The Bidens: When Can We Start Calling It What It Is, Namely Bribery?

Damocles said:
I was going to come in here and predict that someone would put the "NYC judge says fraud" story on this thread in "defense" of pResident "Dementia Joe" Bribem. But I see I was too late.
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Defend President Biden from what? Still waiting on the evidence.
Or is this just another Big Lie? Another 2000 Mules.
Don't you morons on the far right know what evidence is? Do you really expect anybody to swallow what you're saying without proof?
Maybe MAGA morons will swallow it because they're brain-dead but nobody else.
 
Damocles said:
I was going to come in here and predict that someone would put the "NYC judge says fraud" story on this thread in "defense" of pResident "Dementia Joe" Bribem. But I see I was too late.
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You are so certain. How about providing proof? You are wrong about dementia and bribery. But you do believe.
 
domer76 said:
Gotta find any evidence of Joe taking a bribe first.

So far, zilch. Nada. Zip. Nothing burger. Swing and a miss.
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the evidence to support the admissions of Hunter and his partner and the guy who paid Joe will be in the transfers between the LLC accounts.....money laundering is one of the easier RICO crimes to prove......
 
Joe Capitalist said:
When can we start saying Trump found Guilty?

NOW!!!

Donald Trump and his company "repeatedly" violated state fraud law, a New York judge ruled Tuesday.
The ruling came in response to a request by New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking judgment on one of the claims in her $250 million civil lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 2. Judge Arthur Engoron agreed in his ruling with James' office that it is beyond dispute that Trump and his company provided banks with financial statements that misrepresented his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.
"The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business," Engoron wrote in his ruling, in which he ordered the defendants' New York business certificates canceled. He ordered that within 10 days, they must recommend potential independent receivers to manage the dissolution of the canceled LLCs.
James' office sued Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization in September 2022, claiming they committed extensive fraud over more than a decade while seeking loans from banks. In addition to $250 million, her office is seeking several sanctions that would severely hamper the company's ability to do business in New York.
Both sides sought summary judgments from Engoron. James' office asked for the ruling delivered Tuesday, saying it would streamline the trial if Engoron found certain facts were beyond dispute: that Trump and the company issued false business records and false financial statements.
The Trumps' legal team asked Engoron to toss the case. They argued many of the loans in question occurred too long ago to be considered as part of this case.
Engoron also ruled on that motion Tuesday, rejecting it.
The upcoming trial will now focus on other allegations in the lawsuit related to falsification of business records, issuing false financial statements, insurance fraud and conspiracy.
The Trumps and their company have denied wrongdoing and accused James, a Democrat, of pursuing them for political reasons.
In a statement Tuesday evening, Alina Habba, legal spokesperson for Trump's Save America PAC, called the judge's ruling "fundamentally flawed at every level" and said they would "immediately appeal."
"It is important to remember that the Trump Organization is an American success story," the statement said. "The fact that this Court summarily found that there is no question of fact, finding in part that Mar-a-Lago is worth approximately $20 million and issue a decision of this magnitude is an affront to our legal system."
The judge found as fact that Trump and the company overstated the valuations of many properties by hundreds of millions of dollars. He cited the Palm Beach Assessor valuation of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club at between $18 million and $28 million for each year between 2011 and 2021 — the values for which he paid local property taxes. During those years, Trump valued the property at between $328 million and $714 million on his annual statements of financial conditions.

During arguments Friday related to the motions, a lawyer for James' office said Trump signed off on so-called statements of financial condition portraying many properties he and his company owned as worth hundreds of millions more than the valuations of appraisers they had hired.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise said in response that the valuations reflected "Mr. Trump's investment genius." He pointed to Trump National Doral Miami golf club, which was purchased out of bankruptcy for about $150 million in 2012. Kise said it's worth "well more than $1 billion" now.
"What Doral demonstrates is that President Trump is a master at finding value where others see nothing," Kise said.
Engoron gave some indication he didn't buy Kise's argument during that hearing. Engoron peppered Kise with questions, frequently interrupting him, and at one point raising his voice as he banged his fist on the bench.
"You cannot make false statements and use them in business — that's what this statute prohibits," he said.
Engoron also ruled Tuesday on a separate motion by the New York attorney general seeking sanctions against Trump's legal team for repeatedly making arguments Engoron and other courts had already rejected. James' office asked the judge to impose a fine of $20,000.
Engoron ruled in the attorney general's favor but upped the amount, fining five attorneys $7,500 each, for a total of $37,500.
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lol....padding loan applications is not a crime.......banks do not rely on applications......why do you think banks get appraisals?......
 
