"Graham's conspiracy theory-based investigation is rooted in the baseless allegation that Biden pressured Ukraine to remove a corrupt prosecutor in 2016 as a way to protect Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, against a corruption probe. Biden's son Hunter was previously a board member with Burisma until April this year.
There is no evidence to support allegations that Biden acted improperly in calling for the prosecutor general in charge of the Burisma probe to be ousted, and both Ukrainian and U.S. officials have said there is no merit to the claim. As many have since noted, the Burisma investigation was in fact dormant when the prosecutor general was forced out on accusations he was slow-walking corruption probes, among other things.
Trump brought up that debunked conspiracy during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, asking the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden as well as a baseless conspiracy involving the Democratic National Committee servers." american independent
*******
"Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much debate in epistemology centers on four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification,[1][2] (2) various problems of skepticism, (3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for knowledge and justification. Epistemology addresses such questions as: "What makes justified beliefs justified?" "What does it mean to say that we know something?", and fundamentally "How do we know that we know?" wiki on epistemology
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As in the example above from the "American Independent," the MSM and online projects like the American Independent incessantly insist that the simple fact that Hunter Biden and his dear old dad, a "Union Man," solicited money in Ukraine and in China for services not rendered proves nothing, that nothing has been proven against them and that any mention of these occurrences is evidence of harsh partisan rhetoric based on fantasy and equivalent to belief in the Loch Ness Monster.
Well, pilgrims I want to know who and what investigation or investigations cleared the Bidens of anything.
It is obvious that Hunter is qualified for employment as a bag man and not much else. He has a law degree? So what? As in the matter of the qualifications of doctors, not all learn much in medical or law school.
"US Officials" say the Bidens are pure in heart and deed? Hah! Is it not clear that The Borg (foreign policy establishment) hate Donald Trump and will say anything possible to injure him?
"Debunked," "Discredited," "Conspiracy theories?"
Trickery in the press is the real truth, trickery intended to protect the only viable candidate in the Democratic Party field.
The article highlighted here, typically, is a lie. As documented in Moon of Alabama’s timeline (https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/11/a-timeline-of-joe-bidens-intervention-against-the-prosecutor-general-of-ukraine.html), Shokin was actively investigating Zlochevsky in February 2016, when Shokin seized his luxury car. Barely two weeks later, Biden was on the phone to Poroshenko demanding Shokin’s firing. While this doesn’t prove that Biden was motivated primarily by a desire to protect his son’s employer, it is certainly consistent with that possibility.
John Solomon has been very much in the lead on reporting from Ukraine which furthers what the MSM calls “conspiracy theories”.
While he earlier reported, or opined, from The Hill,
now he evidently has been bumped (my opinion) from that perch,
and now has own blog John Solomon Report: https://johnsolomonreports.com/
He has been roundly attacked in the media for opposing the party line on Ukraine,
see especially this Paul Farhi (normally a balanced voice, but not in this case) column: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-a-conservative-columnist-helped-push-a-flawed-ukraine-narrative/2019/09/26/1654026e-dee7-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html
In any case, here are some recent columns where Solomon fires back at the MSM and the party line:
2019-11-22 https://johnsolomonreports.com/responding-to-lt-col-vindman-about-my-ukraine-columns-with-the-facts/
2019-11-20 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-ukraine-scandal-timeline-democrats-and-their-media-allies-dont-want-america-to-see/
2019-11-20 https://johnsolomonreports.com/impeachment-surprise-how-adam-schiff-validated-my-reporting-on-ukraine/
2019-11-15 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-15-essential-questions-for-marie-yovanovitch-americas-former-ambassador-to-ukraine/
2019-11-13 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-real-ukraine-controversy-an-activist-u-s-embassy-and-its-adherence-to-the-geneva-convention/
2019-10-31 https://johnsolomonreports.com/debunking-some-of-the-ukraine-scandal-myths-about-biden-and-election-interference/
This last link is especially worthwhile.
It is tragic, IMO, how the MSM ignores the facts that Solomon documents in his columns.
It is possible that JS is a mouthpiece for corrupt elements in Ukraine,
but I think his points deserve more attention than they have been getting.
There are two sides to this story, not only one as Col. Lang pointed out in his root piece.
I recall that the Russiagate conspiracy theory was “proven” factual as well, and by many of the same people who claim that Biden’s corruption has been “debunked”. Even though it was absurd on its face and had been debunked numerous times, many people in fact continue to insist otherwise.
