BIDEN THEIR TIME

Rep. Peter King

I find it interesting how Representative Peter King from New York and Long Island has decided to leave the seat that he has held so ably for so many years. Rep. Peter King is serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 2nd congressional district since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, King is currently in his 14th term in Congress, having served since 1993.
Several Republican senators are leaving the Senate, choosing not to run again. All this makes me wonder why. Although I didn’t agree with Rep. King, I also did agree with him. He is one of the voices of reason to weight the arguments that help me decide as a voter. He has always served his office well and that I will miss.

There is cancer growing in Congress that seems to be causing many an otherwise decent politician to abandon their office and years if good service because they are in a no-win situation, their constituency is supporting Trump and their moral compass is pointing the other way. Rather than pour money and time into a re-election campaign knowing they will not get the full support of those they should be representing if they support impeachment.

The shameful way the Republican Party is behaving in the process of impeachment is cause for these retiring members of Congress to disassociate themselves with their lost party. No longer can the Republican Party take the high road in any coherent way as they obfuscate, hinder, and obstruct the process, one which is meant to police and govern the officeholders particularly in high office.

If you listen to reports, read testimonies and consider statements made by credible, some non-partisan voices from career public servants, you can’t help be listen to what is being said and not know that this is all legitimate concerns and honest acknowledgment that something is illegal by the POTUS’ actions with the Ukrainian, his attempt to further his interest politically by his quid pro quo of the Congressional monies award to the Ukrainian government for their defense against our common enemy, Russia.

In their efforts to deflect from the POTUS place in this whole scandal they look to direct the focus from Donald Trump the politician to Hunter Biden, the son of a Democratic former Vice President. Biden has been investigated enough times that we can be assured that his time on the Board of Directors of Burisma, a

corrupt oil company in Ukraine is clear of any scandal.
 

Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden has worked as a lobbyist and has served on boards of directors, and his business dealings have raised eyebrows and headlines. According to The New York Times, Hunter Biden was on the board “of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies.” Politifact concluded in their article exploring the issue that “Experts agree that Hunter Biden’s acceptance of the position created a conflict of interest for his father, (the Vice President).”

In May 2019 the New York Times reported that dealing with Ukraine was something Joe Biden “enthusiastically embraced” as President Barack Obama’s vice president, “browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act.” 

The Times added that Joe Biden, in 2016, “threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.” The prosecutor’s name was Viktor Shokin. What transpired was in the interest of the U.S., and not political gain.

The prosecutor was voted out. The Times reported that Hunter Biden “had a stake in the outcome,” because, at the time, he was a board member for “an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch” who had been a target of the fired prosecutor.

The Times described Hunter as a “Yale-educated lawyer” who had served on Amtrak’s board and boards for nonprofit organizations but didn’t have experience in Ukraine. He was paid “as much as $50,000 per month” some months for his work for Burisma Holdings, The Times reported. 

The Times claimed that Hunter and his partners “were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats” during “the period” that the company faced probes in Ukraine and from Obama administration officials.

The newspaper quoted Hunter Biden as saying, “I have had no role whatsoever concerning any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers. I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”

Some allege that Shokin stopped investigating Burisma, countering his narrative that he wanted to pursue the probe. Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), told Radio Free Europe that Shokin “dumped important criminal investigations on corruption associated with [former President Viktor] Yanukovych, including the Burisma case.” Furthermore, “Ukrainian prosecutors and anti-corruption advocates who were pushing for an investigation into the dealings of Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevskiy, said the probe had been dormant long before Biden leveled his demand,” Radio Free Europe reports.

To complicate matters further, Rudolph Giuliani, a non-government employed personal lawyer for Donald Trump was creating backdoor policy investigating and non-issues that POTUS felt needed to be done to take the onus off of the President.

The fact that there was smoke with Hunter Biden I think it should be investigated further, however, not in the same vein as the impeachment, but so should the actions of the President to find dirt where there are conditions of withholding Congressionally approved funds for the defense of an Allie, the Ukrainian nation.