https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/ukrainian-court-throws-wrench-joe-bidens-2020-e******n-plans

Judge orders legal probe of former VP forcing ouster of prosecutor investigating gas firm employing his son H****r B***n

A Ukrainian court has ordered an investigation into whether Joe Biden violated any laws when he forced the March 2016 firing of the country’s chief prosecutor.

The ruling could revive scrutiny of H****r B***n’s lucrative relationship with an energy firm in that corruption-plagued country just as the former vice president’s campaign for the Democratic p**********l nomination is surging after a lackluster start.

Former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who has long alleged he was fired because he would not stop investigating the Burisma Holdings firm that employed H****r B***n, secured the ruling last month. Ukrainian officials confirmed the State Bureau of Investigation has since complied and initiated the probe.

The Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv ruled last month that Shokin’s lawyers had provided sufficient evidence to warrant a probe and “obliged the authorized officials of the State Bureau of Investigation" to accept the ex-prosecutor's complaint and "start pre-trial investigation of the reported data," according to an official English t***slation of the ruling provided by Shokin's attorney.

The ruling does not mention Biden by name, but court filings by Shokin's lawyers that led to the decision show that the former prosecutor had alleged “the commission of a criminal offense against him by Joseph Biden, a citizen of the United States of America, in Ukraine and abroad: interference in the activities of a law enforcement officer.”

Ukraine officials say the court-ordered investigation could include a review of non-public documents and possibly even interviews.

The court order revives allegations that were at the center of President Trump’s recent impeachment and acquittal, and which have dogged Joe Biden since he boasted in a 2018 video interview that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S.-backed loan guarantees if Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko did not fire Shokin as the country’s chief prosecutor.

Shokin alleges he was fired on March 29, 2016 specifically because his office refused to shut down a long-running corruption investigation into Burisma, one of Ukraine’s larger natural gas companies. The firm hired H****r B***n as a board member in spring 2014, shortly after Joe Biden was named by President Obama to oversee Ukraine-U.S. relations. Records gathered by the FBI show H****r B***n’s American firm was paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

President Trump’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, asked the State Department and Ukraine officials back in 2019 to investigate the Bidens, an act which gave rise to the impeachment proceedings,

During impeachment testimony, multiple State Department officials said they believed the Bidens’ arrangement created the appearance of a conflict of interest and that the department even blocked a business deal with Burisma at one point over concerns the company was corrupt.

Joe Biden and his defenders have denied any wrongdoing, saying the vice president sought Shokin’s firing because the prosecutor was ineffective in fighting corruption. His supporters have also claimed that the Burisma investigation was dormant at the time Shokin was fired and therefore not a high priority.

But evidence has emerged in recent weeks that the probe into Burisma, in fact, was heating up when Shokin was fired in spring 2016. The prosecutor’s office had secured a ruling re-seizing assets of Burisma’s owner in early February 2016, and the Latvian government acknowledges it sent a warning to Ukraine officials that same month f**gging several Burisma t***sactions, including payments to H****r B***n, as “suspicious.”

Documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act also show Burisma's lawyers were pressuring the State Department in February 2016 to end the corruption allegations against the firm, even invoking H****r B***n's name as the reason.

File

And Shokin himself says he was making plans to interview H****r B***n, an act that likely would have garnered major attention in the United States as Democrats were trying to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 p**********l e******n.

H****r B***n recently left Burisma’s board and said he believes in retrospect it was bad judgment to join the Ukraine company while his father oversaw U.S.-Ukraine relations. He also acknowledged he likely got the job because of his last name.

Wh**ever Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation does, the emergence of an investigation in Ukraine focusing attention on the Biden’s ethics comes at an unwelcome time for Joe Biden, whose p**********l campaign lagged for months but got a jolt over the weekend when he won convincingly in South Carolina’s primary.

Biden’s momentum continued Monday on the eve of the critical Super Tuesday e******ns when rivals Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropped from the 2020 Democratic p**********l race and announced plans to endorse the former vice president.

While the Ukraine probe just gets started, a separate investigation launched by Republicans in the U.S. Senate has been growing for weeks as investigators seek documents on H****r B***n’s finances, his overseas travels with the vice president and possible interviews with Ukraine officials.

KABUL (Reuters) - The United States conducted an airstrike on Wednesday against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, a U.S. forces spokesman said, the first such attack since a troop withdrawal agreement was signed between the two sides on Saturday.

The Taliban fighters were “were actively attacking an (Afghan National Security Forces) checkpoint. This was a defensive strike to disrupt the attack,” said Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in a tweet.

He said Washington was committed to peace but would defend Afghan forces if needed.

