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I saw this fragment from a trial few days ago:

Today, it looks like in 99% Trump will be acquitted in the coming days.

Now, what do you think? Is it a mistake that it will probably end like this? Or was the impeachment just an another "dog and pony show", to distract public from more important news?

I think extorting foreign influence for an upcoming election should be a slam-dunk conviction, but it's a shame the Republicans are willing to go down with the sinking ship.

"…extorting…"

So where is the clear evidence of extortion exacly? Because the Ukrainian president have said numerous times that he was not pressured to do anything. Again, at the end, military aid was released and no investigations by Ukraine was announced – which is a shame to me, because I would like to know, for example, what happend to those 7 billions of $ that were misappropriated on Ukraine during Obama.

"Republicans are willing to go down with the sinking ship"

Really? Because the last time I've checked Trump's Job Approval it was around 45%, just like at the beginning of impeachment. At the same time dems are tearing each other in Iowa, because it looks like they can't even count votes properly.

Just FYI, if Ukraine is dependent on US aid, and the US president has been shown to hold said aid for seemingly arbitrary reasons (despite aid already being approved by congress and said hold up being deemed illegal), it stands to reason he could do it again for other reasons, such as not agreeing with his version of events.

This by no means proves that Ukraine was pressured, but one should be skeptical of that statement proving otherwise, as it would be logical to lie about being pressured if it did happen.

As for the release of said aid, it was released after there were investigations as to why it was held up, with still no real explanation as to why this happened in the first place.

The evidence that would either prove or disprove the idea that Trump was withholding foreign aid for personal gain is being withheld by the Trump administration over complaints of a "sham investigation" and a "sham impeachment".

The thing is, there is at least a premise of a corruption problems on Ukraine, not only with Hunter Biden, who admitted in interview, it was a "poor judgement" on his part to be on board of a company, that was founded by a corrupt oligarch Zlochevsky. There were also other things, for example loss of hundreds of millions of USA dollars, by former owner of PrivatBank, Ihor Kolomoisky.and some other cases of corruption in the meantime.

Even if Trump was doing it, partly, for personal gain, there should be no denying to the fact, that investigation or investigations of corruption on Ukraine would be in the national interest of USA.

>So where is the clear evidence of extortion exacly?

He asked ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden and withheld aid until they did so.
gonna copy/paste some quotes from the wikipedia page on this
In a September 20 tweet, Giuliani appeared to confirm suspicion that there was a connection between the withholding of military assistance funds and the investigation he and Trump wanted Ukraine to undertake.[225][226] He said: "The reality is that the President of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegations--our money is going to get squandered."[227] Trump himself appeared to make a similar connection on September 23, telling reporters: "We want to make sure that country is honest. It's very important to talk about corruption. If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?"[215] Trump later denied pressuring Ukraine.[215]
On January 16, 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a non-partisan watchdog agency, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding of Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine.
As the second week of the Trump impeachment trial was set to begin in January 2020, The New York Times reported that Bolton wrote in his forthcoming book that the president had told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing the Ukraine aid until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.

"he wanted to continue freezing the Ukraine aid until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens."

Sure, it was during Obama administration, that were a lot of hazy deals on Ukraine, at the same time when loads of US dollars were sent there, as I've said before in my previous posts. The GAO has also said that a decision would be justified if the administration had recognized “savings or efficiencies that would result from a withholding". Not losing money to a potentially corrupt country is a pretty good justification to me. Even if, at the end, Ukraine investigations would show no wrong doing, the premise was there.

> it was during Obama administration, that were a lot of hazy deals on Ukraine, at the same time when loads of US dollars were sent there

cool, so what does Obama have to do with Trump asking ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden and withholding aid until they did so?

> Not losing money to a potentially corrupt country is a pretty good justification to me.

Thats not the reason they did it though.

>Even if, at the end, Ukraine investigations would show no wrong doing, the premise was there.

The premise of what

"The premise of what"

Can't you read? Of shady deals on Ukraine, again, I've talked about them in my previous posts.

Vice president Joe Biden was Obama's main guy on Ukraine. His sonny Hunter, cocaine enthusiast, was installed there, in Burisma's board of directors (also with some former CIA director from Bush's era), right after Euromaidan in 2014, when the old guard has been changed to the new crew from US. Of course, the majority of this crew were "experts", closely related to the DNC, like John Podesta's brother or pollsters from Obama's campaign.

Not to mention the time, when during 2016 elections, Ukraine's officials tried to sabotage Trump's campaign with Alexandra Chalupa, a high DNC staffer. Those pesky foreign interferences, right?

What does any of that have to do with Trump's abuse of power?

Trump is STILL punishing Ukraine by withholding six commercial arms and ammo sales worth $30 billion.

"Bu-bu-bu-but Trump gave them "JAVELINS" say the defenders.

I wouldn't call it an abuse of power, necessarily.

If there was a mere POSSIBILITY of corruption on the Ukraine (which we can safely assume it was), I would say an US President, as an executive branch of goverment (espetially in cases like foreign policy), has an obligation to adress it with the Ukrainian president, in the name of the national interest.

It doesn't matter if the son of his political opponent might be somehow related to this case. It may be a bad optics, but we shouldn't treat polititians and their relatives like some holy cows. Remember, this whole affair with Trump, Guliani and Ukraine begins way before Joe Biden even announced, that he's running for office. I truly believe that Trump's main goals were to discover origins of 2016 interference on Ukraine in his campaign and maybe some Russiagate origins, among other things. Bidens are just a bonus in this.

To be clear, I don't have problems with Trump and Republicans under the loop of investigators. It's just bad that it looks like there are double standards in case of Democrats.

First of all: This Twitter feed is full of people with advanced TDS.
Second of all: Buzzfeed News? Nigga please
Third of all: Correct you link, according to the title it should be 30 millions, not billions.

Anyway, my point from previous posts still stands.

Maxi-005, I have to ask, what was the intent of this thread?

The OP seems to suggest a rather casual semi-polling just to see what people's opinions on if Trump should or should not have been convicted. This doesn't have huge overlap with the existing politics general thread, as that thread is more hard information and debate.

However, every subsequent post of yours seems less interested in hearing people's opinions and instead debating users who disagree with you. Disagreement of course is fine, but if this was just going to be arguing over the facts and interpretations of them, it really doesn't seem conductive to people posting who might have an opinion but don't want to wade through all the information that has and hasn't been made available, various legal opinions, and debate people who oppose them.

This goes doubly so with the changing the whataboutism of the previous administration. Sure, it isn't something that I feel should be ignored. But in a thread gauging opinions about "should Trump have been convicted or not" this is much broader than the OP suggests is expected in the thread.

"Maxi-005, I have to ask, what was the intent of this thread?"

I just wanted to dive a little into the subject, trying also to show a little broader picture of things and I just thought that putting OP in the Politics General thread, it would be replaced in 2 hours by another topic from the news cycle. I just think this topic is big enough, it deserves it's own thread.