What was the stated reason for freezing?
And how was said reason justified?
Originally Posted by Precious_b
The stated reason was to further investigate a badly corrupt country and an unknown leader before handing out millions of dollars.
It was justified because it was in the authority of the President to hold it up till he was satisfied with further investigation. There was a time limit on the President that he did not exceed so no breaking of any law was violated.
Now what the Democrats will tell you, is that Trump held it up to elicit a promise from Zenlensky that Hunter and Joe Biden would be investigated because as Obama told Biden, "what your son Hunter is doing has the "appearance of impropriety".
Think about it, the VP, Joe Biden is the point man on all things Ukraine while his son sits on a board in an industry he is not qualified to advise. Perhaps he was only there for his access to his dad.
Then Joe Biden gets on tv and brags about how he elicited a quid pro quo from Ukraine that if they wanted the 1 billion dollars Biden had in his pocket, they would fire the AG of Ukraine. He even gave them timeline. Either do this in the 6 hours I will be here or I'll leave with that money.
And they want to impeach Trump for a quid pro quo? Please.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...obe-is-revived
Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.
In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.
Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.
You mean the very corruption Trump pointed out as the reason he was holding back the 400 million that he released before the deadline to release the money?
But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.
U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.
The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.
Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
He added: “I would like to emphasize the fact that presumption of innocence is a principle in Ukraine” and that he couldn’t describe the evidence further.
Although Biden made no mention of his son in his 2018 speech, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities both told me Biden and his office clearly had to know about the general prosecutor's probe of Burisma and his son's role.
I hope that answered your questions.
Oh, just a side note, Zelinsky said on more than one occasion, that Trump never asked him to "make up anything" about Hunter Biden as Democrats insist he did, in fact calling Zelinsky a liar.