“Taliban leadership promised the (international) community they would reduce violence and not increase attacks. We call on the Taliban to stop needless attacks and uphold their commitments,” he said.

The airstrike was the first by the United States against the Taliban in 11 days, when a reduction in violence agreement had begun between the sides in the lead up to Saturday’s pact.

Since the signing, the Taliban had decided on Monday to resume normal operations against Afghan forces, though sources have said they would continue to hold back on attacks on foreign forces.

The Taliban has so far declined to confirm or deny responsibility for any of the attacks and did not immediately respond to request for comment on the airstrike.

On Tuesday, there were several attacks against Afghan officials blamed on the Taliban, including one at a security checkpoint near a copper mine that k**led five Afghan policemen.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said on Wednesday that in the past 24 hours there had been clashes between the Taliban and Afghan security forces in nine provinces, including Helmand.

A spokesman for Helmand provincial governor said that the Taliban had attacked a security checkpoint in Washer district - a different district to the one in which the U.S. carried out its airstrike - on Tuesday evening, k*****g two police officers.

A defense ministry spokesman also confirmed an attack against an Afghan army base in the city of Kunduz and said there were seven casualties.

The weekend agreement envisages a full withdrawal of all U.S. and coalition forces within 14 months, dependent on security guarantees by the Taliban, but faces a number of hurdles as the United States tries to shepherd the Taliban and Afghan government towards talks.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-taliban/u-s-carries-out-first-airstrike-on-taliban-since-doha-deal-idUSKBN20R12R

George Conway has made his opposition to Trump loud and clear for the last three years. His tweet is sending a signal to fellow anti-Trump Republicans that it is time to step and support the one candidate who can get rid of Trump and protect US democracy.

The never Trumpers see in Joe Biden what Donald Trump and his administration see. A candidate who inspires intense support, appeals to a broad coalition of v**ers, and who can defeat Donald Trump in November.

Mr. Conway is putting his money where his tweets are and actively helping to get rid of his wife’s boss to save the United States from Trump.

https://www.politicususa.com/2020/03/03/george-conway-donates-the-max-to-joe-biden-to-send-kellyanne-to-the-unemployment-line.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=george-conway-donates-the-max-to-joe-biden-to-send-kellyanne-to-the-unemployment-line

Nearly twice as many v**ers cast their b****ts in Virginia’s Democratic p**********l primary on Tuesday as in 2016.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, some 1.3 million v**es had been counted in the commonwealth. That’s nearly double the roughly 780,000 v**es cast in the state’s 2016 Democratic primary race between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The number of v**es also surpassed the 986,000 cast in the 2008 primary.

Former Vice President Joe Biden won a decisive victory in Virginia on Tuesday. Current tallies show him with more than 700,000 v**es in the state — a roughly 40 percent increase over the half-million v**es Clinton received when she won the state four years ago.

Sanders saw a more modest 10 percent increase over the 275,000 v**es he won in Virginia in 2016. He currently has a little over 300,000 v**es in the state.

The sky-high turnout in Virginia comes amid mixed turnout in the four early nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Turnout in Iowa and Nevada fell short of expectations. In New Hampshire, it exceeded the record previously set in 2008. And in South Carolina, turnout nearly matched the record set in 2008 when former President Obama was on the b****t.

Turnout is seen as an important measure of v**er enthusiasm. Democrats see v**er turnout as an e*******l game changer, arguing that the more people who show up to cast their b****t, the better the party’s chances are of defeating President Trump in November.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485850-v**er-turnout-in-virginia-nearly-doubles-from-2016

In 1983, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Raymond Dirks, an investment advisor who passed insider information on to his clients, who used it to make money. It seemed clear that using insider information this way was illegal, but the Court found a dubious loophole. The fascinating thing about the case: the most conservative justices v**ed to acquit Dirks, while the most liberal ones insisted, in dissent, that he was guilty.

The Dirks case is an example of what has been called the “white collar paradox” – that conservative Supreme Court justices, who rarely v**e to reverse convictions of poor criminal defendants, have shown a clear sympathy for rich ones. The conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, one study found, v**ed for defendants in about 7 percent of non-white-collar criminal cases – and 82 percent of white-collar ones.

The conservative Supreme Court’s soft spot for white-collar defendants is part of a larger phenomenon: its deep and abiding sympathy for the rich. In the 1960s, under the leadership of liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court famously became an advocate for the rights of the poor, in areas ranging from the rights of welfare recipients to the right to appointed counsel in criminal cases. For the past 50 years, however, the Court’s sympathies have been the reverse: on one legal doctrine after another, it has expanded the rights of wealthy individuals and corporations.

