Steun groeit voor afzettingsprocedure tegen Trump #7

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:05 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

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Er werd terecht opgemerkt dat je de delen en perioden dat ze volgens jou corrupt zijn zo uit kiest dat het net goed uit komt met je verhaal.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:05 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

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Er werd terecht opgemerkt dat je de delen en perioden dat ze volgens jou corrupt zijn zo uit kiest dat het net goed uit komt met je verhaal.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 12:41 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Comey (om maar iemand te noemen) een loyale Democraat?

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:29 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Laten we voor het gemak niet vergeten dat Comey het onderzoek naar de e-mails van Clinton kort voor de verkiezingen heeft heropend, om iets later te concluderen dat er weinig aan de hand was. Maar ja, toen was het kwaad natuurlijk al geschied.

Nu beweer ik niet dat het per se onterecht was dat Comey dat onderzoek startte, maar het was uiteraard niet in het voordeel van de Demoraten. Sterker, de consensus luidt dat dit heeft bijgedragen aan haar verlies.

Dus stellen dat Comey 'loyaal' was van de Democraten, vind ik nogal onzinnig.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:43 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Obama was de baas van Comey. Wil je beweren dat die heeft besloten dat er opnieuw onderzoek moest worden gedaan naar de e-mails van Clinton?

En je noemt het halfslachtig, maar dat 'beleid' heeft Clinton wel flink wat electorale schade berokkend.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:44 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Comey had weinig keus. Als hij het onderzoek niet had heropend, dan zou de impressie van extreme corruptie bij zowel Clinton als de FBI nog groter zijn. Hij wilde niet, maar moest wel om de krantenkoppen te sturen.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 14:02 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Nee, dat slaat nergens op. Het onderzoek was namelijk al afgesloten, maar Comey besloot op eigen houtje het kort voor de verkiezingen te heropenen. Ik besef dat dit verloop van omstandigheden niet past in jouw 'loyale Democraten'-narratief, maar zo is het toch echt gegaan.

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Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine has widened its investigation into the founder of energy company Burisma to include suspicion of embezzling state funds, Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said on Wednesday.

Allegations of wrongdoing at Burisma go to the heart of a U.S. impeachment inquiry into whether President Donald Trump improperly pressured Ukraine’s leadership to investigate his main rival in the 2020 presidential race.

Trump wants Ukraine to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was a board member at Burisma from 2014-2019.

The prosecutor who has investigated Burisma is Kostiantyn Kulyk, who previously met Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss accusations against the Bidens.

After he took office in late August, Ryaboshapka launched a wide-ranging audit of criminal cases to see whether they had been conducted properly. Thirteen of them relate to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, Ryaboshapka told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.

Burisma did not respond to a request for comment.

Ryaboshapka’s predecessors oversaw a series of investigations into Zlochevsky, a multimillionaire former minister of ecology and natural resources. The allegations concern tax violations, money-laundering and licences given to Burisma during the period where Zlochevsky was a minister.

Ryaboshapka said Zlochevsky was now suspected of the “theft of government funds on an especially large scale,” but did not provide evidence or details.

Ryaboshapka was speaking after being asked about a document from the general prosecutor’s office that was leaked at a separate press conference by three lawmakers earlier on Wednesday.

The document, only part of which was visible, showed Kulyk suspected Zlochevsky of offences including using his official position to embezzle 800 million hryvnias ($33 million) of money belonging to the central bank.

The investigation is effectively on hold, however, because the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.

The central bank did not respond to a request for comment.

Giuliani has previously told Reuters he met Kulyk in Paris. He said at that meeting Kulyk echoed allegations that in 2016 Joe Biden as Vice President had tried to have Ukraine’s then-chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired to stop him investigating Burisma. Biden has accused Giuliani of peddling “false, debunked conspiracy theories” for repeating these allegations.

Kulyk told Reuters in October that he had been investigating Zlochevsky for around two years.

Reuters could not independently verify the extent of Kulyk’s involvement, but a source close to the energy company saw a spike in activity by Kulyk in regards to Burisma after Giuliani’s interest in the company and the Bidens had been conveyed to Kulyk’s then superior, Yuriy Lutsenko.

In late January, Kulyk sent Zlochevsky the first of several summons for questioning, documents seen by Reuters showed.

