Baloney, the Feds do it all the time with foreign aid as well as funds to the States. Politicians can't do it to enrich themselves or solicit aid in an election.
A president, Sec. of State, etc., can negotiate legal concessions from other countries, by withholding aid.
But NOT a Vice President.
He does not have that authority.
And clearly getting the Ukrainian Inspector General fired, was not for US interests, but for the interests of Burisma Holdings instead.
And that makes it illegal as well.
Sure looks like he had the authority from the President to use the US funds like that. Why can't the President delegate that authority to the VP?
Without pressure from Joe Biden, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, Shokin would not have been fired, said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Corruption Action Centre in Kiev.
"Civil society organizations in Ukraine were pressing for his resignation," Kaleniuk said, "but no one would have cared if there had not been voices from outside this country calling on him to go."
Explainer: Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn't pursue corruption cases
How does that explain a $500k salary with zero experience?
Coat tails can be ignored, but not a vice president committing open blackmail.
Baloney, the Feds do it all the time with foreign aid as well as funds to the States. Politicians can't do it to enrich themselves or solicit aid in an election.
Sure people can do quid pro quo at the request of the president, but it is very unlikely Biden got permission to get the Ukrainian Inspector General fired in order to protect Burisma Holdings.
Nor does Trump have to have only one motive.
Biden was carrying out US Policy.
2 Republican senators refute Trump’s Ukraine-Biden conspiracy theory
"But you don’t have to take my word for it: Take what Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) have recently said about Shokin’s 2016 departure.
“The whole world felt that this that Shokin wasn’t doing a [good] enough job. So we were saying, ‘Hey, you’ve ... got to rid yourself of corruption,” Johnson told the radio program
The Vicki McKenna Show on Thursday.
And then on Monday, Portman told Ohio’s
Columbus Dispatch the same thing. While the article doesn’t contain quotes to this effect, it describes Portman as “disput[ing] Trump’s characterization of an ousted Ukrainian as an aggressive battler of corruption,” saying he and other lawmakers “believed the prosecutor wasn’t doing nearly enough to root out corruption — not because he was doing too much.”
This isn’t terribly surprising.
Johnson and Portman were two of three GOP senators who co-signed a bipartisan 2016 letter to Ukraine’s then-president calling for him to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” Four days later, Shokin resigned (although he didn’t officially leave until the following month when Ukraine’s Parliament voted him out).