Can someone explain the origins of the Hunter laptop saga?

[madaboutharry]

I never really got this story. From what I remember there was a claim by some independent computer repair store that claimed to have had Hunter’s laptop. The owner of the shop claimed there was some nefarious information on it. I never got who is in possession of it now. Is this laptop a right wing urban legend?
I am not getting it.

[Skittles]

1. it was too hard finding real dirt on Joe

the sex scandal, for example, was a big dud......they had to come up with something, so they went for an easier target - Hunter Biden - Hunter has gone through some very bad times (to his credit, he owns up to it all, I read his book).....the laptop is just made-up bullshit, it simply serves as red meat for Trump's moronic base

[Meadowoak]

3. +1

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. + 2

[canuckledragger]

7. lol, and don't forget...

He was a BLIND computer repair shop owner that swears he 'saw' nefarious crap on that laptop.

[Skittles]

8. the entire "story" is ridiculous to anyone with critical thinking skills

but it's marketed for TRUMP HUMPERS so the bar is very low indeed

[obamanut2012]

19. And, the laptop had his name on it

wtf

And, he traveled ac ross the country to this little place run by a blind repair guy. The fuck.

[MichMan]

20. It was in Wilmington Delaware

Not inconceivable that Hunter would have been there.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Paranoiac delusion?

I think you have it right and then it end up in Rudy's possession and then he supposedly did something with it.

At least that is best as I remember it.

[WarGamer]

4. Do you really want to know?

We DO know that the FBI is in possession of the laptop.

Other than that... NOTHING has actually been confirmed.

Bottom line, who cares. It's NOT Joe's laptop

WaPo confirmed some of the data on the Hard Drive and other experts have detected manipulation and possible tampering.

[Frasier Balzov]

5. Here's the Wikipedia article on the topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy#Aftermath_and_veracity_concerns

[OhZone]

12. Yeah, it seems that no one could prove what was real and what was faked now -

from your article -

"One of the analysts characterized the data as a "disaster" from a forensics standpoint. The analysts found that people other than Biden had repeatedly accessed and copied data for nearly three years; they also found evidence others had written files to the drive both before and after the October 2020 New York Post reports. In September 2020, someone created six new folders on the drive, including with the names "Biden Burisma," "Salacious Pics Package" and "Hunter. Burisma Documents." One of the analysts found evidence someone may have accessed the drive contents from a West Coast location days after The New York Post published their stories about the laptop"

[dweller]

9. Kim Guifoyle

Is on Don Jr’s lap top … and several others lap tops …







✌🏻

[brewens]

10. I'm wondering if Rudy actually did come back with emails that had been hacked somehow.

He claimed to have the goods on the Bidens and promised a bombshell documentary by summer 2020 if I remember right.

I wonder if they took what Rudy had and ginned up the hard drive?

[TigressDem]

11. WIKI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy

The Hunter Biden laptop controversy involves a laptop computer that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, son of the then-presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden. The laptop was seized by the FBI after being informed of its existence by John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Delaware, who claimed that it had been brought to his shop in April 2019 by a person saying he was Hunter Biden who never came back for it.[1]

Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a story presenting these claims, Hunter Biden's alleged ownership, and some material on the laptop that was allegedly compromising for Joe Biden. The incumbent president and presidential candidate Donald Trump tried to turn the story into a so-called October surprise to hurt Joe Biden's campaign.[2]

Other conservative media outlets promoted the story, leading most other major media outlets to also discuss the story. The laptop was of unclear origin and contained emails allegedly from Hunter Biden[2] and other digital files relating to Hunter Biden, some of which were confirmed as authentic in 2022.[3]

PolitiFact wrote in June 2021: "Over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden", concluding that the laptop "was real in the sense that it exists, but it didn't prove much", as "[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son's tenure as a director for Burisma

[TigressDem]

13. The reason a fuss was made about the laptop - Biden-Ukrain Conspiracy Theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy

The media coverage of the laptop spurred speculation about the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory, which falsely[5] alleged that the then vice president Joe Biden acted in Ukraine to protect his son from a corruption investigation by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published an article based on an email from the laptop about a purported meeting between then vice president Joe Biden and the Burisma advisor Vadym Pozharskyi. The Biden campaign denied Joe Biden had any meeting with Pozharskyi and said that if they had ever met, it would have been a brief encounter.[6] Witnesses at the dinner where they allegedly met said Biden briefly passed by to see an old friend. The Post reported in its story that Pozharskyi declined to comment, and he did not comment to a Politico journalist who reported extensively on the story a year later.[7]

