Politics Thread

[Berzerker]

UK passes bill to make the internet safe

to comply tech platforms will likely employ the UK's definition of safe and apply it to the rest of us

[Dauphin]

UK passes bill to make the internet safe

Lol at that idea.

[N35t0r]

UK passes bill to make the internet safe

to comply tech platforms will likely employ the UK's definition of safe and apply it to the rest of us

If it was up to the US to regulate tech, then we'd probably die of old age before anything is done. I'm thankful for European efforts in this regard given how US legislators are in the pockets of (or carrying water for) the industry.

[Berzerker]

Sometimes we pretend to like our 1st Amendment, now we can just blame European censors

kinda like how when Bush and Cheney were citing Italian and British intel to support their invasion of Iraq instead of our own intel... and then we blamed our intel anyway when the WMD didn't show up... You hate America if you didn't support Bush, he speaks for us.

[N35t0r]

I think that hating a whole continent for what Bush did is a bit too much...

[Berzerker]

Hunter Biden is suing Rudy Giuliani and his lawyer for hacking his laptop and manipulating a related external hard drive

that would be the laptop 51 high ranking security experts dismissed as Russian disinformation to help Biden

[Jon Miller]

The existence of the laptop wasn't outrageous.

The whole story was outrageous. The blind store person. The laptop information being sent various places and getting lost. The laptop being left for over a year. A number of the people involved were very obviously shady.

JM

[Ming]

Donald Trump liable for business fraud, says judge in New York civil cas
By Sam Cabral
BBC News, Washington

Donald Trump committed fraud by repeatedly misrepresenting his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars, a New York judge has ruled.

The ruling, part of a civil case brought against the former president and his family business, said he defrauded banks and insurers for years.
It is a major blow to Mr Trump that will likely hamper his ability to do business in the state.
Mr Trump and the other defendants have argued that they never committed fraud.
New York Attorney General Letitia James had accused Trump, his two adult sons and the Trump Organization of inflating the value of their properties by more than $2bn (£1.65bn) to suit the needs of their business.
She claimed the defendants issued false records and financial statements in order to get better terms on loans and insurance deals, and to pay less tax.
The scathing decision on Tuesday was issued by Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York state court, after Ms James asked for a summary ruling before the trial begins. She argued that finding certain facts to be beyond dispute would speed up the trial.
The judge determined that Mr Trump:

• Overvalued Mar-a-Lago by 2,300% in one financial statement
• Overvalued his penthouse at Trump Tower in New York by claiming that it was three times its actual size
• "Absurdly" argued that calculating the area of the penthouse was subjective, ruling "a discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud"

The ruling resolves the key claim of fraud made in the lawsuit, meaning the trial will now focus on a more narrow set of six remaining claims and determine the size of any potential penalty.
The trial is scheduled to begin on 2 October and could last until at least December. Ms James is seeking $250m in penalties and a ban on Mr Trump doing business in his home state.
In his ruling, Judge Engoron said "the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business".
"That is a fantasy world, not the real world," he wrote.
Judge Engoron also ordered the cancellation of business certificates that allow some of the former president's businesses, including the Trump Organization, to operate in New York.
That will not dissolve his company, but could end his control over signature New York properties like the Trump Tower and the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street.
The judge denied the Trump team's request to throw out the case, and separately fined five Trump attorneys $7,500 each for making "preposterous" arguments already rejected by the court and fueling what he called their clients' "obstreperous" conduct.

The Trump crime family... actually convicted in a court of law.

[pchang]

In a summary judgment no less.

[Berzerker]

Former Asst Atty Gen Eileen O'Connor testified the guy (Weiss) investigating Hunter Biden allowed the statute of limitations to run out on the more serious offenses

[Berzerker]

More from the impeachment inquiry... one of the Democrats on the committee said Jonathan Turley was discredited because he defended a polygamist in court

I guess that means lawyers can no longer testify on matters involving the law

[Berzerker]

Joe is only guilty of being a father - Democrat on the panel

I cant believe the room didn't erupt in laughter

the government is about to shut down - Jamie Raskin

[Berzerker]

uh oh... 3 Biden family business associates all corroborated Joe Biden is the "Big Guy" in the emails

[Jon Miller]

Can you provide links or references?

I have had you and others, independents and some Never Trumpers, who all tell me that there has been some piece of evidence given that demonstrate Joe Biden's guilt. And every time no evidence is forthcoming, it is just hearsay (which might motivate an investigation or inquiry, but if investigations and inquiries don't turn up evidence they should go away... unless they do turn up obstruction of justice).

“Third,” Gerhardt continued, “there were executives who asked Hunter Biden for help. Again, not yet any proof about any kind of complicity of President Biden. And lastly, Joe Biden gave a speech.”

“If that’s what exists as basis for this inquiry, it is not sufficient,” he continued. “I say that with all respect and I think that that is part of the problem I think, and many Americans think may, exist with respect to these proceedings.”

....

Jordan’s claim about Burisma asking Hunter Biden for help is established first in his appointment to the board, clearly and admittedly a function of his last name. It was also addressed in testimony from Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer. Archer told Oversight investigators that there was “constant pressure” on Burisma executives and that, particularly after a board meeting in Dubai in 2015, those executives appealed to Hunter Biden to do what he could.

What Archer didn’t say, though, was that this pressure was coming from the “prosecutor in Ukraine,” a man named Viktor Shokin. In fact, Archer testified that “Shokin wasn’t specifically on my radar as being an individual that was targeting” Burisma’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky.

