NBC News assigned two investigative reporters to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. What they discovered was worthy of a James Bond movie (farewell to Sean Connery, the best of the Bonds).
NBC investigators Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny pursued the origins of a document that was widely circulated on rightwing media.
One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, a fake “intelligence” document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China.
The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.
The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.
One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.
Despite the document’s questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing, its claims that Hunter Biden has a problematic connection to the Communist Party of China have been used by people who oppose the Chinese government, as well as by far-right influencers, to baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.
The document and its spread have become part of a wider effort to smear Hunter Biden and weaken Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which moved from the fringes of the internet to more mainstream conservative news outlets.
An unverified leak of documents — including salacious pictures from what President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a Delaware Apple repair store owner claimed to be Hunter Biden’s hard drive — were published in the New York Post on Oct. 14. Associates close to Trump, including Giuliani and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, have promised more blockbuster leaks and secrets, which have yet to materialize.
The fake intelligence document, however, preceded the leak by months, and it helped lay the groundwork among right-wing media for what would become a failed October surprise: a viral pile-on of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.
The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop first appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post in mid-October. The gist of the story is that Hunter Biden allegedly dropped off computers at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, telling the shop owner that they had suffered water damage and needed to be fixed. He never returned to pick them up.
The shop owner decided to examine the contents of the hard drive and discovered emails that showed that Hunter had introduced his father to officials in Ukraine, that he had persuaded his father to get involved in a business deal in China in 2017 (when Joe Biden was a private citizen), and salacious videos of Hunter Biden. The shop owner says he turned over the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and to the FBI. Giuliani then distributed the contents of the hard drive to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The story was supposed to be the Trump campaign’s October surprise, an expose that would destroy Biden. But the mainstream media was wary and treated the story skeptically. The reporter for the New York Post who wrote it refused to put his name on it. Some wondered why Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, would fly to Philadelphia and take a train to Wilmington to have his computer repaired, then forget to retrieve it.
As soon as the New York Post published the expose about Hunter’s emails, Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch wrote that the provenance of the laptop was extremely fishy. Some suspected that Russian disinformation was involved. Coldewey wrote, “But even supposing no global influence effort existed, the provenance of this so-called leak would be difficult to swallow. So much so that major news organizations have held off coverage, and Facebook and Twitter have both limited the distribution of the NY Post article.” As a techie, he finds the whole story not credible. He gives several reasons why it defies common sense. He writes:
It is beyond the worst operational security in the world to give an unencrypted device with confidential data on it to a third party. It is, however, very much a valid way for someone to make a device appear to be from a person or organization without providing any verification that it is so...
The repair shop supposedly could not identify Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, as the customer. But the invoice (for $85 — remarkably cheap for diagnosis, recovery, and backup of three damaged Macs) has “Hunter Biden” written right on it, with a phone number and one of the email addresses he reportedly used. It seems unlikely that Hunter Biden’s personal laptop — again, loaded with personal and confidential information, and possibly communications with the VP — would be given to a small repair shop (rather than an Apple Store or vetted dealer) and that shop would be given his personal details for contact...
The idea that Biden or his assistant or whoever would not return to pick up the laptop or pay for the services is extremely suspicious. Again, these are supposedly the personal devices of someone who communicated regularly with the VP, and whose work had come under intense scrutiny long before they were dropped off. They would not be treated lightly or forgotten. On the other hand, someone who wanted this data to be inspected would do exactly this…
That the laptops themselves were open and unencrypted is ridiculous. The serial number of the laptop suggests it was a 2017 MacBook Pro, probably running Mojave. Every Mac running Lion or later has easily enabled built-in encryption. It would be unusual for anyone to provide a laptop for repair that had no password or protection whatsoever on its files, let alone a person like Hunter Biden — again, years into efforts to uncover personal data relating to his work in Ukraine. ..
That this information would be inspected by the repair shop at all is very suspect indeed. Recovery of an ostensibly damaged Mac would likely take the form of cloning the drive and checking its integrity against the original. There is no reason the files or apps themselves would need to be looked at in the course of the work in the first place. Some shops have software that checks file hashes, if they can see them, against a database of known child sex abuse material. And there have been notable breaches of trust where repair staff illicitly accessed the contents of a laptop to get personal data. But there’s really no legitimate reason for this business to inspect the contents of the devices they are working on, let alone share that information with anyone, let alone a partisan operative. The owner, an avid Trump supporter, gave an interview this morning giving inconsistent information on what had happened and suggested he investigated the laptops of his own volition and retained copies for personal protection.
The data itself is not convincing. The Post has published screenshots of emails instead of the full text with metadata — something you would want to do if you wanted to show they were authentic. For stories with potential political implications, it’s wise to verify.
Since Trump can’t explain his inability or unwillingness to control the pandemic, since he refuses to admit that his administration is trying to have the Affordable Care Act thrown out by the Supreme Court, since he can’t produce the health insurance plan that he claims will be better than the Affordable Care Act, since he has no policies that he can defend, all he has left is throwing mud at Joe Biden. Let’s hope the American people are not fooled.
