[throwawa3495]

"JOE BIDEN SPOKESMAN ANDREW BATES hits back at the N.Y. POST STORY, via NATASHA BERTRAND and KYLE CHENEY: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.

“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani - whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported - claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

idk, read for yourself

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2020/10/14/...

[Covzire]

Why would they have documented illegal/potentially illegal activity in the "official schedule" anyway? The claim that the official schedule somehow supports the rebuttal is pretty flimsy.

[throwawa3495]

yeah exactly, that's what I was trying to convey. Like why include this qualifying language about "checking the official schedule" but for some funny business being afoot?

It's just a kinda legalistic answer, you'd give in a deposition but is kind of besides the point now.

[the_only_law]

I mean I don't particularly have much stake in whether its true or not, I'm just saying I'm not shocked he's not responding to it immediately for vaguely similar reasons to why people tell you not to talk to the police without a lawyer, whether you're innocent or not.

[throwawa3495]

that's a fair point, just if its not true its pretty easy to say "not true, fake news" instead, what the answer that's provided is "we checked the schedule and didn't see it there" which is kinda suspicious.

Like the censorship of "misinformation" would be more persuasive then I think.

[Thorrez]

> we checked the schedule and didn't see it there"

That's not what Biden said.

Biden said "and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place." That clearly is a denial that a meeting took place. It's not conditioned on a calendar entry. It's not saying "the calendar says no meeting took place", or "according to the calendar no meeting took place".

[nl]

When a politician is ambushed with a question like "when did you stop beating your wife" the politician can't respond to the allegations because that ads to the story ("politician denies beating his wife").

This is politics 101.

[Thorrez]

But Biden did respond to it. He said the meeting didn't take place.

[nl]

No, someone on his team said that, at least in the reports I've seen.

And you'll note they didn't engage in discussing the specific allegations.

[Thorrez]

Isn't some press person for Biden speaking on his behalf basically the same as Biden saying it himself?

>And you'll note they didn't engage in discussing the specific allegations.

He addressed some parts of the specific allegations (whether a meeting took place), without addressing other parts (whether the emails are real). This immediately makes people think the email is real, which is what throwawa3495 was pointing out.

[aksss]

The official statement predicates the denial on their search for an official record of it. “Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

There’s an implicit dependency between these two clauses - we looked at the official schedule (there was no record, so,) no meeting took place.

Sentence construction in crisis management publications like this is poured over and very deliberate. Do not imagine this is just sloppy sentence construction.

[mcphage]

> just if its not true its pretty easy to say "not true, fake news" instead, what the answer that's provided is "we checked the schedule and didn't see it there" which is kinda suspicious.

Wait, so you're saying that providing an alibi as to why the claim is impossible is more suspicious than dismissing it as fake news without a defense? I'm not sure how else to interpret what you're saying, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but that position is mindboggling to me.

[throwawa3495]

Just because it wasn't on Biden's "official" schedule, doesn't mean it didn't happen. My point is that saying "the meeting didnt happen" is less suspicious than saying "We checked the official schedule and find no record that the meeting happened"

Bc, of course, light bribery probably does not go down when you're on the official schedule

[nl]

Meeting with someone isn't illegal in anyway - it's normally a good thing! And there's probably a good chance that Joe Biden did meet Pozharskyi at some point.

But they didn't have some kind of scheduled meeting, so it seems unlikely that any business was done.

The Post story included a screenshot of what the paper said was a 2015 email from Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden, thanking him for “the opportunity to meet your father.” But the email doesn’t indicate whether Pozharskyi was describing a meeting that had already occurred or one intended to occur in the future. Nevertheless, the Post reported that the existence of such a meeting undercut Biden’s long-held assertions that he had no involvement with his son’s business dealings.

Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.

Notably:

Burisma’s website lists at least some of Pozharskyi’s meetings with U.S. officials, including a meeting in November 2017 with then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and a series of meetings with members of Congress, though the company lists only Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) by name. It lists no meetings with Joe Biden. Pozharskyi also reportedly met in 2018 with Kurt Volker

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...

[mcphage]

“The meeting didn’t happen” isn’t what you said in your previous comment.

[throwawa3495]

I dont understand what we are arguing abt anymore. You can see the Biden campaign's response in the above and draw your own conclusions