Senate Starts Bidens in Ukraine Investigation

The Daily Beast and other sources are announcing that the Senate is starting an investigation into the Biden's actions in the Ukraine. The DB writes:

“Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday requesting documents related to Joe Biden’s communications with Ukrainian officials. Graham’s inquiry focuses on any calls Biden may have had with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about the firing of the country’s top prosecutor, or any calls that referenced Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board. The Washington Post reports that Graham’s letter appears to begin an investigation into Trump’s widely debunked claim that Biden, who at the time was vice president, put pressure on Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in an attempt to protect his son.”

This is an interesting move by the Senate. If there is the same level of openness about this investigation there was in the House impeachment inquiry, it should add to the amount of information the public has access to. So far, the president and State Department has refused to cooperate and thus additional evidence about the GOP alleged Biden-Ukraine conspiracy should come to light. Presumably the conspiracy will remain debunked, which should help dispel the GOP’s Biden corruption in Ukraine narrative.

The concern is that if the Senate proceedings are not made public as the House has done, then there is a significant likelihood that false information will be faked and used to smear Biden.

Debunking false conspiracies and other forms of nonsense

By now, it is clear to nearly all reasonably open-minded observers that the two sides in Washington are not going to cooperate with each other. There is too much hate and distrust for that for the time being, maybe for a very long time. One side in particular, the GOP, keeps relying on debunked conspiracies and other forms of false and misleading information to create false realities and advance their flawed, reality-detached messages.

Since the two sides won't cooperate, the next best thing to get at truth for the public is for the Senate to run its investigations and the House to run its investigations. Between the two of them, so long as the investigations aren't corrupt, the public should get the benefits of whatever information comes to light.

Honest investigations vs. dishonest investigations

If it turns out that Joe Biden did act illegally or improperly in the Ukraine, then the public needs to know that. Unfortunately, the Senate is just now starting its investigation. They can choose to drag it out and dribble out whatever damaging material there may be, or damaging false information they assert, until the election. In that scenario, the GOP can do to Biden’s 2020 campaign exactly what the Russians and Wikileaks did to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Just keep dripping out damaging material just before the election to damage Biden’s campaign as much as possible.

No doubt, the Russians are planning to attack the democratic nominee, regardless of who that turns out to be. If Biden is nominated, he could be under attack by both a dishonest GOP investigation and an illegal Russian lies and smear campaign.

Can one point the same finger of blame at the current House investigation? Are the democrats dragging their impeachment investigation out? Arguably they are not yet at that point. That investigation is focused on potentially impeachable information that became publicly known in recent months, i.e., the September 2019 release of the president’s phone call partial transcript and the whistleblower report in September of this year of improper actions by the president. The House is not pursuing anything in the Mueller report, which seems to put evidence of the president’s obstruction of justice and conspiracy with Russia off limits. If the House drags their investigation out until, say May, then an allegation of a dishonest, purely partisan investigation becomes reasonable.

By contrast with the House investigation of the president’s actions in Ukraine, the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory has been around for years. The GOP could have started this investigation while Obama was still in office. Instead of investigating Biden years ago, the GOP chose to ignore it until now. One has to ask why now?

So far, the House investigation looks to be mostly honest, but arguably significantly (but not completely) partisan. Whether the Senate investigation turns out to be honest or dishonest cannot be known now. It is fair to have some skepticism about GOP motives in waiting for years to begin an investigation the party showed no serious interest in until now. The GOP’s timing is curious, to say the least. Time will tell how the Senate chooses to conduct itself.