WHILE THE AOC-ALIGNED GROUP IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICA …
FOX NEWS
"Ocasio-Cortez-aligned group attacks Biden, says he’s out of touch with Democratic Party"
Alex Pappas
25 APRIL 2019
A progressive political group that boosted New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's bid for Congress last year vowed to oppose former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, blasting him as part of the “old guard” and accusing him of standing in opposition to the “center of energy” in the Democratic Party.
“While we're going to support the Democratic nominee, we can't let a so-called 'centrist' like Joe Biden divide the Democratic Party and turn it into the party of 'No, we can’t,’” the group Justice Democrats said Thursday.
Biden announced his candidacy for president Thursday.
He enters a crowded field of Democratic contenders aiming to unseat President Trump — nearly 32 years after he announced his first campaign for president.
The campaign is Biden’s third bid for the White House, having also unsuccessfully run in 1988 and 2008.
“The old guard of the Democratic Party failed to stop Trump, and they can’t be counted on to lead the fight against his divide-and-conquer politics today,” Justice Democrats said.
“The party needs new leadership with a bold vision capable of energizing voters in the Democratic base who stayed home in 2016.”
The group added: “Joe Biden stands in near complete opposition to where the center of energy is in the Democratic Party today.”
“Democrats are increasingly uniting around progressive populist policies like 'Medicare-for-All,' a Green New Deal, free college, rejecting corporate money, ending mass incarceration and deportation."
"We don’t need someone who voted for the Iraq War, for mass incarceration, and for the Bankruptcy Reform Act while voting against gay marriage, reproductive rights, and school desegregation,” Justice Democrats said.
Others, though, took issue with the group's claim about the energy in the party.
"It's probably worth noting that while this group, Justice Democrats, calls Biden 'out-of-touch' with the 'center of energy' in the Democratic Party, only 26 of the 79 candidates it endorsed last year won their primaries, and only 7 of those went on to win the general election," said Nate Silver, the editor of FiveThirtyEight.
According to its website, Justice Democrats says its mission is “to elect a new type of Democratic majority in Congress, one which will create a thriving economy and democracy that works for the people, not big money interests.”
The attacks could foreshadow the looming clash between the progressive and establishment wings of the party: Biden, along with independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- who enjoys the support of Democratic Socialists in the party -- have consistently topped the polls in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Fox News’ Lillian LeCroy and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 26, 2019 AT 8:37 PM
Paul Plante says:
Chas, dude, I can think of no better evidence that your words above here, when you so passionately and quite accurately state “I am challenging you to step outside your comfort zone and truly see where America is today, this is not a reality show,” are being heard and taken seriously in the highest of high places than an article in none other than your favorite rag The Washington Post entitled “Former vice president Joe Biden jumps into White House race” by Michael Scherer and John Wagner on 25 April 2019, where we have as follows:
Former vice president Joe Biden opened his third campaign for the presidency on Thursday, taking direct aim at President Trump and declaring that “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation.”
“The core values of this nation — our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America — is at stake.”
“That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
end quotes
I have to say in my own estimation that those words “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation” uttered by Joe Biden just four days after this article appeared in the Cape Charles Mirror came to Joe after reading your words above, which describe very vividly that very battle, and it was those words of yours above that finally brought Joe Biden into the fray with a not only a ready made slogan and soundbite, both of which are super-critical to a presidential candidate in America today, along with the ability to fundraise, of course, because the office of president goes for big bucks these days, but a potent nickname as well for Joe, now known as “THE SOUL MAN,” and something even more important than that, which is a personal theme song which for Joe Biden goes as follows to a catchy reggae beat in three-part harmony with some DO-WHOPPA-DOO being crooned in the background, to wit:
Comin’ to ya on a dusty road
Good lovin’ he’s got a truck load
And when you get it you got something
So don’t worry cause Joe Biden’s coming
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Got what he got the hard way
And he’ll make it better each and every day
So honey don’t you fret
‘Cause you ain’t seen nothing yet
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Play it Steve!
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Listen
He was brought up on a side street
He learned how to love before he could eat
He was educated from good stock
When he starts lovin’ he just can’t stop
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Well grab the rope and he’ll pull you in
Give you hope and be your only boyfriend
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
You’re a soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
end quotes
So, Chas, thanks to you, it very much appears that now with Joe Biden in the race as AMERICA’S CHAMPION, the nation’s prayers for its soul to be saved have been answered, and if it weren’t for you and the Cape Charles Mirror, it never wouldn’t have happened!
So a grateful nation owes you its thanks, Chas.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-143462
Paul Plante says:
Chas, dude, I can think of no better evidence that your words above here, when you so passionately and quite accurately state “I am challenging you to step outside your comfort zone and truly see where America is today, this is not a reality show,” are being heard and taken seriously in the highest of high places than an article in none other than your favorite rag The Washington Post entitled “Former vice president Joe Biden jumps into White House race” by Michael Scherer and John Wagner on 25 April 2019, where we have as follows:
Former vice president Joe Biden opened his third campaign for the presidency on Thursday, taking direct aim at President Trump and declaring that “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation.”
“The core values of this nation — our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America — is at stake.”
“That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
end quotes
I have to say in my own estimation that those words “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation” uttered by Joe Biden just four days after this article appeared in the Cape Charles Mirror came to Joe after reading your words above, which describe very vividly that very battle, and it was those words of yours above that finally brought Joe Biden into the fray with a not only a ready made slogan and soundbite, both of which are super-critical to a presidential candidate in America today, along with the ability to fundraise, of course, because the office of president goes for big bucks these days, but a potent nickname as well for Joe, now known as “THE SOUL MAN,” and something even more important than that, which is a personal theme song which for Joe Biden goes as follows to a catchy reggae beat in three-part harmony with some DO-WHOPPA-DOO being crooned in the background, to wit:
Comin’ to ya on a dusty road
Good lovin’ he’s got a truck load
And when you get it you got something
So don’t worry cause Joe Biden’s coming
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Got what he got the hard way
And he’ll make it better each and every day
So honey don’t you fret
‘Cause you ain’t seen nothing yet
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Play it Steve!
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Listen
He was brought up on a side street
He learned how to love before he could eat
He was educated from good stock
When he starts lovin’ he just can’t stop
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
Well grab the rope and he’ll pull you in
Give you hope and be your only boyfriend
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
You’re a soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
He’s the soul man
end quotes
So, Chas, thanks to you, it very much appears that now with Joe Biden in the race as AMERICA’S CHAMPION, the nation’s prayers for its soul to be saved have been answered, and if it weren’t for you and the Cape Charles Mirror, it never wouldn’t have happened!
So a grateful nation owes you its thanks, Chas.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-143462
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies"
Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel
2 MAY 2019
WASHINGTON — It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act.
And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.
The pressure campaign worked.
The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine.
He would be paid about $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.
The broad outlines of how the Bidens’ roles intersected in Ukraine have been known for some time.
The former vice president’s campaign said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son’s role with the Ukrainian energy company from news reports.
But new details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign.
They show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration.
Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.
“I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers,” Hunter Biden said Wednesday in a statement.
