I always knew Joe Biden would end the Trump presidency

[5starlib]

I just never thought it'd be this soon!! Well I know I'm counting my chickens, but even if Trump remains in office, he'll be deeply wounded going into 2020. Joe Biden is doing a public service by running for president! If he never launched his campaign, none of this Ukraine stuff would've happened. Biden would go down in history as a giant of American legends. If Trump is forced out, no way the Democratic Party would not nominate him.

[BlueTsunami2018]

3. Impropriety?

What impropriety?

[DrFunkenstein]

8. According to the US Departmental Ethics Office

Conflicts and Impartiality

Conflicting Financial Interests

Sometimes your government work may benefit you or your family personally, or may affect individuals or organizations that you have some connection with outside your government job. In these circumstances, the public could be concerned that you will be motivated by considerations other than your desire to do what is best for the public as a whole. Because the success of our government system depends upon maintaining the confidence of the public and your impartiality in performing official duties, your agency might decide that you should not be involved in a certain assignment because the public might question your objectivity.

Of course, the public is likely to consider some circumstances more troublesome than others. Recognizing this, Congress passed a criminal conflict of interest law, 18 U.S.C. § 208, which prohibits you from working on an assignment in some situations - even if you know you can be objective and even if your supervisor wants you to work on it.

Specifically, this law says that you may not work on an assignment that you know will affect your own financial interests or the financial interests of your spouse or your minor child. The prohibition also applies if you know the assignment will affect the financial interests of: your general partner; an organization that you serve as an officer, director, employee, general partner, or trustee; or someone with whom you have an arrangement for employment, or with whom you are negotiating for employment.

...

Appearance of Impartiality

There may be circumstances other than those covered by 18 U.S.C. § 208 in which an employee should not perform official duties in order to avoid an appearance of a loss of impartiality. The issue of impartiality is addressed in the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch at 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502. The regulation contains two disqualification provisions addressing appearance issues.

The first provision, entitled "Personal and business relationships," states that an employee should obtain specific authorization before participating in certain government matters where his or her impartiality is likely to be questioned. The matters covered by this standard are particular matters with specific parties, such as contracts, grants, or investigations:

--that are likely to affect the financial interests of a member of the employee's household, or

--In which persons with whom the employee has a specific relationship ("covered relationship" ) are parties or represent parties. This would include, for example, matters involving recent employers, employers of spouses or minor children, or anyone with whom the employee has or seeks a business or financial relationship.

https://www.doi.gov/ethics/conflicts

[beastie boy]

13. From the text you posted, one phrase jumped out at me:

"your agency might decide that you should not be involved in a certain assignment". It appears that the law requires a decision of one's agency to determine conflict or partiality. In Biden's case, his agency was probably Obama's Chief of Staff. I am not aware of anyone ever bringing up any such decision by any agency. In fact, if such decision existed, there would be no need for Trump or Giuliani to risk a fishing expedition in Ukraine in violation of the US law.

So far, Trump's clumsy attempt to dig dirt on Hunter Biden, let alone Joe Biden, has backfired spectacularly. Trump wasn't even trying to frame Joe, he was trying to frame Hunter and just pin him on Joe by association. But it appears there is nothing he found, or will find, that can implicate Hunter in any impropriety. Legally speaking, Hunter's conduct doesn't reflect on Joe at all as far as conflict of interest law is concerned, since Joe had nothing to do with Hunter's business at all, and there are no grounds to bring any charges for Joe in any event.

So ethically speaking, Joe is squeaky clean, and is so by design. After all, eight years of being a VP makes you aware of the laws you are sworn to uphold.

This is why Trump is a monumental fool, and is paying dearly for being a fool. As far as law is concerned, his fishing expedition was doomed from the outset.

[highplainsdem]

18. That was brought up and answered at the time. Please don't aid RWers by echoing their attacks.

From Reuters, May 2014:

Asked by a reporter whether Hunter Biden’s appointment to the company presented a conflict, White House spokesman Jay Carney said it did not.

“Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president,” Carney said during a briefing.

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Vice President Biden, said he “does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company.”

The head of a watchdog group on government ethics said there was no inherent conflict in Biden’s job.

“It can’t be that because your dad is the vice president, you can’t do anything,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Financial conflict of interest laws and regulations for government officials do not apply to the president and vice president, explained Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer for former Republican President George W. Bush from 2005 until 2007.

Even if they did apply, the laws do not extend to the financial interests of officials’ grown children, he said.

“It’s very clear the statute does not cover this, even if the statute applied to the vice president,” said Painter, now at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Regulations do require government officials to recuse themselves on decisions where their family members are a party, or representing a party, he said.

And, as has been pointed out again and again, Biden's role in getting a very corrupt Ukrainian official was NOT because that official was investigating the company that had hired Hunter Biden, but because that official was NOT prosecuting corruption.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287292961


https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287289740


https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287288568

[PAMod]

22. You should re-read your own post

None of that describes what transpired in Ukraine.

Vice President Biden was representing the President of the United States. He took no action on his own.

Even more to the point, his actions did not affect the financial interests of anyone, certainly not anyone in his household, or an employer of his spouse or minor children.

Good lord...

[highplainsdem]

19. If you talk about "Biden's impropriety," use that wording, you help the RW attacks on him. It's

important to discredit them, not echo them.

Trump and the RW smear machine will go after any of our candidates they see as a threat to Trump's re-election.

