Its a little bit different tho; I personally reported few ads that claims were definitely untrue and were easy to debunk which I did when reporting to FB. They took these down within 5 days or so. Here you have situation in which Facebook basically saying: we know there is no proof of Biden corruption and all the evidence so far proves to the contrary, but we will let them continue to demean his name thru these false ads. This is clearly done for profits obviously - we are what? a year from election and Trump Facebook budget is at $1.5 million per week (!!). Its a serious money and Facebook is publicly traded company so morals, truth and character take a back seat :(
From what I can see here[0], her plan is to undo the mergers (so, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp would become their own companies once again).
And I believe you're referring to this audio[1], which I did not know about until now. Relevant quote:
> "You have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. ... But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight."
Mobsters will fight over existential threats too, and it doesn't make what they're doing appropriate or worth defending. I'm not sure I'd go so far as defending to the death Facebook's right to be a giant conglomerate eating up other companies. Isn't that exactly the point?
I don't see an argument saying 'companies must be ever bigger, infinitely, as a moral right'. The companies might think so, very passionately even, but I would suggest they're wrong and it's a bad thing to indulge.
No proof of Biden corruption? How about the video where he brags about extorting Ukraine to fire the special prosecutor investigating the company his son was being paid by? "I'm leaving in 6 hours... if he's not fired, you're not getting the billion dollars." What evidence goes to the contrary?
Biden's son served on the board of Barisma.. a company that was being investigated for corruption. When Shokin inherited the case, he did nothing with it. Just let it sit for a year+. He did that with a lot of corruption cases, which is why western leaders (EU leaders, IMF, and Biden) wanted Shokin removed.
Removing Shokin hurts Barisma.. Shokin was standing in the way of the case being prosecuted.
So if you think Biden was doing this for his son, the question is: why put pressure on Ukraine to remove the prosecutor that's preventing Barisma from being prosecuted? It makes no sense. If Biden wanted to help his son, Shokin was exactly the person he wanted in that position.
(Also note, Barisma was being investigated for actions taken before Biden's son was hired.. Biden's son was not the target of the investigation.)
There are records in the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, and statements on the record by his colleagues and deputies that he did nothing with the case. In 2015 he literally took 0 actions on the barisma case. Literally nothing. He didn't even touch the file.
His deputy (Kasko) resigned in frustration because Shokin made so little progress in the corruption cases he promised to pursue.
And he says there were no complaints about him... but he refused to assist the UK in a separate corruption case against Barisma... the IMF wanted him gone; the ERDC; the entire G7; and the Obama admin (not just Biden) because he failed in his job.
Shokin's statement (that you linked to in part) was made to help Firtash in a court case in Austria. Firtash is another Ukrainian energy tycoon being investigated for corruption, bribery, and money laundering. The fact that he's going to bat to help corrupt individuals avoid charges kind of says it all (the same people that as a prosecutor he would have been in charge of prosecuting--Firtash was also under investigation at the same time.. he did nothing on that case either).
I find it truly difficult to believe that you believe this so easily. It's preposterous. They closed the case immediately after replacing the prosecutor.
I know HN isn't really the place for this, but since you asked and I did a fairly deep dive into this just to know what's going on, here's what seems to have happened, complete with evidence to the contrary:
> Shokin claimed in May 2019 that he had been investigating Burisma Holdings.[28][29][30][31] However, Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin's deputy overseeing international cooperation before resigning in February 2016 citing corruption in the office, provided documents to Bloomberg News indicating that under Shokin, the investigation into Burisma had been dormant.[32] Also, the investigation into Burisma only pertained to events happening before Hunter Biden joined the company.[33]
I believe that's true, and the cited sources seem to check out, and predate this whole scandal. It's worth noting that a lot of these Ukrainian politicians are pretty sketchy and they have a big problem with corruption, so there are other geopolitical interests at play with these Ukrainian political figures.
To be sure I'm not being duped by Wikipedia, I find Google News searches for articles about the key players in any controversy that were published before the MSM started caring give a way clearer picture of what's going on. It can help you figure out who's spinning what.
It's helpful to know that Shokin was widely condemned for being a corrupt prosecutor that, ironically, wasn't pursuing corruption cases against political allies. From March 2016: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sackin... It's pretty clear that Shokin was a known corrupt actor, for real reasons, prompting domestic and European outrage in ways that Biden would have had great difficulty manufacturing.
I don't read Ukrainian, so some of the local reporting isn't clear to me, but the English reporting from Ukraine seems like they're telling the whole story as they know it.
> Joe Biden said he has never spoken to his son about the directorship. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker that his father simply said, "I hope you know what you are doing."
Joe knows his kid is a fuckup that's trying to cash in on the family name. I don't think he would stake his reputation on doing something corrupt for his kid and then brag about it. It's far more likely that was Joe is just bragging about his own amazing diplomacy skills. In reality, he was just doing what the administration told him to do, after the groundwork to remove Shokin had been being laid by EU and Ukranian interests way in advance.
It's pretty clear that Hunter Biden was never being investigated, but the likely-corrupt gas company did have a prior history of being investigated for corruption issues. It's also clear that Hunter Biden has skated by his whole life on being Joe Biden's kid, and his moral compass may be lacking. There is no evidence that Joe was actually involved in anything corrupt.
The unfortunate truth is that Hunter's actions probably were legal, and that's a real problem, but you can't condemn Joe for his kid trying to cash in on the family name.
So yes, the video of Joe Biden isn't great, but it's because he was bragging about how great he is at negotiating in a Q&A section. And really, he was taking credit for other people's work to remove Shokin, even if he actually was the final tipping point in making Ukraine take action. Not one of his finer moments, but it's not the admission of corruption you think it is.
Here's the full video at the time you're referencing. If you watch more of it, he's actually pretty informed about this whole Ukraine/Russia business: https://youtu.be/Q0_AqpdwqK4?t=3100
The bit you're referring to is at the tail-end of the Q&A and he's obviously loosened up a bit before he starts telling his likely-exaggerated war story about getting Shokin fired.
I'm not shocked that Joe and Hunter golfed together, or that Hunter's business partners were there too. But there remains 0 evidence that Joe did anything wrong, and even the daily mail says that in the article you linked.
Look at the level of effort and defense you needed to go to in order to try and explain this stuff away. We disagree on a few things, like, I do think it was an admission of corruption, but I agree that much of this can never / will never be litigated and certified as such in a court. The point wasn't to debate the eventual court decision, my point was that only in the Biden case does this type of evidence even exist. In the Trump case, there's only mind-reading and rumor.
A few things:
- Even if Biden is guilty, what Trump is doing is clearly illegal, as said by everyone looking at the law
- GOP was supporting Biden on this issue at the time
- Even the remove prosecutor in Ukraine says there is no Biden story here.
You say "clearly illegal" like it means something, or it's true. At best, you could say that you think it is illegal.
What law? Where is the violation? "by everyone looking" is another silly falsity. Lots of people looking at this see nothing even remotely illegal.
"It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election" - Ellen L Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission
> However, there's a vast distance between that quote and convincing evidence of a violation in this instance.
Of course there isn't any evidence that you'll accept. Nevermind that the whole world saw him solicit Russian assistance in hacking his opponent during the last elections and that the video evidence of him doing so is available for anyone to view at any time.