TOP said:
it's even more pathetic when they try to claim all the $$ comes from Book Sales and speaking engagements...:laugh:
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Conservatives look upon the American Free Enterprise System as virtually a sacred religion.

Bribery and corruption are as fundamental a part of the American Free Enterprise System
as oxygen is a fundamental component of fresh air.

Capitalism has never existed without bribery and corruption,
and there's never been a shred of evidence that it can.
It's absurd to even imagine it.

Why do we stray so far off track with these silly arguments?

It simply boils down to

I LIKE WHAT I LIKE,
AND I HATE WHAT YOU LIKE,
SO FUCK YOU.

Hatred doesn't have to justify itself.

If we're going to have it,
lets keep it in clear focus, avoid tangents, and fully enjoy it
to the best of our abilities.

I don't have enough time left to be wasting any of it on silly platitudes.
Do any of you?

It's both business AND personal.
That's the universe that was inflicted upon us.

I'm in a particularly good mood today as you can probably see.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Conservatives look upon the American Free Enterprise System as virtually a sacred religion.

Bribery and corruption are as fundamental a part of the American Free Enterprise System
as oxygen is a fundamental component of fresh air.

Capitalism has never existed without bribery and corruption,
and there's never been a shred of evidence that it can.
It's absurd to even imagine it.

Why do we stray so far off track with these silly arguments?

It simply boils down to

I LIKE WHAT I LIKE,
AND I HATE WHAT YOU LIKE,
SO FUCK YOU.

Hatred doesn't have to justify itself.

If we're going to have it,
lets keep it in clear focus, avoid tangents, and fully enjoy it
to the best of our abilities.

I don't have enough time left to be wasting any of it on silly platitudes.
Do any of you?

It's both business AND personal.
That's the universe that was inflicted upon us.

I'm in a particularly good mood today as you can probably see.
Click to expand...

Happy to hear you're feeling better!!
 
serendipity said:
Francis Menton cuts through the crap yet again, God love him.

The Biden family corruption scandal gets deeper with every passing day. Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally opened an impeachment investigation in the House last week, and now the first hearing in that investigation has been scheduled for September 28 before the House Oversight Committee.

So what is the potential impeachable offense? You will undoubtedly recall, in the context of the two Trump impeachments, the endless semantic contortions that took place trying to shoehorn Trump’s conduct into the vague constitutional catchall of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that might support an impeachment.

Now, with Biden, the conduct at issue goes by various euphemisms like “the family business,” “business dealings with foreign nationals,” “influence peddling,” “selling access,” or maybe just “corruption.” Are these impeachable offenses?

Well, how about “bribery”? In Biden’s case, there is no need for creative legal argumentation. Biden’s crime is right there in the list set out in Constitution Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

And yet for some reason participants in the public discussion of the Bidens’ conduct seem remarkably reluctant to call a spade a spade. The reluctance spans both sides of the political divide, and even extends to the websites of the House of Representatives that discuss the ongoing investigations. Here are a few recent examples (out of hundreds):

From NBC News, May 10: “The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee mounted more attacks Wednesday against President Joe Biden and his family, alleging that relatives of the president engaged in business with foreign nationals. . . .”

From ABC News, September 14: “[O]n Capitol Hill, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week said he would initiate an impeachment inquiry against President Biden over his alleged role in his son's influence-peddling. . . .”

From the New York Post, August 14: “The evidence that President Joe Biden benefited directly from son Hunter’s influence-peddling operation just keeps mounting.”

