Month: August 2023

Churning in the Donald Trump multiverse

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan is set to consider a trial date for Donald Trump’s trial on federal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 indictment. CNN reports, “Smith wants the trial to begin January 2 – two weeks before Trump’s first big test in the 2024 primary race in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. The ex-president’s team has asked for much more time, and is proposing a date of April 2026. Trump is not expected to be at the hearing.”

Watch Brandi Buchman’s live feed from the Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C. beginning at 10 a.m.

In Atlanta, meanwhile, in a hearing this morning, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will present arguments in the case against Mark Meadows who seeks to move his case to federal court.

Politico explains why Meadows (and others) might want their cases heard in federal court:

If moved to federal court, the charges — all of which are under Georgia law — would remain the same, and Willis’ team could continue to handle the prosecution. But federal procedural rules, not state court rules, would apply. And some defendants might anticipate other, more substantive advantages in a federal forum.

A jury for a trial in federal court would likely be drawn from 10 counties that comprise Atlanta and its sprawling suburbs, while a state-court trial would likely include jurors only from Fulton County, which delivered a 73% to 26% victory for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020. The broader set of counties is home to a somewhat higher proportion of Trump supporters, though the political makeup is not dramatically different.

All those co-defendants complicate Trump’s Georgia trial and the timing, especially since several want a speedy trial set to minimize the cost of their defense. Most do not have Trump’s deep pockets and fundraising machine. Their electoral machinations on Trump’s behalf will cost them and their families.

Washington Post:

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s request to move his case to federal court will be the subject of an evidentiary hearing Monday. It’s possible that Meadows might need to testify for his request to succeed, and we learned Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis has subpoenaed two central witnesses to participate: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his chief investigator, Frances Watson. (Politico’s Kyle Cheney said this makes Monday’s hearing something of a “mini trial.”)

Also Thursday, a judge set an Oct. 23 trial date for one defendant, Kenneth Chesebro. Chesebro has requested a speedy trial, which he is entitled to under Georgia law. Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell has also requested a speedy trial, though her trial date hasn’t been set. While their prosecutions might be separated from the defendants who prefer to delay their proceedings (including Trump), an early trial for one or more defendants could get at central facets of the alleged conspiracy.

Powell is what we might call, colloquially, a loon. Murray Waas observes that going to trial with her or with Trump is a devil’s bargain for Chesboro, if not for John Eastman as well.

John Eastman and Ken Chesboro face a difficult choice: Go to trial with Donald Trump who is attempting to scapegoat them to get off the hook himself. Or go to trial alongside Sidney Powell, and lose complete control of the proceedings to her. https://t.co/seFH8rHIhr

— murray waas (@murraywaas) August 28, 2023

Running for a pardon

For all his declarations of innocence, Trump is not looking, as an innocent man might, for trails to exonerate him before voters decide if he should again be president in November 2024. He’s running for a self-pardon, at least on the federal charges (New York Times):

As a further complication, Mr. Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides of his desire to solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. If either of the two federal trials he is confronting is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general simply dismiss the matters altogether.

Finding slots to schedule all the Trump trials into the calendar are a challenge. Even more so since Trump hopes to campaign for president concurrently (if he does not get his delays).

Should state officials or others challenge Trump’s eligibility to appear on state ballots under the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause, Trump and his attorneys will face even more time in court fighting for ballot access. That’s ironic, since Republicans from sea to shining sea spend so much time and effort trying to prevent everyday voters access to voting theirs.

Michael Tomasky asks the question. And it’s chilling:

It’s not just unprecedented that we now have an ex-president with a mug shot. It’s insanely, amazingly, staggeringly, chillingly unprecedented. It makes me think about the past—about how we got to this insane, amazing, staggering, chilling point. And it makes me think about the future—about what grim precedent Trump will drag us into next.

We got here because Donald Trump, now also known as Prisoner P01135809, has never had any regard for laws of any kind. We’ve known this for decades. When I was a young reporter in New York, and Trump was not yet a wannabe dictator, and the working-class men of the heartland registered him in their minds (if at all) as a swanky Manhattan rich guy who had nothing to do with their lives, Trump’s habits and attitudes were well known in New York. Sometimes, people went at him, but no one ever got him. And often, the people with the power to do so didn’t even go at him.

Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney for most of the years Trump was operating in New York, left his office in 2009 with a sterling reputation. And he largely deserved it. But the record does tell us, as Morgenthau’s biographer Andrew Meier wrote in The New York Times earlier this year, that Trump befriended Morgenthau, and the D.A. reciprocated. Trump donated to Morgenthau’s campaigns and his pet charities. Morgenthau accepted an invitation to stay in Mar-a-Lago.

And yet, late in life—Morgenthau lived to be 100, and three years into Trump’s presidency—he seemed to have some regret. Meier visited him not long before his July 2019 death and asked him what his greatest fear was, to which Morgenthau answered: “Trump.”

Trump was sued and deposed over and over and over, but he always had the money and the legal architecture to wiggle out. Like it or not, there’s a complex calculus involving the extent to which the law will pursue a rich and famous man who builds glitzy buildings and makes donations to the Police Athletic League. Prosecutors, too, have budgets, and they think twice before committing them to the pursuit of people who have the power to fend them off for years.

But once a person enters public life, the calculus changes. Then, the money and power and P.A.L. checks don’t matter anymore. All that can no longer insulate you. Presidents take an oath, and they are subject to federal and state laws. Period.

And so Trump’s great, improbable triumph—his ascension to the presidency—was also his fatal mistake: He finally put himself in a position where the law, however slowly, could catch up with him. He didn’t understand or accept this, of course, because he always thought of himself as above the law. He is probably shocked to find that there are potential consequences to saying to a state official that the official just needs to find him 11,780 votes. There’d never been consequences before for anything.

So that, in sum, is how we got here. It’s a simple and very American story of money, influence, and power. And while I wouldn’t say it could only happen in New York, the city was easily the most likely place for it to happen, because New York—especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when money, influence, and power really began to swallow the whole place, its possessors lionized in the newly celebrity-obsessed media—was far more susceptible to a Trump than any other American city.

As for where we’re headed: Well, quickly, let’s review. The precedents Trump has set: winning the presidency with help (wittingly or not, we don’t know, at least from a legal perspective) of Russia; believing Russia’s dictator over his own intelligence agencies; saying, as president, that there were “good people” among the white supremacists who marched with torches in a Southern city; getting impeached twice; refusing to accept election results; losing 60-odd court cases toward the end of overturning that result; and, finally, getting indicted four times.

What’s next? The trials, of course. But what else? Miles Taylor, the former (and repentant) Trump official who is the author of Blowback, told Nicolle Wallace on her MSNBC show Thursday: “All of these things lend themselves to a more volatile and combustible situation. We are about to find out in the next couple of weeks what law enforcement in this country actually thinks about it. Usually in September, we have the heads of the intelligence agencies and the FBI come up and testify before Congress. I predict they will come up and say that the political violence factors and trajectory in this country are worse than it was before, and they are worried about 2024. I think you will hear from the FBI, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, probably around the beginning of September.”

I don’t want to make irresponsible predictions. But am I worried about violence? Should we all be worried about violence? Tucker Carlson asked Trump this question Wednesday. Presidents, of course, usually urge people against such a course when asked such a question. Trump—and here’s another new precedent—did not: “There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen [and] there’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination.”

How do you think they heard that in Proud Boys-Oath Keepers-MAGA land?

The next election is about many things: abortion rights, civil rights, the fate of the planet, and more. But it’s really about one thing: Whether one man can corrupt and destroy a 250-year-old democracy. That we’re this unsure of the answer is terrifying.

I agree with every word except that I think the ground was tilled by the Republican Party for several decades to make it possible. And they continue to enable him now. That’s terrifying too.

What is going on down there?

This is truly stunning. They rounded up all the Black kids in the school for an assembly. You won’t believe what it was for:

A Florida elementary school has prompted outrage for singling out its Black students to attend a special assembly identifying them, as a group, as a “problem” because of standardized test performances.

Black fourth- and fifth-grade students at Bunnell elementary school in Flagler county, central Florida, were pulled from class last Friday and mandated to attend the presentation on improving test scores, the Washington Post reported.

Students were chosen to attend the presentation based on race, Jason Wheeler, the communications coordinator for Flagler school district, confirmed to the Guardian.

The nine- and 10-year-old students were shown a powerpoint entitled “AA presentation”, referring to African American, according to a copy of the presentation shared with the Guardian.

