rumitoid

Trump has said his request for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens was linked to an interest in rooting out corruption, which would be in the US's national interest.

But Giuliani's letter directly undermines that, as it specifies he was acting as Trump's private attorney; in other words, he was representing the president's personal political interests and not the country's interests.

"Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States," Giuliani wrote. "This is quite common under American law because the duties and privileges of a President and a private citizen are not the same."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/newly-revealed-letter-rudy-giuliani-072130945.html

woodguru

Actually it raises questions such as if Giuliani is even close to being legal in hos premises that private business on behalf of the president is even close to being okay. It trashes defenses we would be seeing otherwise. I expect everything to be a matter of attorney client or executive privilege in spite of the fact that there is no such thing in criminal matters.

Giuliani, the gift that keeps on giving, having given us the shreks.

Weasel Loc: In the Great State Of Indiana!!

We want H****r B***n on the stand to be questioned under Oath.
If not for the Bidens involvement with Burisma, none of this Kangaroo Court Proceeding would have seen the light of day.
Yes President Trump was looking out for the American People.
And yes he saw corruption on the part of the Biden Family

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

I'm trying to see the connection here, how the hell does a president's personal representative destroy anything a president does? Every president in American history has appointed personal representatives, attorneys, envoys, and emissaries.

The Special Envoy: Why the United States needs them

AMONG all the instruments available to the President in his conduct of foreign relations, none is more flexible than the use of personal representatives. He is free to employ officials of the government or private citizens. He may give them such rank and title as seem appropriate to the tasks; these designations may be ambassador, commissioner, agent, delegate; or he may assign no title at all. He may send his agents to any place on earth that he thinks desirable and give them instructions either by word of mouth, or in writing, or through the Department of State, or in any other manner that seems to him fitted to the occasion. Some have been exceedingly formal; others completely informal. Many agents have borne commissions like those of Government officers, ensuring them diplomatic rights, dignities and immunities. Because of these circumstances many have mistakenly considered themselves officers. Others have had mere letters of introduction and have enjoyed no diplomatic privileges. Some have gone with no written credentials whatsoever, their errand described only verbally. Their functions have varied in importance from the trivial to the vital.

Their missions may be secret, no one wh**ever being informed of them. They may be open and accompanied by a blare of publicity. Neither their private character nor public attention affects the position of the representative. The President may meet their expenses and pay them such sums as he regards as reasonable. In this matter there is no check upon him except the availability of funds which has never proved an insoluble problem. In short, he is as nearly completely untrammeled as in any phase of his executive authority.

<SNIP>:

P**********l Envoys and Emissaries

Is Donald Trump the first president to dispatch private emissaries to conduct p**********l business? You might actually think so, listening to the recent barrage of media denunciations on this point.

“Giuliani’s role as Trump’s man in Ukraine,” asserted Financial Times, was “in defiance of diplomatic norms.”

And why, Chris Wallace demanded of p**********l adviser Stephen Miller on Fox News Sunday, did Trump use three private lawyers to get information on Biden from the Ukrainians rather than “go through all of the agencies of the government?”

These are nonsense charges, of course, as the media sharpshooters certainly know – or ought to know. Trump’s use of Giuliani was perfectly in keeping with “diplomatic norms.” The role of special p**********l envoys, with or without formal rank or title, is enshrined in US history and embodied in the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution.

It all started with George Washington – who better? – who sent emissaries overseas for negotiations without legislative approval. His successor, John Adams, dispatched three US envoys to France in a fruitless attempt to avert what turned into a “Quasi War” (1798-1800).

Fifty years on, President James Polk detailed a special emissary to Mexico to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war between the US and Mexico and recognized the Rio Grande as America’s southern border.

Notable in his own right as a p**********l confidant and envoy was Edward House. A novelist and himself the subject of numerous biographies, “Colonel” House (the rank was really a nickname) served as Woodrow Wilson’s personal diplomatic representative to the European powers before, during, and after World War I.

Franklin Roosevelt, an admirer of Colonel House, employed his own intimate friend and adviser, Harry Hopkins, in a very similar fashion. During World War II, in fact, Hopkins lived in the White House when not away on secret p**********l missions outside of usual diplomatic channels. FDR’s reliance on Hopkins was a constant thorn in the side of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who found himself routinely bypassed in favor of the “American Rasputin.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Key elements of the Roosevelt-Hopkins Oval Office relationship were reprised between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Like FDR, rather than go through his Cabinet, Nixon preferred to run foreign affairs out of the White House. Thus it was Kissinger, not State Secretary William Rogers, who was sent flying off on that secret mission to Beijing.

President Trump, in his dealings with foreign leaders, has an embarrassing abundance of reasons not “to go through all of the agencies of the government” (to use Chris Wallace’s stodgy Beltway phrase). The contamination of Trump’s official White House communications channels – including all those NSA unmaskings – began on Day 1, if not before, and the leaking since has been neither stanched nor slowed. Under such circumstances, sending private communications via personal emissaries, including one’s attorney, makes eminent sense.

It was a similar rationale that prompted FDR, needing to ensure absolute wartime security, to delegate Harry Hopkins as a top-secret courier to Allied leaders (including Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin).

As a parting note on the matter, can we doubt that a President Hillary would have continued to call on the manifold sk**ls of her favorite political operative, Sidney Blumenthal, just as she did throughout her career – for the Lewinsky scandal, Libya debacle, and Steele dossier, for example – and that the rabid watchdogs of the mainstream media would have collectively yawned and looked the other way?

rumitoid

Sorry, but you are being ridiculously dense on this question. It was a personal request by the president to investigate a political opponent and withhold legally allocated funds by Congress until the Ukraine complied--in that personal coercion to comply. Other channels and means if it was a matter of national security were not used and ignored. Wake up!

