Biden's Laptop: It's real, and it's spectacular
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real-11625868661
The Hunter Biden Laptop Is Real
Our ‘newspapers of record’ become something else when they conspire to deny facts and hide truth.
The problem isn’t Hunter Biden —it’s Joe—as major media outlets may be discovering, sort of, with the White House’s absurd intervention in the younger Mr. Biden’s latest career as a budding Van Gogh.
In fact, the intervention smells like a scheme dreamed up by Hunter himself, designed to call attention to his connection to the president, advertise it and enable it, while pretending to do the opposite.
For details, see a long account on the front page of Friday’s Washington Post. Under the plan, a New York gallery will keep secret the identities of those paying up to $500,000 for his novice pieces, but of course this wouldn’t stop the buyer from letting Hunter know who just bought his art or from turning up later as Hunter’s guest at a White House event.
All of this is magnificently obvious on its own terms, but even more so in light of the ludicrously detailed, well-documented revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop published over the last nine months by the New York Post and Britain’s Daily Mail.
To avoid knowing the truth so you don’t have to report it is not good reporting. This has been the approach of other media, or was until last month when the Washington Post’s resident “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, in a hilariously neurotic piece, apparently forced on him only because of his previous swallowing of Biden denials, finally confirmed some of the New York Post’s reporting.
To wit, the vice president made an “unscheduled” stop at a private restaurant dinner in April 2015 where Hunter was hosting an official of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Understand: If Hunter’s role on Burisma’s board was to make the company a hot potato for Ukrainian corruption investigators, the vice president’s stop-by succeeded instantly in turning the administration’s Ukraine policy into a hostage to Burisma avoiding prosecution.
Mr. Kessler writes a sentence that would fascinate Dr. Freud: “When we looked into it, there was less to the story than one might imagine.” He never specifies who “one” is or what one “imagines,” but the Washington Post confirms the New York Post story in toto.
Let the dam break. The New York tabloid’s reporting, and that of the Daily Mail, which also has the laptop data, is everything journalism aspires to be, based on transparently obtained, contemporaneous documentation, not on somebody’s after-the-fact recollection or spin. Their reporting makes the average Bob Woodward book look like the product of ouija-board reporting.
Mr. Kessler and others use the excuse that the tabloids won’t share the laptop data, as if they should surrender their scoops to their haughtier brethren. But as Mr. Kessler demonstrates, other outlets are perfectly free to follow up by going to sources and asking questions, seeking documents. Watergate would not have unraveled if other papers didn’t follow up, and sometimes correct, the Washington Post’s revelations. Good places to start would be evidence of Mr. Biden’s lending the trappings of the vice presidency to Hunter’s effort to curry favor with Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco, or of Hunter’s use of his business income to pay his father’s personal phone and home-improvement bills.
Other news outlets are not obliged to adopt the tabloids’ framing. They can interpret the pattern as Washington complexities as usual or as Mr. Biden’s indulgence of a particularly troubled son. But ignoring a story you know to be true in hopes your readers will believe it’s not true is not the job our “newspapers of record” signed up for.
All this takes on a sicklier coloration when you recall how the media coverup started: when 50 former intelligence officials, led by Obama administration veterans, claimed the laptop story had “all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.” They had no evidence and, worse, were prostituting their professional judgment. To create a plausible fake laptop, with a plausible index of files, plausible time stamps, plausible browser history, thousands of plausible photos, text messages, emails and other documents would be beyond the Kremlin and laughably disproportionate to any aim the Kremlin might hope to achieve.
The intelligence officials knew it. They were lying to the American public to influence an election. It’s hard to imagine a Ben Bradlee or Abe Rosenthal being party to this, or trying to pretend the laptop doesn’t exist. It’s hard to imagine them sitting still for the government’s stonewalling over the shooting of Ashli Babbitt or the death of Officer Brian Sicknick or the dubious Russian intelligence that remains the open secret of the FBI’s chaotic intervention in the 2016 election.
Much excellent reporting is still done by our big-time news organizations but can you trust them when you know they are also hiding news from you? Once you did not start from the presumption that members of the press were conformist lickspittles. Now you are stuck with the default presumption that they probably are.
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Just a thought experiment. if this were Don Jr.'s laptop, do you think the NYT, WaPo and others would have dismissed it as "Russian disinformation?"