Democrats only hurt themselves if they fall into that RW trap, even if it might appear for the moment to offer an advantage to a rival of the front-runner.

[gordianot]

2. Prisons are full of lesser Donald Trump's.

They are all self destructive. Trump and his Narcissism are on a truly grand scale. Joe Biden’s empathy (which does get him occasionally in trouble) is the exact opposite of Donald Trump. If they were in High School it is entirely possible Biden would have met him behind the barn. It is doubtful Trump would have shown up without help.

[Funtatlaguy]

4. Here is my biggest concern.

What if the big money and power people in the gop get together and decide to dump Trump.
They tell 20 gop Senators to vote him out.
If that would happen by December, they would have time enough to put some heavy hitters on enuf state primary ballots to get a strong nominee like Kasich or Romney.

[empedocles]

6. Bigger concerm, might be Dem progressives undermine Biden, who appears

to be much stronger opponent to any republican than progressive candidates. Dem primary enthusiasts hurt in general elections.

[Demsrule86]

15. Then his base will be so pissed...we will have a landslide...they still love him...and the GOP is

supporting Trump still...in terms of voters...so that won't happen. And a progressive candidate only works in this center left country if one has a deeply unpopular president like Trump so Biden is still the best choice- a perceived moderate...he helps with the senate, preserves the house and wins the presidency...no more judges for the cons.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Get real. Biden isn't and hasn't ended it. At most he is only peripherally involved at this point.

He has as yet not had any central role in it, and tRump's presidency is not ended yet.

You could make a better case that his son is ending it.



tRump is doing himself in, as Pelosi and many others including myself predicted. There are 101 things that could have ended tRump at any time. It is just chance that this one hit.

Biden didn't lift a finger.

Get real.

[HeartlandProgressive]

9. Hunter Biden did nothing wrong

indirectly he deserves some credit for sending Trump over the edge.

[samnsara]

7. yes he will!

[njhoneybadger]

10. Joe Biden has been tRumps biggest fear.

Funny nobody is talking about gaffes lately

[beastie boy]

14. Can you follow up on this one? I am not getting it.

[emulatorloo]

17. A couple three DU'ers seem to be amplifying Trump's false accusations for some unknown reason

Trump’s false accusations have been debunked by lots of respected news organizations.

Links to several articles debunking Trump’s falsehoods:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212489036#post7

[jcgoldie]

11. Yeah right

[bobGandolf]

16. You should be worried.

It looks, at this time, that Warren might beat Biden out for the nomination. I hate to say this, because she has done everything she can to lay out her positions for voters, but I'm not confident she can beat Trump.

[peggysue2]

20. It is strange

Strange in the sense that the smear against Joe Biden and his son was set into motion the day after Fox indicated Joe Biden was leading Trump by 10 points in the national polls.

But from what I'm reading--though the threat of Biden's candidacy was noted early on--the Biden smear was also planned as a smoke screen, a distraction in the wider plot to cover Trump in his intended pardon of Paul Manafort. Why would that be? Manafort might be making noise through his lawyers that he's getting really, really tired of sitting in jail. And Manafort holds the Crown Jewels on Trump's criminal activity, his collusion with Putin and who knows what else.

Think Mob connections.

Killing two birds with one stone. Get rid of Biden's election threat with a smear campaign, the sort used on Hillary Clinton, and then ensure that Manafort doesn't create a problem for Trump and his handlers down the road.

In the future, this is going to make a great True Crime novel!

[Gothmog]

21. President Trump was extraordinarily preoccupied with Joe Biden

Link to tweet

At home and abroad, on Twitter, at campaign rallies, in interviews and even from the White House lawn, Trump spent an inordinate amount of time deriding Biden and insisting that the former vice president could not be ahead of him in polls — despite the fact that Biden has led the president in general election matchups in every major poll conducted in 2019.

“I think he’s got a pretty clear pattern, doesn’t he? He usually only spends his capital on those that he views as a threat, or a challenge,” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, which did not endorse a candidate for president in 2016. “I think our union coming out strongly on behalf of Joe Biden, cut him short at best ... It got under his skin.”

Trump’s predawn online tirade was a precursor to a period in which Biden appeared to occupy a remarkable amount of his attention. At a May 20 rally in Pennsylvania — the state where the former vice president was born — the president laced into the candidate who was then the undisputed front-runner in the Democratic field....

“The one thing the president is well aware of is that in his base there are a lot of Obama voters,” the aide said, alluding to what he said was the president’s perception that Biden threatened his hold on those voters. “They’re union members, they’re rank and file. A lot of those times, if they were campaigning, Obama would send Biden out there.”

[Tarheel_Dem]

23. I'm hopeful, but I'm not convinced that this damages tRump as much as we might hope.

There have been so many inflection points where I thought any other POTUS would have had to step down. You have to admit, this guy has changed the game, and it's unlike any other presidency we've known or read about. I don't blame him, I blame his enablers. The "Justice" department acting as his personal law firm. Rogue nations acting as his opposition research team. It's all so new, and as long as Moscow Mitch & Co. continue to treat his behavior as normal, nothing actually happens, and the country moves on to the next outrage.

There's a reason why there are so many non-confirmed, "Acting" heads of some of our most crucial governmental agencies. What other administration would have the nads to just blatantly defy court orders & subpoenas the way this WH does? At every turn, he proves his unfitness for the highest office in the land, and there are no consequences from his compatriots in Congress.