A slide labeled “The Problem” claimed that “AA”, referring to Black students, have underperformed on standardized tests for the past three years.

A subsequent slide added that students will be placed in a competition with each other to improve their test scores and could receive a meal from McDonald’s as a prize, according to the presentation.

Several parents were outraged about the assembly and noted how their children were segregated for the presentation, even if they had passed their tests.

“They segregated our kids, [in] 2023,” Jacinda Arrington, a parent, told WFTV 9, the local ABC affiliate based in Orlando.

“To me, it told my child that she’s not good enough. The color of your skin means that you’re not good enough when, in fact, she’s one of the smartest kids in her class,” Arrington said to Fox 35 Orlando.

“This was solely based off of color,” Nichole Consolazio, the parent of a fifth-grade student, said to Daytona News Journal.

Parents also said their children were reportedly told that if they did not do well in school they would end up dead or in jail.

The Power Point they used was filled with grammatical errors, by the way.

This is the state that says teachers should teach that slavery was beneficial for the slaves. Have they lost their minds?

You knew they would:

The former president has raised $7.1 million since he was booked at an Atlanta jail Thursday evening, according to figures provided first to POLITICO by his campaign. On Friday alone, Trump raised $4.18 million, making it the single-highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals.

The campaign’s fundraising has been powered by merchandise it has been selling through his online store. After Trump was taken into custody, the campaign began selling shirts, posters, bumper stickers and beverage coolers bearing Trump’s scowling mugshot. The items bear the tagline “NEVER SURRENDER!” and range in price from $12 to $34.

The mug shot literally documents his surrender.

Trumpers’ brains would rattle in a thimble.

Alabama is on the hunt for the best killing ritual

Horrifying:

Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used. [Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia.]

Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation. […]

Alabama has been working for several years to develop the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, but has disclosed little about its plans. The attorney general’s court filing did not describe the details of the how the execution would be carried out. Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters last month that a protocol was nearly complete.

The United States of America is allowing states to experiment on prisoners now to determine if their ritualized method of killing them is humane enough. WTF is that?

Yesterday there was another horrific hate crime perpetrated down in Florida when a racist walked into a Dollar Store and gunned down 3 people because they were Black:

“This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening.

Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack.

All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black.

Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border.

Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities.

But Waters said by the time authorities were alerted about the manifestos, the gunman had already started the attack in the Dollar General.

Last week a California shop keeper who flew a pride flag on her storefront was gunned down:

The man who shot and killed the store owner last week over her display of a pride flag outside her store was a far-right conspiracy theorist who shared deeply anti-LGBTQ and antisemitic content on his social media accounts.

Travis Ikeguchi, 27, shot Laura Ann Carleton, 66, on Friday after “yelling many homophobic slurs” about the store’s pride flag, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said at a news conference Monday.

The shooter fled the scene but police officers tracked him down later on Friday. When confronted, police said in a press conference, the 27-year-old fired at multiple patrol vehicles with an unregistered semi-automatic handgun before he was shot in what was described by officials as a “lethal force encounter.”

Authorities said they are continuing to investigate the murder as a possible hate crime. While they believe the shooter acted alone, authorities are continuing to look into the possibility that he was affiliated with  a hate group.

But a review of 27-year-old’s social media accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and the far-right social network Gab, show that the shooter had fully embraced a wide range of conspiracy theories—from claiming the 9/11 attacks were staged to suggestions that former first lady Michelle Obama is a man to denying climate change. He also posted content opposing gun control measures.

The shooter spent much of his time online sharing anti-LGBTQ content, reposting and responding to content shared by right-wing figures like commentator Matt Walsh and fringe networks like One America News. His pinned tweet, posted in June, simply showed a rainbow flag on fire with the caption: “What to do with the LGBTQP [sic] flag.”

On Gab, one of his pinned posts was even more explicitly threatening to the LGBTQ community. “We need to STOP COMPROMISING on this LGBT dictatorship and not let them take over our lives,” he wrote. “Stop accepting this abomination that the government is forcing us to submit to these mentally disordered tyrants.”

Another pinned post on Gab featured a link to a video entitled: “When Should You Shoot a Cop,” along with the caption: “There will come a time that we have to do this.” While the shooter’s X profile remains active, his Gab profile was removed late on Monday. X and Gab did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The majority of the suspect’s posts are infused with an overt Christian nationalism, which quickly gives way to virulent antisemitism in much of the content he shared online.