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Nice Seinfeld reference.
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Hunter Biden’s hard drive contained an enviable lineup of contacts for top US officials tasked with overseeing the US-China relationship, and at least 10 senior Google executives — raising new questions about the extent to which Joe Biden’s well-connected son could have leveraged his connections for personal profit, The Post has learned.
Many of the top-level government officials would have been in position to help Hunter Biden’s business aspirations in China during father’s term as vice president from 2008 to 2016. Throughout that period, he infamously looked to capitalize from his family name and connections — often while his father conducted sensitive state business.
As for the Google braintrust, one former exec there told The Post that Hunter Biden sought the tech giant’s cash for Chinese ventures, and that several of the company’s bigwigs wound up working for the Obama-Biden administration during his father’s vice presidency.
Among the names and personal cell phone numbers of the dozens of government officials and federal employees found in the infamous laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019: John Kerry and Max Baucus, who served as Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to China, respectively, during the Biden vice presidency. The Post reached Kerry’s answering machine when it called the number listed in the laptop. Baucus had a Chinese phone number listed and The Post was unable to reach him.
Hunter Biden and his father had been active in China for a long time.
In 2013, Hunter Biden tagged along on Air Force 2 when his father went to Beijing to visit with Xi Jinping. The vice president was looking to de-escalate tensions in the South China Sea, but his son was looking to deal, paying a visit to Jonathan Li, a Chinese financier who ran the private-equity fund Bohai Capital. He even finagled a handshake between Li and the elder Biden.
Ten days later the Chinese business license for Bohai Harvest — a new company which would invest Chinese cash in projects outside the country that Hunter Biden had been trying to launch for more than a year — was approved by Chinese officials.
Hunter would be wined, dined and feted by Chinese oligarchs throughout his father’s term in office. Ye Jianming, boss of CEFC China Energy Co., even presented him with an $80,000 diamond as a gift. The rock later became an albatross during his divorce proceedings with wife Kathleen Buhle.
" Baucus had a Chinese phone number"
Oh...
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Nothing to see here, move along. BTW, what about those January 6th hearings? Isn't Chaney wonderful? And empathetic? Look how she gave comfort and solace to that young woman who screwed her courage to the sticking point and testified how she heard her hairdresser's first cousin talk about how Trump looked at a steering wheel.
A total threat to our democracy, I tell ya...
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in It's real, and it's spectacular:
Nothing to see here, move along. BTW, what about those January 6th hearings? Isn't Chaney wonderful? And empathetic? Look how she gave comfort and solace to that young woman who screwed her courage to the sticking point and testified how she heard her hairdresser's first cousin talk about how Trump looked at a steering wheel.
A total threat to our democracy, I tell ya...
lol
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QUESTION: Ok. And then on a different topic, why is there a voicemail of the president talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the president had said he's never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealing?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Well, first I'll say that what the president said stands. So, if he -- if that's what the president said, that -- that is what stands. And second -- secondly --
QUESTION: He's leaving a voicemail --
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: But secondly --
QUESTION: A New York Times article concerning --
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Secondly --
QUESTION: Hunter Biden's business dealings. And he says I think you're clear. How is that not him talking to his son about his overseas business dealings?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: We're not -- from this podium, I am not going to talk about alleged materials from the laptop. I will -- I'm not --
QUESTION: So, are you disputing that it was his voice on the voicemail?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: I am not going to talk about alleged materials on the laptop. It's not happening.
QUESTION: Are you disputing then that it is not the --
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Peter, I refer you to -- to his son's representative.
QUESTION: Ok.
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Well, it looks like 4chan has gotten a copy, and they have put it up on the interwebz via torrent sites, so it's EVERYWHERE.
Oh. "Help me, Dad."
Weighing crack:
Who is Mike Harrington who should be contacted "only if necessary?"
What does Herb Stapleton have to do with Hunter?
Another FBI cyber contact:
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in It's real, and it's spectacular:
And who is "Pedo Peter????"
Oh....
Why are the dates on the right of that picture in the 'UK format'? - i.e. Day/Month/Year, whereas the dates on the left are in US format - month/day/year?
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in It's real, and it's spectacular:
Hunter talking about his stepmother, the First Lady, Jill Biden, using a word that we can't repeat on the air
Doctor
He called her a doctor
That makes some people crazy, Tucker was kind enough to keep it quiet.
