Uzbekistan, Got Any Dirt on Joe Biden?
by John Lawrence, October 7, 2019
This is El Presidente Trump speaking: "Hey Namibia, got any dirt on Joe Biden? And Transylvania, send me your dirt on the Bidens. Finland, you got any dirt?" Trump's strategy evidently is to ask for dirt on the Bidens everywhere in the hopes that Ukraine will only be one of the countries involved. Sort of spread it around to the point of ridiculousness. The fact is that the Ukraine situation is corrupt to the core, and it's not only because of the Bidens although they've played a significant part in it.
Let's go back to 1954 when Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine just because he felt like it, the idea being that Ukraine and Russia would always be friends so what's the dif? Fast forward to 1990 when assurances were given to Gorbachev that NATO would not move eastward into formerly Soviet controlled territory.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University
These assurances were not worth the paper they were not written on as US policy after the Berlin wall came down and Germany was reunified was totally contrary to the assurances given Gorbachev. The policy was for NATO to move eastward, and, in particular, the US had its sights set on Ukraine. Crimea was the site of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, an important Russian military asset so some Russians were rueing the day when Crimea was just given to Ukraine especially in light of the fact that Ukraine was considering becoming a part of NATO. So Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, thereby at least securing its military base and access to the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, in 2014 there was a revolution in Ukraine and pro-Russian Yanukovych was ousted in favor of pro-Western Poroshenko. President Obama made Joe Biden his point man in dealing with Ukraine. Right after Joe being appointed as point man, Hunter Biden took a position on the board of the country's largest private gas company, Burisma. He was reportedly paid up to $50,000 a month. Nice work if you can get it. Obviously, Hunter was trading on the Biden family name. Now Ukraine was famous for corruption and Joe Biden wanted the country to do something about it oblivious to the fact that his son was profiting from that corruption.
NPR reported:
Joe Biden has actually boasted about his work in Ukraine as a spokesperson for the White House and the West generally. He called for the ouster of the top Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, for what was widely seen as his failure to investigate corruption.
At an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, Biden said he made one of his many trips to Ukraine in March 2016 and told the country's leaders that they had to get rid of the prosecutor if they wanted $1 billion in U.S. aid.
"I said, 'You're not getting the [$1 billion]. I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a b****. He got fired," Biden said.
The Trump narrative is that Biden wanted the prosecutor replaced because he would have fingered Hunter Biden as part of the corruption. The fact is that the "corruption" started with the US meddling in Ukraine trying to draw it into NATO after giving assurances to Gorbachev that the US would do no such thing. So the whole Ukraine situation is one pile of corruption from top to bottom, a veritable shitload of corruption. US policy was corrupt. Ukrainian politicians were corrupt and Hunter Biden's being paid $50,000 a month for a no show job was corrupt.
So does this exonerate Trump when he asks Ukraine for dirt on Biden? No, if we consider that asking another country for dirt on a political opponent represents "high crimes and misdemeanors." However, "high crimes and misdemeanors" is not defined in the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't say specifically "You can't ask a foreign government for dirt on your political opponent." "High crimes and misdemeanors" boils down to "I'll know it when I see it," and the Democrats have seen it. So why don't they make an amendment to the Constitution which spells out a number of "high crimes and misdemeanors" so the next time this happens they'll be able to nail it. For right now "high crimes and misdemeanors" is in the eyes of the beholders.
