2y ago

AOC accuses Republicans of making up evidence in Biden hearing

www.theguardian.com

Questioning witnesses in the first impeachment hearing staged by House Republicans, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted each to say they were not presenting “firsthand witness accounts” of crimes committed by Joe Biden.

The New York Democrat also accused Republicans of fabricating supposed evidence of corruption involving the president and his surviving son, Hunter Biden.

Republicans on the House oversight committee called three witnesses, Democrats one.

42 comments

The republicans are a fucking joke at this point man.
- They would be a joke if they weren't such a serious threat.
- at this point
  oh man where have you been for the past ... checks notes ... 169 years
  
  Nah. Lincoln was the republican president 169 years ago. Also Teddy Roosevelt was pretty cool. Trust busting and all.
“Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that … appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation.... That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image.”
She caught them fabricating evidence in the hearing. They shopped a bubble around a section of a larger text to take it out of context and make it look like a standalone statement. She (read: her staff) went through the exhibits and found the actual quote with context that entirely changed the meaning of the statement.
- And this is allowed because the congressmen who presented the "evidence" were not under oath, so they're allowed to completely doctor fake evidence?
  
  In the days of yore, public figures cared about at least pretending to have integrity in the public eye. The system wasn't built with many safeguards against bad actors who do so publicly with zero sense of shame.
- This is terrible reporting. Could the Guardian have shown the screenshot? Could they have asked what the context was? I don't understand why this all is behind a mostly opaque screen. Why we are being told something that obfuscates what was said rather than giving us the chance to judge for ourselves.
We need more people like her calling those shitheads out.
- She is a bit of a unicorn there. Even among what they were calling her posse of new politicos, she's a stand-out brand-focused mouthpiece for her own agenda.
  I'm ever so glad her agenda happens to align with helping people, as she's a force of nature.
  
  And yet the centrist Democrats hate her, even though she's energized her voting base, pushed for legislation, made more interested in running for office, and doesn't bow down to Republicans because they were nice to her one time.
I mean, the stupid thing is that they're not even bothering to fabricate evidence, they're just fabricating the entire accusation and not presenting any evidence at all. Their first witness even said point blank that there's no reason to be doing any of this; so as usual, not only are they criminally partisan, but they're also really bad at it.
- Except for, you know, the fake screenshot of a text message explicitly mentioned in the article.
  
  I don't know, does that count? The text message actually happened, the fakery was just putting it into a screenshot. The context was all bogus, of course, as AOC correctly pointed out; but the text itself wasn't fabricated per se.
- criminally partisan
  Also known colloquially as traitors
The headline should be: “AOC Shows That Republicans Are Making Up Evidence”.
- "accuses" sells ads.
She went on to accuse cheetahs of running fast, mountans of being tall and fire of being hot. Fox news denied all of her claims as hearsay and deep state propaganda.
The entire impeachment theater is directed at low-information voters. People who will find out about the hearing and not bother to read or watch to find out it's a nothingburger, who won't read the accusations but just take it that there's a scandal, and who will throw their hands up and say "both sides are the same" because they're impeaching one another's presidents.
- It's okay to just say Republicans instead of low-information voters, since the Venn diagram for them is a circle.
Remember how Rudy Colludy went to Ukraine in 2019 to "gather the facts" about Hunter Biden and Burisma?
Wonder why the GOP don't want to hear from him about that trip?
- I wonder why the Dems didn't present his testimony. If it's exculpatory, they had a duty to present him as part of a best-defence kind of duty.
  Unless there's some gamesmanship or something in his testimony fucks with the case unduly, the Dems are usually smart enough to bring all barrels to bear, and the omission is odd.
  
  They tried. The GOP stopped it for reasons that a small child could understand.
  Raskin and other Democrats introduced a motion to issue subpoenas to Giuliani and an associate, Lev Parnas, to come testify. Republicans voted it down.
She’s calling them out on it, not accusing them of it.
- Agreed, accusing makes it sound uncertain. When they want to seem balanced but there's a hippo on one side of the balance it's not balancing it's helping legitimize the false side.
Dear The guardian. The word you are looking for is "Fabricating". One would think that journalists would be proficient in the language they report in. But maybe that's just me expecting unrealistic standards.
- Journalist often target their content to people with a low reading age. Some tabloids in the UK target their content for someone of a reading age of 7. Even the financial times a high brow economic paper targets a reading age of 12.
  It's likely the journalist made a conscious decision to not say fabricate, as that would restrict the amount of people that could comprehend the headline.
  
  54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level in America so that tracks
  
  I'll take your word for it. So, in short, I am in fact expecting an unrealistic standard. Complaining about shit like this makes me feel like an old grumpy man, and I'm not even 30 yet
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The New York Democrat also accused Republicans of fabricating supposed evidence of corruption involving the president and his surviving son, Hunter Biden.
Turning to Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and well-known conservative commentator, she said: “In your testimony today, are you presenting any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States?”
Ocasio-Cortez asked the same question of Eileen O’Connor, a former assistant attorney general in the justice department tax division who worked for Donald Trump’s transition team and is a member of the rightwing Federalist Society.
Ocasio-Cortez said she would “assume the same” of the sole witness called by Democrats, Michael J Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor.
Referring to Byron Donalds, she said: “Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that … appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation.
Donalds showed text messages he claimed indicated that Hunter Biden engaged in fraud and money laundering, to the benefit of his father.
The original article contains 509 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- The summary cuts off right before the paragraph the title is actually referring to:
  “I don’t know where it came from,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t know if it was the staff of the committee, but it was not the actual direct screenshot from that phone. [...] What was brought out from that fabricated image excluded critical context that changed the underlying meaning and allegation that was presented up on that screen, by this committee and by members of this committee.”

42 comments