Alex Christoforou
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the release of a transcript between U.S. President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which was the basis of a Democrat push for an impeachment inquiry and which does not reveal any type of ‘quid pro quo’ or other attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Obama VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
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Pelosi’s Impeachment Bluff Hides Real Ukraine Story; CrowdStrike, Soros & Hillary Servers In Kiev by The Duran
The Duran Quick Take: Episode 315. The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the release of a transcript between U.S. President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which was the basis of a Democrat push for an impeachment inquiry and which does not reveal any type of ‘quid pro quo’ or other attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Obama VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
The transcript of President Donald Trump’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart shows no pressure or threats to withhold aid. So why are Democrats and media still reading it that way, and invoking it as impeachment grounds?
For over two years, the Democrats pinned their hopes on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating the claims of “Russian collusion” and obstruction of justice in relation to it – only to come up empty-handed back in May.
Undeterred, the party pushed impeachment anyway, arguing that the report somehow showed obstruction of justice somewhere between the lines, and proved something it explicitly said it did not. Even that rationale was abandoned this week, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi finally announced the impeachment proceedings.
Instead, the entire case was hung on the claim that Trump somehow “engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security,” as Pelosi phrased it, in a telephone conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that took place on July 25.
The actual transcript of the conversation reveals no such thing. Moreover Zelensky himself said he was not “pressured” into anything, in a joint press appearance with Trump on Wednesday at the UN. This has not deterred Pelosi, who said she “hasn’t seen” the transcript before launching the probe, or the rest of her party – and the media – who have been tying themselves into pretzels to interpret the conversation as ominous, even criminal.
For example, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-California), one of the principal peddlers of ‘Russiagate,’ described it as “a classic mob shakedown.”
Adam Schiff on Twitter: “The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown:- We do a lot for Ukraine- There’s not much reciprocity- I have a favor to ask- Investigate my opponent- My people will be in touch Nice country you got there.It would be a shame if something happened to her. / Twitter”
The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown:- We do a lot for Ukraine- There’s not much reciprocity- I have a favor to ask- Investigate my opponent- My people will be in touch Nice country you got there.It would be a shame if something happened to her.
Candidates for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination also jumped on it, with Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) saying the transcript was “apparent proof that Trump pressured a foreign nation to meddle in our democracy again.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), currently leading the pack in the polls, called the transcript “a smoking gun.”
Except literally none of this is true. There is not even a smoke signal of impropriety in the conversation – aside from the clear demonstration that Ukraine is not an independent country but a vassal of the US in every way, but that’s not something either Democrats or Republicans would be comfortable contemplating.
It appears that while extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, truly outlandish claims require no evidence at all – as shown by Russiagate, the attempt to derail the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and now this Ukraine business.
What is fascinating is that there are plenty of actual questions when it comes to the US-Ukraine relationship, from the run-up to the 2014 coup to the origins of the Russiagate claims in 2016, and Trump seems to have asked Zelensky to look into some of those in the course of rooting out corruption in his country.
Specifically, the US president asked about Crowdstrike, a contractor for the DNC that originated the claim that Russia hacked the party’s emails in June 2016. He asked about the DNC servers that Crowdstrike never allowed the US authorities to inspect, and a rumor they might be in possession of an oligarch in Ukraine.
He also asked about the firing of a prosecutor and whether he was investigating a gas company that paid Vice President Joe Biden’s son $600,000 a year to sit on their board, simply on account of his last name and family connections. Biden himself boasted publicly, at an event in 2018, about threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine if the prosecutor wasn’t fired.
Rep. Jim Jordan on Twitter: “So let’s get this straight:Hunter Biden makes $50k a MONTH working for a Ukrainian company.A Ukrainian prosecutor investigates the company.Then Hunter’s dad, the Vice President, holds up $1 Billion in aid until the prosecutor is fired.But somehow it’s Trump’s fault. / Twitter”
So let’s get this straight:Hunter Biden makes $50k a MONTH working for a Ukrainian company.A Ukrainian prosecutor investigates the company.Then Hunter’s dad, the Vice President, holds up $1 Billion in aid until the prosecutor is fired.But somehow it’s Trump’s fault.
The Democrats are in effect saying with this impeachment push that the American public does not need or deserve to know the answers to these questions. Merely to ask them is somehow treasonous and evil.
Trump’s critics appear to be betting that impeachment will mobilize their base going into the 2020 election. Yet that amounts to a tacit admission they do not have a platform or a candidate strong enough to beat him at the ballot box. The tactic is likely to backfire, even, mobilizing the GOP base the way it did in the 2018 Senate races, following the Kavanaugh circus. Republicans already see the ‘Ukrainegate whistleblower’ affair as yet another partisan attack on Trump.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1176923596389801985
So what comes next? If the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton is anything to go by, there will be months of hearings and congressional drama – except this time, instead of one committee and a special counsel, there are six congressional committees competing with each other for attention and resources. Clinton’s impeachment lasted almost six months, but the process may take longer this time and overlap with the primaries of the 2020 campaign.
Keep in mind that no American president has ever been successfully impeached. Nixon resigned before it could happen. Both Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Clinton in 1998 stayed in office, after they were impeached in the House but not convicted in the Senate. This is also likely to happen to Trump, since Democrats would need the votes of 13 Republican senators in order to convict.
The very same members of Congress that condemned the Republican-led impeachment of Clinton for lying about having an extramarital affair in the White House are now leading the calls for Trump to be impeached for… what exactly? When pressed on it, none of them can say.
This, rather than anything Trump has said or done, is what is destroying not just the US reputation around the world, but the fabric of the American republic itself. Once unraveled, it may not be possible to ever put it back together. It didn’t have to be this way, but here we are.