“An unverified leak of documents — including salacious pictures from what President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a Delaware Apple repair store owner claimed to be Hunter Biden’s hard drive — were published in the New York Post on Oct. 14.”
The only relevant question is, are those documents authentic or are they fake/forged/planted? I don’t believe the Biden campaign has answered that question directly (in fact, they’ve gone to great lengths to avoid that question), but they have made no claim that I’m aware of that any of the documents are not authentic, which is the first thing I’d do if someone released emails that I purportedly wrote if I did not, in fact, write them. I’d be the first and the loudest hollering for a full investigation into the matter. I find the Biden’s silence on the matter odd.
Dienne, we are well aware by now that you despise Biden and will accept whatever Giuliani and Bannin do as authentic. Four more years of Trump would make you gleeful.
You clearly must be deaf dumb and blind
And now 1 1/2 years later, with every6thing that is now known,which admittedly is not everything, however is more than sufficient to demonstrate the thought process you followed and the assumptions you made were flawed and erroneous. So much so that you arrived at a determination that was nearly if not entirely incorrect. The question I have is given that the sources you presented as credible, knowledgable and trustworthy, provided you with information that has turned out to indicate the opposite may be true, what steos have you taken to be more catious with how you evaluate information you gather. Do you still decide on an ending and than seek out only information that fillows the narrative. Sad, you seem to have a very logical thought process and are good at communication your thoughts, however you have choosen to limit yourself sinply because of an appearant inability to actually keep an open and objective mind, or even begin the process in such a way. You are a skilled writer and comminicator, if only you had choosen to sinply report the factgs and information and let the reader decide, but that is exactly why you choose to explain every thing. Trust the public, if given the correct information, complete and unbiased without the editing and omissions, we can decide for ourselves what we believe is best. By providing information that is incorrect, misleading or false you al but ensure that the wrong decisions will be made. Thyen again maybe that is the point.
What can Biden say? You can’t prove that something that doesn’t exist doesn’t exist.
This is like the Birther conspiracy. Trump wants to change the conversation fromCOVID to Hunter. I’d like to see a discussion about theTrump family cashing in.
Exactly. It’s the classic “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument the neo-cons wielded to send our sons and daughters into Iraq.
You posit Saddam maintains caches of WMD without proof. It is a tenant of logic that you can not prove a negative. You were never able to prove Saddam did NOT have WMD until you spent 7 years excavating every square inch of desert sand. The fact that 450 inspectors were crawling up Saddam’s every orifice with a flashlight and couldn’t find ANYTHING (which–at least in terms of nuclear WMD, any nuclear physicist will tell you that if it is there you WILL get the isotope’s fingerprints) never was a problem for the Bushies. It only meant Saddam was far more clever than you and I in terms of hiding them.
You can’t prove Biden WASN’T in league with Ukrainian crime lords. It isn’t possible.
And claiming “silence” must be evidence that there is “there there,” is a similarly ridiculous argument. It probably means that anyone who challenges a stupid, nonsensical “let’s keep throwing crap at the wall until something sticks” allegation knows it becomes a cesspool you can’t escape until the truth that there was nothing to it in the first place is finally ascertained is revealed AFTER the election.
I remind everyone that this post was written by the person who rejected the sworn testimony of government officials – under penalty of perjury – and the copious evidence during the impeachment hearings!!! It was all a nothing burger! Not convincing! Too sketchy! President Trump didn’t do anything wrong! Same with the Mueller report! And the pandemic is over!!
But somehow these e-mails – which don’t amount to anything! — are incriminating?
Can dienne77 please explain what the “crime” is that Biden committed based on these e-mails that she is far more certain happened than the crimes of president Trump that were revealed during the impeachment hearings and Mueller investigation that she said were a total nothing burger??
Why not just admit that you are fine with a racist, dishonest president because issues like racism and honesty and integrity are unimportant to you? Why go to great and absurd lengths to look for a reason for why you trust President Trump so much more than Biden?
Shocked simply shocked that someone should use their celebrity status to to profit by being on a corporate board.
The incriminating email even if authentic is not written by Hunter Bidden. It is a proposal by a third party , for a deal that never happened. With no indication that Joe Biden had any knowledge of it.
“the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” John Nance Garner
What the hell was a 75 year old retired Vice President whose party lost the presidency worth in 2017 .
Some of the emails and material may be authentic while the laptop may not be . As the author said I doubt he would drop it off at a random computer repair shop. When Biden wins I suspect we may find out.
In 2017, Biden was a private citizen with no expectation of running for office again. How would he have a conflict investing in a deal with China? What influence would he have in the Trump administration?
During the last debate, Trump acknowledged that he was always on the lookout for deals with China. Now, as president, he steers foreign dignitaries and Republican groups to his hotels and golf course. The government has paid the Trump Organization millions of dollars to house Secret Service agents in his luxury hotels. Who is he to bring up conflicts of interest? Who is he to complain about Biden’s son when Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr. peddle his name all over the world? Ivanka got 40 Chinese patents for her product line after meeting the Chinese president at Mar-a-Lago.