Zlochevsky has not commented on the summons or an announcement by Ryaboshapka in October that his office was reviewing a series of investigations linked to Zlochevsky.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 14:00 schreef VoMy het volgende:

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Ja, dit is dus onzin he. Je kunt niet zomaar overal corruptie, samenzweringen, geheime agenda's en complotten verzinnen, en vervolgens acties die erop wijzen dat het allemaal wel meevalt met die deep state controlflauwekul afdoen als: 'het moest wel om de krantenkoppen te sturen'.

En wat is er gebeurd met het idee dat de MSM toch onder een hoedje speelt met de corrupte globalisten van de Dems?

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 14:19 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

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Wat vind jij dan het meest waarschijnlijke?

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En allemachtig, MuH rUsSiA types hebben geen recht om anderen te beschuldigen van het verzinnen van complotten.

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En tsja, als je het niet dubieus vindt dat (gevallen) topambtenaren uit de veiligheids- en inlichtingendiensten de switch maken naar nieuwszenders, dan mag je dat gerust zo vinden.

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Het lijkt mij niet onredelijk om te denken dat er al goede relaties tussen die twee partijen waren voordat ze werden ontslagen.

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Geloof jij lekker in jouw complottheorietjes, ik in de mijne. En dan zullen we zien wiens wereldbeeld in elkaar dondert.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 13:10 schreef dellipder het volgende:

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En dit is overigens ook vreselijk domme uitspraak, want er zijn geen 35.000 medewerkers verantwoordelijk voor de FISA affidavit.
Werkelijk een zeer belachelijke gedachtegang.

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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 14:13 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Ooit bedacht dat iemand als Comey niet handelt uit politieke motieven en gewoon z'n werk doet (en daarbij soms inschattingsfouten maakt)? Niet alles is een complot, beste Ed.

Afijn, wat leesvoer:

‘James Comey had geen politieke motieven bij FBI-onderzoek Clinton’

Over het eerste onderzoek naar de e-mails van Clinton, dat in juli 2016 is stopgezet:
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En over het tweede onderzoek:
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Op vrijdag 22 november 2019 14:42 schreef Montov het volgende:
Er zijn een dozijn Russen en een half dozijn campagneleden van Trump veroordeeld, diverse inlichtingendiensten hebben Russische inmenging bevestigd en Mueller heeft een dik rapport met veel specifieke voorbeelden. Dat staat als een huis.

Iemand zegt dat Oekraïne achter de hack zit van de DNC, maar daar is geen enkele indicatie van. Dat wereldbeeld is al ingestort ongeacht hoe erg je er in blijft geloven net als muh Seth Rich, muh QAnon en muh pizzagate.

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Facebook suspends five accounts, including that of a social media researcher, for misleading tactics in Alabama election

Earlier this week, Morgan, the head of the firm New Knowledge, told The Washington Post he had experimented with misleading online tactics during the 2017 contest between Republican Roy Moore and since-elected Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. Morgan acknowledged creating a misleading Facebook page to appeal to conservatives. He also acknowledged purchasing retweets on Twitter to measure the potential “lift” of political messages.

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Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.

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Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard

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Within a few days of Gabbard announcing her presidential bid, DisInfo 2018, part of the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, found that three of the top 15 URLs shared by the 800 social media accounts affiliated with known and suspected Russian propaganda operations directed at U.S. citizens were about Gabbard.

Analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they've spotted "chatter" related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns. The chatter discussed Gabbard's usefulness.

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New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics
Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.

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Hunter Biden-linked company received $130M in special federal loans while Joe Biden was vice president

An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.

Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.

Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.

According to federal records, 177 firms participated in TALF, many of them well connected in Washington or on Wall Street. For investors, there was little risk and a high chance of reward. The Federal Reserve funded as much as 90% of the investments. If the bonds were profitable, the borrowers benefited. If not, the department agreed to take over the depreciated assets with no repercussions for the borrowers.

“It's very complicated to become qualified as a TALF borrower or as a TALF fund, if you will,” Carol Pepper, a wealth management specialist, told Forbes in 2009. “But that's an example of where, if you can get into a TALF fund, you can benefit from this government program.”

