Biden's son Hunter indicted on gun charges

WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden's son Hunter was indicted Thursday for illegally buying a gun when he was using drugs, casting a new shadow over his father's campaign for reelection next year.

Hunter Biden, 53, was charged with two counts of making false statements when claiming on forms required for the 2018 gun purchase that he was not using drugs illegally at the time.

A third charge said that, based on the false statements, he illegally possessed the gun during an 11-day period in October that year.

If convicted on all three felony charges, Biden could in theory face 25 years in prison, though in practice they are seldom punished by any jail time.

In attesting that he was not an unlawful user of drugs when he bought the Colt Cobra revolver, Biden "knew that statement was false," the Justice Department said.

The indictment came two days after Republicans in Congress opened an impeachment probe against Democrat Joe Biden, alleging that when he was vice president he benefitted financially from his son's foreign business dealings. 

The legal troubles of Hunter Biden present a target for political rivals of his father, who is bidding for a second term in the White House.

Hunter is a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist, but his life has been marred by alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction.

Without offering any evidence, Republicans have accused Biden's Justice Department of protecting his son and have accused Weiss, a Republican appointee, of going easy on Hunter.

Representative James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky who will be leading the impeachment inquiry, welcomed the filing of the gun charges, calling it a "very small start."

"Mountains of evidence reveals that Hunter Biden likely committed several felonies and Americans expect the Justice Department to apply the law equally," Comer said.

Twice-impeached former president Donald Trump reacted on his Truth Social platform.

"This, the gun charge, is the only crime that Hunter Biden committed that does not implicate Crooked Joe Biden," he said.

PLEA DEAL COLLAPSED 

But a leading Democrat, Keisha Lance Bottoms, ex-mayor of Atlanta and a former senior adviser to Joe Biden, questioned why Hunter had been charged.

"Can anyone tell me how many people have been federally indicted for purchasing a gun while dealing with substance abuse issues?" Bottoms said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"I don't know the answer, but in my over 29 years as an attorney, I have never heard of it."

The gun charges were filed by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 over various allegations, mostly related to his overseas business deals.

Two months ago a plea deal between Biden and Weiss, covering the gun charge as well as alleged tax violations, went sour.

Biden agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Delaware to two minor tax charges. In exchange he was offered probation, as he had already paid what he owed the government along with penalties.

Weiss agreed to suspend the felony gun charge if Biden completed "pretrial diversion," which often involves counseling or rehabilitation.

But in a dramatic July 26 hearing, the deal collapsed over whether Biden would have been immune from any other charges also investigated by Weiss, including possible crimes related to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

The judge mentioned the possibility that Biden could be charged as having acted as a lobbyist for foreign governments without registering with the Justice Department.

Three weeks later, after the deal collapsed, Weiss dropped the tax charges and said an indictment on the gun charge would come by the end of September.

As the 2024 election race swings into gear, Republicans in the House of Representatives on Tuesday formally opened an impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

They alleged, without offering hard evidence, that while vice president in 2015-2016, Biden intervened to protect an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, where Hunter Biden sat on the board.

Republicans allege Joe Biden and his family reaped large sums for helping Burisma.

Agence France-Presse

Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds

KIEV - 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

source: news.abs-cbn.com 

Ukraine envoy testifies Trump linked military aid to investigations, lawmaker says

WASHINGTON — William Taylor, the United States’ top diplomat in Ukraine, told impeachment investigators privately Tuesday that President Donald Trump held up vital security aid for the country and refused a White House meeting with Ukraine’s leader until he agreed to make a public pronouncement pledging to investigate Trump’s political rivals.

In testimony that Democrats in attendance called the most damaging account yet for the president, Taylor provided an “excruciatingly detailed” opening statement that contradicted in blunt and unsparing terms the quid-pro-quo pressure campaign that Trump and his allies have long denied.

When he objected to that effort, Taylor said in his opening statement obtained by The New York Times, one of the president’s allies sought to explain Trump’s actions by noting that he was a businessman, and saying that, “when a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”

Taylor’s testimony directly contradicted repeated assertions by Trump and his Republican allies that there was never a quid pro quo involving investigations into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and other Democrats.

That is not true, Taylor told the committee. He said the president had explicitly made it clear that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would not be invited to the White House or secure much-needed security aid unless the Ukrainian leader made a public announcement that his country would start the investigations that Trump so badly wanted.

Taylor testified that he was told of Trump’s demands for investigations during a telephone call with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a Trump campaign donor, who Taylor described as part of a “highly irregular” diplomatic effort aimed at pressuring Ukraine.

“Ambassador Sondland said that ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor told lawmakers. “He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskiy ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.”

Taylor added that: “During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election,” Taylor said.

One lawmaker described the testimony as drawing a “direct line” between U.S. foreign policy and Trump’s own political goals.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who sat in on the deposition as a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said that Taylor relied in part on detailed “notes to the file” that he had made as he watched the pressure campaign unfold. His testimony shed new light on the circumstances around a previously revealed text message in which Taylor wrote to colleagues that he thought it was “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

He “drew a very direct line in the series of events he described between Trump’s decision to withhold funds and refuse a meeting with Zelenskiy unless there was a public pronouncement by him of investigations of Burisma and the so-called 2016 election conspiracy theories,” Wasserman Schultz said.

In his statement, Taylor placed the reason for the hold on Ukrainian aid directly on Trump, relating a July 18 call with the Office of Management and Budget, where a staff member said the directive had come from the president to the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.

“In an instant I realized one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened,” Taylor said in his testimony.