The shooter only followed 19 people on X, including One American News, former President Donald Trump, and conspiracy theorist David Knight, who once worked with Alex Jones. The shooter also followed and boosted rightwing professor and conspiracy theory promoter Jordan Peterson, antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the right-wing satirical website the Babylon Bee.

Trump has said nothing about any of this, of course. He’s too busy bragging about his golf game. DeSantis took a moment on the campaign trail to call the Florida shooter a scumbag. Ramaswamy said “The reality is we’ve created such a racialized culture in this country in the last few years so that right as the last embers of racism were burning out, we have a culture in this country …. that throws kerosine on that racism.” If only everyone would shut up about racism everything would be fine.

Racism was almost gone until people started talking about it in the last few years. Ok then.

Here’s the latest from the man tens of millions of Americans worship like a god. I just thought you ought to know even if you don’t want to.

In case you were wondering, Trump always cheats at golf. Here’s an excerpt of one of many, many stories about it:

Jack O’Donnell worked with Donald Trump for four years as vice president of Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City. O’Donnell’s dad was one of the founders of Sawgrass, the iconic Pete Dye golf course near Jacksonville, Fla. “My dad always told us to respect the game,” O’Donnell says. “That’s the one part of the game that tells me what kind of person you are. You play the ball where it lies.” So when O’Donnell’s office colleague, the late Mark Eddis, came back after his first round with Trump, O’Donnell couldn’t resist asking.

“So, does he improve his lie?”

Eddis looked at him and threw his head back in laughter. “Every shot but the tee shot.”

Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”

“I played with him once,” says Bryan Marsal, longtime Winged Foot member and chair of the coming 2020 Men’s U.S. Open. “It was a Saturday morning game. We go to the first tee and he couldn’t have been nicer. But then he said, ‘You see those two guys? They cheat. See me? I cheat. And I expect you to cheat because we’re going to beat those two guys today.’… So, yes, it’s true, he’s going to cheat you. But I think Donald, in his heart of hearts, believes that you’re gonna cheat him, too. So if it’s the same, if everybody’s cheating, he doesn’t see it as really cheating.”

Okay, but …

a)  Everybody isn’t. Except for an occasional mulligan on the first tee and accepting a gimme (a short conceded putt) from an opponent, 85 percent of casual golfers play by the rules, according to the National Golf Foundation.

b)  To say “Donald Trump cheats” is like saying “Michael Phelps swims.” He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching, and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf, that’s how he learned it, that’s how he needs it, and whether you’re his pharmacist or Tiger Woods, if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.

I know you are well aware of how nuts he is. But I believe it’s important to remind ourselves of it often. He’s a very disturbed individual and yet he has tens of millions of followers. Will they ever be reprogrammed?

Is it too much to ask?

Heather Cox Richardson posts, “Reading a paper today and it gave me a crazy idea: how about interviewing some Democratic voters for a change? Maybe that’s just too out there to be on the table, though….”

Other than mocking lefties for eating avocado toast, the press doesn’t view them as newsworthy subjects of inquiry unless they occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office, that is, when they show up where political reporters normally do their jobs. There are few political reporting safaris to where Democrat-leaning voters hang out in cities large and small unless they are on college campuses or represent the lunatic fringe. But angry right-wingers at school board meetings? That bleeds. Even when it doesn’t.

Are there no coffee shops? No book stores?

Marianne Williamson visited one in little Aiken, SC recently (in a county that went 61-38 for Trump in 2020). Local papers reported the press release. Nothing on the rarities who showed up with opinions.

Trump couldn’t pass a job interview

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (IIRC) last week observed that Republicans are seriously considering nominating for president a man facing four federal and state indictments on 91 felony counts who, the last time he held office, tried to end the republic as we know it and sent a mob to sack the U.S. Capitol.

Ben Rhodes, former Obama deputy national security advisor, commented Thursday night on “the steady radicalization of the Republican Party and the trivialization of politics.” Regarding Donald Trump’s interview last week with fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Rhodes wrote that “the GOP frontrunner talked at length on this platform about vicious mosquitos, conspiracy theories, and general nonsense. A man who said those things in a job interview for just about any other position in the world wouldn’t get hired.”