Therapy. Seek therapy. This is no longer bordering on mental illness. It’s arrived.
Yeah, Come on Man…we are better than Hillary!
The American people may not be fooled but if they can’t vote, the GOP and Trump will win. They are working to cut off the “will of the people”. 340,134 voters were removed illegally from the voter rolls of Georgia before the 2018 midterm election.
………………
The Purged: The Vanished Voters of Trump’s America
Oct 30, 2020
Greg Palast
Will voters choose the President—or The Purge? Investigative reporter Greg Palast warns us — with a heartbreaking tale — to save our votes and our democracy.
If YOU have been purged from the rolls, you can still register on Election Day in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and more, and during early voting in North Carolina.
Republicans are suing to toss out 100,000 ballots cast at a drive-in Center in Houston-Harris County.
OMG, the rePUG-nicans are desperate.
BTW, is everyone here comfortable with the fact that both Fakebook and Twitter completely blocked the NY Post story from being posted or shared in any way? And Twitter, in fact, locked the NY Post out of their account completely for three weeks. Regardless of what you think of the story itself, are we all comfortable with major tech giants having that kind of power to decide what qualifies as valid news or not? What happens when the next story about the Israeli occupation and brutalization of the Palestinian people gets squashed? Do we all just accept that there was no there there? We have that much faith in companies whose largest single investor is Blackrock? If the Hunter Biden email story, as the liberal media claims, is so flimsy, why not let the story run and let people see for themselves how flimsy it is? Doesn’t the suppression itself suggest that there’s something besides alleged “fake news” that the liberal media is afraid of?
Furthermore, does anyone else have any problem with the fact that the liberal media uniformly parroted the CIA line that the Hunter Biden story has the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation” while conveniently leaving off the part where the CIA admitted that, in fact, they have no evidence that it is “Russian disinformation”? We’re all okay with the media unquestioningly repeating evidence-free proclamations of intelligence agencies with a long history of lying?
Dienne, really?
The Hunter Biden story is like Hillary’s emails. Covered widely. Trump brought it up
Repeatedly in the last debate. You really believe that Hunter Biden flew from his home in Los Angeles to a Philadelphia, then took a train to Wilmington so he could give his unencrypted computers with highly damaging informationto a repair shop, then forgot to pick them up? How gullible are you?
Hunter Biden is an adult, who has nothing to do with Joe’s ongoing presidential run. 😁
I don’t how involved the legally blind computer store owner is with Hunter’s computer(s). If the owner can’t see, how does he even know what’s on the hard drives? 🤔
Why involve Rudy Giuliani, instead of the local police? 🤔
Correction on my reply:
I don’t know how …
Why did the FBI confiscate that laptop? No necessary if it is fake. Why doesn’t Hunter come to News Reporters say his denial that it is not his laptop?
Smells like Steel dossier but instead of Russia BS it is truthful and instead of Wiki Leaks, it was a computer from hell.
God blessed the people of America and brought forward an idiot son to sabotage his father… ”The Big Guy” crook that pointed his finger to Trump being the crook with rank and file help of deep state BS actors on Ukraine.
Tragedy, what goes around comes around, an Opera on US politics by DNC and Democrats can not be playwrighted any better then this real life story. A tragedy-drama movie will be made on this chapter of America and it will be an Academy Award winner…who will be the Director?
Meet Rick . . . from planet Oz. CBK
It ends up the laptop story is true. Not a Russian disinformation campaign. “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html
Dienne77, Facebook and Twitter can block news and people, as they see fit. Capitol Fax censors and bans people all the time. 😐
Thank you for making these points; “If the Hunter Biden email story, as the liberal media claims, is so flimsy, why not let the story run and let people see for themselves how flimsy it is? Doesn’t the suppression itself suggest that there’s something besides alleged “fake news” that the liberal media is afraid of?”
sedelmannyp: …why not let the story run and let people see for themselves how flimsy it is?
If any reliable media were to put out this story, it would have to be accompanied with all the absurd details of why it isn’t credible. Why not just leave it in the dust bin where it belongs.
Fox has been working full time to be sure that their watchers know that Biden is a liar. Fox is making millions of conning people into believing that Trump is the leader who can ‘fix’ all of our problems. Why not let the people decide for themselves when Fox lies?
He’s done a great job with COVID-19 so now we have nothing to worry about. Right? The fact that the U.S. has higher numbers now just as winter and indoor is starting shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Just don’t wear a mask and keep breathing in those droplets and hope you or anyone in your family doesn’t die way before they should.
I don’t think the media should print libelous stories right before a crucial election without verifying the sources. If anyone could explain why Hunter would fly from his home in Los Angeles to give laptop(s) with confidential secrets but no encryption or passwords to a Trump zealot in Delaware, then forget to retrieve them, that would be a start.
sedelmannyp I think you don’t know the difference between “suppressing information” and “letting your political opponent control the narrative.”
We already know Trump lies and will say and do ANYTHING to stay in office. We also know that a national narrative about Hunter Biden pushes the tsunami of Trump offenses to the background.
But I also think you are quite aware of all the above; either that and you are complicit, OR you are a dupe. Take your pick. CBK
Wow! dienne77 isn’t bothered by racism and xenophobia and hosing down peaceful African Americans including children and those in wheelchairs yesterday who just wanted to peacefully rally to get out the vote.
It is always interesting what outrages a Trump supporter and it is never about the ordinary people being harmed, and always about the great orange man being treated “unfairly” when he attempts to destroy our democracy.
When dienne77 spends as much of our outrage on the systematically disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable Americans as she does on the “unfairness” of president trump not getting his latest, unverified conspiracy theory amplified as “truth”, she will be reflecting the values of Bernie Sanders and AOC.
Imagine someone who isn’t outraged at the attacks and threats on AOC and her squad, but instead is outraged because a nothing burger of false charges that people like her are free to learn more about by watching Tucker Carlson is not being amplified everywhere?
How come dienne77 is never concerned about all the censored stories that repeat lying attacks on AOC and her squad? I am shocked that dienne77 is now insisting that lies about Bernie Sanders and AOC that cause Trump supporters to threaten them MUST be amplified all over because that is the duty of the media. They should not, as all real progressives know.
I always suspected this was really about her support of President Trump because she has now made it clear that Bernie Sanders and AOC and her squad are not to be trusted since they want to defeat Trump and dienne77 wants only to defeat the democrats.
dienne77, Israel has been a haven for Jews who survived The Holocaust, Jews forced out of Arab Lands, Ethiopian Jews and Gay, Lesbian and Bi Arabs (who can’t be their authentic selves in their countries). There’s pictures online of Gay Jewish and Arab couples too.
😁🙂
I think it should be obvious–in a political climate where the nominal CEOs of these social media companies are IMMEDIATELY dragged in front of the appropriate GOP Senate committee to answer for ANY action that would appear to disparage or downplay or “filter out” conservative media reports–that Twitter, Facebook et al do NOT take a decision like filtering the NY Post story lightly.
I think any rational, unbiased individual would acknowledge that a story like the Post’s–with it’s cosmically ludicrous background–required vetting. And in the case of the Post’s story on the magically appearing Biden laptops, ensuing events have shown that it was not only right to be suspicious, it was right to hold off on this story until it could be fact checked. One salient fact was that Guiliani had (obviously) approached Fox News with this and THEY wouldn’t touch it without independent checking. The individual assigned to this story at the Post’s management’s request refused to put his name on it. They finally found a young intern who’d been at the Post six weeks willing to allow HER name to go on the byline.
While I understand that simplicity and the appeal of arguing that the “Mainstream Media” (always SUCH a convenient villain?) is somehow engaged in the “criminal conspiracy” of suppressing information people “have a right to know,” I think genuinely rational people of ANY political persuasion agree that there is a HUGE difference between “suppressing important information” and “preventing the dissemination of obvious, politically motivated steaming piles of horse manure.”
I would challenge you to find ANYTHING about this Post story that has been disseminated and fact checked since that supports ANY perspective that this was anything other than a bungled, hastily assembled, ill-conceived political hit job intended to accomplish a result similar to the Hillary email “october surprise” imbroglio.
I realize for some, the possibility of “recreating that magic” was too impossibly tempting.
But seriously, finding a Trump supporting computer repair store owner who turned out to be half blind to the point where he couldn’t even say it was Hunter Biden? Laptops without password protection dropped off 3000 miles where Hunter Biden lived?
This was the effort of “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” The incredibly amateurish effort suggests that Roger Stone was too occupied with his legal situation to take charge of this dirty trick. He would have pulled this off seamlessly.
Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. But this time it isn’t sticking.
The whole tale was a gift wrapped scandal that only the extremely gullible would believe. Knowing that disinformation flows freely on the right, we can put this lurid episode to bed. Laptop gate is a farce. It was supposed to help Trump sow his seeds of doubt and chaos. Sane people must keep their eyes on the prize, and that is Tuesday’s election.
retired teacher,
Thank you. Yes, this entire tale was a “scandal gift wrapped” and is a FARCE.
Contributing factors for the decay of critical thinking in America have been charters, vouchers, high stakes testing, the common gore, and all the rest of that nonsense, including the over-diagnosis of children regarding learning disabilities, because of ridiculous benchmarks set by those far away from the classroom.
It’s all tied together.
Nailed, retired teacher!
“Let’s hope the American people are not fooled.”
After seeing these fools at Trump rallies, and hearing my Kool-Aid-brain relative talk, I look back at Hillary’s “deplorable” comment and laugh out loud . . . through my political tears. And they accuse Biden of cheating . . . CBK
Thanks for the reminder. The media shocked, shocked by her use of the word “deplorable.” They are not shocked when the president uses curse words at his rallies and defames his many enemies.
Double standard much?
Diane There seems to be this strange idea hanging around in the air, sort of like the corona virus, that Trump’s bottom-feeder personality is somehow a sign of strength . . . like Ayn Rand’s Gary Cooper figure in The Fountainhead.
It’s all so retrograde . . . toxic masculinity coupled with the also-strange attraction to the mob. But I also like the question in another note: Where did these people go to school? CBK
This is Trump’s FAKE October Surprise with four goals:
ONE: To feed Trump’s base that lives/thinks in an alternative universe a new conspiracy theory that they will run with boiling them into a frenzy that might start a Civil War to keep Trump in power for the rest of his life. This explains Trump Jr fire and brimstone rally that resulted in a bus full of Biden supporters in Texas being surrounded by Trump supporters.
TWO: Influence (FOOL the always fools) as many Never Trump voters and undecideds as possible that would have voted for Biden to not vote or switch their vote to Trump.
THREE: Give Trump another issue (it doesn’t matter if it is fake with no evidence to support it) to take to the courts in an attempt to interfere with counting the votes and/or stop the election and/or get the Supreme Court to hand the election to him even if he loses both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
FOUR: cast doubt on President Biden before he even takes the Oath of Office in January 2021 turning a Biden presidency into a target that Trump will attack repeatedly to cripple Biden’s administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress as Trump attempts to rule the country through the people he appointed to run the federal government. This explains his recent executive orders to protect his appointees running those federal agencies from being replaced by Biden appointees. Trump is gambling that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of those executive orders so Trump ends up ruling the country from outside of the White House through the (alleged) loyalists he appointed to run all the federal agencies. Another gamble because with Trump many that swear loyalty to him often turn on him as soon as they are targeted by the justice system.
Dienne77
So here’s the deal as I see it.
The president lies, changes his explanations, demeans individuals with disabilities, refuses to tell the KKK and cronies to shut it down (or does with his wink, wink, fingers crossed dog whistle), refuses to divulge his conversations with communists, attacks the likes of John McCain, demeans women, refuses to take responsibility for the pandemic spread (yeh, yeh, China travel ban – that did not cause the last 50,000 deaths…), and on and on.
Vice President Biden will deny something not true and provide evidence to make his point – and admit if he screwed up and … and he will own up to his evolving position over time (hmmm, Like Dr. Ravitch and the Department of Education, Robert Kennedy and civil rights…)
The difference between him and Vice President Biden?
Your boy in the wh does all those things and either denies it even when it’s on tape – – – or flaunts it – “Yeh I said it – Yeh I did it… So what?” And some people salivate.
He’s Pavlov with a checklist at the podium:
Remember to Say these words regardless of the topic: Laptop, emails, birth certificate, forest management, Lincoln, vaccine, secret health plan, liberal, defund police,
“Yo, Mr. President, what’s the weather like today?”
“Laptop”
“Yo, Mr. President, did you watch the World Series?
“Hillary’s emails.”
“Mr. President, did you just wink and tell your armed white boys to stand ready?”
“Me and Lincoln”
We may disagree but here’s some advice,
If anyone serves you an actual cup with kool aid, please don’t accept it.
Maybe better advice would be: If someone tells you to inject bleach, please don’t do it. Because I fear that someone here places a lot more trust in the words of President Trump than in the words of the “lying” scientists and doctors who are all out to get her beloved Trump.
The Hunter Biden story should be aired and discussed, not totally dismissed and censored.
Joe Biden has not denied the authenticity of the uncovered emails, which raise legitimate questions about the presidential candidate.
Calling the country’s longest-running daily newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton “Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post,” seems meant to discredit all the reporting.
Just as insulting is calling it “Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.”
OMG this has to be the most trolling post I have seen.
You tell us exactly what this awful thing that Joe Biden did is first, and then he can deny it. You are full of innuendo.
Tell us this awful thing that Joe Biden did. You can’t. Because if you wrote it out instead of just using innuendo, iut would sound so ridiculous that you’d sound just like Trump telling us to inject disinfectant.
Tell us exactly what crime Joe Biden committed and exactly how he committed it, and how the e-mails prove it.
I’ll be waiting…..
There is nothing nastier than people saying things like “sedelmannype] didn’t deny doing the ‘disgusting thing’ that someone else said that he did, so it must be true”. Do you deny that ‘disgusting thing’ or not, sedelmannyp? Does your family know that someone has said you do “disgusting things”? If you haven’t told your family that you don’t do all the “disgusting things” that someone says you do, does that mean that you do them?
Talk about desperation. Why can’t you just let people who love racism and hate and want to lock up Bernie Sanders and AOC vote for Trump because he has promised to do those things? Quit making up conspiracy theories because you are afraid that there aren’t enough people like you who can’t wait to lock up AOC and her squad?
Odd comment. New Yorkers in general have always considered the Post “mild entertainment” and not a source of legitimate news reporting. It is generally considered one or two steps above the National Enquirer–and only because of the lack of coverage of alien visitations and because it’s been around longer.
However, for those who think the Post is being unfairly disparaged as a Murdoch (massive Trump donator and enabler via the Fox News stable) mouthpiece . . . . . . I encourage you to dig into the connections between Post management and Rudi Guiliani over the years and factor in that Guiliani first took this “October Surprise” to Fox News, who decided not to run with it–given that there were too many elements that seemed to ill fit the narrative. That just the Post answered Rudi’s call should tell you that ol’ Rudi reached the end of his rolodex.
I’m still waiting for one of our resident pro-Trumpists to explain exactly what crime was committed by Biden, with quotes from the e-mails they believe “prove” it.
It’s a very easy question, unless there actually isn’t anything there!
They depend on innuendo that sounds really ridiculous when they try to turn it into a “crime” or wrongdoing.
Remember, inviting emissaries from the Russian government offering dirt on your election opponent to a special meeting to discuss the illegal dirt they are offering is NOT a crime according to these people. There is no “proof” that just because there was a specific meeting called for the sole purpose of a foreign country offering to help your campaign,. and just because your top campaign officials and family members were at that meeting does not mean that you did anything wrong.
The proof of a crime would have been if Donnie Jr. had sent an e-mail “maybe you can meet” and no meeting happened!
These trolls should be banned permanently. This is to discuss real issues and if you support President Trump, just argue that you love his policies and the way he “talks tough” to the people you hate. Stop lying.
There is a Trump supporter in our workplace whom I am actually really fond of. Rather than stomping off in a rage when I lead him through a fact finding expedition associated with something like “laptopgate,” he smiles, buys me a beer and changes the subject to sports.
So I gently walked him through Rudi Guiiani’s and Steve Bannon’s “October Surprise.” It was wonderful. Nothing about the story makes sense from any perspective. He wasn’t able to get through the sordid tale without getting the details mixed up or including material from previous Hunter attacks by the right wing media. We had to agree with–whether you considered the story fact or not–it was a TERRIBLY convoluted story. And we have to face the fact that many Trump supporters considered formal education superfluous or one more attempt by the “liberal establishment” to contaminate their brains with liberal hoaxes and lying climate change scientists. I think one major reason this really never was able to gain traction with MAGAworld, was that it was simply too complicated to work through to the inevitable “money shot”–“LOCK HIM UP!”
And I suppose the nail in this story’s coffin was that–even if you accept everything about the Post story as absolute fact, it seems corrosive for Hunter Biden, but one is left with wondering “where does Joe Biden get the knife here?” Lost in this absurdity is the fact that Joe Biden simply appears as nothing other than Hunter’s father in this tale of Ukrainian mischief.
For a MAGA supporter, the concept that a man can have one or more children who get in trouble or caught up in something nefarious is a familiar tale from their OWN worlds, and they have a natural reluctance to associate a child’s wrongdoing with the father’s character or hapless parenting skills.
And it’s hard for even the most loyal MAGAcultist to defend everything Trump’s own children do and have done.
Here is the blather from Patriotic Times. [They never have a link.]Why isn’t the media required to tell the truth? This destruction of truth in the media is why this country is in danger of reelecting a want-to-be-dictator. Trump is a pathological liar who hoped this would be the end of Biden but even the Wall Street Journal refused to publish it.
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Liberal Media Under Fire For Hiding Massive Biden Scandal Update
We’ve gotten to a point where news media outlets are not merely favoring Joe Biden over Donald Trump in subtle-to-overt ways; they’re actively suppressing “unhelpful” information. On the Hunter Biden saga — which has not quite shaped up as the smoking gun that some may have hoped for, and that is unlikely to move many votes, in my opinion — the biggest scandal is journalists’ treatment of the story. One can believe or disbelieve the story of Hunter Biden’s business associate, Tony Bobulinski, which he laid out in a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson this week. At the very least, Bobulinski has provided documentary evidence strongly indicating that Joe Biden has not been telling the truth in his blanket and categorical denials about any involvement in, or knowledge of, his son’s foreign financial deals and entanglements. That unto itself seems worthy of further exploration. So does the possibility (I’m not yet convinced by some potential breadcrumbs and theories) that the former vice president may have illicitly received money from at least one of these schemes.
Aside from a handful of news outlets, most of the press has downplayed, blacked out, or attacked this story, with many simply regurgitating — or not challenging — the Biden campaign’s claim that the whole controversy is a product of Russian disinformation. This assertion has literally zero basis in established fact, yet it’s the official position of Team Biden, and has been parroted by journalists. Lefty writer Matthew Taibbi, who has been highly critical of the media in recent years, is aghast:
…The New York Post material hasn’t been conclusively tied to Russia (it has also been denied by the Director of National Intelligence, not that blue-state audiences care). Nonetheless, politicians and pundits alike freely make such accusations…As has been hinted at by several prominent journalists, controversies erupted within newsrooms across New York and Washington in the last week. Editors have been telling charges that any effort to determine whether or not the Biden laptop material is true, or to ask the Biden campaign to confirm or deny the story, will either not be allowed or put through heightened fact-checking procedures. On the other hand, if you want to assert without any evidence at all that the New York Post story is Russian interference, you can essentially go straight into print.Many people on the liberal side of the political aisle don’t have a problem with this, focused as they are on the upcoming Trump-Biden election. But this same press corps might be weeks away from assuming responsibility for challenging a Biden administration. If they’ve already calculated once that a true story may be buried for political reasons because the other “side” is worse, they will surely make that same calculation again.
In his latest piece, Taibbi lists the various ways journalists are repeating the completely unproven “Russian disinformation” allegation — even as they ignore Bobulinski’s accusations, which are at least fortified by some actual evidence. I’ll remind you that the Biden campaign has refused to call the emails and text messages he’s provided (and on which the New York Post reported) fake or fabrications. They also haven’t denied that Biden may have met with people attached to Hunter’s international dealings, from Ukraine to China. As another reminder, here is the Democratic presidential nominee’s stated position on all of this, from late last year:
Joe Biden was speaking with reporters in Iowa when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked the relevant question about the controversy over his son’s windfall business dealings while he was Vice President. Doocy asked “How many times have you spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?” Biden’s response was the second greatest surprise from the press scrum. Biden declared “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”…Biden simply attacked Trump and barked at Doocy to “Ask the right questions!” He then continued on with his campaign…
Joe Biden: “I Have Never Spoken To My Son About His Overseas Business Dealings…”
JustInformed Clips
Jul 22, 2020
Heh, heh…meant to comment sooner: I call it Pathetic Times.
Nothing “patriotic” about it.
Also: New York Post is a rag. Remember how they treated Bernie in 2016?
Not good enough for even bird cage liner!
This whole thing is nuts. These people are grasping for one Biden story so they can justify their vote for the president.
Every one of these president supporters know full well he lies and cheats and steals and pick a few other Commandments. They know he humiliates people, gets sick or makes fun of anyway remotely different than his country club cronies (white, rich, abled, pre-1954 “real” men) and they know that after he saved us from travel from China (seriously?) hundreds of thousands got sick and died on his watch.
So – they are looking for anything – the slightest shred of juice they can use to defend themselves at Thanksgiving dinner with their kids and grandkids. They are dying for a “yeh, but what about…” response as if that cleanses them for sleeping with the devil.
My suspicion is that Russian intelligence has significant dirt on a number of these Trump enablers, toadies, and high-level operatives and is the source of these QAnon-y stories–the one about an alleged assault written by the woman who wrote the love letter to Putin, this story about the laptop. The working theory in the SVR and GU seems to be that Americans, stupid enough to have elected Donald Trump president, will believe anything.
At any rate, if the laptop story is the one that was supposed to derail the Biden candidacy at the eleventh hour, it doesn’t seem to be working does it? Does anyone take Rudy Tootie Fruitie Ghouliani seriously anymore, for example? He goes on Faux News, waves papers purporting to be about the laptop in the air like some demented creature in a stage production of Faust, and even the Faux News anchor has to just shake her head and think, along with everyone in the audience, even the most avid Trumpeteers, that Rudy is just ridiculous and nuts.
Trump is a pathological liar.
AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s errant final pitches on virus, energy
LOCKDOWNS
TRUMP: “Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy!” — tweet Sunday.
TRUMP: “Biden is all about lockdowns. They want to lock it down … for a couple years, and let it go away.” — Michigan rally Sunday.
THE FACTS: To be clear, Biden isn’t promising to push wide-scale stay-at-home orders to stem the coronavirus if elected, and most certainly not “for a couple years,” which is beyond when most scientists think a vaccine could become widely available…
ENERGY
TRUMP: “How do you like the $2 gasoline? You’ll have it for a long time if you elect Trump.” — Michigan rally Sunday.
THE FACTS: Trump is wrongly taking credit for lower gas prices that were the byproduct of a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans.
Gasoline prices didn’t fall because of the Trump administration. They plunged because of the coronavirus forcing people to abandon their offices, schools, business trips and vacations…
VIRUS
TRUMP: “You can have the vaccine, but without it, we’re rounding the corner.” — Iowa rally Sunday.
THE FACTS: No, the coronavirus isn’t going away, and Trump is contradicted by his own top health experts. New cases are on the rise toward their summer peak. Deaths have also been increasing…
TRUMP: “You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’” — rally Friday in Waterford Township, Michigan…
THE FACTS: No, the virus death count has not been overstated because of doctors lying to get more money. No evidence has emerged of such systemic fraud.
Over 230,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been confirmed. The true number is almost certainly higher by a considerable margin…
TRUMP: “In California, you have a special mask. You cannot under any circumstances take it off. You have to eat through the mask.” — Arizona rally on Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Those statements are false.
California residents are not required to wear “special” masks. Nor are they required to wear them all the time and “eat through the mask.”…
TRUMP: “We have a spike in cases … And you know why we have so many cases? Because we test more.” — Michigan rally Tuesday.
THE FACTS: No, increased testing does not fully account for the rise in recorded cases, and Trump is contradicted by his own top health officials. People are also infecting each other more than before as distancing rules recede, some shun masks and community spread picks up…
2020 ELECTION
TRUMP: “It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November third, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws.” — remarks to reporters Tuesday.
THE FACTS: “Our laws” don’t require the immediate reporting of all election results in the country on election night. Delayed counting is unavoidable.
Apart from the usual lags in rounding up and reporting totals from every precinct in the country, the U.S. is seeing unprecedented numbers of early votes, and some battleground states won’t even start counting them until Election Day votes have been tallied…
TRUMP: “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA.” — tweet on Oct. 26.
THE FACTS: No, the catastrophe Trump has warned darkly about for months in mail-in voting has not materialized.
There have been sporadic reports of voters receiving mail ballots that were incorrectly formatted and other localized hitches in the record early turnout, but large-scale disenfranchisement has not been seen….
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-joe-biden-donald-trump-pandemics-dbaf877840db860f397921f0aa4f3a51
Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose
Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
…Two of the investigations into Trump are being led by powerful state and city law-enforcement officials in New York. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, are independently pursuing potential criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became President. Because their jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a Presidential pardon. Trump’s legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. (By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, he’d racked up more than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trump’s finances are already under growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning recent Times report, Trump—whether reëlected or not—must meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with the lenders, he will be on the hook. The Financial Times, meanwhile, estimates that, in all, about nine hundred million dollars’ worth of Trump’s real-estate debt will come due within the next four years. At the same time, he is locked in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over a deduction that he has claimed on his income-tax forms; an adverse ruling could cost him an additional hundred million dollars. To pay off such debts, the President, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be two and a half billion dollars, could sell some of his most valuable real-estate assets—or, as he has in the past, find ways to stiff his creditors. But, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Trump’s properties—especially his hotels and resorts—have been hit hard by the pandemic and the fallout from his divisive political career. “It’s the office of the Presidency that’s keeping him from prison and the poorhouse,” Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale who studies authoritarianism, told me.
The White House declined to answer questions for this article, and if Trump has made plans for a post-Presidential life he hasn’t shared them openly. A business friend of his from New York said, “You can’t broach it with him. He’d be furious at the suggestion that he could lose.”…
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/65993-why-trump-cant-afford-to-lose
As per her usual, Jane Meyer nails it. Imagine–an it that wants to remain president only to stay out of prison!
Such a (as it might say) tremendous reason for running for the highest, most important office in the land! A perfect reason!
May G-d (the real One, not the demagogue it) help us all!
Oh, & was watching a show–or read this in Rage (sorry, my head is spinning, not unlike Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist)–whereby Scaramucci stated that it45 even asked him what he (Mooch) was doing the next day &, if nothing, perhaps wanted to play some golf.
A very serious candidate, & the song remains the same…
Good cover up article if its true…which it probably isnt, as why have the FBI not said a word in regards to any of this stuff,including email from Hollary on Anthony Weiners laptop and all the information collected regardinf Epstien,and his laptops computors etc??????
What a terrible, biased and false article. It seems to be verified now that hunter is under tax investigation by the fbi. LOL. Deny deny deny.
That’s hilarious. Hey Fred. Could you help all of us stupid “liberal elites” out? And find SOME way of making the connection between these made up laptops that were supposedly dropped off by Hunter Biden himself 18 months ago and never picked up. But gleefully managed by a blind Trump supporting computer store owner (who just went out of business by the way) with the close assistance of Rudi Guiliani and Steve Bannon . . . . . . and a tax investigation issue?
Help me out here. When the computer store owner went into one of the hard drives, there were supposedly pictures of Hunter having intimate relations with people other than his wife–well THOSE weren’t of much help if the REAL goal of Guiliani was to frame Hunter for 2014 Burisma right? So all we are left with is . . . . tra la la la . . . . EMAILS! Oh sorry, this isn’t Hillary Clinton we’re trying to screw this time.
So emails. Did any of these emails have to do with taxes? No?
So exactly what does this entirely made up story about laptops have to do with a DOJ investigation into Hunter’s taxes that started in mid 2018?
Help us out man! Our brains are so warped by constant exposure to the liberal elite mainstream media we just can’t connect the dots.
But you can!
Fake news exposed! Fuck you NBC, you and your fake news pals squashed this story to preserve your agenda. You are the enemy of the people.
Fonnie Preston Ah . . . a new person here. But from what we know about Giuliani, not to mention those who believe what he says, the best we can say is that he has confused Biden with what WE ALL KNOW about Trump. Poor man. CBK
tsk tsk. Potty Mouth!
Oh. And DON’T forgot your boys at Fox News squashed this story. They didn’t want to touch it.
Once you manage to figure out why ONLY the New York Post-just one step up from the National Enquirer agreed to run it for their good friend Guiliani-would actually print it. And WHEN THEY DID, the author of the story refused to allow the Post to use HIS byline!
Instead they got some poor female intern to put HER name to this steaming pile of obvious horse manure.
You want to blame NBC? Come on, you KNOW NBC is the liberal elite mainstream media.
A much bigger problem is that Guiliani spent well over a year and a half building this entire false flag operation, but screwed up so many details no legitimate CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WING media outlet would carry it!
Why don’t you go pick on Fox News?
Hell, not even NEWSMAX or OAN was willing to back this piece of garbage!
So maybe you need to clean your own right wing conservative media outlet “house” first. Because you can certainly make the case that their refusal to run with the “magic laptop” story helped Biden win!
Oh I’m sorry. Trump won. My bad.
Is anyone now saying “oh shit, they were right”