Just Security: The Swiftboating of Joe Biden + Timeline: Trump, Giuliani, Biden, and Ukrainegate

[highplainsdem]

https://www.justsecurity.org/66290/the-swiftboating-of-joe-biden/

Merriam-Webster has not yet added the word “swiftboating” to its dictionary, but the Urban Dictionary and Taegan Goddard’s Political Dictionary have. The term refers to “the act of discrediting a political opponent by making exaggerated or outrightly false claims about his/her character and past actions.” If successful, this form of disinformation can falsely turn a decorated war hero into a traitor, as it did in the eyes of some voters for then-Senator and Navy veteran John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s debunked narrative about Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine fits the mold, but there is an important dimension that’s not been widely understood.

Even some of the best analysis that explains the falsity of the Trump-Giuliani allegations has fallen into a trap. The Trump-Giuliani allegations are called “exaggerated,” while others write that “no evidence has surfaced to support Mr. Trump’s claim.”

What’s missing from those types of assessments is evidence that actually points in the opposite direction. That became clearer to us as researchers when we prepared a chronology of events published on Just Security earlier today. The timeline covers developments from November 2013 to the present, including Biden’s work in Ukraine and Trump and Giuliani’s actions in what has become known as “Ukrainegate.”

The publicly available evidence suggests that the Vice President, working in tandem with other U.S. officials such as Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, pursued anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine that would increase the legal risks to the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, where Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board. The U.S. government’s efforts, led by Biden, explicitly and specifically targeted the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine not only for its failure to pursue investigations – but also for blocking an investigation into allegations concerning the owner of Burisma.

-snip-

This is a long article, but well worth the read for the evidence it offers in Biden's defense.

So is the timeline referred to in the article:

https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/

Timeline: Trump, Giuliani, Biden, and Ukrainegate


A months-long campaign by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to reportedly pressure the Ukraine government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s potential rival in the 2020 election, has gripped the nation’s capital. The situation escalated following the Sept. 13 revelation of an intelligence community whistleblower complaint reportedly related to a “series of events” including a phone call between President Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

As these events unfold, the aim of the chronology below is to provide a useful reference for the context and timeline on Ukraine, the roles of Joe Biden and his son Hunter there, and Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to persuade Ukraine to pursue investigations against them. We attempt to present an accurate picture of events, favorable and unfavorable to the players involved. Our assessments and views of the available public information are reflected in two pieces: Viola Gienger’s “Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine ‘Dirt’ on Biden: An Explainer” and our forthcoming, “The Swiftboating of Joe Biden.”

This chronology will be updated as new information becomes available.

November 2013 – Political revolution in Ukraine

-snip-

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended.

It worked against Kerry, and the GOP has faith that the typical, uninformed GOP voter will once again fall for it.

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. K&R

[treestar]

3. I always thought swift boating had an element of using your positives against you

Dubya had a slim military record compared to Kerry's. They were all about military/war in 2004, and so Kerry was a good pick. They couldn't claim he hated the troops and all that stupidity. So they attacked his strength: a better military record than Shrub at a time when the nation was all about war, troops, military heroism.

[Voltaire2]

4. Yeah the Hunter Biden thing isn't a 'swiftboating'.

It was a corrupt attempt by Hair Shitler to get some dirt on Hunter to concoct scandal similar to the Clinton benghazi/email bullshit, which wasn't a swiftboating either.

[emmaverybo]

5. This is research investigative journalists working for MSM should have been doing. Not too late

for them to make their assessment more complete and fair. Excellent research on the research, highplainsdem.

[Perseus]

6. Ady Barkan

[link:

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[DrFunkenstein]

7. SBVT Completely Fabricated Claims, Hunter Biden's Gig Was Legal But Highly Unethical

Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son...was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.

Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. He would be paid as much as $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html

A $600,000 a year gig for someone totally unqualified in any way, but happens to be the son of the Veep. I know it's for our team, but that doesn't make it any less gross. If the same work was done by one of Dump's kids, we'd all be up in arms.

While Biden or his son did nothing illegal (unlike the Trump clan), he should have recused himself from personal involvement to avoid any impression of conflict of interest (for precisely these sorts of false accusations that Trumpworld is making). A bad call by a good man.

Kerry was someone who bled for his country - literally took shrapnel for his country - and that was not only denied by the SBVT, but all of his medals of honor for acts under fire were called into question. A hero was called a fraud.

Biden is no villain - he's a good man, but he's hardly a hero in this story. Mostly he's just a powerful dad with a screwed up, spoiled son involved in the kinds of activities that makes people think the whole game is rigged.

[BlueMississippi]

11. He was not doing any government work.

Your post is extremely insulting and assumes facts that are not there.

Just because someone is a VP's son, daughter, brother or sister doesn't mean they have to recuse themselves from every job opportunity.

He was on the board of a PRIVATE company. NY Times' article came from David Sirota's buddy and contains many stretchings of facts to suit a narrative.

[pwb]

8. Using a mans Dead Son? What a heartless fucking pig trump is?

.

[Cha]

9. Thank you,

.. the more we know.. the better.

[BlueMississippi]

10. k&r nt

[peggysue2]

12. You know who else has been working this scam behind the scenes?

Peter Schweizer.

Remember the classic 'Clinton Cash' tome released to smear Hillary Clinton six ways to Sunday. That beaut belongs to Schweizer, so it only goes to reason that he'd be more than willing to jump on the Biden trash train, dig up dirt and create fictitious connections and patterns. It's what these guys do for a living, a rather good living spreading smut in all directions.

Thanks for the link and additional info, highplainsdem!

[Gothmog]

13. Great Statement by Joe Biden

Link to tweet

[peggysue2]

14. Excellent!

As Joe Biden said the other day:

We all know who Donald Trump is. Now it's time to show everyone who we are.

One of the things I've been noticing today? Trump and his enablers are losing the narrative. They're desperately throwing excuses against the wall but nothing is sticking and/or overriding the existing story:

Donald Trump has betrayed the Office of the Presidency.

[Gothmog]

15. Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden "did not violate anything"

Link to tweet

A former top Ukrainian prosecutor, whose allegations were at the heart of the dirt-digging effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday he believed that Hunter Biden did not run afoul of any laws in Ukraine.

“From the perspective of Ukrainian legislation, he did not violate anything,” former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko told The Washington Post in his first interview since the disclosure of a whistleblower complaint alleging pressure by President Trump on Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelensky.

Lutsenko’s comments about Hunter Biden — which echo what he told Bloomberg News in May — were significant, because Trump and his personal attorney Giuliani have sought to stir up suspicions about both Hunter and former vice president Joe Biden’s conduct in Ukraine in recent weeks. Joe Biden is leading Trump in many opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election.

Hunter Biden has denied any wrongdoing, and there is no evidence he was involved in any lawbreaking in his work in Ukraine with the country’s largest private gas company.