Trump is also, you may have heard, 6′-3″ and 215 pounds of rippling muscle.

The height and weight on Donald Trump's booking records is the same that Chris Hemsworth was while filming his role as Thor in #TheAvengers https://t.co/VrTzeP48Ru

— JustJared.com (@JustJared) August 25, 2023

Mmmkay! And I'm 110lbs and a virgin 😂! I'm not a scale or a doctor but I have spent some time beneath 215lb men and Tiny was not one of them.

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) August 25, 2023

BTW, Trump this week declared himself the winner of another golf tournament (at a club he owns) in which he totally did not cheat. Trust him on that:

The worst thing, to me, is that he believes people will believe it — and is right. pic.twitter.com/hneFuxPyCK

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) August 26, 2023

The Trump phenomenon was only possible, Rhodes added, “because of a Republican party that descended into grievance based insanity after the Obama election, and too much (not all) political media that cares only about performative nonsense.”

(To be blunt, plenty of registered Democrats, likely driven by the same grievances, also voted for Trump. Twice.)

Regarding the candidates on the GOP debate stage last week, Rhodes wrote:

Consider the fact that Vivek Ramaswamy, a man who has precisely zero interest in performing any functions of the U.S. presidency, is heralded for a performance in which he mainly demonstrated his complete lack of fitness to run for any office, nevermind the most powerful one.

Meanwhile, what’s at stake? The livelihoods of Americans. A world in which there is the biggest European war since World War II and the potential for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers in East Asia. The survivability of the planet.

We’re unpaid extras inside The Twilight Zone. Except those episodes were over in 30 minutes.

You’re about to get hit with a barrage of propaganda from Fox News about Biden and Burisma (again.) In case you’re not sure of what this is all about, Media Matters offers a primer:

On August 25, Fox News previewed an interview of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by network host Brian Kilmeade that is set to air in full on August 26. In the preview segment, Shokin accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of “corruption” and “being bribed” to push for the prosecutor’s removal from office in 2016. In fact, there was widespread agreement at the time across the political spectrum in the United States and the European Union that Shokin should be fired for being soft on corruption, including State Department allegations that Shokin himself was corrupt.

Additionally, at the time of his removal, Shokin wasn’t actively investigating Hunter Biden or Burisma, an energy company that had hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board of directors. Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer recently testified that it would have been better for Burisma if the Ukrainian government had kept Shokin because he was unlikely to move against the company.

Shokin’s claims are part of a longstanding smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani on behalf of former President Donald Trump, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Fox News knew Shokin’s claims were baseless then and continues to know it now, but the network is airing Shokin’s baseless allegations regardless.

Pushing for Shokin to be fired was the policy of not only the United States, where it was supported by leading Republicans, but also the international community

European nations, the United States, and over 100 members of Ukrainian parliament had pressured the Ukrainian government for months to fire Shokin. The international community concluded that Shokin was “turning a blind eye to corrupt practices” and “defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite.” [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2/11/16; The New York Times, 3/29/16]

In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called Shokin “an obstacle” to anti-corruption efforts. Ukraine’s refusal to act on anti-corruption measures, including keeping Shokin, resulted in the International Monetary Fund threatening to withhold $40 billion in aid. The European Union applauded his removal. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Protests in Ukraine demanded Shokin’s removal after he launched an investigation into an anti-corruption watchdog group and had fired various anti-corruption prosecutors. The group, Anti-Corruption Action Center, had publicly criticized Shokin. [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3/28/16; Kyiv Post, 3/25/16]

In 2016, Republican Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson and Democratic colleagues addressed a letter to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, calling for him to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” The bipartisan letter was also signed by five Senate Democrats, underlining that removing Shokin was the consensus view in Washington, D.C. — not a pet project of the Biden family. [CNN, 10/3/2019]

Johnson would later lead a committee that investigated Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma and failed to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing. The New York Times noted, “In fact, investigators heard witness testimony that rebutted those charges,” and Johnson acknowledged there were no “massive smoking guns” in the report. [The New York Times, 9/23/20]

