You remember Hunter Biden's laptop, don't you? Sure you do. What you may not remember is that a few weeks before the 2020 election a bunch of ex-intelligence folks wrote an open letter saying they suspected it was part of a Russian disinformation plot. That turned out not to be true—something the New York Times recently confirmed—and a variety of people are pissed off that no one is being drawn and quartered over this obvious attempt to prop up Joe Biden shortly before the election.
Yawn. It's true that the intel folks got it wrong, but that's the most trivial possible part of the whole Biden laptop story. In case you don't remember:
- Rudy Giuliani had been openly looking for dirt on Hunter Biden for over a year. Then, voila!, three weeks before the election he pops up to say that he miraculously found a hard drive with a bunch of compromising Biden emails on it. His rousing tale about how he came across the hard drive was bizarre to say the least.
- Giuliani shopped the story around but it was so thin that nobody bit—not even Fox News. So he finally gave it to the New York Post, the only outlet shameless enough to print it. And even there, it was no slam dunk. Everybody understood that the provenance of the hard drive was dubious to say the least.
- Real reporters spent the next couple of weeks desperately trying to confirm Giuliani's story. They begged him for access to the drive so they could see all the emails and have it forensically analyzed. Giuliani refused.
- In the end, that's why the press mostly refused to go down the rabbit hole of the Biden laptop. The story sounded preposterous. Giuliani was a massively unreliable source. They couldn't verify any of it. And none of it incriminated Joe Biden anyway, it just vaguely smeared him by association. The obvious conclusion was that the whole thing was a typical last-minute Republican ratfuck. The intelligence letter had almost nothing to do with any of this.
Remember all this when your local wingnut starts haranguing you about how the laptop was genuine all along and it goes to show that the mainstream media is corrupt blah blah blah. Whatever we know now, the media did the right thing in October 2020 based on what they knew then. Giuliani could have helped them verify his story anytime he wanted, but he didn't. So of course they didn't report on it. Nobody with a room temperature IQ would have done differently.
I don't think that's actually what is being stated. Some of the material found on the laptop were genuine emails, and that was known at the time, exactly because they were emails that could be obtained from other people on the chain. As far as I can see, no one has yet put a name to confirmation that ALL of the material on the laptop is genuine, nor that the laptop really belonged to Hunter Biden.
This matters because if the Republicans retake either house of Congress, we will be treated to 24/7 hearings of the Select Committee on the Hunter Laptop, covered gavel to gavel by Fox News. The NY Times and CNN will offer only daily summaries though.
The hard drive contents were hacked from the cloud. The laptop from which they were purported to be captured was as much Hunter Biden's as the c. 1999 ThinkPad that the Russians found in Ukraine at an Azov safehouse was NATO's.
This is exactly right. To my knowledge, no one disputed that at least some of the *content* on the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden. The question was whether (A) whether the laptop actually belonged to HB or (B) the laptop was created by someone who had stolen some content belonging to HB and was looking to plant a story, presumably to damage Joe Biden's election campaign.
To believe (A), you'd have to believe that a series of highly unlikely events occurred: HB dropped off a laptop containing very sensitive personal information at a repair shop that was a great distance from where he was living at the time, he chose not to pick it up for repair, and the proprietor thereafter chose to provide it to Rudy Giuliani.
This is exactly my understanding as well. And it’s exactly the same analysis which is underlying the intelligence experts letter which the NYT falsely says has been debunked. . I do not think Kevin’s actually read the sources that he thinks supports his post and, in particular, the deceptive headline.
Lev Parna - remember him?
He is saying that the job on the Burisma board of Directors was a set up.
I do indeed remember him. But I also remember that the first, second, and third rules for using criminals as witnesses is corroboration. Whether it makes or breaks your case, the same rules apply. I’d be interested in seeing a proffer.
Burisma brought on several American board members back in 2016-17, looking to raise its international profile and improve its image: Hunter Biden and Cofer Black, the guy who founded Blackwater with Eric Prince. Funny they never bring up *his* involvement in this supposed cesspool of corruption and influence peddling.
Um... he dropped it off at a repair shop close to his dad's home... who he was presumably visiting.
This is hardly unlikely.
But that doesn't make the data purported to be from it today the same as what was stolen from it.
And in any case, no crimes were revealed. So why do we care?
Why would he have two laptops with him while visiting his dad and both needing some repairs? And wouldn’t it be more likely that he’d take them to a repair shop near to his own house?
No-one knows who dropped it off. The owner is blind and couldn't identify the customer, only that the individual "claimed" to be Hunter Biden. But didn't give any contact info and supposedly never returned to pick up the computer.
