The Impeachment Pool

Where was it? I'm rather busy at this time, so there are posts which I miss or intend to read the links and forget.

 

This is why the Clintons should be banned from the thread, except for direct impeachment trial comparison re Bill

It leads to posters debunking the same tired conspiracy theories for the 1000th time but it's like a hydra with 10 heads

All of which has nothing to do with the Impeachment of Trump

 

The bold is what I'm talking about. No doubt that Parnas has a lot of information, but it is very clearly meant to put him in a better negotiating position either by saying he has receipts on additional people, or by saying he has receipts on people who ultimately control the investigation.

When it comes to people in a position of power and wealth, the "cult-like" metric should be used with more caution. It is not that they are willingly saying things positive about Individual One, it is more that they are forced to if they want to continue to be in power or gain more wealth. People in McSally's position are more doing a kiss-the-leader's-ass thing but once the leader is gone, they will go back to being an individual and distancing themselves from him. This is different to the red-hat-wearing, "Hillary is a bitch" t-shirt-wearing band of people who see Individual One as having done nothing wrong and will willing drink the punch. It push really came to shove, and I don't mean in just political terms, I don't think McSally would drink the punch unless her family was threatened. And that goes for a lot of members of Congress. Sure there are a bunch like Nunes, Possibly even Cotton (R-Ak), but even guys like Kennedy (R-La) would not drink the punch unless some unforeseen threat comes to them regarding life.

 

Post 4462

The question is not so much whether Parnas is being truthful (LOL) but what are his motivations

e.g. the WSJ origin story is that Parnas is some kind of moderately successful but dodgy Florida businessman who simply scoped the opportunity to buy his way in to Trump's circle. In that version, Parnas had no Ukranian contact network, but essentially worked a grift based on the cult like beliefs in the Trump orbit. But the Firtash connection casts a lot of doubt on that story. It seems quite possible that Firstash is the real source of the Biden scam, and Parnas in fact works for Firtash. I favour this view.

Secondly, why is Parnas running this huge media expose? Clearly self preservation is high on his agenda, but how does this achieve it?

There is a lot we don't understand here.

 

Well yeah.

But the important question is we still don't understand what Parnas's core motivations are. Is he just a crook who got pinched? In which case your analysis holds. Or does he work for others? In which case dropping the partial motherlode might have a different goal.

The cult reference is because McSally went full Trumpian

She did a bit more than kiss arse

 

That's the caution I'm talking about. He has receipts for a hell of a lot, but at this point it is one sided which so very neatly lines up with what we want to see. I'm not buying it is that neat, because things are never that neat.

What she did, she didn't do willingly. That is the point, and that is why the term needs to be given more caution.

 

This is right wing media, anti-Clinton phrasing. Because the insinuation is that they led to some kind of personal financial gain. As has been pointed out to you by several posters is that the Clintons were in heavy debt when they left office because of all the legal things the Reps constantly put on them, but their income post office could be fairly well calculated, in an underestimated manner, post election because of past president. But B Clinton hustled his ass off, as Jitty said, and he even got a massive book deal that was a game changer. But the Clintons also set up a charity to bring in millions because they are very good fund raisers, B Clinton being extremely good.

Many of the donors she did meet with — people like the crown prince of Bahrain and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus — were more or less exactly the kind of people you would think would be able to get a meeting with a Cabinet secretary.

So if there was no quid pro quo, does that mean Clinton's conduct was aboveboard? I interviewed four experts this week — and their answer was that the Clinton really did risk dramatically escalating an already serious problem with money’s influence in politics.​

From your first link, they certainly walked the line, moved around in the grey area, but they didn't reap financial gain as your phrasing above suggests. Additionally, as what I quoted says, many of the people H Clinton did meet with were the kinds of people the SoS would meet in her position. And it happens that they are also wealthy. But this is not news, and rather than donating to a campaign to gain influence, those wealthy and powerful people donated to a charity who, IIRC, had and has a top level rating by watchdog groups.

Again, this is about the grey area. Was the line crossed? I have no doubt it was, but as noted there was very large amount raised for B Clinton's 65th birthday, and most of it was about access to B Clinton, himself (Not the Qataris). But to what end? B Clinton is a very well connected person. Could that have been a precursor to the WC bid for 2022? What that about a meet-and-greet with the SoS, who happened to be his wife? Or was there something else not related. The issue is lack of reporting, but considering how visible both the Clintons and their charity are, it would seem that somebody would have found something far more concrete between 2009 and 2016.

“It would be useful for Hillary Clinton to recognize that that kind of a behemoth fundraising operation was irresponsible,” Holman said.​

I agree, and I suspect she is aware of that. I think it is naive to think she did not know that.

“I don’t think there was sincere intent to sell favors on her part,” he added, “but I know full well on the part of the donors that was their purpose. … They knew it was essentially throwing money at the feet of not only the secretary of state, but potentially the next president.”​

And here is where the narrative goes to conspiracy. The Clintons have egos, B Clinton in particular. And they entered a world where there were already some very well named and very well funded charities. So they needed to be able to figure out how to insert themselves into that world. Thus their political connections were used to solicit donations. I don't think it is to far fetched to say that a country like Saudi Arabia, a country which has links to OBL, is quite discriminatory towards women, and a poor human rights record, would donate to the Clinton Foundation to make themselves look good. And a pleasant meeting of thanks with the US SoS was along the same lines.

Normally, he said, the conflicts arise out of requests from run-of-the-mill political contributors, rather than from foreign donors to a charity. But everybody wants a favor or access, “and of course many of the ambassadors are themselves contributors to the president’s political party.” ​

Oh, that sounds familiar. I think some guy is the ambassador to the EU or something like that.

As I read, that was not your initial argument. You started out by insinuating that H Clinton is corrupt because she is a good fundraiser.

 

Exactly.

I mean in ordinary course of US politics, you can simply make big political donations (e.g. to a super pac) and get access.

Indeed that is express in lots of these fundraisers where if you pays your money, you get a literal seat at the table.