......

More importantly, Joe Biden’s speech in December 2o15 was not what “start[ed] the process” of getting Shokin fired. Jordan is implying — as he did without pushback on Fox News earlier this year — that the Joe Biden speech on Dec. 9 of that year followed directly from the Dubai meeting, which was a few days before. But the trip to Ukraine was scheduled weeks earlier and Biden’s speech wasn’t the first push the U.S. government had made to have Shokin removed.

U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt had called out Shokin’s failure to address corruption in a speech that September. That came months after international actors here and in the European Union had begun discussing how to deal with Shokin’s failures to address corruption.

“I know how the idea to have Shokin fired came up, and it wasn’t Biden,” one former Treasury official told the Financial Times in 2019. “His direct involvement came late in the game.”

....

“Devon Archer, when we deposed him under oath just two months ago, said this — here’s the question: ‘The request was help from the United States government to deal with the pressure they were under from their prosecutor?’ You know what Mr. Archer’s response was? ‘That’s correct.’”

“Next question: ‘What did Hunter Biden do after he was given that request?’” he continued. “‘He called his dad.’ That’s what we’re investigating.”

A few minutes later, Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.) sought to introduce into evidence another part of Archer’s testimony — in which Archer denied that Joe Biden had taken any action on behalf of Burisma.

Hunter Biden “did not provide the Burisma executives with actual access to his father. The access to his father was an illusion of access to his father. Is that right?” Goldman asked Archer.

“Right,” Archer replied.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/28/jordan-biden-impeachment-hearing/

JM

[Berzerker]

ouch... wealthiest woman in Russia gave Biden family a few million before Russia annexed Crimea as protection when Obama responded with sanctions... She was left off the sanctions target list

[Berzerker]

hmm... I'll bet there were quite a few wealthy Russians trying to preempt sanctions with bribes pouring into Washington

[Jon Miller]

But even within the document itself, the Republican leaders can’t help drawing specious connections and elevating debunked arguments — to say nothing of the public presentations they’ve made to complement their effort.

It is possible that, as the document suggests, there will be no article of impeachment brought against Joe Biden. It is also possible that the inquiry will stumble onto significant evidence intertwining Biden’s authority with his son Hunter’s business or demonstrating that the sitting president leveraged his power to his family’s benefit.

But the current path seems to be that articles of impeachment will follow even if nothing new emerges, since Republican leaders and their allies in the right-wing media have already convinced many Americans that Biden acted improperly. Instead of putting together a case built on robust evidence, the pattern has been to bury Biden in allegations, with the scale of misleading or disproven claims substituting for importance.

....

At one point, Republicans showed a message Hunter Biden sent in June 2017 over WhatsApp, talking about the “family brand.” This, Smith claimed, suggested that IRS investigators who obtained the message were concerned about how Hunter Biden’s business activity was tied to “official government activity while Joe Biden served as vice president of the United States.”

Smith has been quick to hype other WhatsApp messages in the past, using IRS summaries of the messages to create fake screenshots of the communications. But in this case, the question posed by NBC reporter Ryan Nobles was different: How was a message in June 2017 indicative of Joe Biden using his position as vice president to aid Hunter Biden, when Joe Biden wasn’t vice president in 2017?

Smith was flummoxed.

“I think the facts speak for themselves,” he insisted. “There’s over 700 pages of examples of where people should be very concerned.”

...

This week, his committee publicly alleged that a payment made to Hunter Biden by a Chinese businessman had been wired with Joe Biden’s home address as the recipient address. In a post on social media, Comer declared that “Beijing cash was basically wired right to Joe’s front door.”

But it wasn’t wired to Joe Biden’s door, as The Washington Post reported Wednesday. It, like all such wires, was wired to a bank — and, specifically, to a bank account owned by Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden had used his father’s address for some time before the wires were received in the summer of 2019, as Comer had noted previously. In Hunter Biden’s memoir, he details living in Los Angeles hotels in the early part of that year as he battled addiction.

....

It gets ignored that Comer, for example, made a serious allegation of bribery against Joe Biden back in May and, in the intervening months, has been entirely unable to substantiate the allegation while the evidence for it has eroded. In fact, the allegation made its way into the 30-page inquiry document as though it were as robust and damning as Comer had first suggested.

So did an allegation made by Comer and Jordan on Fox News in July, in which they implied that a trip Joe Biden made to Ukraine in 2015 followed a call from Hunter Biden — though that trip had been on the books for weeks.

.....

Again, the inquiry may eventually find evidence that Joe Biden acted improperly as vice president or was more intimately involved in his son’s business than he has asserted. We shall see. But even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. The flurry of allegations and pages of documents, however pertinent, will keep feeding the flames of outrage. Doesn’t matter what they say. They’ll burn.

The idea that Comer, Jordan and Smith will look at the bonfire they’ve created and then walk away from it, not file articles of impeachment, seems very unlikely.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/28/republicans-biden-impeachment-hearing/

Due to all the lies that have been presented on this Hunter Biden issue, I require evidence to believe anything on this subject. I know that many Americans have bought into the lies. Can you provide evidence?

JM

[Jon Miller]

ouch... wealthiest woman in Russia gave Biden family a few million before Russia annexed Crimea as protection when Obama responded with sanctions... She was left off the sanctions target list

After all the lies, I require evidence.

Please provide evidence.

JM