation), do you agree that Trump was not indicted for those reasons?
Sorry, I was too hasty in my reading and mixed up indictment/impeachment, since we were talking about the other a couple comments away. I still maintain my description of the impeachment.
I think the NY indictment is for business records, but relies on a pretty sketchy reading of campaign finance laws. I think the FL indictment was for documents, but shows a bit more of the violent fight between Trump and the bureaucracy over who gets to decide. This one is, as you say, for election shenanigans (and my thoughts are posted elsewhere in this thread, mostly, "We'll see if they can substantiate anything direct implicating Trump this time." If they can, maybe there's some there there. If not, it may turn out that the best description is that they indicted Trump "to get Trump". They realized with the Cohen plea that it wasn't sufficient to just call him a 'co-conspirator' on an extremely sketchy campaign finance charge and not even try to bring anything to a court (NY is kinda trying to remedy that), so they've gotta actually take some direct shots.)
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Of course Trump was charged with using his office for illegitimate ends. The ends here was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponent. It is now reasonably clear (and even back then there was a bunch of smoke) that Trump wanted actual corruption of his political opponent investigated. So what I said was correct.
Maybe you shouldn’t write things with the effect “show me how it harmed US policy” if you don’t want people to believe you think bribes aren’t a big deal provided it didn’t harm US policy
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When you scratch the surface of many of the different attempts at lawfare against Trump, they're often undergirded by a necessary axiom: "The deep state, bureaucracy, The Party, whatever you want to call it, decides what is in the interest of the United States. If you do things that are counter to that decision, then it is inherently illegitimate, could only be for some nefarious personal interest, and is almost certainly illegal. But if you do things that are aligned with that decision, then you're a pretty good guy who really shouldn't be put through all the stress of, like, investigations and stuff. You're one of us." This was probably most obviously on full display during the first Trump impeachment.
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