Seriously….who would think Biden’s son taking a highly paid position with a company in a foreign country that Biden was representing the US in wasn’t a conflict of interest? Even the ‘appearance’ of a conflict of interest should be avoided in such situations.
I find Biden and his political ‘career’, greased by his ‘good old Joe act’ disgusting in so many ways it would take too long to describe them here.
It should be investigated but I doubt it will.
The media really seems to be testing the limits of disinformation. More and more, the media wants to convince people that black is white and up is down. Fortunately, I don’t think their plan is working all that well.
In the case of Hunter Biden, we are told that “There is no evidence to support allegations that Biden acted improperly”.
Okay, that’s one way to look at things, but I have found that even among my liberal friends, the fetid smell of corruption emitting from this case, is overpowering. And while most people might have a hard time sinking their teeth into a “quid pro quo”, they do have a pretty good grasp of old fashioned influence peddling, which is what we are talking about.
So why has the media chosen to defend the crooked goings-on of public officials who were obviously up to no good? Don’t they care about their credibility at all?
Was the American Independent quote lifted from The NY Times? It sure sounds like it!
For some time I’ve been wondering how exactly Biden got cleared. Was there any formal investigation? Who conducted it? And how reliable are the facts when they come from a place like Ukraine, where anything, including the ‘truth,’ can be laundered?
What’s become painfully obvious is how eagerly America’s major news outlets, including the journals of record, participate in the laundering of truth.
Of course, that should have been obvious from the yellow journalism preceding the war in Iraq.
What’s really scary are reports that “intelligence” services get most of their ‘facts’ from the very same truth laundering sources.
too much to summarize, includes original government documents, read all for yourself please
State Department Releases Detailed Accounts Of Biden-Ukraine Corruption
by Tyler Durden
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/state-department-releases-detailed-accounts-biden-ukraine-corruption
I always got the impression the “wild, debunked conspiracy theory pushed by right wing nuts” was always referring to the Crowdstrike DNC computer investigation hoax that Trump tried to re-open.
They would never specifically refer to the Crowdstrike favor Trump specifically asked for in the phone call, instead they would substitute Trump asked about some “debunked, wild right wing conspiracy”.
So they never explained how the Crowdstrike investigation hoax was debunked either.
To me this is far more interesting missing debunked conspiracy link – since it shows incredible coordination between the DNC, the “leak” of their DNC computer data, Ukrainian Crowdstrike, and finally the Mueller Report who used the DNC Crowdstrike investigation conclusoin hook line and sinker to reach their own official conclusions which is now “proven” operating dogma. Without ever doing an independent investigation themselves. How often does that happen?
To me the Crowdstrike connection begs further investigation – why would a Russian hating Ukrainian who was running Crowdstrike point the finger at the Russians and claim they “hacked” the DNC computers, but not let anyone else touch those same computers to corroborate that conclusion?
And then parlay this into Trump supporting Russian interference in the 2016 election. All too tidy for me. Feels like dark forces are still at work, and subverting language to achieve their ends.
Whatever happened to Joe Biden’s taped boast, at the Council on Foreign Relations, that he gave President Poroshenko 6 hours to fire Prosecutor Shokin — or else lose $1 Billion of US aid ?
How was this taped confession of QUID-PRO-QUO debunked ?
The media (approx. 99% of them) have been in the tank for Democrats since at least the Vietnam war.
Roger Ailes said why he didn’t read the NY Times:
“You cover the bad news about America. You do. But you don’t get up in the morning hating your country.”
The “debunked” is based on the claim the the Ukrainian General Prosecutor Shokin was not investigating Burisma or its owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
That claim is evidently false.
On Feb 2 2016 Shokin confiscated the houses (more like palaces) of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
A news agency reports the seizure two days later (Note: European date format ddmmyy)
https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/322395.html
Eight days later Joe Biden launched an intense pressure campaign to get rid of Shokin. He personally calls Poroshenko on Feb 12, 18 and 19 to press for firing Shokin.
To think that this is unrelated is not reasonable.
The rest of the timeline shows further Biden influence in the case.
(I should update that timeline as a lot of additional evidence of Burisma lobbying State at that time has since come in.)
There are tons of additional dirt. The U.S. has control over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and uses it to push all such investigations to its favor. NABU has itself been involved in serious corruption.
There is also a USAID/Soros paid NGO that has a similar function and is equally corrupt.
These organizations are used as weapons to put all Ukrainian assets into the hands of those that the U.S. embassy likes.
