Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump.

[elleng]

Source: nyt

Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, is encouraging Ukraine to wade further into sensitive political issues in the United States, seeking to push the incoming government in Kiev to press ahead with investigations that he hopes will benefit Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation’s president-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.

One is the origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

Mr. Giuliani’s plans create the remarkable scene of a lawyer for the president of the United States pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump’s allies hope could help him in his re-election campaign. And it comes after Mr. Trump spent more than half of his term facing questions about whether his 2016 campaign conspired with a foreign power.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/politics/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html?

[ETStevens]

1. ENOUGH

It's time to impeach! This is not 1998!

[Roy Rolling]

2. Latest Images From the Ukraine

[Zoonart]

5. LOLOLOLOL

Hysterical.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Abuse of Power. . . . nt

[delisen]

4. Giuliani is going to humiliate himself. We will learn more about his $$$$

interests which are not some one-off like Hunter Biden's

[highplainsdem]

6. Matthew Miller: "Sitting presidents don't have private emissaries to foreign governments. Ukraine

will understand this for what it is - the full weight of the US presidency leaning on it to harm the president’s domestic political opponents."

Link to tweet

[highplainsdem]

7. The Trump admin just recalled the US ambassador to Ukraine because she was interfering with this,

apparently.


See this article

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/07/us-ambassador-to-ukraine-recalled-in-political-hit-job-lawmakers-say-marie-yovanovitch-lutsenko-right-wing-media-accusations-congress-diplomats-diplomacy/

which I found thanks to a tweet from Matthew Miller:

Link to tweet

This story about the administration firing the ambassador to Ukraine this week after she took on the prosecutor Giuliani has been buddying up to merits a lot more scrutiny in light of tonight’s NYT story

.

[jmbar2]

8. After that, he should circle back through Hawaii to find Obama's birth certificate

I hear Trump is still looking for it.

[SkyDaddy7]

9. SERIOUSLY...WTF!?!

...How can Trump & the GOP continue to struggle with what is or is not a “Witch Hunt” when they’re experts themselves at conducting truly authentic “Witch Hunts”!

...Your comment was spot-on perfect!! ...And hilarious!

[SunSeeker]

10. Unfuckingbelievable.

He is literally conspiring with Russia to win again, this time by way of trying to dig up dirt against Biden.

[defacto7]

11. He could very well be planting something. Money and power can buy lots of people.

[olegramps]

12. The most important threat to our liberties is not Russia or China, but the Republican Party.

The Republican Party is a criminal organization that has given us the rogue administrations of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and now the master criminal Trump. Where will this end is dependent on what actions the Democrats are willing to take to save the nation from the Republicans insatiable greed and lust for power.

[BlueIdaho]

13. Inspector Clouseau is on the case! Nt.

I’m sure he’ll find a Russian agent with fake documents that can prop up Shitler’s claims.

[lagomorph777]

14. His real mission: shopping for real estate.

The cabal will need a place to flee to after the election.

[Gothmog]

15. Washington Post-Opinion: Why the alleged Joe Biden "Ukraine conspiracy" doesn't hold up

Link to tweet

The trouble began when right-wing bloggers sought to meld these two points into a single conspiracy in which Joe Biden had the prosecutor sacked to protect his son’s business interests. I may be an outsider to the bewildering mess that is Ukrainian politics, but, on this particular issue, I have a genuine insight into what happened, having written extensively about Hunter Biden’s ex-employer, Mykola Zlochevsky.

As a result, when journalists seek the fire behind the smoke in the Biden-Ukraine tale, they often call to ask my opinion. Many are eager to flesh out what seems a satisfyingly simple conspiracy, but I have to tell them: It isn’t true. The timeline doesn’t work. The investigation into Burisma, Hunter Biden’s employer, had ground to a halt long before the prosecutor was sacked. A subsequent probe into the company’s owner was opened because of a request from Ukrainian legislators, not because of prosecutorial initiative. There is, in short, no there there; the bloggers are putting two and two together — and coming up with 22.

Hunter Biden should not have taken the job; Joe Biden should probably not have boasted about bullying the president of another country. But those are judgment matters for them personally, not proof of conspiracy, and certainly not an affair worth destabilizing the fragile democracy of a new U.S. ally.

But that has not stopped Giuliani, who tweeted last week: “how deep and how high did the alleged Ukraine conspiracy go?” He was responding to a story in the New York Times (the Times apparently not “failing” on this occasion, since Trump retweeted the paper’s story), which analyzed the theories around the Bidens’ Ukraine connection. The article ticked all the journalistic boxes, giving father and son space to deny wrongdoing, but still raised a cloud of smoke for those shouting “fire.” If a major newspaper devotes 2,500 words to conflict-of-interest questions, then those questions presumably exist. How often do you beat your wife?