“I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”
Hunter Biden, who left Burisma’s board last month, was one of many politically prominent Americans of both major parties who made money in Ukraine over the last decade.
In several cases — most notably that of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman — that business came under criminal investigation that exposed a seedy side of the lucrative Western consulting industry in Ukraine.
But the renewed scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s experience in Ukraine has also been fanned by allies of Mr. Trump.
They have been eager to publicize and even encourage the investigation, as well as other Ukrainian inquiries that serve Mr. Trump’s political ends, underscoring the Trump campaign’s concern about the electoral threat from the former vice president’s presidential campaign.
The Trump team’s efforts to draw attention to the Bidens’ work in Ukraine, which is already yielding coverage in conservative media, has been led partly by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Mr. Giuliani’s involvement raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is endorsing an effort to push a foreign government to proceed with a case that could hurt a political opponent at home.
Mr. Giuliani has discussed the Burisma investigation, and its intersection with the Bidens, with the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general and the current prosecutor.
He met with the current prosecutor multiple times in New York this year.
The current prosecutor general later told associates that, during one of the meetings, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on any such phone call with Mr. Trump, but acknowledged that he has discussed the matter with the president on multiple occasions.
Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.
Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel’s inquiry.
“I can assure you this all started with an allegation about possible Ukrainian involvement in the investigation of Russian meddling, and not Biden,” Mr. Giuliani said.
“The Biden piece is collateral to the bigger story, but must still be investigated, but without the prejudgments that infected the collusion story.”
The decision to reopen the investigation into Burisma was made in March by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general, who had cleared Hunter Biden’s employer more than two years ago.
The announcement came in the midst of Ukraine’s contentious presidential election, and was seen in some quarters as an effort by the prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally, the incumbent president, Petro O. Poroshenko.
Mr. Poroshenko lost his re-election bid in a landslide last month.
While the incoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he will replace Mr. Lutsenko as prosecutor general, Mr. Zelensky has not said whether the prosecutors he appoints will be asked to continue the investigation.
Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, a deputy for Mr. Lutsenko who was handling the cases before being reassigned last month, told The New York Times that he was scrutinizing millions of dollars of payments from Burisma to the firm that paid Hunter Biden.
No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal.
Some of his former associates, moreover, said Mr. Biden never did anything to deter other Obama administration officials who were pushing for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities — and potentially to start its own investigation — into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for possible money laundering and abuse of office.
The Biden campaign cast the revival of the Ukrainian investigation as politically motivated and pointed to the involvement of Mr. Giuliani to question the motives behind the new scrutiny.
Kate Bedingfield, a Biden campaign spokeswoman, said the former vice president’s 2016 push to oust the former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was undertaken “without any regard for how it would or would not impact any business interests of his son, a private citizen.”
The effort, she added, was consistent with “the United States’ foreign policy to root out corruption in Ukraine” and was backed by the United States government, allies and multilateral institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The younger Mr. Biden said in the statement, “At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business, or my board service, including my initial decision to join the board.”
Mr. Lutsenko denied any political motivation in reopening the case.
Hunter Biden, 49, is the middle of three children his father had with his first wife, Neilia Biden.
She and the youngest child died in an automobile crash in 1972.
Hunter and his older brother, Beau, survived the crash, and Beau Biden went on to a career in public service.
Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter Biden took on a number of roles that intersected with his father’s political career, including working with a Delaware-based credit card issuer, working at the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton and working as a lobbyist on behalf of various universities, associations and companies.
When his father was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, Hunter Biden terminated his lobbying registrations, which at the time included a company that had lobbied the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which his father had served, about online gambling issues.
Months after his father became vice president, Mr. Biden joined with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, then a senator, and Devon Archer, a Kerry family friend, to create a network of investment and consulting firms with variations of the name Rosemont Seneca.
Mr. Kerry would go on to become secretary of state.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Archer pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection.
Among the companies they did work for was Burisma, a natural gas company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky.
Mr. Zlochevsky had served nearly four years in the government of the former Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, who stepped down in early 2014 and fled amid mass street protests.
In the months after the collapse of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, Mr. Zlochevsky also fled the country as Ukrainian prosecutors opened multiple investigations into him and his businesses.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office froze London accounts linked to Mr. Zlochevsky containing $23 million, declaring it was connected to money laundering and Yanukovych-era corruption.
(The British prosecution later collapsed because of what American officials said was a lack of cooperation from the office of the Ukrainian prosecutor general who preceded Mr. Shokin.)
When Mr. Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering.
Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.
Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma have always vigorously disputed the accusations against them.
Views about the role of the Bidens in the matter depend to some degree on questions about Mr. Shokin’s motives.
Among both Ukrainian and American officials, there is considerable debate about whether Mr. Shokin was intent on pursuing a legitimate inquiry into Burisma or whether he was merely using the threat of prosecution to solicit a bribe, as Mr. Zlochevsky’s defenders assert.
Concerns about Mr. Shokin notwithstanding, the cases against Burisma had high-level support from the Obama administration.
In April 2014, it sent top officials to a forum on Ukrainian asset recovery, co-sponsored by the United States government, in London, where Mr. Zlochevsky’s case was highlighted.
Early that year, Mr. Archer, the Kerry family friend, and Hunter Biden were part of a wave of Americans who would come from across the Atlantic to help Burisma both with its substantive legal issues and its image.
Their support allowed Burisma to create the perception that it was backed by powerful Americans at a time when Ukraine was especially dependent on aid and strategic backing from the United States and its allies, according to people who worked in Ukraine at the time.
First, Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board.
Around the same time, the company started paying the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where Hunter Biden was working.
The firm, which Mr. Biden left at the end of 2017, declined to describe the nature of Boies Schiller’s work for Burisma.
But previously unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014.
Soon after Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden followed, despite being warned by associates who had experience in Ukraine to stay away from Mr. Zlochevsky, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
A news release from the company said Hunter Biden would “be in charge of the holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the company among international organizations.”
Mr. Biden said the news release mischaracterized his role with Burisma.
“At no time was I in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” he said.
Among the Americans brought in by Hunter Biden’s American business partners to help fend off the investigations was Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by Clinton administration veterans that had done substantial work in Ukraine.
A team from Blue Star, and an American lawyer Blue Star hired, John D. Buretta, who had served as a senior official in the Obama Justice Department, held two previously unreported meetings in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, with Mr. Lutsenko, who took office in May 2016 after Mr. Shokin’s dismissal, according to people with direct knowledge of the meetings.
Mr. Lutsenko denied attending the meeting.
Mr. Lutsenko initially took a hard line against Burisma.
But within 10 months after he took office, Burisma announced that Mr. Lutsenko and the courts had “fully closed” all “legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against Mr. Zlochevsky and his companies, and that the oligarch had been removed by a Ukrainian court from “the wanted list.”
Mr. Zlochevsky returned to the country.
Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated.
Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor.
The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
Rosemont Seneca Bohai was controlled by Mr. Archer, who left Burisma’s board after he was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars.
Bank records submitted in that case — which resulted in a conviction for Mr. Archer that was overturned in November — show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled about $50,000 in some months.