This Court that loves the upper classes has its roots in Richard Nixon’s e******n in 1968. Nixon vowed during his campaign to end the poor-people-loving Warren Court and replace it with a conservative one. He was able to do this with extraordinary speed: within months of taking office, he appointed a new, conservative chief justice, Warren Burger, and in his first three years in office he was able to name a total of four new justices. That locked in a conservative Court that is still with us today.

One of the first groups the new conservative Court came to the rescue of was rich children, or at least children in wealthy school districts. There was a growing consensus among lower federal courts, state courts, and law professors that the Equal Protection Clause required states to equalize spending between rich and poor school districts. In 1973, however, the Court, by a 5-4 v**e, declared that Texas, and other states, had the right to spend more money on children in rich districts than children in poor ones.

As a result of that decision, today there are gaping disparities in school spending nationwide. An analysis of funding in Pennsylvania a few years ago found that one wealthy district spent more than three times as much as the state’s lowest-spending district. In the aggregate, these disparities mean that children from wealthy families across the country begin life with greater educational opportunities, and a better chance at success later on.

Another group the conservative Court quickly came to the rescue of was wealthy campaign contributors. After Watergate, Congress passed a tough campaign finance law, with strict limits on both contributions and expenditures. In 1976, the Court struck down the expenditure limits, on the dubious theory that money equals speech under the first amendment. That let wealthy people spend as much as they wanted to elect candidates, and the Court has been opening the floodgates further ever since. In 2010, in Citizens United v. F.E.C., it took the radical step of saying that corporations have the same right to spend money to elect candidates as people do.

By striking down campaign finance limits, the Court has given wealthy people and corporations more power than ever over government. In the last decade, wealthy donors have spent more than $3 billion on super-PACs, and a single couple, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, gave nearly $300 million, according to “Oligarch Overload,” a new Public Citizen report. These super-donors use their contributions to extract government policies that enrich them further, including lower taxes on the wealthy. It is no coincidence that, as campaign contributions and spending have soared, the 400 richest U.S. families paid lower taxes in 2018 than the middle class. The freedom to spend unlimited amounts of money also gives the very wealthy the ability to promote their favorite social policies on a mass scale — including liberal ones, such as Michael Bloomberg’s aggressive support of pro-gun control congressional candidates.

The Court has bestowed many more gifts on wealthy individuals and corporations. For years, businesses tried to get Congress and state legislatures to enact sharp limits on class-action lawsuits. It has had little success getting elected officials to enact these limits, but the Court has come through. In a series of rulings, including a high-profile one against Wal-Mart in 2011, it has made it far harder for workers and consumers to band together in class action lawsuits, which are often the only way for working-class people to get justice. In the Wal-Mart case, the Court threw out a class action by about 1.5 million female workers, insisting they did not have enough in common to sue together. The Court has also decided that the Due Process Clause bars what it views as excessively large punitive damage awards. It then used that made-up doctrine to drastically reduce jury awards against Exxon Shipping for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and State Farm over its mistreatment of a physically disabled customer.

The Supreme Court’s dedication to the wealthy is sharply at odds with its popular image. In civics class, the Court is generally presented as the defender of minorities and of the poor. Hollywood has made movies with Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer who became the first black justice, and Henry Fonda as Clarence Gideon, the prisoner who won poor defendants the right to a court-appointed lawyer. The Court itself has declared that courts are “havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless” and “weak.”

The Court has certainly had moments of championing society’s most vulnerable – such as a surprising 2011 decision ordering California to reduce prison overcrowding, but not many, and particularly not in the past half-century. Far more often, it has stood on the side of wealthy campaign contributors, rich corporations, and children born into privilege. In the overwhelming majority of its cases, the Court has been a haven of refuge not for the helpless and weak, but for members of society who are doing exceptionally well on their own.

https://time.com/5793956/supreme-court-loves-rich/

Surrounded by smoldering houses and the blackened skeletons of burned-out cars, Mohammed Efaz picked his way through the streets of Khajuri Khas, a neighborhood in north-east Delhi.

The 32 year-old Muslim said he would never return to India’s capital after what he saw happen here last week.

“We will never come back here to live among Hindus,” Efaz told TIME on Saturday as he loaded a burlap sack into his small truck, preparing to travel back to his home village. “The divide between Hindus and Muslims is unbridgeable now.”

The violence began on Feb. 23 and lasted for several days, leaving at least 46 people dead in Delhi, the majority of them Muslims. It was the worst religious violence in India in years. Though some Hindus too were k**led in the r**ts, it quickly emerged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Delhi police force his government oversees, had tacitly supported the mobs, who chanted Hindu nationalist slogans as they burned buildings and beat Muslims while police reportedly looked on.

