Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
How is it bribery for a president, responsible for seeing that the laws are faithfully executed, to insist that a regime dependent on U.S. aid investigate a conflict of interest and potential corruption when the enriched beneficiary is the son of the vice president of the USA?
Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens?
“Was there a quid pro quo?”
This question has bedeviled this city for months now. “The answer is yes,” said U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland in sworn testimony on Wednesday.
Sondland added that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, national security adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence were all wired in to what was up:
“They knew what we were doing and why. … Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.”
And so where are we headed now?
The House intel and judiciary committees will advance one or more articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the House floor, where they will be agreed upon in party-line votes and sent to the Senate for trial.
Impeachment appears as inevitable as anything in politics today.
Some are pressing the House, after Sondland, to slow down, cast a wider net, and demand the sworn testimony of Pompeo, Mulvaney, Pence, Bolton and Giuliani. Others are urging the House to strike while the iron is hot, move impeachment swiftly, and get it all done before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
As the goal of the more rabid anti-Trumpers is to impeach, convict and remove the president, and then proceed with civil and criminal charges, this looks to be a fight to the death.
Mulvaney may have shown the White House the way to fight a month ago. Asked whether the withholding of aid to Ukraine until an investigation of the Bidens had been announced was not the definition of a “quid pro quo,” Mulvaney blurted out:
“We do that all the time. … No question about it… That’s why we held up the money. I have news for everybody. Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.” Welcome to the real world.
In return for meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump had a right to demand that Ukraine initiate an investigation into its most corrupt company, Burisma. Especially since the ne’er-do-well son of Vice President Joe Biden had been given a $50,000-a-month seat on Burisma’s board just days after Joe demanded and got the resignation of the state prosecutor and signed off on a billion-dollar loan guarantee for this third-most corrupt regime on earth.
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We read often that allegations of corruption in the smelly deal that put Hunter Biden on Burisma’s board are “unfounded.”
Who did the investigating?
And what are we to make of the crocodile tears of Democrats that Ukrainian soldiers battling secessionists and Russians in the Donbass have died for lack of U.S. weapons held up by Trump?
Is this not manifest hypocrisy?
Most Ukrainian government officials were not even aware that the military aid for which Congress voted was being held up. And from 2014, when Vladimir Putin’s Russia seized Crimea and backed the secessionists in the Donbass, to 2017, President Barack Obama confined military aid to the Ukrainians to “sending blankets and meals,” as said the late Sen. John McCain.
If Trump imperiled “national security” by withholding for two months this latest tranche of military aid, did not Obama more gravely imperil our national security by denying Ukraine lethal aid for years?
Among the foreign service professionals who testified to Adam Schiff’s intel committee this week, none chose to associate himself with charges of “crimes” or “bribery” having been committed during that controversial phone call of July 25.
Indeed, the weakness of the Democratic case may be found in the endless escalation of the charges. First, Trump was guilty of a quid pro quo, and then an abuse of power, and then throwing fighting Ukrainian allies to the wolves. Next, it was bribery.
But how is it bribery for a president, responsible for seeing that the laws are faithfully executed, to insist that a regime dependent on U.S. aid investigate a conflict of interest and potential corruption when the enriched beneficiary is the son of the vice president of the USA?
Even before his first day in office, President Trump was in the gun sights of the “deep state” and its media auxiliaries.
And the origins of that “Get Trump!” conspiracy inside the “deep state” are now under investigation by the Inspector General of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.
The issue at hand: Criminal misconduct inside the U.S. government to determine the outcome of an election, and, failing that, to remove a president our government elite cannot abide.
Bottom line: If this country is not to be torn apart for a decade, the decision to retain or remove President Trump should be made by those who put him in the White House and not by rabid partisans like Adam Schiff.
Let the people decide the fate and future of the president of the United States. After all, they were the ones who hired him.
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I hope the senate takes the bull by the horns and conducts a trial. This way all the dirty laundry will come out for the entire world to see.
What I saw in the house intel hearings is subordinates questioning the policies of their boss; the president, and what right have they to do this? This is subordination.
And I really want to know what chain of command Lt. Cor. Vindman follows? This blows my mind that a military man can question his commander & chief in such a way and get away with it without court martial.
What amazes me is that no one is crying out against the abuse of power by the democrat party/ deep state, this including people in the democrat party that I personally know. Why can not they realize they are going down also, that reasoning has gone from what is the truth to what is someone’s opinion? Is the world supposed to revolve around a couple of billion people’s opinions.
Knew things were bad but not this bad, and maybe that is what this is, a warning nothing is going to get better.
Days of Noah Jesus Christ had spoken of:
“And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Genesis 6:5
In reference to the cartoon pictured, remember this when you vote :
The hacker needs no prior experience.
https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/28/EVEREST.pdf
The US government introduced communists Bolshevik principles into the once American state;
“It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes” ~ Joseph Stalin
But don’t worry, we’re only 70% communist for now.
I hope at the end of this Trump puts everyone of the treasonous son of bitches in jail
In jail my butt. I don’t want the taxpayers to pay to feed them for the rest of their miserable lives. The proper penalty for treason is death!
McCarthy was right. The Bolsheviks do not compromise. It is a rabid mindset that has to be put down. Those that confront them have to understand this. There is no compromising.
As usual, the Democrats are blaming Trump for what they are guilty of. Every witness except Sondland is involved in illegal weapon sales through Ukraine. Soros and Kolimoisky are at the top of the pyramid, right under Kissinger at the apex.
The entire impeachment scam is there to blow smoke and cover up the massive malfeasance of the Obama reign and the government drones who enriched themselves mightily at Ukranian expense. As to what has happened since Trump was elected, what you see here is a complete takeover by the deep state/dems to work a coup against a duly elected president because the fear that he may upset the apple cart. If they succeed then you can really kiss what remains of the US goodbye.
Pat you are a lying piece of shit! Sondland specifically stated there was NO quid pro quo in his teatamony yesterday yet you say different????
retire and collect your NWO checks you bastard!!!!
Do the government thing and round up all these slimy Democrats and take them to Gitmo. Do it at 3 am.
Stop all this foreign aid crap.It’s not like our country isn’t in enough debt already.
It’s all a bad joke.
Pat’s too intelligent to be a cuckservative so he must be one of “them”. Also diligently guards the 9/11 secret.
“They – TPTB” get to decide who makes it onto the ballot in November, and the sheeple continue to pretend that it is their vote that decides who is president. LOL.
We saw that with Ron Paul. I haven’t voted since.
We have seen that with EVERY election since 1789.
Let the “CITIZENS” decide Trumps fate. There, fixed it for ya. The same way leftist claim to tax the “Rich”. They define rich as anyone they can take shit from….with parasitic immigration I no longer trust “the people”.
William Lind, a bonafide military genius smells something brewing and it ain’t coffee.
4th Generation Warfare Handbook
“…should a Warren win in 2020, President Trump’s supporters will not consider her (or him) a legitimate President. But if the unholy alliance between Democrats and the Deep State succeeds in driving President Trump from office through impeachment or some other means, that will be a very different story. At that point, the message to President Trump’s supporters will be, “Your votes don’t matter, because even if you elect a President, we will drive him from office and reduce you to a silent serfdom. You and your views are entitled to no representation. You are and will remain ‘unpersons.’”
At that point, in the vast electoral sea that is red America, the legitimacy of the system itself, i.e., the state, will be brought into serious question. And when that happens, the chance of Fourth Generation war here on a large scale will rise dramatically. When you tell people they cannot achieve representation through ballots, they start to think about doing it with bullets.”