(09-28-2019, 01:46 PM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(09-28-2019, 10:40 AM)mikesez Wrote: I'm not saying Trump should have ignored the alleged crime.  If he really wanted to punish Hunter Biden and steer our government away from nepotism, 

1) lead by example.  Stop enriching your own children.
2) get the people who actually properly answer to you, the DoJ, on the case.  See if they find evidence that US law was violated.  Remember, even if Ukraine's laws were broken, doesn't mean US laws were, and vice-versa. 
3) if there is probable cause that US laws were broken, have a DoJ spokesperson announce an investigation. get a warrant.
4) ask for Ukraine's help to execute the warrant.

What Trump did, though, was clearly aimed at bamboozling a novice Ukrainian president, and hopefully inducing him to drafting a press release complaining about how corrupt Biden and Obama were.  Fortunately the Ukrainian President didn't take the bait and is trying to stay out of it.  He's only said that he's going to investigate *everything* that went on with prosecutions around 2015, not Biden specifically.  

Consider that a man who was a comedian only two years ago, and still doesn't have his cabinet in place, has a better understanding of how to be discreet as the president of a country, than Trump does after 3 years and near 100% turnover in his cabinet.

1. How exactly are Trump's children being enriched by Trump's actions WRT foreign governments?
2. The DoJ was on the case. Trump asked Ukraine to provide Barr with any information they had.
3. Does the DoJ need to "announce" every investigation? That would result in 2nd hand punishment of a lot of innocent people. "You're under investigation by the DoJ. Therefore you're fired!"
4. An agency doesn't need a warrant to request information. A warrant is only issued if the subject of the warrant refuses to turn over information the agency suspects he has.

There was no "bamboozle." Trump was more interested in the actions of CrowdStrike, and Hunter Biden was only mentioned in passing. In spite of no response from Ukraine, the military aid was still given, so no Quid Pro Quo, unlike the DIRECT THREAT that Joe Biden made.

As far as "damaging the other political party," are you saying that one can escape investigation of a crime by being a member of the other party? That sure didn't work for Flynn, Manafort, or Page (or Trump for that matter).

Your arguments are ridiculous, but not surprising since they are probably talking points from far Left websites.

1) Qataris are extending loans to Kushner, and elites in Saudi and UAE have suddenly started staying at Trump properties more frequently.

2) No, Trump tried to loop his personal attorney in on everything.  It is not appropriate for the President to know the details of these types of matters, and it's definitely not appropriate for the personal attorney to know.  The President is just supposed to just have a general sense of what DoJ is up to, rarely ever names of the accused or suspected, and the personal attorney is not supposed to be looped in unless it's his client that's under investigation.  I agree that it would be appropriate for Barr to be involved, if he is.

3) no, it would be bad for DoJ to announce all of their goings-on for the reasons you state.  But, as 2016 taught us, we deserve to know if public officials or candidates are under investigation.

4) true, but sometimes the feeling is that if they request and wait, the evidence will be destroyed.  So sometimes a warrant and a seizure happens first.

5) he detained the aid with no official statement why.  He didn't tell the press why, he didn't tell the congress why, and he doesn't appear to have told the ukrainians why, at least not directly.  That's suspicious, but not necessarily wrong, on its own.  But within the pattern of facts, they were trying to spook the Ukrainians without too many people in the US noticing.

6) I am by no means saying that party affiliation should play any role in who gets investigated or indicted. It is commendable that guys like Flynn and Manafort got in big trouble for what they did. if Hunter Biden really did things bad enough to believe the next person under the looking glass, they should definitely go through the process with him. They should be very careful with their PR because he is famous, but they should investigate.

personally involving the president and the president's personal lawyer is not what being careful with your PR looks like.

That looks like something else, that has nothing to do with getting to the bottom of if a crime was committed or not.

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