Amos J. Hochstein, who worked with Vice President Biden on Ukraine issues as the State Department’s coordinator for international energy affairs, said the Obama administration’s support for prosecuting Mr. Zlochevsky contradicts any implication that the elder Mr. Biden was seeking to oust Mr. Shokin in order to protect his son or Mr. Zlochevsky.
“I was in almost every single meeting that Vice President Biden had with President Poroshenko, I was on every trip, and I was on most of the phone calls, and there was never a discussion about his son, or Burisma,” Mr. Hochstein said.
“None of these issues ever came up.”
On Wednesday, Hunter Biden said in his statement that his term as a director had expired and that he was stepping down from Burisma’s board in a political climate “where my qualifications and work are being attacked by Rudy Giuliani and his minions for transparent political purposes.”
Kenneth P. Vogel reported from Washington, and Iuliia Mendel reported from Kiev, Ukraine.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies"
Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel
2 MAY 2019
WASHINGTON — It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act.
And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.
The pressure campaign worked.
The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine.
He would be paid about $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.
The broad outlines of how the Bidens’ roles intersected in Ukraine have been known for some time.
The former vice president’s campaign said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son’s role with the Ukrainian energy company from news reports.
But new details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign.
They show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration.
Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.
“I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers,” Hunter Biden said Wednesday in a statement.
“I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”
Hunter Biden, who left Burisma’s board last month, was one of many politically prominent Americans of both major parties who made money in Ukraine over the last decade.
In several cases — most notably that of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman — that business came under criminal investigation that exposed a seedy side of the lucrative Western consulting industry in Ukraine.
But the renewed scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s experience in Ukraine has also been fanned by allies of Mr. Trump.
They have been eager to publicize and even encourage the investigation, as well as other Ukrainian inquiries that serve Mr. Trump’s political ends, underscoring the Trump campaign’s concern about the electoral threat from the former vice president’s presidential campaign.
The Trump team’s efforts to draw attention to the Bidens’ work in Ukraine, which is already yielding coverage in conservative media, has been led partly by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Mr. Giuliani’s involvement raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is endorsing an effort to push a foreign government to proceed with a case that could hurt a political opponent at home.
Mr. Giuliani has discussed the Burisma investigation, and its intersection with the Bidens, with the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general and the current prosecutor.
He met with the current prosecutor multiple times in New York this year.
The current prosecutor general later told associates that, during one of the meetings, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on any such phone call with Mr. Trump, but acknowledged that he has discussed the matter with the president on multiple occasions.
Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.
Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel’s inquiry.
“I can assure you this all started with an allegation about possible Ukrainian involvement in the investigation of Russian meddling, and not Biden,” Mr. Giuliani said.
“The Biden piece is collateral to the bigger story, but must still be investigated, but without the prejudgments that infected the collusion story.”
The decision to reopen the investigation into Burisma was made in March by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general, who had cleared Hunter Biden’s employer more than two years ago.
The announcement came in the midst of Ukraine’s contentious presidential election, and was seen in some quarters as an effort by the prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally, the incumbent president, Petro O. Poroshenko.
Mr. Poroshenko lost his re-election bid in a landslide last month.
While the incoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he will replace Mr. Lutsenko as prosecutor general, Mr. Zelensky has not said whether the prosecutors he appoints will be asked to continue the investigation.
Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, a deputy for Mr. Lutsenko who was handling the cases before being reassigned last month, told The New York Times that he was scrutinizing millions of dollars of payments from Burisma to the firm that paid Hunter Biden.
No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal.
Some of his former associates, moreover, said Mr. Biden never did anything to deter other Obama administration officials who were pushing for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities — and potentially to start its own investigation — into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for possible money laundering and abuse of office.
The Biden campaign cast the revival of the Ukrainian investigation as politically motivated and pointed to the involvement of Mr. Giuliani to question the motives behind the new scrutiny.
Kate Bedingfield, a Biden campaign spokeswoman, said the former vice president’s 2016 push to oust the former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was undertaken “without any regard for how it would or would not impact any business interests of his son, a private citizen.”
The effort, she added, was consistent with “the United States’ foreign policy to root out corruption in Ukraine” and was backed by the United States government, allies and multilateral institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The younger Mr. Biden said in the statement, “At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business, or my board service, including my initial decision to join the board.”
Mr. Lutsenko denied any political motivation in reopening the case.
Hunter Biden, 49, is the middle of three children his father had with his first wife, Neilia Biden.
She and the youngest child died in an automobile crash in 1972.
Hunter and his older brother, Beau, survived the crash, and Beau Biden went on to a career in public service.
Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter Biden took on a number of roles that intersected with his father’s political career, including working with a Delaware-based credit card issuer, working at the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton and working as a lobbyist on behalf of various universities, associations and companies.
When his father was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, Hunter Biden terminated his lobbying registrations, which at the time included a company that had lobbied the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which his father had served, about online gambling issues.
Months after his father became vice president, Mr. Biden joined with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, then a senator, and Devon Archer, a Kerry family friend, to create a network of investment and consulting firms with variations of the name Rosemont Seneca.
Mr. Kerry would go on to become secretary of state.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Archer pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection.
Among the companies they did work for was Burisma, a natural gas company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky.
Mr. Zlochevsky had served nearly four years in the government of the former Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, who stepped down in early 2014 and fled amid mass street protests.
In the months after the collapse of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, Mr. Zlochevsky also fled the country as Ukrainian prosecutors opened multiple investigations into him and his businesses.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office froze London accounts linked to Mr. Zlochevsky containing $23 million, declaring it was connected to money laundering and Yanukovych-era corruption.
(The British prosecution later collapsed because of what American officials said was a lack of cooperation from the office of the Ukrainian prosecutor general who preceded Mr. Shokin.)
When Mr. Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering.
Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.
Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma have always vigorously disputed the accusations against them.
Views about the role of the Bidens in the matter depend to some degree on questions about Mr. Shokin’s motives.
Among both Ukrainian and American officials, there is considerable debate about whether Mr. Shokin was intent on pursuing a legitimate inquiry into Burisma or whether he was merely using the threat of prosecution to solicit a bribe, as Mr. Zlochevsky’s defenders assert.
Concerns about Mr. Shokin notwithstanding, the cases against Burisma had high-level support from the Obama administration.
In April 2014, it sent top officials to a forum on Ukrainian asset recovery, co-sponsored by the United States government, in London, where Mr. Zlochevsky’s case was highlighted.
Early that year, Mr. Archer, the Kerry family friend, and Hunter Biden were part of a wave of Americans who would come from across the Atlantic to help Burisma both with its substantive legal issues and its image.
Their support allowed Burisma to create the perception that it was backed by powerful Americans at a time when Ukraine was especially dependent on aid and strategic backing from the United States and its allies, according to people who worked in Ukraine at the time.
First, Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board.
Around the same time, the company started paying the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where Hunter Biden was working.
The firm, which Mr. Biden left at the end of 2017, declined to describe the nature of Boies Schiller’s work for Burisma.
But previously unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014.
Soon after Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden followed, despite being warned by associates who had experience in Ukraine to stay away from Mr. Zlochevsky, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
A news release from the company said Hunter Biden would “be in charge of the holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the company among international organizations.”
Mr. Biden said the news release mischaracterized his role with Burisma.
“At no time was I in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” he said.