Since the r**ts, hundreds of Muslims have fled the city, unsure if they will ever feel safe enough to return. Although both Hindu and Muslim houses were burned down in this corner of Delhi, on Saturday it was only Muslim families loading up their possessions to flee. “The ruling party has built an atmosphere against Muslims,” Efaz said. “Now, h**e is being preached openly against us.”

For India, the violence has marked a bloody milestone after six years of governance by Hindu nationalists, who are now more politically dominant than ever before. Since winning ree******n in a landslide last May, Modi has stoked his far-right Hindu nationalist base, many of whom see Muslims as invaders of a rightfully Hindu India. In August, Modi put Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, on lockdown and stripped it of its semi-autonomous status. His government is planning to construct a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque demolished by Hindu nationalists in 1992. And his Home Minister, Amit Shah, is pushing forward plans to deport “infiltrators” from India with the help of a mass population registration program.

After days of silence, Modi condemned the violence in Delhi on Feb. 26. “Peace and harmony are central to our ethos,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is important that calm and normalcy is restored at the earliest.” But Muslims and academics alike say it was his own rhetoric that led to the r**ts. “The trend we see across India is that a lot of the violence perpetrated against Muslims these days is actually perpetrated by subsidiaries of the Hindu nationalist movement,” says Thomas Blom Hansen, a Stanford professor of anthropology who has studied religious identities and violence in India for three decades. “The government and the BJP can wash their hands and say, ‘we have nothing to do with it, these are just patriots acting on their own.’”

The policies and rhetoric of the ruling party are felt directly, too. The BJP has tried to cast India’s Muslims as terrorists, says Mohammed Numan, a Muslim resident of the Khajuri Khas neighborhood whose house was burned down on Feb. 25. Numan told TIME he had long expected the BJP’s rhetoric would cause r**ts targeting Muslims. “A vast majority of Indians have come to believe that Muslims are a threat to India — which we are not,” he said. “We are as Indian as they are.” Refusing to turn his face toward the smoldering ruin of his home, Numan recalled how his Hindu neighbor used to taunt him, saying that soon Muslims would be stripped of their v****g rights and thrown in detention camps.

For more go to.........................................

https://time.com/5794354/delhi-r**ts-muslims-india/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20200304&xid=newsletter-brief

Longtime CNN political analyst Paul Begala predicted on Monday that President Trump is "gonna dump [Vice President] Mike Pence in favor of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley" on July 16 when the Democratic nominee is slated to give his or her acceptance speech.

The former "Crossfire" co-host "guaranteed" Trump will throw Pence "under the bus" because of his handling of the c****av***s, which the president tapped Pence to lead a task force on last week.

“This is not a prediction. It’s a certainty. On Thursday, July 16 — that’s the date the Democrat gives his or her acceptance address — on that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms," Begala predicted during a panel discussion at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C.

"You watch. Guaranteed," Begala said. “Trump put Pence in charge of c****av***s to throw him under the bus.

Longtime CNN political analyst Paul Begala predicted on Monday that President Trump is "gonna dump [Vice President] Mike Pence in favor of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley" on July 16 when the Democratic nominee is slated to give his or her acceptance speech.

The former "Crossfire" co-host "guaranteed" Trump will throw Pence "under the bus" because of his handling of the c****av***s, which the president tapped Pence to lead a task force on last week.

“This is not a prediction. It’s a certainty. On Thursday, July 16 — that’s the date the Democrat gives his or her acceptance address — on that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms," Begala predicted during a panel discussion at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C.

"You watch. Guaranteed," Begala said. “Trump put Pence in charge of c****av***s to throw him under the bus."

In December, Begala predicted that Trump would be impeached again.

"This is not the last impeachment we will cover of Donald J. Trump," he said during a panel discussion on "Anderson Cooper 360."

Haley, who was nominated by Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and was confirmed with a 96-4 v**e in January 2017, has staunchly denied speculation she could replace Pence on the GOP ticket.

"The vice president and the president are a great ticket together," Haley told "Fox & Friends" in November. "They're solid. Solid enough that they're going to win together. There is no t***h whatsoever that I would ever in any way look to get that position. I think Mike is great for that job and I think that he's the right partner for the president."

"Mike Pence is a great vice president,” Trump said in November, while noting Haley would “absolutely” be involved in his 2020 campaign.

“She is a friend of mine, she endorsed me with the most beautiful endorsement you’ve ever heard. She did a great job at the U.N.,” Trump added of Haley.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/485562-cnns-begala-trump-will-dump-pence-for-haley-on-day-of-democratic-nominees