The intelligence whistleblower’s complaint that prompted the impeachment inquiry said that Trump’s effort to pressure Zelenskiy to open an investigation of Burisma was part of a concerted effort to use the power of his office to enlist foreign help in the 2020 election. Taylor was the latest in a string of career diplomats and current and former administration officials who have defied a White House blockade of the impeachment inquiry and submitted to closed-door depositions with investigators digging into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political adversaries.

The president sought to discredit the inquiry with attention-grabbing rhetoric early Tuesday as Taylor made his way to Capitol Hill to testify, comparing the impeachment investigation against him to a “lynching.” His comment on Twitter drew bipartisan outrage in public as the ambassador made his case behind closed doors. 

Wasserman Schultz said that in addition to referencing his notes, Taylor “had very specific recall of things,” including what she said were “meetings, phone calls, what was said.”

Several Democrats who participated in Taylor’s questioning described his testimony. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., shook his head after exiting the deposition, saying “what he said was incredibly damning to the president of the United States.”

Wasserman Schultz called it “one of the most disturbing days” she has had in Congress, and added: “I have not seen a more credible witness than this.”

Republicans accused Democrats of exaggerating, but they declined to share details of the testimony.

“I don’t know that any of us, if we are being intellectually honest, are hearing revelations that we were not aware of,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. “The bottom line is no one has yet to make the case for why the aid was withheld or even if the Ukrainians knew about it.”

Still, by Democrats’ account, Taylor’s testimony provided the most extensive picture yet of the scope of the president’s effort to pressure Ukraine and the players who were involved in the effort on Trump’s behalf.

“It’s like if you had a big, 1,000-piece puzzle on a table,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This fills in a lot of pieces of the puzzle.”

Taylor became a star witness in the Democratic impeachment probe after a colleague, Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, revealed texts they exchanged. In some of the text chains, as Taylor expressed his concerns about an apparent quid pro quo, Sondland sought to take the conversation offline, telling Taylor to “call me.”

Wasserman Schultz said Taylor provided new context for and details about the exchanges with Sondland, including a phone call that occurred after the texts.

In his lengthy opening statement and in questioning afterward, Taylor laid out a meticulous timeline of events during his time in the administration.

Taylor’s habit of keeping notes throughout his tenure has given the inquiry a boost, allowing him to recreate crucial conversations and moments even as the administration seeks to block Congress from reviewing documents related to its dealings with Ukraine.

Taylor has shared his notes with the State Department but has not produced copies of them for lawmakers conducting the impeachment inquiry, a person familiar with his testimony said.

The State Department objected to Taylor’s appearance before the committee, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry. In response, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena Tuesday morning to compel his testimony, and Taylor complied, according to the official.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Impeachment pressure grows, Trump remains defiant

Pressure escalated Monday for US Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, who faces accusations that he sought to extort Ukraine into revealing dirt on his political rival Joe Biden.

A defiant Trump said he is taking the impeachment threat "not at all seriously" and sought to make the controversy about Biden, accusing the former vice president, without evidence, of engaging in corruption in Ukraine.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned of "a grave new chapter of lawlessness" as Democrats ramped up demands that the administration release a secret whistleblower complaint that sparked the latest crisis.

The complaint reportedly centers on Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, and a possible attempt to coerce Zelensky into digging up damning information about Biden's son's business dealings in Ukraine.

Trump himself acknowledged Sunday that the conversation addressed alleged corruption involving Biden and son Hunter.

"The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption... and largely the fact that we don't want our people, like vice president Biden and his son, creating... the corruption already in the Ukraine," Trump said. 

On Monday, he followed up with a bald attack on the Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 race for the White House.

"What Biden did is a disgrace. What his son did is a disgrace. The son took money from Ukraine and from China," Trump said, without providing details.

To date there has been no evidence that implicates the Bidens in illegal conduct in Ukraine.

'Impeachable offense'

Several Democrats now argue that Trump's call for Ukraine to investigate Biden -- and what they suspect was a threat to condition $250 million in aid to Ukraine on an investigation of Biden -- is impeachable conduct. That view may be pushing House leaders towards a tipping point for launching removal proceedings.

"I mean, extorting a foreign leader for the purposes of getting that leader to do your political work to try to find dirt on your opponent is extortion," House Democrat Jim Himes told CNN Monday.

"Of course it's an impeachable offense," he added.

"I can't tell you that the House will move into impeachment mode right away, but this really ups the ante."

With pressure building, a handful of Republicans in the US Senate -- which would hold a trial of Trump should the House impeach him -- have signalled they want the president to be more transparent about the call and the whistleblower's complaint.

"I would just urge the president -- you know, he's talking openly about the conversation -- to release as much as possible," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump loyalist, told the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

On Sunday, Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and no fan of Trump, sounded a severe warning that evidence of Trump asking Ukraine's president to investigate Biden "would be troubling in the extreme."

But most congressional Republicans have either defended the president or remained silent.

All eyes will be on Washington Thursday, when the administration official who blocked release to Congress of the whistleblower document, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, is scheduled to testify publicly on the issue before a House panel.

Launching impeachment proceedings could be a politically risky move ahead of a presidential election, especially given the high hurdle of convicting the president in the Republican-led Senate.

Of the 235 House Democrats, 137 of them, plus Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash, support launching an impeachment inquiry, according to a CNN count.

Democrat leaders have hesitated to pull the impeachment trigger. But Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his own reservations about impeachment were fading over Trump's Ukraine call.

"I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment (but) the president is pushing us down this road," he said Sunday.

"This seems different in kind, and we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here."

source: news.abs-cbn.com