Among the Americans brought in by Hunter Biden’s American business partners to help fend off the investigations was Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by Clinton administration veterans that had done substantial work in Ukraine.
A team from Blue Star, and an American lawyer Blue Star hired, John D. Buretta, who had served as a senior official in the Obama Justice Department, held two previously unreported meetings in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, with Mr. Lutsenko, who took office in May 2016 after Mr. Shokin’s dismissal, according to people with direct knowledge of the meetings.
Mr. Lutsenko denied attending the meeting.
Mr. Lutsenko initially took a hard line against Burisma.
But within 10 months after he took office, Burisma announced that Mr. Lutsenko and the courts had “fully closed” all “legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against Mr. Zlochevsky and his companies, and that the oligarch had been removed by a Ukrainian court from “the wanted list.”
Mr. Zlochevsky returned to the country.
Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated.
Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor.
The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
Rosemont Seneca Bohai was controlled by Mr. Archer, who left Burisma’s board after he was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars.
Bank records submitted in that case — which resulted in a conviction for Mr. Archer that was overturned in November — show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled about $50,000 in some months.
Amos J. Hochstein, who worked with Vice President Biden on Ukraine issues as the State Department’s coordinator for international energy affairs, said the Obama administration’s support for prosecuting Mr. Zlochevsky contradicts any implication that the elder Mr. Biden was seeking to oust Mr. Shokin in order to protect his son or Mr. Zlochevsky.
“I was in almost every single meeting that Vice President Biden had with President Poroshenko, I was on every trip, and I was on most of the phone calls, and there was never a discussion about his son, or Burisma,” Mr. Hochstein said.
“None of these issues ever came up.”
On Wednesday, Hunter Biden said in his statement that his term as a director had expired and that he was stepping down from Burisma’s board in a political climate “where my qualifications and work are being attacked by Rudy Giuliani and his minions for transparent political purposes.”
Kenneth P. Vogel reported from Washington, and Iuliia Mendel reported from Kiev, Ukraine.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE HILL
"2020 rivals, greens rip Biden over purportedly 'middle ground' climate plan"
Miranda Green
11 MAY 2019
2020 Democratic hopefuls and environmental groups are blasting former Vice President Joe Biden's forthcoming climate plan, which is reportedly being pegged as a "middle ground" approach to addressing global warming.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), both presidential candidates, took to Twitter on Friday to criticize Biden's plan, which would reportedly include continued use of natural gas and rely on nuclear energy.
"There is no 'middle ground' when it comes to climate policy."
"If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations," Sanders tweeted.
"Fighting climate change must be our priority, whether fossil fuel billionaires like it or not."
Inslee called the plan a "half measure" that "won't cut it."
"We need a large-scale national mobilization to defeat climate change and grow millions of jobs in a clean energy economy," Inslee tweeted.
Reuters first reported Friday morning that Biden's campaign was in the midst of drafting a climate policy plan.
The plan would include re-committing to the Paris climate agreement, which President Trump has said he intends to pull the U.S. out of in 2020, and investing in carbon capture technology for fossil fuel emissions.
The approach, two sources told Reuters, is meant to appeal to working-class voters who may be reluctant to back more extensive approaches to climate change, like the Green New Deal, which ultimately seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero over a 10-year period.
Biden has not backed the Green New Deal, a progressive plan championed by progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and which every Democratic senator running for the presidency, including Sanders, has signed on to.
Biden's anticipated plan follows two climate proposals rolled out last week by Inslee and another Democratic hopeful, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke.
Each plan called for ending reliance on fossil fuels and transitioning the U.S. electric grid entirely to renewable and clean energy use.
Inslee's plan supported the use of nuclear power, an energy source hotly debated by environmentalists who worry about the resulting nuclear waste.
While Sanders has not released a formal climate policy yet, he has staunchly backed the ideas of the Green New Deal and signed a pledge to not accept campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Environmentalists Friday also strongly criticized Biden's plan, arguing it won't go far enough to address climate action at a time when various reports, including those from the United Nations, warn the world has fewer than 12 years to stop the effects of greenhouse gases.
Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth lead group backing the Green New Deal, equated Biden's anticipated plan to a "death sentence" for millennials and younger generations.
"A 'middle ground' policy that's supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis," she said in a statement.
Charlie Jiang, climate campaigner for Greenpeace said the idea of a "middle ground" approach to climate action was unrealistic.
"There is no such thing as a middle ground on climate change."
"We either doom millions of people to climate catastrophe or we don't," he said in a statement.
"This kind of rhetoric from the frontrunner in the Democratic race is dangerous and irresponsible, especially while many of his 2020 competitors are raising the bar with their climate plans."
Biden is currently leading the Democratic field.
However, climate change has also surged to the top of issues that Democratic voters care about, according to recent polls.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
"2020 rivals, greens rip Biden over purportedly 'middle ground' climate plan"
Miranda Green
11 MAY 2019
2020 Democratic hopefuls and environmental groups are blasting former Vice President Joe Biden's forthcoming climate plan, which is reportedly being pegged as a "middle ground" approach to addressing global warming.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), both presidential candidates, took to Twitter on Friday to criticize Biden's plan, which would reportedly include continued use of natural gas and rely on nuclear energy.
"There is no 'middle ground' when it comes to climate policy."
"If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations," Sanders tweeted.
"Fighting climate change must be our priority, whether fossil fuel billionaires like it or not."
Inslee called the plan a "half measure" that "won't cut it."
"We need a large-scale national mobilization to defeat climate change and grow millions of jobs in a clean energy economy," Inslee tweeted.
Reuters first reported Friday morning that Biden's campaign was in the midst of drafting a climate policy plan.
The plan would include re-committing to the Paris climate agreement, which President Trump has said he intends to pull the U.S. out of in 2020, and investing in carbon capture technology for fossil fuel emissions.
The approach, two sources told Reuters, is meant to appeal to working-class voters who may be reluctant to back more extensive approaches to climate change, like the Green New Deal, which ultimately seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero over a 10-year period.
Biden has not backed the Green New Deal, a progressive plan championed by progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and which every Democratic senator running for the presidency, including Sanders, has signed on to.
Biden's anticipated plan follows two climate proposals rolled out last week by Inslee and another Democratic hopeful, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke.
Each plan called for ending reliance on fossil fuels and transitioning the U.S. electric grid entirely to renewable and clean energy use.
Inslee's plan supported the use of nuclear power, an energy source hotly debated by environmentalists who worry about the resulting nuclear waste.
While Sanders has not released a formal climate policy yet, he has staunchly backed the ideas of the Green New Deal and signed a pledge to not accept campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Environmentalists Friday also strongly criticized Biden's plan, arguing it won't go far enough to address climate action at a time when various reports, including those from the United Nations, warn the world has fewer than 12 years to stop the effects of greenhouse gases.
Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth lead group backing the Green New Deal, equated Biden's anticipated plan to a "death sentence" for millennials and younger generations.
"A 'middle ground' policy that's supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis," she said in a statement.
Charlie Jiang, climate campaigner for Greenpeace said the idea of a "middle ground" approach to climate action was unrealistic.
"There is no such thing as a middle ground on climate change."