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And Tucker tonight made it clear that he believes the files on the laptop are evidence that the Bidens, Joe, Jimmy and Hunter have sold out the USA to China.
Pretty strong stuff
And again, the real story is the silence.
Maybe because the whole thing is not real. But if it is, we have a problem.
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Laptop shows dozens of meetings with dad, business partners
Hunter Biden met with his father at least 30 times at the White House or the vice president’s residence, often just days after he returned home from overseas business jaunts.
The breakfasts, lunches and other gabfests between 2008 and 2016 raise questions about whether Hunter was relaying messages to his father on behalf of foreign clients, and cast new doubt on the president’s repeated denials that he had any role in his son’s shady overseas business dealings.
The meetings were found in a review of the personal calendar on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.
Eric Schwerin, the president of Hunter Biden’s investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners, is named as a calendar invite recipient on 21 of 30 listed meetings, with a green check frequently indicating his confirmed receipt of the invite for meetings with the vice president. Schwerin was a longtime Hunter Biden business confidante, and had access to the elder Biden’s personal financial information.
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik — who has promised to subpoena Hunter Biden should Republicans win back control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections — said it was more evidence of corruption.
“Hardly a day goes by without another revelation about how intimately involved Joe Biden was with his son Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings. The fact that Joe was in meetings with senior foreign leaders on behalf of Hunter and his business associates while Vice President further proves that Joe has been lying to the American people,” Stefanik told The Post.
Hunter Biden met Daniel Kablan Duncan, the Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, on April 15, 2016 in Washington D.C., his calendar shows. The 8:15 a.m. sitdown was quickly followed by a 9 a.m. confab with Vice President Biden at the Naval Observatory. The purpose of his meeting with Kablan is unclear.
Between Feb. 15-18, 2012, Hunter Biden was wined and dined by billionaire oligarchs in Moscow, including one now wanted for murder. Four days after his return, Hunter Biden met with Vice President Biden, again at the Naval Observatory.
On Nov 14. 2015, Hunter Biden met with Romanian ambassador to the United States George Maior, before heading off for meetings in that country. He returned Nov. 17, and had breakfast with his father at the Naval Observatory two days later. Just months after the trip, he teamed up with former FBI Director Louis Freeh to help Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu avoid jail time.
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LOL In other words, a parent met with his child!!
Scandalous!!!!!
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@taiwan_girl said in It's real, and it's spectacular:
LOL In other words, a parent met with his child!!
Scandalous!!!!!
Er, no.
In other words, the son of the Vice President met with him discussing business deals days before and after meeting with cronies overseas.
Remember when Biden said, "I don't get involved with my son's business?"
Yeah.
There are currently 150 active investigations of impropriety in business dealings with the lesser Biden. What do you think the odds are that NONE of them involve Biden, the elder?
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CBS News: "Credible Whistleblowers."
"Highly credible" whistleblowers have come forward to a senior Senate Republican alleging a widespread effort within the FBI to downplay or discredit negative information about President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, according to letters reviewed by CBS News.
"The information provided to my office involves concerns about the FBI's receipt and use of derogatory information relating to Hunter Biden, and the FBI's false portrayal of acquired evidence as disinformation," GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland on July 25. "The volume and consistency of these allegations substantiate their credibility and necessitate this letter."
Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the whistleblowers alleged that legitimate streams of information and intelligence about the president's son were characterized as likely disinformation or prematurely shut down leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
CBS News first reported in April that more than 150 financial transactions involving either Hunter or James Biden's global business affairs were flagged as concerning by U.S. banks for further review. CBS News previously reported the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been investigating potential tax fraud, money laundering and foreign influence peddling.
[...]
A spokesperson for Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss declined to comment on whether he was aware of whistleblower allegations that credible reporting about Hunter Biden was allegedly labeled misinformation by the FBI and whether these allegations had been factored into his probe.
In the correspondence, Grassley cited a 2020 FBI intelligence assessment that was "used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation." He continued, "Based on the allegations, in at least one instance, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation."
In October 2020, one month before the election, "an avenue of derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed" by a senior FBI agent at the bureau's Washington Field office. An earlier letter from Grassley identified the agent as Timothy Thibault.January is going to be interesting.
