Trump didn't openly extort Zelensky. He simply made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

You shouldn't need one if you're in the US. Aren't you?

 

YEs but in fact here in the US the NYT puts up a paywall if you wish to read the whole article

 

Rep. Schiff asserts that to be impeachable, we don't need the action to involve a quid pro quo. But isn't that what a shakedown is? "Give me this (info on Biden) and I'll give you that (weaponry, money, whatever)."

I don't say that shakedowns are the only impeachable offenses, but to be a shakedown it must at least be a shakedown.

 

Not according to @Golem, creator of this thread. The so called 'logic' being that the mafia "don't come out and say 'If you don't do this, I will kill your whole family.'"

 

Trump won in 2016.
You need to get over this.

 

Hold on to that thought. Grasp it like a life preserver off a sinking cruise ship. It's sure to serve you well as the ship sinks. The rest of us have transferred to a better ship and moved on.

 

What's the "better ship?" And you haven't been capable of responding to my earlier scrutiny.

 

Noooooooooo!!!!!!

 

It's more like a "fact."

 

Kill shot: "Congressman, there are a lot of things that concern me -- I'm the Director of National Intelligence. How the Presidrnt conducts diplomacy is his business."

Acting DNI Maguire, 2 minutes ago.

 

Asking him to open up investigations into political opponents is obvious meant to aid him in winning the elections.

 

Something that far righters always get wrong is their claims that Hunter Biden worked directly for Burshima. He didn't. He sat on their board of directors. It's very common for the boards of both the US and European companies to have members from outside industries to help oversee corporate governance. I am not saying that he didn't get the job partly because of who his father was, but there is no evidence that there was anything illegal done to get him the job.

Far righters automatically assume, based just pn the fact that he had no experience in the oil industry, that getting a spot on the board of directors of an oil company autonatically means he or his father bribed someone to get him the jobs, but like I said,it's common for boardmmembers to not have direct experience in whatever industry a company happens to be in. For example, the board of directors for Fox includes the CEO of a french investment firm, a former CEO of Ford Motor Company, a Partner in JP Morgan, and Paul Ryan......None of whom have ANY experience running a telecom company.

 

Bravo, excellent post.

Trump said, "I would like you to find out about the other thing. There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me."

That is about as clear as one can get. Trump is asking a foreign power to intervene in our Presidential election on his behalf and he used the military aid intended to fend off Russian aggression as a bribe. Five days before the phone call, Trump withheld the funds. During the phone call, Trump said, "I would like you to do us a favor."

Only a person with extreme naiveté can't understand the connection.

 

So because you know you got nothing on him you are trying the mob angle?
Jeez, talk about desperate

 

Only in public.

 

Yeah, I kinda wonder whether there was maybe a connection.

 

Lol, uh, no.

 

LOL! I think Trump fans have lost any credibility of accusing others of nepotism when Ivanka and Jared were appointed to the WH.

 

1. I wonder why they wanted him on the board.

2. I wonder what he actually did day to day that merited his monster salary.

3. I wonder what the difference is in your mind between a righter and a far righter.
(Everything is expressed with modifiers like this these days. "The revelations in the whistleblower's report are of extremely grave concern to anyone who cares, as we Democrats do, about the survival of the Republic." What happened to "concern" and "grave concern"?)

4. I wonder if you are aware that Biden's "job" raised ethical concerns in many corners, not just at the headquarters of the KKK.

Yoshiko M. Herrera, an expert on Russia and Eurasian policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the Post that Hunter Biden's position in itself was "a conflict of interest even if it doesn’t break any laws."

From the Washington Post:

• There's also a subplot with a Ukranian prosecutor, ousted under pressure from Joe Biden, who says he would have questioned Hunter Biden if he had stayed in the job. But the Post notes that "is unclear how seriously Shokin — who was under fire by U.S. and European officials for not taking a more aggressive posture toward corruption overall — was scrutinizing Burisma when he was forced out."
• The Post also notes that "for more than two decades, [Hunter Biden's] professional work often tracked with his father’s life in politics, from Washington to Ukraine to China."

Do they earn $50k/month?

On edit, well, whaddya know: "President Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who serves as Advisor to the President, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who serves as Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor, each forgo their White House salaries."

I hope you know that Trump also forgoes his salary

 

What do they say in the closed door meetings you have with them?

 

I might be mistaken, but I think he said it isn't necessary for the language during the phone conversation to explicitly mention a quid pro quo. Both parties knew what was being discussed.........that is clear.

 

I'm not privy to FBI procedures or methodology.

 

Read OP

If by "reasons" you mean "excuses".... But Trump hasn't come up with an intelligent one.

 

From the complaint...........

"Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange ofpleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:
• initiate or continue an investigation2 into the activities offormer Vice President Joseph Eiden and his son, Hunter Eiden;
• assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber sec~ity firm Crowdstrike,3 which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; and
• meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem."

 

You will have to convincingly show that one (dirt on Biden, which isn't even what Trump asked for; he asked for information) was necessarily dependent on the other (the money) for it to matter to voters.

Since the Senate will quickly quash the articles of impeachment, there won't even be a trial, so it's going nowhere legally, but the extent of the linkage -- the quid pro quo -- will probably matter a lot to swing voters. R's and D's are all entrenched and aren't going to bend.