"We either doom millions of people to climate catastrophe or we don't," he said in a statement.
"This kind of rhetoric from the frontrunner in the Democratic race is dangerous and irresponsible, especially while many of his 2020 competitors are raising the bar with their climate plans."
Biden is currently leading the Democratic field.
However, climate change has also surged to the top of issues that Democratic voters care about, according to recent polls.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE HILL
"Poll: Biden leads 2020 Democratic field by 31 points in South Carolina"
Justin Wise
12 MAY 2019
Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a sizable lead over the 2020 Democratic presidential field in a key primary state, according to a new Post and Courier-Change Research Poll.
The survey, which was released on Sunday, found that 46 percent of likely Democratic voters in South Carolina, home to the nation's third primary, favor Biden over the rest of the Democratic field. Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a distant second, with 15 percent of respondents saying they'd support him.
Meanwhile, 10 percent of likely South Carolina Democratic primary voters said they'd favor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
The Post and Courier noted that Harris and Sanders' support has remained steady in the state since February.
Biden, on the other hand, has experienced a surge in support since officially launching his presidential campaign in late April.
"He's always been popular in South Carolina and always maintained good relationships here, so people were really excited about him getting in," Kenneth Glover, chairman of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party, told The Post and Courier.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each earned support from eight percent of respondents.
Four percent of likely primary voters said they'd support Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), while two percent said they'd favor former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas).
The support for O'Rourke represented a seven-point slide from the previous month, according to the newspaper.
Polls have increasingly shown that Biden and Sanders are the early favorites among the field of candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and recent surveys have shown Biden with a substantial lead over Sanders.
A Morning Consult poll released last week found Biden had a 21-point lead over Sanders nationwide.
The Post and Courier-Change Research Poll was conducted between May 6 and May 9 among a population of 595 likely South Carolina primary voters.
The margin of error is four percent.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Poll: Biden leads 2020 Democratic field by 31 points in South Carolina"
Justin Wise
12 MAY 2019
Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a sizable lead over the 2020 Democratic presidential field in a key primary state, according to a new Post and Courier-Change Research Poll.
The survey, which was released on Sunday, found that 46 percent of likely Democratic voters in South Carolina, home to the nation's third primary, favor Biden over the rest of the Democratic field. Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a distant second, with 15 percent of respondents saying they'd support him.
Meanwhile, 10 percent of likely South Carolina Democratic primary voters said they'd favor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
The Post and Courier noted that Harris and Sanders' support has remained steady in the state since February.
Biden, on the other hand, has experienced a surge in support since officially launching his presidential campaign in late April.
"He's always been popular in South Carolina and always maintained good relationships here, so people were really excited about him getting in," Kenneth Glover, chairman of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party, told The Post and Courier.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each earned support from eight percent of respondents.
Four percent of likely primary voters said they'd support Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), while two percent said they'd favor former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas).
The support for O'Rourke represented a seven-point slide from the previous month, according to the newspaper.
Polls have increasingly shown that Biden and Sanders are the early favorites among the field of candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and recent surveys have shown Biden with a substantial lead over Sanders.
A Morning Consult poll released last week found Biden had a 21-point lead over Sanders nationwide.
The Post and Courier-Change Research Poll was conducted between May 6 and May 9 among a population of 595 likely South Carolina primary voters.
The margin of error is four percent.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
NBC NEWS
"Sanders: It's 'not good enough' just to defeat Trump in 2020"
Ben Kamisar
19 MAY 2019
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., argued Sunday that his candidacy has the potential to energize and transform the Democratic Party on issues like climate change, saying that it's “not good enough” for the party to nominate a candidate just to defeat President Trump in 2020.
Appearing on "Meet the Press," Sanders hit back at former Vice President Joe Biden’s argument, delivered Saturday during a campaign rally in Philadelphia, that the “most important plank” of his environmental policy is to “beat Trump.”
“Beating Trump is not good enough."
"You have to beat the fossil fuel industry, you have to take on all the forces of the status quo who do not want to move this country to energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” he said.
“Taking on Trump?"
"Of course you’ve got to do that."
"But you need a real plan to transform our energy system.”
Calling Trump "the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country," Sanders said that he brings a different coalition to the ballot box around his progressive agenda on issues like health care, education and wages.
"We're going to create the kind of excitement that we need to bring out the large voter turnout," Sanders said.
"The truth is that our campaign, I think, can generate that excitement."
It's a debate that underscores the differences in approach between Sanders and Biden.
The former vice president recently told reporters in New Hampshire that he expects bipartisanship to return to Washington once Trump leaves office.
"You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends," Biden said.
"If we can't change it, we're in trouble."
"This nation cannot function without generating consensus."
When he addressed climate change during his Saturday rally, he argued that the solution to the "existential crisis" is cooperation.
"We need to set the most aggressive goals as soon as possible."
"But we have to work together to get it done," Biden said.
Sanders on Sunday made the case for more sweeping changes.
“Our campaign has a different goal — to transform this country," Sanders.
"And we are taking on the entire establishment when we do that.”
Sanders and his allies have sought to draw a contrast to the former vice president as they take on the political establishment.
The two men have topped virtually every poll of the Democratic presidential field.
But while Sanders blasts establishment Democrats for thinking too small, embedded in Biden's argument about the need to defeat Trump is the idea that some in the party have that Sanders' progressive platform is too far to the left to win in a general election.
Sanders dismissed that notion during his interview, as well as the question of whether his defeat in 2016 to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton shows he can’t capture the party’s nomination.
“We took on the entire Democratic establishment — we took on the Democratic National Committee, we took on every Democratic governor, we took on every Democratic mayor, and we ended up winning 22 states and 13 million votes, and in fact bringing forth an agenda that transformed the Democratic party,” he said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Sanders: It's 'not good enough' just to defeat Trump in 2020"
Ben Kamisar
19 MAY 2019
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., argued Sunday that his candidacy has the potential to energize and transform the Democratic Party on issues like climate change, saying that it's “not good enough” for the party to nominate a candidate just to defeat President Trump in 2020.
Appearing on "Meet the Press," Sanders hit back at former Vice President Joe Biden’s argument, delivered Saturday during a campaign rally in Philadelphia, that the “most important plank” of his environmental policy is to “beat Trump.”
“Beating Trump is not good enough."
"You have to beat the fossil fuel industry, you have to take on all the forces of the status quo who do not want to move this country to energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” he said.
“Taking on Trump?"
"Of course you’ve got to do that."
"But you need a real plan to transform our energy system.”
Calling Trump "the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country," Sanders said that he brings a different coalition to the ballot box around his progressive agenda on issues like health care, education and wages.
"We're going to create the kind of excitement that we need to bring out the large voter turnout," Sanders said.
"The truth is that our campaign, I think, can generate that excitement."
It's a debate that underscores the differences in approach between Sanders and Biden.
The former vice president recently told reporters in New Hampshire that he expects bipartisanship to return to Washington once Trump leaves office.
"You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends," Biden said.
"If we can't change it, we're in trouble."
"This nation cannot function without generating consensus."
When he addressed climate change during his Saturday rally, he argued that the solution to the "existential crisis" is cooperation.