“American Independent” is David Brock’s Clinton / Soros linked Shareblue disinfo and troll brigade rebranded.
It will obviously tell every lie going to protect the corrupt Corporate Dem Establishment, the Globalists and the Deep State. https://twitter.com/Ian56789/status/1198338991814250497
Quid Pro Joe Biden.
Quid pro quo becomes a fait accompli.
It’s not really that complicated an inquiry to decide whether there is a need to go further; two questions: what did Hunter Biden do for the money; and Joe, did you get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired as you bragged you did, and why? Maybe throw in a third if the answer is “I did”, what or who made you think that you could do that?
The debunkers seem to be citing Yuriy Lutsenko, who said that “he had no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or his son.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/23/fact-checking-president-trumps-wild-jabs-joe-biden/
Lutsenko was the guy who was appointed as Prosecutor General after Biden got the previous one fired. IOW Lutsenko owed his job to Biden.
Lutsenko has had a pretty sketchy career, including charges of abuse of power, forgery and embezzlement among other things.
https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/yuriy-lutsenko/
It’s telling that Democrats and the mainstream media choose to cite such a character as their primary source for evidence that the Bidens did nothing wrong.
Reminds me of Mark Twains old adage: “An honest politician is one who, once he’s been bought, stays bought.” More recently it seems that his loyalties have shifted, accusing Yovanovitch of giving him a list of people who should be protected.
The only thing I can conclude is that Lutsenko is probably just trying to survive the shifting tides in the Ukrainian swamp and will say or do whatever it takes.
It’s my understanding that not only is Hunter Biden a bag man for the family, but Joe’s employed his brother James as a cutout too. I recall something about a billion dollar US-funded contract having been granted to James Biden’s company to construct housing in post-war Iraq.
I’d bet if some book deals/book sales enjoyed by prominent pols were scrutinized, unethical transactions would be uncovered there as well.
Its a depressing idea that Biden is a viable candidate.
plantman, I fully agree with your observation about “testing the limits of disinformation”. I have difficult time to understand, how the mantra (of Bidens snow white, Ukraine good, Russia bad, Israel good, Palestinians bad, etc etc) how that mantra is so precisely, so completely, so viciously spread in the USA and in Europe and elsewhere. Are there just few guiding heads directing the show? and the journalists who’s livelihood depends on that mantra are falling in line.?
While there are certainly some key media voices deliberately broadcasting messages on behalf of nefarious officials, it can’t all be explained by journalists on the take or executing some scheme. Its too widely-ranging and impenetrable.
To me its taken on a more religious aspect. Its socially unacceptable in many circles to support or otherwise abet Trump’s presidency, and heretics are punished. I suspect sentiments like this are prevailing heavily in various newsrooms. When I was younger I was prone to this stuff, its really not difficult to self-censor our information intake, dismiss any media that don’t tell us what we want to hear, develop a very poor or even warped understanding of issues.
The server hack and Crowdstrike situation was the first publicly fishy element of the entire Russia debacle, and the fact that they never took any steps to just put it to bed with serious evidence has to be considered ridiculous.
I always liked Edward Snowden’s guess about the server – that they probably found multiple hacks of the server by different actors, it was a juicy target and obviously the security wasn’t awesome. But the narrative was about the unique attack committed by Russia so that all had to be kept quiet. One possibility.
I agree to a large extent, but this hatred for Russia, support for centrifugal forces in many places, not only in Russia, those events were present long time before Trump, his unsympathetic (at least to me) ways of talking and actions are only another reason for the social coherence of the s.c. liberal minds
it was a juicy target
So one round before all that fuss, there was some controversy about Hillary emails, and a reddit post where someone was asking other sysadmins how to selectively delete emails from a large outlook mailbox file. There was speculation this post was tied to those emails and it vanished as far as i could tell. But the advertisement was there. That wasn’t “a faint scent of blood in the water,” that was Bambi and all the tasty little morsels hopping across through the fire swamp in utter innocence.
Right here with a mere 34k views. Less than 2 mins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urTk6O4c0mU
As most of you know, One America News Network has conducted an investigation of the events in Ukraine,
and produced a three part series showing the results.
If you click on my name above, you will get a YouTube playlist of those three 50-minute videos, featuring interviews with
Rudy Giuliani, Victor Shokin, and many people in Ukraine
who can speak about what they observed,
countering the media’s big lie that
all the charges against Biden have been “debunked”.
Depressing would be any viable Democrat candidate, who might turn the clock back to the swamp.