The Post reported that the email was found in a cache of data extracted from the external hard drive of the laptop computer that appeared to belong to Hunter Biden. The Post reported that the owner of the repair shop had made a copy of the external hard drive before it was seized by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and that the copy was later provided to the Post by Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The subpoena to seize the laptop was issued by a grand jury on behalf of the U.S. attorney's office in Wilmington, which was later reported to be investigating Hunter Biden about lobbying and financial matters.[8][9]

The veracity of the Post's reporting was strongly questioned by most mainstream media outlets, analysts, and intelligence officials due to the unknown origin and chain of custody of the laptop and the provenance of its contents and due to suspicion that it may have been used as part of a disinformation campaign by Russian intelligence or its proxies.[10][11][12]

[TigressDem]

14. HOW did the shop owner "see stuff on the laptop that concerned him" when he's legally blind?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy

Delaware computer repair shop owned by John Paul Mac Isaac.[29] Mac Isaac obtained the laptop in April 2019.[30] He asserted three years later that while he was copying individual files and folders from the laptop's hard drive to another device, he "saw some content that was disturbing and then also raised some red flags", including "criminality … related to foreign business dealings, to potential money laundering and, more importantly, national security issues and concerns."


According to the New York Post story, a person—who Mac Isaac could not identify because he is legally blind[34]— left the computer at the repair shop to repair water damage, but once this was completed, the shop had no contact information for its owner, and nobody ever paid for it or came to pick it up.[35] Criticism has been focused on Mac Isaac over inconsistencies in his accounts of how the laptop came into his possession and how he passed it on to Giuliani and the FBI.[35][31]

[Effete Snob]

17. The key is in the phrase "legally blind"

Leaving aside the fact that my daughter is well beyond that and can still tell you what is on a computer, there is a big difference between “legally blind” and “can’t see anything.”

Someone who can see things when they are inches away from an illuminated computer screen is not someone who can, for example, drive a car or recognize a face across a room.

We use the term “legally blind” to indicate that someone CAN see, but not well enough to be issued a driving license. If you have 20/200 vision, you can see all sorts of things, but you are blind working the meaning of rhe motor vehicle laws.

This guy, with his vision problems and right wing predisposition was an ideal target.

[TigressDem]

23. OK that makes sense.

Near vision works in a focal point (say 4-9 inches) but can't see street signs clearly enough to read them and people on other side of counter are blurry.

I didn't know that was "legally blind" but yeah, hubby has a bit of that and needs glasses to drive, but takes them off for up close work.

I didn't think of that as "legally blind" though.

I was thinking of a former coworker who used the accessibility options and text to speech so he could work tech support, but had a seeing eye dog. He couldn't "see" the screen perse, but his brain for the work was brilliant.

But I could see someone in that situation being easy prey for someone to scam him and convince him the information was real.

[TheProle]

15. New York Mag

Has a pretty thorough article on this

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/hunter-biden-laptop-investigation.html

[Iggo]

16. Not me.

(Hide thread…lol.)

[MichMan]

18. President Biden says Hunter has not broken any laws & they have never discussed his business affairs

End of story

[maxrandb]

21. Here is all you need to know

and it fucking works like this EVERY time.

From the Wiki article:

Other conservative media outlets promoted the story, leading most other major media outlets to also discuss the story.

[Kid Berwyn]

22. Trumputin

The GZP created “a thing” to smear a good name and draw attention from all that Trump owes Russia.

NBC explains the Deus ex machina of it all:

NBC News obtained a copy of Biden’s laptop hard drive from a representative of Rudy Giuliani and examined Biden’s business dealings from 2013 to 2018 based on the information available on the hard drive and the scope of the documents released by the Senate.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/analysis-hunter-bidens-hard-drive-shows-firm-took-11-million-2013-2018-rcna29462

A former U.S. Attorney, Rudy knows a thing or two about how to plant evidence and the needed landscaping.

[pfitz59]

24. Broken chain of custody

and Right Wing Echo Chamber. That's it

[Whiskeytide]

25. Luca Brasi took a laptop to a repair shop in Delaware ...

… and told the blind owner that he was Hunter Biden. The media did the rest.

[Qutzupalotl]

26. Hal Sparks did a masterful takedown

pointing out all the holes in the supposed story. See the YouTube link here — long but WELL worth a listen.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/1/2089520/-Hal-Sparks-Expertly-Destroys-WaPo-Story-on-Hunter-s-presumed-Laptop

[yellowcanine]

27. I don't know but IF there were incriminating evidence on the laptop it would be useless because of

muddled chain of custody of the laptop/laptop's hard drive. Right now as I see it, it is the equivalent of the RW nutbags shouting "SQUIRREL!" to distract from Trump's many legal problems.

[yellowcanine]

28. And it was a "story" promoted by Rudy Giuliani. That is actually all I need to know that it is

utter bullshit.