"We need to set the most aggressive goals as soon as possible."
"But we have to work together to get it done," Biden said.
Sanders on Sunday made the case for more sweeping changes.
“Our campaign has a different goal — to transform this country," Sanders.
"And we are taking on the entire establishment when we do that.”
Sanders and his allies have sought to draw a contrast to the former vice president as they take on the political establishment.
The two men have topped virtually every poll of the Democratic presidential field.
But while Sanders blasts establishment Democrats for thinking too small, embedded in Biden's argument about the need to defeat Trump is the idea that some in the party have that Sanders' progressive platform is too far to the left to win in a general election.
Sanders dismissed that notion during his interview, as well as the question of whether his defeat in 2016 to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton shows he can’t capture the party’s nomination.
“We took on the entire Democratic establishment — we took on the Democratic National Committee, we took on every Democratic governor, we took on every Democratic mayor, and we ended up winning 22 states and 13 million votes, and in fact bringing forth an agenda that transformed the Democratic party,” he said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
"Trump assails Biden over ‘Super Predator’ crime bill 25 years on"
Tim Pearce
27 MAY 2019
President Trump took a shot at Joe Biden Monday by attacking Biden’s support for the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
At the time of the bill’s passage, Biden served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was instrumental in getting the bill onto then President Bill Clinton’s desk and signed into law.
“Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected."
"In particular, African Americans will not be ble to vote for you,” Trump tweeted.
“I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, and helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!”
Trump then went after Biden directly.
“Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing."
"That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized?"
"No!” Trump said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Trump assails Biden over ‘Super Predator’ crime bill 25 years on"
Tim Pearce
27 MAY 2019
President Trump took a shot at Joe Biden Monday by attacking Biden’s support for the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
At the time of the bill’s passage, Biden served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was instrumental in getting the bill onto then President Bill Clinton’s desk and signed into law.
“Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected."
"In particular, African Americans will not be ble to vote for you,” Trump tweeted.
“I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, and helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!”
Trump then went after Biden directly.
“Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing."
"That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized?"
"No!” Trump said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
THE HILL
"Biden campaign slams Trump for criticizing a former vice president on foreign soil"
Brett Samuels
28 MAY 2019
Joe Biden's campaign on Tuesday issued a sharp response to President Trump's criticism of the former vice president while on a state visit to Japan, calling the president's attacks on his potential 2020 rival "beneath the dignity of the office."
While in Japan, Trump repeatedly criticized Biden on Twitter and during a press conference alongside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The president said multiple times he agreed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's assessment that Biden was a "low IQ" individual.
"To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President speaks for itself," Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.
"And it's part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions — whether taking Putin's word at face value in Helsinki or exchanging 'love letters' with Kim Jong Un."
Biden's campaign appeared to wait to respond to Trump's broadsides until the president landed back in Washington, D.C., a nod toward the old adage that criticism stops while the president is abroad.
Trump has been fixated on Biden since the former vice president entered the race, tweeting repeatedly about him and predicting that he would be the eventual Democratic nominee.
While in Japan, the president sided with Kim Jong Un in his criticisms and targeted Biden over his support of a 1994 crime bill.
"Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low IQ individual."
"He probably is based on his record."
"I think I agree with him on that," Trump said while standing alongside Abe at a press conference in Tokyo.
Asked in a follow-up question whether he was siding with a foreign dictator over a former U.S. vice president, Trump stood firm.
"I don't take sides as to who I'm in favor of, who I'm not," Trump added.
"But I can tell you that Joe Biden was a disaster."
"His administration with President Obama, they were basically a disaster when it came to so many things."
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Biden campaign slams Trump for criticizing a former vice president on foreign soil"
Brett Samuels
28 MAY 2019
Joe Biden's campaign on Tuesday issued a sharp response to President Trump's criticism of the former vice president while on a state visit to Japan, calling the president's attacks on his potential 2020 rival "beneath the dignity of the office."
While in Japan, Trump repeatedly criticized Biden on Twitter and during a press conference alongside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The president said multiple times he agreed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's assessment that Biden was a "low IQ" individual.
"To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President speaks for itself," Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.
"And it's part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions — whether taking Putin's word at face value in Helsinki or exchanging 'love letters' with Kim Jong Un."
Biden's campaign appeared to wait to respond to Trump's broadsides until the president landed back in Washington, D.C., a nod toward the old adage that criticism stops while the president is abroad.
Trump has been fixated on Biden since the former vice president entered the race, tweeting repeatedly about him and predicting that he would be the eventual Democratic nominee.
While in Japan, the president sided with Kim Jong Un in his criticisms and targeted Biden over his support of a 1994 crime bill.
"Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low IQ individual."
"He probably is based on his record."
"I think I agree with him on that," Trump said while standing alongside Abe at a press conference in Tokyo.
Asked in a follow-up question whether he was siding with a foreign dictator over a former U.S. vice president, Trump stood firm.
"I don't take sides as to who I'm in favor of, who I'm not," Trump added.
"But I can tell you that Joe Biden was a disaster."
"His administration with President Obama, they were basically a disaster when it came to so many things."
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
TIME
"Several More 2020 Democrats Just Called for Impeachment Proceedings to Begin"
Madeline Fitzgerald
31 MAY 2019
As he closed his investigation on Wednesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller alluded to impeachment, noting that the Constitution spells out a process to “formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.”
Several Democratic presidential candidates took it from there, saying for the first time that the House should begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
In tweets and remarks to the press on Wednesday, California Sen. Kamala Harris; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro called for impeachment proceedings to start.
They joined Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who first called for impeachment proceedings to begin in late April.
Of the Democratic 2020 candidates, only Moulton could vote to begin impeachment proceedings, while Harris, Booker, Gillibrand and Warren would be part of the Senate trial if the House moved to impeach Trump.
The candidates generally agreed that Mueller’s 448-page report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the White House amounted to an “impeachment referral.”
Not all 2020 candidates agreed.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee stated that Trump and Attorney General William Barr “lied about the Mueller report,” but did not call for impeachment proceedings to begin.
Former Vice President Joe Biden released a statement which said that Congress must continue to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The statement added that “impeachment may be unavoidable” but did not explicitly call for proceedings to begin.
For his part, Mueller was careful not to endorse or caution against impeachment.
In his eight-minute remarks, the former FBI director said that his team found “insufficient evidence” that any Americans conspired with Russia to interfere in the elections, that they could not charge a sitting president with a crime under Department of Justice precedent and that they would have cleared Trump of obstruction of justice if they could have.
“As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” he said.
Voting to begin impeachment proceedings does not guarantee that the House would ultimately vote to impeach Trump, and it would take a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate to convict and remove him from office.
No president in U.S. history has ever been removed from office by impeachment, with Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton winning Senate trials, and Richard Nixon resigning before he was impeached.
Here’s what the 2020 candidates said about impeachment proceedings.
