Joe Biden has been listed as a suspect in a Ukrainian criminal investigation.  I recent commented on the wisdom of having a criminal defendent as a presidential candidate, and was informed by an all-to-woke young lady that it was okay, because we elected Trump.

When asked to detail Trump's crimes, I got the usual tripe out of the playbook about the Russian collusion and after all, he WAS impeached.  This is my reponse:

Yep, Russia influenced our elections. First, what was the net effect? Did a bunch of people get their votes switched from D to R? No. Did Russia spread misleading disinformation? No. Did Russia do anything to keep Democratic voters from going to the polls? No.

What was it they did again, then? They used information they had obtained in a standard espionage operation to show how the DNC was rigging the primary against Bernie Sanders, in violation of their own bylaws, and in spite of the will of the elected Democratic primary delegates. To really understand this, you need to know how the Democratic party allocates their delegates. I'm not 100% up to speed on it myself, as it seems pretty Machiavellian the way they set it up compared to the straightforward way the Republican party does it, but it involves "super-delegates" who aren't elected, but appointed by the party leaders to counterbalance the will of the elected delegates if they don't toe the party line and select the coronated candidate.

While the public line of the DNC was that HIllary was being selected fair, square and above board, the Russian revelation showed the dirty underside of the DNC, and revealed how the party itself was cheating on the inside to make sure Bernie didn't have a chance.

OMG, can you imagine? How on Earth can we ever have a proper American election if those damned Russians pull the curtain back and show the American public how politics really works in America? How the hell can we have a proper election when the people are shown the ugly TRUTH? Who gave those damned Russkis the right to tell the truth about what's going on to Americans? OMG, that means the elections would be done by an INFORMED American public! We can't have that!

Why did the Russians do it? That's a damned good question. Because on the face of it, there was absolutely no reason for them to favor anyone but Hillary, because - not to put too fine a point on it - she was their bitch.

In October of 2010, the State Department and the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) curiously — and unanimously — approved the sale of part of Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with uranium interests in the U.S., to Rosatom, a Russian state holding company. That sale gave Russia, a potential nuclear foe, defacto control over 20% of the U.S.' uranium supply.

The CFIUS that approved the Rosatom deal had two key members: Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in a clear conflict of interest materially benefited from the deal, and Attorney General Eric Holder, the man responsible for slow-walking the investigation into Russian nuclear racketeering.

Hillary was selling access and influence in the State Department via donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation raked in a cool $145 million in donations and "speaking fees" just from Uranium One- and Rosatom-affiliated donors while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was supposedly keeping all Clinton Foundation business at "arm's-length." Clinton official emails show extensive connections between Hillary, the Clinton Foundation and donors during her time as secretary of state, a kind of criminal conga-line of people asking for favors from Hillary and donating to the foundation.

Why on Earth would Russia want to derail such a compliant accomplice from achieving the highest office in America? Who knows? Maybe Hillary overplayed her hand and tried to extort something from Putin. Maybe she didn't deliver on a deal they had. Maybe an Clinton presidency threatened other interests in Russia who were able to leverage Putin to do what he did. We'll probably never know. But the idea that Trump had anything to do with it, and that Russia was courting Trump through doing so is just plain laughable.

Thanks to Trump, we've shifted NATO's military center of gravity eastward towards Poland, clearly against the best interests of Russia's military position. We've placed economic sanctions on Russia for their adventures against Ukraine. We've given military aid to the Ukraine to counter Russian aggression. We've dramatically increased US oil production, to the point where we're again the world's leading producer of oil, which gravely threatens Russia's vital but sagging petroleum industry.

Whatever the hell the quid pro quo the leftists claim was between Russia and Trump, I don't think the Russians got their money's worth. He's the shittiest goddamn puppet they could have.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden, in a real quid pro quo, held up $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor who was getting a little too close to the international money laundering racket that Joe's son was hip-deep in through Burisma. Then the dumb sonofabitch bragged about it on national TV.

Yes, Trump was impeached by a congress that was ideologically driven and had spent three years trying to find a crime for which to impeach him. Under the constitution, the president may be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Please carefully note that the articles of impeachment brought against Trump did not cite a single civil code that his supposed to have violated. Surely if he had broken the law, they would have actually led with citing the statute that he had broken. They could not, because no statute was violated. No crime had been committed.

The first article was that he had supposedly withheld a Ukrainian aid package unless the Ukrainian government cooperated in the Burisma money-laundering investigation. The charge was that he was asking for this investigation to gain a political advantage over his opponent, whose son was implicated in the money laundering scheme.

First of all, how is it that the son of a sitting vice president, who has absolutely zero experience in the petrochemical industry, lands a lucrative board position on a foreign petrochemical company after being kicked out of the US Navy for drug use? How does he earn his position? It sure as hell isn't for his good looks, winning personality or expertise.

Second, since when is running for office a get-out-of-jail free card for a candidate and his entire family?

Third, The president, as the head of the executive branch of the government has the duty and responsibility to enforce the law and prosecute crime. Further, he has an additional responsibility as head of state to cooperate with other countries according to treaty obligations to investigate and prosecute international crime. To not do so would make him derelict in his duties, and subject to a real charge of impeachment. See the nice little trap the Democrats tried to set, where he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't? The only thing they need is an electorate that's civically illiterate - like your entire generation is - to not be able to see the logical flaw in their argument.

The second article of impeachment was that Trump refused to turn over the records that Congress demanded. Trump was entirely in his right to do so. If you had a civics education you would know about the separation of powers built into our constitution. Congress can subpoena all the records they want from the executive branch, and the president can tell them to go piss up a rope. He doesn't work for them. If Congress really has a charge that requires Executive records, they can go to the Supreme Court and get a warrant, and the President would have to honor that. Pelosi and her kangaroo-court congress didn't do that, because they had nothing. The records subpoena was a fishing expedition. They wanted to comb through those records and see if they could find something worthy of impeachment, because after three years of the most intensive investigation a president has EVER endured, they had bupkiss to nail on him.

Again, they floated a bullshit impeachment charge of obstruction, knowing there was no way to make it stick, because they were confident that civically illiterate Americans would buy their bullshit and not see it for the political posturing that it was, and think the president was a criminal.

I guarantee you know little to nothing about what happened in the Watergate scandal. I lived through it. The president was railroaded out of office by a nonstop barrage of lies, accusations, insinuations, and "Have you stopped beating your wife yet" types of questions for which there is no good answer. There was no internet, no conservative alternate information source, no one who could speak for the president and call bullshit in the national conversation. The left still thinks it can pull these sorts of stunts. I'm disappointed that you buy their bullshit.