What's Really Going on With Hunter Biden's Hard Drive? Here's Everything We Know.

[marmar]

What’s Really Going on With Hunter Biden’s Hard Drive? Here’s Everything We Know.
How to make sense of the weirdest, weakest October surprise ever.

By AARON MAK
OCT 19, 202010:14 PM


(Slate) For the next two weeks until Election Day, expect allies of Donald Trump to repeat the same refrain: but his emails! So far, though, the revelation of Hunter Biden’s private messages and photographs has been a dud of an October surprise, largely because the story’s credibility is so evidently flimsy. It’s also confusing—both to Trump supporters who’d like to make hay out of it and to anyone else trying to understand how this whole saga came to be. How did a laptop supposedly belonging to the former vice president’s son end up in a Delaware computer repair shop, then get to Rudy Giuliani, then arrive at the New York Post? What does Steve Bannon have to do with it? Why did it make the entire right wing mad at Facebook (again)? Read on.

How did all this start? There’s a hard drive, and Hunter Biden did what on it?

The New York Post claimed, in a story published last Wednesday, to have obtained a copy of a hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop that contains emails revealing his foreign business dealings, along with personal photos. According to the Post, someone abandoned the laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware, and the data on the hard drive subsequently reached the FBI and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is also a lawyer for President Donald Trump. Steve Bannon is said to have notified the Post of the hard drive’s existence, and Giuliani then supplied the tabloid with a copy. The Post has now run a series of exposés based on the contents of the hard drive, the most purportedly explosive of which has to do with an email that Hunter Biden supposedly received in 2015 from Vadym Pozharskyi, a board adviser at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. In it, Pozharskyi thanks Hunter Biden for introducing him to then–Vice President Joe Biden. This would seem to be evidence limply supporting the Republicans’ allegations that Hunter Biden, who worked for Burisma, had convinced his father to do favors for the Ukrainian company using the powers of the vice presidency.

So is any of this story credible?

A slew of journalists and intelligence officials have questioned the Post’s reporting and the source of the Hunter Biden dirt. The supposedly leaked emails support the false narrative, long pushed by the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, that Joe Biden was helping Burisma while he held office—a charge at the center of the foreign policy meddling by Trump that led to his impeachment. You’ll recall that Trump was caught trying to get Ukraine’s prime minister to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma, apparently to harm the elder Biden’s candidacy. (If anything, though, Joe Biden did the opposite of what Burisma wanted when he was vice president.)

....(snip)....

There are also strong indicators that Russia had something to do with this whole affair, though nothing has surfaced definitively proving this is the case. In January, the same Russian intelligence unit that hacked Hillary Clinton’s and the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016 was also able to infiltrate Burisma’s systems. U.S. intelligence analysts subsequently picked up chatter indicating that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked as part of an October surprise aimed at influencing the election. Analysts were further concerned that forged materials might be included in the leak—something that, without the original materials in question, journalists can’t verify for themselves, leaving everyone to take the New York Post’s word. (And, in case you forgot, U.S. intelligence agencies once again say Russia is trying to tilt the election in favor of Trump.)

....(snip)....

OK, but Rudy Giuliani says it’s legit. Is he trustworthy at all?

No. ...............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/hunter-biden-hard-drive-everything-we-know.html

[BusyBeingBest]

1. It's garbage and no one cares.

[soothsayer]

2. Yours is the best summary

Seriously

[still_one]

3. All I know is that Giuliani claims he received the computer from the computer shop in

Delaware after it was abandoned in April 2019. The shop owner, who is legally blind claims Hunter Biden personally gave him the laptop for repair, and told the Washington Post that he had repeatedly tried to contact Biden to return the computer.

One word:

BULLSHIT!!!

[dchill]

4. Has a real computer forensics expert analyzed the purported drive?

[David__77]

5. I really have no idea what this is about don't care.

I suspect that there are plenty of people in that category. It all sounds very nebulous to me, intangible.

[Takket]

6. Interesting tidbit in here

I hadn’t known that Russia hacked Burisma. So knowing that now and that they stole materials it all makes sense. Russia can’t just hand the emails to the media and expect people to believe them, and they probably just stole a bunch of boring business emails, but not without purpose.

So they have useless but legitimate messages. Now they work with Rudy and the shop owner to get these into a “copied hard drive” which gives them the vehicle they need to get it in the public. No one will believe Russia but they will believe Hunter’s own hard drive, right? And with a huge pile of worthless but legit stuff, they can sprinkle in the forged emails and they look real because “hey look at all this REAL stuff that came with it!!!”

We know the juicy stuff was forged because the time stamps are off and it was mentioned in here last week that the images on the email were obviously photoshopped in because the resolution was different.

All and all a pike Of bullshit no one is falling for. But I’m glad they keep beating this worthless Drum instead of trying to discuss real issues that might actually sway voters.

[brush]

15. You're right. It's all BS. They're trying the "recently discovered laptop" trick...

again that worked in 2016, in which Ghouliani was also involved. This time the laptop is connected by family instead of a staffer connection. It was Anthony Weiner's laptop and his wife worked closely with Hillary.

Trouble is this time they don't have a Hillary hater like Comey in charge of the FBI to fall for it. There won't be any letter to Congress announcing alarming new emails as the intel community and the FBI know this is all bogus.

Anything involving Ghouliani and Bannon is usually bogus.

[Srkdqltr]

7. There is no chain of custody. No matter what is on it there is no proof of who has had it and what

They did with/to it. Under the circumstances I would say the same thing no matter who s it supposedly was.

[UCmeNdc]

8. Exactly!

Even the computer store will not say who actually dropped off the computer. There is no evidence that the harddrive is really Hunter Biden's hard drive.

[FBaggins]

10. It would certainly help if someone would say so

Something like "some of those photos are of me and maybe some company emails were hacked... but I haven't lost a laptop or taken one to a repair shop. I have no idea where that device came from"

[Statistical]

11. No it wouldn't. The story is a non-story not getting traction anywhere and not moving

the needle with voters. Don't give a non-story oxygen by talking about it clarifying things.

Those statements would be reported by the media as "Hunter Biden confirms EMAILSSSSSS ARE REAAAAALLLLLL" and spend the next 10 days talking about it.

The "fire" is going out ... let it.

[backscatter712]

9. Trump and his cronies have no credibility left, so this stunt's backfiring on them.

In 2016, they roped Comey into it, and people hadn't quite figured out what a lying psycopathic piece of shit Trump is yet.

Now everybody's sick of the orange Charles Manson in the White House, nobody aside from the MAGAt bleach-drinkers believes a word he says, he no longer has any officials with credibility backing this up, and all the even marginally credible journalists in the world are calling this out.

All people can truthfully observe from this new stunt is the fact that Giuliani's breath is always flammable these days.

[GeorgeGist]

12. Stop calling it Hunter Biden's hard drive.

[marmar]

13. It's the headline on the story.

[DeeNice]

14. This.