It is a slam-dunk the president is guilty of a High Crime of abusing his office.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

On the day he OK'd the aid, Trump learned that Congress was going to force his hand and spend the money anyway. He could either go along or get run over.

On Sept. 11, the White House received a draft of a continuing resolution, produced by House Democrats, that would extend funding for the federal government. Among other provisions, the bill would push the Ukraine money out the door, whether in the final days of fiscal year 2019 or in 2020, regardless of what the president did.
The draft continuing resolution would on September 30 immediately free up the remainder of the $250 million appropriated for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative in the fiscal 2019 Defense spending law and extend its availability for another year," Roll Call reported a little after noon on Sept. 11.

According to knowledgeable sources, the Office of Management and Budget received the draft on the morning of Sept. 11. OMB Director Russell Vought informed the president around midday. There was no doubt the Democratic-controlled House would pass the measure, which was needed to avoid a government shutdown. Later that afternoon, Trump — who must have already known that the Republican-controlled Senate would also support the bill — had the point emphasized to him when he received a call from Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

Portman, along with Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, co-chairs the Senate Ukraine Caucus. Portman and several other senators wrote to the White House on Sept. 3, imploring the president to release the aid. On Sept. 11, Portman felt the need to talk again, with the same message — only this time with the backdrop of the House preparing to pass a bill that would force Trump's hand.

At that point, the president knew he could not maintain the hold on aid in the face of bipartisan congressional action. So he gave in. By early evening on Sept. 11, the hold was lifted.

It was an entirely unremarkable end to the story. President tries to do something. Congress opposes. President sees he has no support and backs down. It has happened many, many times with many, many presidents.

In the end, the release of the aid is not dramatic proof of anything in the Trump-Ukraine matter. The facts do not support the Democratic notion that the president "got caught," knew he was guilty, and gave in. It is not a smoking gun. It is a story of a president and Congress bumping up against each other on spending, and, as often happens, Congress won.

In the phone call, Trump said, "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 wh**ever 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."

Do you have any idea at all what this is really about? Do you actually believe that president Trump is worried about going up against Plugs, the drunk, Biden in a general e******n? Obviously, you don't have a freaking clue.

rumitoid

Congress was about to pressure him to comply with legally distributed funds because he was in criminal violition. Once the president was caught in this nefarious act, hand in the cookie jar, he finally released the funds.

Ugly t***h. Ouch!

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

In the Yale Journal of International Law, Jeffrey A. Meyer writes:

As the United States in the 1980s seeks to reassert its influence abroad, foreign assistance is playing an increasingly important role in American foreign policy. No longer primarily a subsidy for friendly foreign governments, foreign assistance has become a versatile instrument of intervention without the use of force. For example, the United States has used foreign aid to destabilize unfriendly regimes in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Angola; to quell international terrorism; and to secure the release of American hostages in the Middle East. Foreign aid serves an equally great symbolic role, as a barometer of American moral approval or disapproval of the outside world. Therefore, though the actual volume of foreign assistance channeled abroad may be small and sometimes of little impact, American foreign assistance policy functions as a broad index of U.S. foreign policy concerns. The annual foreign assistance budgeting process has become no less than a surrogate for a systematic reexamination of the progress, problems, and propriety of America’s foreign policy.

Although published 30 years ago thus somewhat dated, this extract is spot on. Some of the issues the United States uses foreign aid to address are, Female G*****l M********n, A******n & Human Trafficking, to name but a few. In the case of Ukraine, if indeed President Trump had tied U.S. Aid to the conversation, it would have been in support of U.S. policy concerning corruption. This policy is in fact codified in a treaty between the United States and Ukraine, signed by no less than President Bill Clinton.

Let’s contrast this with Vice President Biden, who did indeed threaten Ukraine with the withholding of U.S. aid if they didn’t fire their senior prosecutor, which they did. The difference there, was that Biden did this to preclude a corruption investigation on his son. Interestingly enough, that would not only be a violation of U.S. law, but a violation of the U.S.-Ukraine Treaty criminal investigation treaty.

In short, we have then Vice President Biden, corruptly using his office to preclude a criminal corruption investigation of his son. On the other hand, we have a sitting President, who in accordance with his Article II powers, U.S. Statute and Treaty obligations, asked his counterpart, President Zelensky to look into a case of possible corruption and interference in the 2016 U.S. e******n. The first was the odds on favorite to be the Democrat nominee for President. The second is the subject of yet another Democrat witch hunt, this one masquerading as an “Impeachment Inquiry” for for an action that he didn’t take, but even if he did, would be absolutely in line with U.S. Law and Foreign Policy.

The Democrats have gotten out way over their skis on this one. Not only is this going to prove a nothingburger as far as President Trump goes, but it will likely lead to Biden dropping out of the race.

What you ain't gettin', bubba, is the time for spreading economic and military aid willy nilly to countries all over the globe is over. For far too long, America has been throwing money at foreign countries, many of them hostile to the US, and getting squat in return, and in some cases, the money was used to finance operations against us, including terrorism.

As of October, 2019, here are the top ten countries receiving US aid and the amount.

Afghanistan: $5.7 billion
Iraq: $3.7 billion
Israel: $3.2 billion
Jordan: $1.5 billion
Egypt: $1.5 billion
Ethiopia: $1.1 billion
Kenya: $1.1 billion
South Sudan: $924 million
Syria: $891 million
Nigeria: $ 852 million

rumitoid

Egads! This while thing gets murkier by partisanship. Biden asked the Ukraine to fire a worldwide notoriously known corrupt person, not for their investigation of the Bidens. Yes, H****r took advantage of his father's position to get what appears to be a proxies job. Not a crime now. But it needs to be investigated.

But thank you for the excellent background information.