Under the terms for the program, any U.S. company looking to invest in select categories of bonds was eligible to apply for the loans. However, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve maintained the “right to reject a borrower for any reason,” and the internal selection process was criticized by some lawmakers as opaque and open to corruption.

“How can my constituents in Vermont get some of that money? Who makes the decisions? Do you guys sit around in a room — do you make it? Are there conflicts of interest?” Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke at a March 3, 2009, Senate hearing. “Do you have to be a large, greedy, reckless financial institution to apply for these monies?”

Joe Biden was a key advocate for the financial bailout, which was approved under the Bush administration and expanded under President Barack Obama. He delayed his Senate resignation in January 2009 to cast his final vote to increase funding for the Troubled Asset Relief Program before taking office as vice president.

“These guys are not the most likable guys in the world,” Biden said about the banks and hedge funds aided by the government intervention. "But here are the facts ... Had we not bailed out the largest bank institutions in the world, there would have been a flat-out depression.”

One of the firms that benefited was Rosemont Capital, a company led by Hunter Biden’s business partners, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer. The firm received the loans at a crucial time for Hunter Biden. The younger Biden had stepped down from his lobbying business in late 2008, reportedly due to pressure on his father’s vice presidential campaign.

Biden, Heinz, and Archer incorporated Rosemont Seneca Partners in Delaware on June 25, 2009. The “alternative investment and market advisory firm” was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, which held a 50% stake in the new venture. Rosemont Seneca and Rosemont Capital shared the same office address in lower Manhattan and the same New York phone number, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. Three weeks after Rosemont Seneca was incorporated, a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, called Rosemont TALF SPV, received $23.5 million in federal loans through the TALF program. This included $13.4 million to invest in student loans and $11.1 million to invest in subprime auto loans. Over five months, the company received a total of $130 million from the program in multiple installments for investments in subprime credit cards and residential mortgages.

“This is a great example of the suspicion of many Americans that these bailouts were used to benefit connected insiders while ordinary Americans went broke,” said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, an organization that was critical of TALF at the time.

Although the government stopped issuing the loans at the end of 2009, the names of the well connected borrowers and investors were later released — prompting new criticism from lawmakers and the press. In April 2011, Rolling Stone reported that millions in TALF loans had been issued to the wife of Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga, and Wall Street titan John Paulson, dubbing the program “welfare for the rich.”

“Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this,” Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sanders, told Rolling Stone. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

Sanders also raised concerns that borrowers were using the program to evade taxes. His office staff compiled a list of over 100 TALF investors based in the Cayman Islands and other known tax havens.

“It has been estimated that each year corporations and wealthy individuals avoid approximately $100 billion in U.S. taxes through the use of abusive and illegal tax shelters,” wrote Sanders in a letter to Bernanke. “Why would the Fed lend to material investors located in the Cayman Islands?”

Federal Reserve records show Rosemont Capital was one of the companies that set up an offshore limited partnership, called “Rosemont TALF Investment Fund LP,” to participate in the TALF program. The fund was incorporated in the Cayman Islands on May 14, 2009, and dissolved on Nov. 14, 2014, according to corporate records in the British territory. The fund was managed by a Delaware-based subsidiary of Rosemont called “Rosemont TALF GP,” SEC records show.

Another investor in Rosemont’s TALF fund, called “Rosemont TALF Opportunities Fund II,” was also based in the Cayman Islands. Additional Rosemont TALF investors included two Greek shipping magnates, a California class action attorney and a financial trust based in Liberia.

Tax experts said the Cayman Islands were a popular location at the time for hedge funds and corporations to set up subsidiaries in order to avoid paying certain U.S. taxes. Didier Jacobs, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America who focuses on international finance, said an estimated $2.7 trillion was parked in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens prior to the U.S. tax reform in 2017.

“As long as it was sitting there, it was not taxed. That’s why there was a lot of money sitting there in the Cayman Islands,” said Jacobs.

Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said the use of an offshore company could also help investment firms reduce the tax liability for foreign or tax-exempt investors who could otherwise be subject to U.S. taxes.

Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the most likely reason for setting up a company in the Cayman Islands would be to take advantage of its tax laws.

“It seems like a pretty basic ask that any recipient of these TALF loans would act in certain ways. And one of those ways would be to not organize their businesses to avoid taxes in the Caymans,” said Gardner.