Warren: ‘It is an impeachment referral’
Harris: ‘We need to start impeachment proceedings’
Booker: ‘Congress has a legal and moral obligation’
Gillibrand: ‘We can’t let the president defy basic accountability’
Moulton: ‘Impeachment hearings should begin tomorrow’
Castro: ‘No one is above the law’
O’Rourke: ‘There must be consequences, accountability, and justice’
Inslee: ‘Trump lied about the Mueller report’
Sanders: ‘Congress Must Continue Its Investigations’
Klobuchar: ‘Impeachment Proceedings Are One Way to Investigate’
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
"Several More 2020 Democrats Just Called for Impeachment Proceedings to Begin"
Madeline Fitzgerald
31 MAY 2019
As he closed his investigation on Wednesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller alluded to impeachment, noting that the Constitution spells out a process to “formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.”
Several Democratic presidential candidates took it from there, saying for the first time that the House should begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
In tweets and remarks to the press on Wednesday, California Sen. Kamala Harris; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro called for impeachment proceedings to start.
They joined Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who first called for impeachment proceedings to begin in late April.
Of the Democratic 2020 candidates, only Moulton could vote to begin impeachment proceedings, while Harris, Booker, Gillibrand and Warren would be part of the Senate trial if the House moved to impeach Trump.
The candidates generally agreed that Mueller’s 448-page report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the White House amounted to an “impeachment referral.”
Not all 2020 candidates agreed.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee stated that Trump and Attorney General William Barr “lied about the Mueller report,” but did not call for impeachment proceedings to begin.
Former Vice President Joe Biden released a statement which said that Congress must continue to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The statement added that “impeachment may be unavoidable” but did not explicitly call for proceedings to begin.
For his part, Mueller was careful not to endorse or caution against impeachment.
In his eight-minute remarks, the former FBI director said that his team found “insufficient evidence” that any Americans conspired with Russia to interfere in the elections, that they could not charge a sitting president with a crime under Department of Justice precedent and that they would have cleared Trump of obstruction of justice if they could have.
“As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” he said.
Voting to begin impeachment proceedings does not guarantee that the House would ultimately vote to impeach Trump, and it would take a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate to convict and remove him from office.
No president in U.S. history has ever been removed from office by impeachment, with Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton winning Senate trials, and Richard Nixon resigning before he was impeached.
Here’s what the 2020 candidates said about impeachment proceedings.
Warren: ‘It is an impeachment referral’
Harris: ‘We need to start impeachment proceedings’
Booker: ‘Congress has a legal and moral obligation’
Gillibrand: ‘We can’t let the president defy basic accountability’
Moulton: ‘Impeachment hearings should begin tomorrow’
Castro: ‘No one is above the law’
O’Rourke: ‘There must be consequences, accountability, and justice’
Inslee: ‘Trump lied about the Mueller report’
Sanders: ‘Congress Must Continue Its Investigations’
Klobuchar: ‘Impeachment Proceedings Are One Way to Investigate’
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN
BLOOMBERG
"Harris Rips Trump as Warren Jabs Biden at California Summit"
Jeffrey Taylor, Sahil Kapur and Emma Kinery
2 JUNE 2019
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Kamala Harris used her home state’s Democratic convention to deliver one of her sharpest critiques to date of President Donald Trump’s policies and performance in office.
“We need to begin impeachment proceedings and we need a new commander-in-chief,” Harris said Saturday to thunderous applause.
“We’ve seen how this president has lied to divide."
"It’s a pathological failure of leadership.”
Harris was the first of 14 Democratic presidential hopefuls who converged on San Francisco this weekend to speak at the California Democratic Party convention.
All the front-runners except former Vice President Joe Biden, and some of the also-rans, are taking part in the biggest single gathering of candidates so far, seeking an advantage in a state set to play a pivotal role early in the 2020 race.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts drew roars and stole some of Harris’s thunder as she outlined her transformative platform and vowed not to settle for incremental change.
‘Moral Clarity’
“When I lead the Democratic Party, we will be a party of moral clarity, a party of courage, and a party with a backbone,” she said, touting her plans for a wealth tax on ultra-millionaires, universal child care, and to cancel student debt.
“The rich and powerful aren’t giving up anything without a fight.”
California is the biggest single prize in the party’s race to the nomination, and it’s taken on added significance for 2020.
The state moved its primary to the Super Tuesday round of voting on March 3, joining at least 13 other states after votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
In 2016, the California primary was held in June.
The state’s prominence gives it special significance for Harris.
A home-state win could vault her into front-runner status, while a poor showing could be a devastating blow.
Warren, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, among other candidates, followed Harris onto the podium early Saturday.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was scheduled to speak on Sunday.
Distracting Tweets
Harris said Trump is “deregulating and deconstructing our government and our democracy’’ while distracting the country with inflammatory tweets and demands for a border wall with Mexico.
With each candidate limited to seven minutes on stage -- a form of political speed-dating -- Harris called on Democratic activists to join the campaign against Trump, which she called “a fight for truth itself.’’
Harris also tore into Trump’s trade fight with China and his threat to impose escalating tariffs on Mexico if it won’t halt the flow of undocumented immigrants across the U.S. border, saying the moves hurt regular Americans.
“I like to call it Trump’s trade tax,’’ she said.
“His trade tax is taking $1.4 billion out of working people’s pockets every month.”
Warren, meanwhile, delivered a thinly veiled swipe at Biden, who was in Ohio to speak at a dinner being held by Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S.
Tweaks, Nudges
“Some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges," Warren said.
“If they dream at all, they dream small."
"Some say if we’d all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses."
"But our country is in a time of crisis."
"The time for small ideas is over.”
Warren appeared to be responding to Biden’s prediction last month in New Hampshire that once Trump leaves office, Republicans will experience an “epiphany” and work with Democrats toward a legislative consensus.
“The thing that will fundamentally change with Donald Trump out of the White House, not a joke, is you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” Biden said.
The comment was mocked by many liberals.
Biden skipped the convention and instead spoke Saturday night in Columbus, Ohio, at a dinner held by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S.
The former vice president called for enacting the Equality Act to ban discrimination in workplaces -- saying it would be the first thing he’d ask to be done if elected -- and criticized policies by Trump and his administration involving LGBTQ individuals.
“Instead of using the full might of the executive branch to ensure justice, dignity, safety for all, this president, this White House, has -- literally, literally a bully pulpit -- has callously extended his power over the most vulnerable,’’ Biden said.
“It’s wrong, and it is amoral what they’re doing."
‘Grassroots Effort’
O’Rourke, from the Texas border city of El Paso, began his remarks in Spanish.
He touted his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign, which came within 3 percentage points of defeating incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, and took credit for the Democratic mobilization that helped them wrest multiple GOP House seats.
“I led the largest grassroots effort in the history of the state,” he said.
Hickenlooper, meanwhile, was booed when he said, as he has elsewhere previously, that “socialism is not the answer.”
As the boos cascaded through the hall for almost a full minute, Hickenlooper broke from his prepared remarks to ad lib, "If we’re not careful, we’re going to wind up reelecting the worst president in the history of the United States."
‘No Going Back’
Buttigieg also appeared to be aiming jabs at the absent Biden.
Trump “wins if we look too much like Washington,” he said.
“He wins if we look like more of the same."
"Which means that the riskiest thing we could do is try to play it safe."
"There’s no going back to normal right now.”
Booker decried gun violence including the latest mass shooting in the U.S., in which 12 people were killed Friday in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
“It is time for us as a nation not to normalize the violence and the carnage of gun violence,” he said.