From PBS, today: “Republicans — led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have contended in recent weeks that Biden’s actions from his time as vice president show a “culture of corruption,” and that his son used the “Biden brand” to advance his business with foreign clients.”

Or even from the House Oversight Committee itself, September 13: “There is mounting evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his family’s influence peddling schemes, including while he served as Vice President.”

“Bribery” is not a complicated crime to understand. It has its own section of the U.S. criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C. Section 201. In case there were any doubt what this is about, the title of the section is “Bribery of public officials and witnesses.” Here are the parts of that section relevant to Biden’s conduct:

(b) Whoever—(2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly . . . seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:

(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act; . . .

shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

Read through that, and you find that the crime of bribery of a public official only has three elements: (1) “corruptly seek[ing], receiv[ing] [or] accept[ing] anything of value”; (2) “in return for”; and (3) “being influenced in the performance of any official act.”

Of the various instances of corruption involving Joe Biden, the facts relating to Hunter Biden’s service on the Burisma board of directors most closely track the specific elements of the bribery statute. As to seeking, receiving or accepting anything of value, Hunter was paid at least $3 million over several years for board service that involved minimal work and no visible contribution to the enterprise other than access to his father. The board service began in 2014, when Joe was Vice President, and immediately after Joe was named “point man” for U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine. After a corruption investigation into Burisma in Ukraine began in 2015, Burisma’s number one corporate objective became ending that investigation. On November 2, 2015 Burisma executive Vadym Pozharsky stated to Hunter Biden in an email that Burisma’s “ultimate purpose” was to “close down” “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [i.e., Burisma chairman Mykola Zlochevsky] in Ukraine.” Then, according to the Congressional testimony of Hunter Biden’s partner and Burisma co-board member Devon Archer, after a Burisma board meeting in Dubai on December 4, 2015, Zlochevsky and Pozharsky stepped out with Hunter to “call Washington.” A few days later Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv, and, as he himself has admitted on a widely-viewed videotape, threatened to withhold a billion dollars of U.S. aid to the country unless the prosecutor investigating Burisma was fired. And the prosecutor was fired.

In other words, the prima facie case of all of the elements of bribery is right there. It is what they call a lay down. Sure Biden has a couple of things he claims as defenses — mainly, that all the money went to his son, and that firing the prosecutor was official U.S. policy coming from people other than him. At this point those defenses look very weak, although maybe Biden can make something out of them.

But the fundamental point is that this is not situation of murky facts that somehow need to be contorted and shoe-horned into some obscure statute in order to make out a possible impeachable offense. This is a case where the prima facie case of a crime, and of a constitutionally enumerated impeachable offense, is right there in front of our eyes. And the crime in question is the main bribery statute.

It’s high time that everybody stopped calling Biden’s alleged wrongdoing by euphemisms like “influence peddling” or “foreign business dealings” — neither of which are terms specifically referencing an impeachable offense, let alone a crime. We should all start using the correct and obviously applicable constitutional and statutory term, which is “bribery.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com...we-start-calling-it-what-it-is-namely-bribery
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It's high time Republicans and friends got their heads out of their assholes and accepted reality. The Joe Biden/Burisma conspiracy theory has been investigated to death including by two GOP Senate committees, to wit:

"The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.[1] As part of efforts by Donald Trump[2] and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign.[3]

Joe Biden followed State Department intentions[4] when he withheld the loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into removing the prosecutor[5] who was seen as corrupt and failing to clean up Ukrainian corruption,[6] in accordance with the official and bipartisan policy of the United States, the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.[7][8][9]

United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that proxies of Russian intelligence promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about the Bidens "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration."[10][11][12] The New York Times reported in May 2021 that a federal criminal investigation was examining a possible role by current and former Ukrainian officials, including whether they used former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was the subject of a separate but related federal investigation, to spread unsubstantiated claims.[13]

A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden, nor has a sweeping Republican House committee investigation of the Biden family as of September 2023."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden–Ukraine_conspiracy_theory
 
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