Nebojsa Malic, senior writer at RT
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
As shown in this article, there is an aspect of the Biden – Ukraine story that has received no coverage by the mainstream media:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/09/joe-biden-corruption-in-ukraine-and.html
At the very least, we can take one thing from the aforementioned events in Ukraine and comments by key members of the Obama Administration; Washington is completely hypocritical when it comes to corruption in government and how Russia uses coercion and other means of control to get its own way in the domestic affairs of other nations and how it uses corruption as a means of warfare.
Quote: ” Washington is completely hypocritical……”
Really? You don’t say. Why, the thought never crossed my mind.
Center is Shokin, the guy that fired/quit and why……https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement….proves Biden quid pro quo to keep son Hunter from being further investigated by Shokin. A must watch for the whole story.
Shokin sleeps with the fishes.
BTW: Have I mentioned that Russia was behind it all?
Reminds me of a funny video I saw tonight, courtesy of another poster.
This is actually seriously funny:
The President of Ukraine made a funny presentation at a conference… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uUlDiQOsGQ
I cried laughing
They all engage in these sort of games…remember way back “The Field of the Cloth of Gold”…or whatever??? Some countries are more direct in their approach…ask Tibet about that !!!
Trump was just trying to drain the Ukrainian swamp. He gave up on his.
I read the phone transcript. If he wants to really do that, he’ll have to finally abandon the rhetoric of a five year old.
Anyway, Ukraine’s government is still chock full of crypto-nazis. Maybe then eyeball popper will finally use that one on Trump.
Adam Schiffty: “Trump supplied lethal arms to Ukrainian neo-nazi groups committing war crimes against civilians when Obama refused to do it!: Impeach!
Yeah, wouldn’t that be a kicker.
Nah. Republicans are involved in that too. Remember their ‘war hero’ John McCain?
Johnny Jihadiseed? Who could forget that American traitor and war criminal extraordinaire?
Ukraine’s chock full of American crypto-nazis too. Funny how shit attracts so many flies.
Just like when the Bosphorus land bridge broke and allowed the Mediterranean to cascade into the Black Sea and flood Ukraine, the American swamp critters have flooded it too. The American Nazi Party looking for pointers, CIA apparatchiks giving pointers or just plain old political bagmen and carpetbaggers out for a buck, like Crack Smokin’ Joe & Son……..they’ve all found a happy home there.
Kind’a reminds me of Casablanca during WWII.
I hope they’re still hiring at Taco Bell
Your festering, fetid flesh is USDOS approved. Not to worry.
Remember when we were watching Bill Clinton being out-ed and the public humiliation.
Do you know what happened while we all watched a silent coup take place? That’s when the planning for regime change “7 countries in 5 years” went into the tops of the US government as policy….which then included the motivating event of tower demolitions and Pentagon hit.
Last “impeachment” hid a coup….be vigilant and discerning, not blind like before.
I said many months ago that once these investigations get going that they keep leading to larger and LARGER “supposedly untouchable” conspiracies. I still view Trump as an imbecile, but the Obama circle of out and out crooks were a stain on America (and don’t get me started on the Bush/Cheney psychos and the Clintons as well). This rot has been proceeding apace for a long time. The question is: Can America handle the truth? Because this is leading to the destruction of America’s (and a lot of the west’s) delusions about their own virtuosity. I believe that all great… Read more »
“Can America handle the truth?”
Nope. It can’t. It can’t even handle the 2 genders.
Has anyone really noticed that TWO huge “unelected bodies” are up to their “armpits” so to speak in EVERYTHING that is going down???
It was curious to watch Wolf Blitzer yesterday and his panel of 7 extoling the high minded values of Whistle Blowers in general and the person who whistle blew on Trump in particular. Made me think of how the same idiots treated Chelsie Manning and Jullian Assange. Both of who blew the whistle on major war crimes etc. The USA tops the world in hypocrisy if nothing else. The MSM in that country is a disgrace. They won`t even show the clip of Biden bragging about threatening to withhold a billion in loans until they fired the prosecutor investigating corruption… Read more »
I might have added that Both Manning and Assange are rotting away in prison as punishment for daring to shine light on the illegal activities of the American Government. But not a peep from Blitzer and his panel about these two heroes.
In prison…have they been tried??? Especially Assange…and he is held in the land of the Magna Charta…what a crock !!!
Where IS Assange ???
Hillary’s server in Kiev? I don’t know, guess if you can have a Ukrainian mirotvorets hit list hosted on a NATO server in Estonia, then anything’s probable.
If you have not read the testimony (2017 in Austria) of the man fired for investigating Biden Gasprom, it’s a must read to the wise:
https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement
The intention, even before Trump came on the scene WAS to destroy the Constitutional Republic ( The push to abolish the Electoral College was championed by top democrats, especially H. Clinton and some states are even trying to circumvent both the College and the spirit of the “Founders” in this regard)…if not the country itself, if needs be…Many of these traitors are even now “praying” for a recession in the USA, hoping that such an occurrence would further their aims. The TPP would have done the US in…Trump dodged that bullet and frustrated them no end. The mainsewerstream fake media… Read more »
Not only that, but, Adam Schiff is heavily involved with an Ukrainian Arms Dealer, along with Pelosi. So no conflict of interest. Funnily enough, it also links into Alexandra Chalupa, who was involved in the Clinton Presidential Campaign, and ‘Prop or Not’ who came up with the Blacklist, for alternative media. No doubt, The Duran might find itself on the list. For the last two years, she has been running the ‘Impeach Donald Trump’ campaign. The whole story keeps running round in circles, involving the same crowd. Google ‘How to Finance Your Congressional Campaign with Arms Sales’ – apelbaum word… Read more »