“It is time that we come together and stand together and take a fight to” the National Rifle Association.
In an interview Friday on Spanish-language program “Noticias Telemundo,” Harris said that if elected, she would end funding for private detention centers, which she said profit from people’s incarceration.
Private prisons, said Harris, “are creating conditions that are unlivable and immoral for the people who are in those detention facilities."
"We recently had six children who have died in custody and that has to end.”
MoveOn Forum
Many of the Democrats also appeared Saturday at a policy forum in San Francisco for MoveOn, the progressive advocacy organization.
“Let me be absolutely clear."
"With the Trump administration sending 10,000 troops to confront Iran, I will do everything in my power to stop that war,” Sanders said at the MoveOn forum.
Activists at the convention distributed anti-Biden fliers, featuring quotes in which Biden praised Vice President Mike Pence and defended billionaires.
Meanwhile, calls of “impeach” rang out in the hall as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat whose district is in San Francisco, recounted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s refusal to exonerate Trump from criminal culpability.
“I told you this was like coming home for me,’’ Pelosi said in response.
--With assistance from Tyler Pager and Mark Niquette.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeffrey Taylor in San Francisco at jtaylor48@bloomberg.net;Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net;Emma Kinery in Washington at ekinery@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros Krasny
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
"Harris Rips Trump as Warren Jabs Biden at California Summit"
Jeffrey Taylor, Sahil Kapur and Emma Kinery
2 JUNE 2019
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Kamala Harris used her home state’s Democratic convention to deliver one of her sharpest critiques to date of President Donald Trump’s policies and performance in office.
“We need to begin impeachment proceedings and we need a new commander-in-chief,” Harris said Saturday to thunderous applause.
“We’ve seen how this president has lied to divide."
"It’s a pathological failure of leadership.”
Harris was the first of 14 Democratic presidential hopefuls who converged on San Francisco this weekend to speak at the California Democratic Party convention.
All the front-runners except former Vice President Joe Biden, and some of the also-rans, are taking part in the biggest single gathering of candidates so far, seeking an advantage in a state set to play a pivotal role early in the 2020 race.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts drew roars and stole some of Harris’s thunder as she outlined her transformative platform and vowed not to settle for incremental change.
‘Moral Clarity’
“When I lead the Democratic Party, we will be a party of moral clarity, a party of courage, and a party with a backbone,” she said, touting her plans for a wealth tax on ultra-millionaires, universal child care, and to cancel student debt.
“The rich and powerful aren’t giving up anything without a fight.”
California is the biggest single prize in the party’s race to the nomination, and it’s taken on added significance for 2020.
The state moved its primary to the Super Tuesday round of voting on March 3, joining at least 13 other states after votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
In 2016, the California primary was held in June.
The state’s prominence gives it special significance for Harris.
A home-state win could vault her into front-runner status, while a poor showing could be a devastating blow.
Warren, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, among other candidates, followed Harris onto the podium early Saturday.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was scheduled to speak on Sunday.
Distracting Tweets
Harris said Trump is “deregulating and deconstructing our government and our democracy’’ while distracting the country with inflammatory tweets and demands for a border wall with Mexico.
With each candidate limited to seven minutes on stage -- a form of political speed-dating -- Harris called on Democratic activists to join the campaign against Trump, which she called “a fight for truth itself.’’
Harris also tore into Trump’s trade fight with China and his threat to impose escalating tariffs on Mexico if it won’t halt the flow of undocumented immigrants across the U.S. border, saying the moves hurt regular Americans.
“I like to call it Trump’s trade tax,’’ she said.
“His trade tax is taking $1.4 billion out of working people’s pockets every month.”
Warren, meanwhile, delivered a thinly veiled swipe at Biden, who was in Ohio to speak at a dinner being held by Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S.
Tweaks, Nudges
“Some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges," Warren said.
“If they dream at all, they dream small."
"Some say if we’d all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses."
"But our country is in a time of crisis."
"The time for small ideas is over.”
Warren appeared to be responding to Biden’s prediction last month in New Hampshire that once Trump leaves office, Republicans will experience an “epiphany” and work with Democrats toward a legislative consensus.
“The thing that will fundamentally change with Donald Trump out of the White House, not a joke, is you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” Biden said.
The comment was mocked by many liberals.
Biden skipped the convention and instead spoke Saturday night in Columbus, Ohio, at a dinner held by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S.
The former vice president called for enacting the Equality Act to ban discrimination in workplaces -- saying it would be the first thing he’d ask to be done if elected -- and criticized policies by Trump and his administration involving LGBTQ individuals.
“Instead of using the full might of the executive branch to ensure justice, dignity, safety for all, this president, this White House, has -- literally, literally a bully pulpit -- has callously extended his power over the most vulnerable,’’ Biden said.
“It’s wrong, and it is amoral what they’re doing."
‘Grassroots Effort’
O’Rourke, from the Texas border city of El Paso, began his remarks in Spanish.
He touted his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign, which came within 3 percentage points of defeating incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, and took credit for the Democratic mobilization that helped them wrest multiple GOP House seats.
“I led the largest grassroots effort in the history of the state,” he said.
Hickenlooper, meanwhile, was booed when he said, as he has elsewhere previously, that “socialism is not the answer.”
As the boos cascaded through the hall for almost a full minute, Hickenlooper broke from his prepared remarks to ad lib, "If we’re not careful, we’re going to wind up reelecting the worst president in the history of the United States."
‘No Going Back’
Buttigieg also appeared to be aiming jabs at the absent Biden.
Trump “wins if we look too much like Washington,” he said.
“He wins if we look like more of the same."
"Which means that the riskiest thing we could do is try to play it safe."
"There’s no going back to normal right now.”
Booker decried gun violence including the latest mass shooting in the U.S., in which 12 people were killed Friday in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
“It is time for us as a nation not to normalize the violence and the carnage of gun violence,” he said.
“It is time that we come together and stand together and take a fight to” the National Rifle Association.
In an interview Friday on Spanish-language program “Noticias Telemundo,” Harris said that if elected, she would end funding for private detention centers, which she said profit from people’s incarceration.
Private prisons, said Harris, “are creating conditions that are unlivable and immoral for the people who are in those detention facilities."
"We recently had six children who have died in custody and that has to end.”
MoveOn Forum
Many of the Democrats also appeared Saturday at a policy forum in San Francisco for MoveOn, the progressive advocacy organization.
“Let me be absolutely clear."
"With the Trump administration sending 10,000 troops to confront Iran, I will do everything in my power to stop that war,” Sanders said at the MoveOn forum.
Activists at the convention distributed anti-Biden fliers, featuring quotes in which Biden praised Vice President Mike Pence and defended billionaires.
Meanwhile, calls of “impeach” rang out in the hall as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat whose district is in San Francisco, recounted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s refusal to exonerate Trump from criminal culpability.
“I told you this was like coming home for me,’’ Pelosi said in response.
--With assistance from Tyler Pager and Mark Niquette.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeffrey Taylor in San Francisco at jtaylor48@bloomberg.net;Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net;Emma Kinery in Washington at ekinery@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros Krasny
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2