![]() One of the laptops had a Beau Biden Foundation sticker. He couldn’t say for sure who dropped them off, because he is legally blind, but he said the person identified himself as Hunter Biden and signed a receipt with what appears to be Hunter’s name. In April 2019, someone dropped off three water-damaged laptops with him for repair, Mac Isaac claimed. As for how they got this information, the following story soon emerged, from a Delaware computer repair store owner, John Paul Mac Isaac. In October 2020, the New York Post began publishing some of Hunter Biden’s texts, emails, and other documents. And whatever the revelations about Hunter, claims from conservatives that the leaked emails proved Joe Biden acted corruptly in some way were false - they proved no such thing. And no evidence has emerged to back up suspicions from former intelligence officials, backed by Biden himself, that the laptop’s leak was a Russian plot.īut the emails were indeed being put out as part of an orchestrated campaign by Trump’s team to try to drive negative media coverage toward Joe Biden shortly before the election. Twitter briefly blocked links to the story for potentially containing hacked material and Facebook briefly restricted it as possible “misinformation” - but it may have been neither. Some decisions and claims look dubious in retrospect. So, nearly a year and a half later, it’s worth revisiting what happened back in the heat of the 2020 campaign. Technically, the Times only vouched for certain emails they’d “authenticated” with the help of “people familiar with them and with the investigation.” But the Times reporters also said the cache of files “appears” to have come from a laptop Hunter abandoned at a computer shop - leaning toward, without quite endorsing, a long-questioned account of how the material got out. ![]() “The Times finally admits: Hunter’s laptop is real,” the New York Post editorial board crowed. ![]() Now, conservatives interpreted last week’s Times report as a belated concession that the leaked material was authentic, and they’re taking a victory lap. The mainstream media generally treated the material with caution - and, perhaps most controversially of all, Twitter and Facebook blocked or restricted links to the Post’s story. Democrats and their allies cried foul, arguing that the materials may have been faked, stolen, or leaked as part of a foreign interference campaign akin to the Russian government’s hacking and leaks of Democratic emails in 2016. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani gave those files to the New York Post, and they circulated to other conservative outlets too, resulting in negative stories about Hunter Biden’s business and personal life. This is a reference to a controversial “October surprise” that came out just before the 2020 election. And that report cites emails that, per the Times, are “from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. The president’s son remains under investigation for matters related to tax payments and his foreign work, the New York Times reported last week. Hunter Biden’s laptop has returned to the discourse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |