Hunter Biden

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118866971#Comment_118866971

As he said, quite the effort of willful ignorance. Astonishing really.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867084#Comment_118867084

As who said?

So you think this YouTuber was engaged with the WH in a coverup? Can we at least try to give some examples for this conspiracy from the WH Press Corp?

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867084#Comment_118867084

Its not ignorance, its something else, and I for one am tired of it.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867107#Comment_118867107

Being logical, requiring evidence, analyzing the claim put forth? So exhausting 😭

DontHitTheDitch

Claims the laptop was 'Russian disinformation':

NPR: N.Y. Post's Questionable Scoop Driven By Ex-Hannity Producer And Rudy Giuliani : NPR

Washington Post: White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump - The Washington Post

New York Times: Trump Said to Be Warned That Giuliani Was Conveying Russian Disinformation - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The most mind-blowing thing about this whole campaign to deceive the public in the run up to an election is that the FBI had actually seized the laptop months earlier and did nothing about it. The FBI knew they collected the laptop from the same repair guy that gave a copy of the hard drive to Guiliani's lawyer. They knew when the media and ex intelligence officals were misleading the public about this that it was in fact Hunter's laptop. The guy in the repair shop even had Hunter Biden's signature on the repair docket and the signature of the FBI agent who collected it. No media outlet asked Hunter was his signature forged, or what he was going to do about a possible fraud. Crazy.

This really is one of the biggest stories in the modern media, near total collusion to suppress or dismiss news before it reaches the public.

DontHitTheDitch

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867156#Comment_118867156

What they haven't said, yet, is that Hunter Biden had nothing to offer these corrupt organisations, except as a conduit to get money to Joe himself with some degree of plausible deniability.

DontHitTheDitch

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867122#Comment_118867122

Come on, maaaan. Your memory must be worse than Joe's if you don't remember this being dismissed as 'Russian disinformation'. I don't believe you.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867267#Comment_118867267

Call me a conspiracy nut but I see a Biden impeachment over this Hunter stuff resurfacing and the Dems are all too happy to go along with it.

I also think it is no coincidence the laptop is raising it's ugly head again now.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867188#Comment_118867188

And what in this reporting is fraudulent?

To recap the claim was the media was conspiring in a coverup. Was the WH not warned Giuliani was the target of a Russian intel operation? The NPR post details what we know and don't know about the laptop at that time:

To start, the emails have not been verified as authentic. They were said to have been extracted from a computer assumed — but not proven — to have belonged to the younger Biden. They were said to have been given to the Post by Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who is known for making discredited claims about the Bidens.

The venue is also suspect. The pro-Trump New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a steady supporter of the president despite recently casting doubt on Trump's reelection prospects. The lead reporter was a former producer for Sean Hannity, Trump's best friend on his favorite news network, Fox News, also controlled by the Murdochs. And the story asserted the existence of a meeting absent any documentation that it actually occurred. (The Biden campaign says the tabloid never sought comment on the veracity of the claims.)

The context also screams for caution: U.S. officials say Russian disinformation campaigns have sought to keep Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine in the public eye. According to The Washington Post, intelligence officials warned the White House last year that Russian operatives had sought to give misinformation to Giuliani to be used against the Bidens. And NBC is now reporting that the FBI is investigating whether the material in the New York Post story originated in a foreign power's disinformation campaign.

Nothing in this reporting claims definitively it's Russian information, it demonstrates the claims made are highly specious and riddled with issues getting the data verified (Bannon and Giuliani refused to share the data with the larger media) and explains why their outlet 'held back' on running off with Bubolinksi and Giulianis claims as if they were gospel.

At worst, the arguments being made here only show the media said "this might be russian disinformation so we're treating it with salt," not that the media said this was russian disinformation, and to ignore it or you're not a patriot, etc.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867267#Comment_118867267

Hunter Biden isn't the President, doesn't hold a paid or unpaid position in the administration, doesn't even manage a peanut farm for his father. Nobody to date has found any smoking guns that would incriminate Joe Biden in any of Hunter's issues paying back taxes or not registering as a FARA lobbyist. Couple this with the fact there aren't enough vulnerable Senators or House members to change the makeup of the Congress so much that an impeachment on such tenuous an conspiracy-nut grounds would ever do what you propose.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867323#Comment_118867323

?

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867364#Comment_118867364

Oh absolutely. Hunter's still being considered by a grand jury right now, so we will know different stuff later. Can easily see why Hunter would pull a 'don't you know who I am' etc. to try and benefit himself, especially with a drug addiction and such (but this is a lot more than blow money). None of that means Biden was very or at all aware or complicit. As for the narrative here folks slamming Biden may want to navigate the choppy waters between 'he's a husk being shuffled around by aides and cant remember the day of the week' and 'Biden is a brilliant criminal mastermind'

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867411#Comment_118867411

That doesn't mean squat though, unless there is evidence of him actually doing criminal things for his children.

DontHitTheDitch

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867267#Comment_118867267

I think it's pretty obvious they are sensing there is blood in the water. The media see it too. This is going to get ugly.

DontHitTheDitch

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867346#Comment_118867346

The son of the vice president accompanying him as an unregistered foreign agent, on foreign trips, working for Ukrainian oligarchs that his own administration and ambassador describe as corrupt, acting as a 'legal advisor' to a corrupt Chinese agent who was then jailed for bribing government officials..

You can pretend it's just like Joe Soap the carpenter keeping income off the books, or a private lobbyist failing to declare themselves as a foreign agent, but this was the now-president and then vice-president's son and brother. The chances this will sink Biden is at the very least 50/50.

DontHitTheDitch

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867466#Comment_118867466

From what I remember at the time this laptop is a Macbook and had Hunter's iCloud backups. This meant it contained not just thousands of emails and documents but SMS messages as well. Messages likely between family members.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118867483#Comment_118867483

I'm not sure how. When Donald Trump underwent impeachment, his poll numbers shot up, not down. I wouldn't try and do too much armchair speculation on polling or voting based only on the what-we-don't-know of what are, ongoing investigations and prosecutions. I have not dismissed the why of why the DOJ has been, for years, interested in investigating Hunter Biden, I think that is evident and explanatory. Many eggs laid by many hens, no great hatches yet.

donaghs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118862227#Comment_118862227

My parents watch the news on RTE twice a day, listen to RTE radio news and current affairs discussions many times a day, read the Irish Times and sometimes Irish Independent, and they know nothing of Hunter Biden's laptop. The same is probably true of their friends.

I haven't followed the story too closely, so don't have strong opinions on it. But it seems clear to me that the mainstream media did try and bury this story. They could easily have reported "allegations" etc. Instead I heard about it through internet sources like boards.ie, podcasts etc.

maik3n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118869664#Comment_118869664

They must have been watching a different RTE to the rest of us. The Hunter Biden story was definitely mentioned quite a few times on RTE news.

You could certainly argue that they reported on it with a sceptical tone (as they should have) but they definitely hyped Guiliani being the main source and also flagged the Tony Bobulinski revelations.

On the overall issue of Hunter Biden, I think when even Tucker Carlson of all people, said that it's time to move on, when the story first broke ages ago, that this is not the smoking gun the right believe it is.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118866971#Comment_118866971

If you actually watch the video it’s a mash up of all the media outlets explicitly saying “Russian Disinformation”. We have the receipts.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870499#Comment_118870499

I’m not interested in pundits expressing opinion that it might be Russian disinformation. Every Carlson or Hannity mirror, like them, is just a mouth and an opinion. That doesn’t evidence the conspiracy charged - that the media covered the whole story up. Pundits actually talking about it?

Which outlets actually reported it was Russian disinformation, and didn’t report the facts about who found it, it’s timing, or their refusal to let anyone else corroborate it? Let’s see those receipts.

hometruths

I wonder if all this new muckraking about his laptop will affect poor Hunter's artistic career, and more importantly the value of his paintings which apparently were fetching up to $500,000 a piece last year, astonishing sums for a totally unknown artist.

Is Hunter Biden’s art project painting the president into an ethical corner?

Experts have raised alarms that individuals might buy the artworks – expected to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000 – to try to curry favor and gain influence with Joe Biden. They also accuse Hunter of trading on his father’s name and position in a manner that, while not illegal, flouts ethical norms.

“I find it deeply troubling,” said Walter Shaub, who was director of the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama. “Merely following the incredibly weak ethics rules that we have doesn’t win you any points and the legalistic approach blinds you to obvious commonsense problems. And here we have an obvious problem.

“We’ve got a family member clearly trading on his father’s name. The man has never sold a piece of art before, has never even juried into a community centre art show, but suddenly he’s selling art at fantastical prices. There is simply no way anybody paid $75,000 for anything other than his name.”

Overheal

Old news for most of us. Hunter Biden isn’t unknown.

Interestingly, $500,000 is the exact same sale price of the Disaster Girl NFT. I wonder if anyone paid more than $75,000 for anything other than it’s recognition? Disaster Girl can’t even get you connected to ‘The Big Guy’ 🙄

I hear Jim Carrey also paints these days, even though that’s not what he is best known for. Corrupt?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870715#Comment_118870715

You may not think it is unethical. But a former director of the Office of Government Ethics does think it is unethical.

Each to their own.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870527#Comment_118870527

If you want to start a conversation with someone about a media cover up, I’m sure you can find someone to have that conversation with because that’s not what I’m talking about. The issue is that media outlets concocted a lie and claimed that the email archive was “Russian Disinformation”.

The real question is, which media outlets have retracted the claim of “Russian Disinformation”. Do you have those receipts?

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870732#Comment_118870732

I know it. This story was covered extensively at the time, but clearly, nobody could get enough fuss kicked up about it. Doesn’t feel like it approaches Watergate or anything when the last POTUS kids overtly used the name of the president to push their personal interests, often on taxpayer expense via travel or even WH salaries. As far as legal and ethical precedents for POTUS go, just that DC Hotel alone was a complete disaster, with all sorts of foreign oligarchs etc dropping huge buckets of money in the Presidents own coffer which, POTUS refused to put in blind trust. That’s not just whataboutism, that actually had the damage of setting precedents on what more range of things a POTUS could do without being reprimanded. A disaster.

Nobody has yet drawn any connections to how this painting sale has ended up in any actual corrupt scheme, just that it is not a great look, and to that everyone at least agrees.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870817#Comment_118870817

You say that’s not what you want to talk about - but then you state that’s what you want to talk about.

They're the same thing: a media coverup, and lying about the news.

So again these receipts please for which outlets just said it’s Russian disinformation, didn’t disclose what the story was, didn’t disclose who reportedly found it (Giuliani) where the found it (a legally blind PC repair shop owner) when they let the public know about it (hours before a debate) or whether they let media outlet confirm the laptop or its contents (exclusively refused)?

Regarding corrections it would be a more efficient argument from you if you went and found any corrections. I did a quick search but didn't find that WaPo had to issue corrections on any of its reporting on this topic. I've linked to their reporting on this topic earlier in the thread, all of which reports everything the public knew about the laptop, who found it, when we knew about it, and the fact that efforts to verify it had been stonewalled by Giuliani and Bannon, who claimed possession of the hard drive.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870829#Comment_118870829

That’s not just whataboutism, that actually had the damage of setting precedents on what more range of things a POTUS could do without being reprimanded. A disaster.

Ah yes, the old not as bad as Trump defence. The former director of the Office of Government Ethics addressed that too:

Shaub suggested that many people are blinded to the ethical problem of the artwork for two reasons. “One is just the hyper-partisanship that has evolved in our country and so people who voted for Biden run around saying, ‘Well, it’s not as bad as Trump.’

“Of course it’s not even close to as bad as Trump but ‘better than Trump’ should never, ever, ever become the standard in this country because that’s saying, ‘I’m better than the absolute worst that prior to 2016 you couldn’t have even conceived of.’

Hard to disagree with that.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118870859#Comment_118870859

If you want to obfuscate about Giuliani, media cover ups, a blind man then you can have that conversation with someone else but it doesn't change the fact that corporate media outlets branded the Hunter Biden email archive as "Russian Disinformation" and have since acknowledged that the archive was real but have not retracted their initial claims. You've been given video and typed instances of where they did this but you seem to want to ignore or refuse the facts and try and steer the conversation towards everything else other than the uncomfortable truth.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118871137#Comment_118871137

I don't, he was spot on at the time: we should be better, reign back in our ethical boundaries.