George Kent, the State Department’s expert on Ukraine, testified during Trump’s first impeachment trial that Shokin’s corruption led to his removal. Shokin was fired over corruption allegations and was not actively investigating Burisma when he was removed. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Kent confirmed that Joe Biden called for the removal of “a corrupt prosecutor general … who had undermined a system of criminal investigation” into Ukrainian corruption cases, and “destroyed the entire ecosystem that we were trying to create.” Kent, who was the No. 2 official in the embassy at the time, explained that Biden was following the official U.S. government position that Shokin must be removed because he was “an impediment to the reform of the prosecutorial system, and he had directly undermined in repeated fashion U.S. efforts and U. S. assistance programs.” In fact, Kent testified that the idea to fire Shokin originated in the State Department before being pitched to others, including then-Vice President Biden. [The Washington Post, 11/19/19; Media Matters, 11/12/19]

At the time of his removal, Shokin was not actively investigating Burisma, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of an investigation into the company

Former Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko said in May 2019 that the investigation into Burisma had been “shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.” Shokin had stalled investigations into Burisma and its co-founder Mykola Zlochevsky. In 2014, he undermined an attempt by British authorities to freeze $23 million worth of Zlochevsky’s assets. [Bloomberg, 5/7/19]

Devon Archer testified that he was not aware of any Shokin-led investigation into Burisma. He also testified that he had no reason to believe that then-Vice President Biden called for Shokin’s removal “was driven by anything other than the U.S. Government’s anticorruption policy in Ukraine,” and confirmed that firing Shokin “was bad for Burisma because he was under control.” [Media Matters, 8/3/23]

Investigations involving Burisma targeted Zlochevsky, who had been accused of “abuse of power, illegal enrichment and money laundering,” rather than the company itself. Shokin had allegedly “dragged his feet” on these investigations, and Hunter Biden, as a board member, was not a target. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Fox News knew its sourcing on the Ukraine conspiracy theory was unreliable

Conservative writer John Solomon was a key distributor of Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories regarding Shokin’s firing. From March 20, 2019 — when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory — through October 2, 2019, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times, including 51 appearances on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show [Media Matters, 10/17/19]

During that period, Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy produced an internal “research briefing book” that “openly question[ed] Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an ‘indispensable role’ in a Ukrainian ‘disinformation campaign,’” according to The Daily Beast. Murphy’s research came from what was known as Fox’s “Brain Room,” which the network later disbanded, and described Solomon as having “played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign.” [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Murphy’s research book also advised that Giuliani had a “high susceptibility to disinformation” that was being fed to him by unreliable Ukrainian sources. [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Fox News continues to accuse Joe Biden of taking bribes regarding Shokin’s firing even when confronted with contradictory evidence. On August 9, a panel discussion on The Five descended into chaos after co-host Jessica Tarlov attempted to get her co-panelists to acknowledge recent testimony from Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer. Archer “was asked, if someone concluded … that Joe Biden was bribed, would you disagree with that? ‘Yeah, I would.’ Devon Archer said that,” Tarlov said to the panel. [Fox News, The Five, 8/9/23]

Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who would later be arrested for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was the lynchpin to the entire scheme

Solomon’s reporting laid the groundwork for Giuliani’s investigations in Ukraine, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Some of Solomon’s key sources were “disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko and the allies of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted Ukrainian oligarch and accused high-level Russian mafia associate,” who “have been seen as forces driving Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s political enemies.” [Media Matters, 10/17/19; The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Giuliani ultimately sent his findings to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, complete with “with unproven allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden” with the goal of undermining a future Biden presidential run. Giuliani used his documents “to bolster unproven allegations that Biden pressured Ukraine in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who has been involved with a business interest there, and that the Obama administration was using Ukraine to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” [NBC News, 10/3/19]

After Trump’s phone call attempting to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was revealed, Giuliani engaged in a press strategy to redirect the focus back to the Bidens. Some mainstream outlets took the bait, with headlines like “Scrutiny over Trump’s Ukraine scandal may also complicate Biden’s campaign” and “Why Trump’s Ukraine scandal could backfire on Biden.” [Media Matters, 9/23/19]

This whole thing was the basis of trump’s first impeachment. They just won’t let go of their ridiculous smear campaign because they believe the American people must eventually believe that there’s something to it. It’s Whitewater, Benghazi all the rest, which just shows it isn’t Trump — it’s the GOP. They were at this particular form of conspiracy mongering long before he came along.