Exactly. This WAS a Russian campaign - and there was no reason to go along with it even if some, or all, of the emails were confirmed to be correct.
Exactly what office was H. Biden running for?
Since he was not running, or serving as an advisor to his father, I don't give a fork!!!!
On the other hand, let us see the emails and taxes of TFG's spawn. They did serve as advisors.
"... So of course they didn't report on it. .."
It was still a story. Complete with non-denial from the Biden campaign.
It was something that was
a. trying to smear Biden by association
b. with something that was a smear by association
c. if that's how you wanted to look at it.
It was three steps removed from nothing but that's why it's the perfect wingnut placebo, it's whatever they want to think it is, like Benghazi, like Hillary's emails, like the unborn, it's a fantasy world, wrapped in horseshit, inside a mental illness, covering up a learning disability.
How soon til we find our Mike Cernovich is diddling those Ukrainian children that former Washington State legislator Mike Shea trafficked out of Poland?
Nicely put.
"...it's a fantasy world, wrapped in horseshit, inside a mental illness, covering up a learning disability."
That is the single best thumbnail I've read yet. I'll distill it further - the net effects of thirty years of relentless propaganda that's been not so subtly guided by Russian influence.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-note-from-finland/sharetoken/2dJYZhFJdl1t
As I recall, Billy Carter had a problem with beer.
So what.
The real story here should be "Why do we care about Hunter Biden's email? Is it because his name starts with an 'H' which is just like... HILLARY! OHMYGAWD! EMAIL!
Seriously. Before I start to care about the contents of Hunter Biden's email and whether they're genuine (and they would ALL have to be genuine, every single one, not just a few*) you need to tell me WHY I would care about what a private citizen, albeit a connected one, has to say to others or what they have to say to him.
* - Back in the Wikileaks days, I had a back-and-forth with someone over whether those emails were genuine or might have been altered. He assured me that you could check the DKIM hash to see if they were unaltered. So... I went and grabbed a few of said emails at random and checked. At least half had no DKIM hash, and thus could not be verified as genuine and unaltered.
"... you need to tell me WHY I would care about what a private citizen, albeit a connected one, has to say to others or what they have to say to him."
If the President's son is taking money to influence the President this is a problem. It is also a problem if the President's son is doing stuff that could get him blackmailed.
Uh-huh. Of course, if a presidential candidate won’t release his tax returns, we don’t know whether he himself is taking money from someone wanting to influence him.
There’s no law requiring a candidate to release his tax returns. If you don’t like that one doesn’t choose to release them, don’t vote for him. Blackmail, on the other hand, is illegal.
But it has become a norm for presidents & presidential candidates to release their tax returns.
& I thought your side, as with Barack Obama being stopped from shoving Merrick Garland down the Supremes's throat, was hypersensitive to the norms.
Uh huh. And refusing to provide tax returns because they would show the candidate was being blackmailed?
Atticus, I mentioned several postings back that you owed me (and others here, for that matter) an apology for your constant and ongoing abusive speech and insults. And I still want it.
And I want it _now_.
Don any example of me being abusive and I’ll match you with three examples from you.
What you're saying is _you_ and only you will get to decide what constitutes abusive speech and what does not. And you're telling me to my face that I'm too thick to get what you really mean, IOW, yet another insult to my intelligence, you weapons grade plum.
If I had my way, you'd be bounced out of here hard and with prejudice. You're exactly the sort of douche bro that rendered bbs's with no moderation untenable, the sort of wiggy slice that turned interesting fora into festering sewers after driving all the intelligent posters away.
Provide links to any of my comments that are “abusive”.
And if you’re worried about my opinion against yours, I’ll gladly put up my universe of comments against your and have an impartial jury decide who is “abusive”.
Your very first comment, the one I responded to was abusive an uncivlil.
Yeah, sure looks uncivil to me. What's next? Putin can't be prosecuted for blackmail, so it's not really blackmail?
If you think that is abusive you are f’ing nuts and I’m not wasting my time talking to you anymore.
First, I disagree with the Merrick Garland ordeal. He should have been voted on.
Second, just because something is a norm doesn’t mean it needs to be codified into law. If Congress wants to pass a law that candidates need to release tax returns, so he it. I’d probably support that. But if it’s not a law and is only a “norm” then a candidate doesn’t have to do it. The recourse for the voter is to not vote for him if you don’t like that he didn’t following the norm.
In this country we don’t prosecute people for crimes that haven’t occurred.
Exactly
The President's sons running a business that benefits the president financially could try to influence the President's decisions as well. For example, they might encourage him to hold an international conference at one of the businesses' money losing properties. And the President was all in and might have done it were it not for covid. They might encourage him to go easy on a foreign country because it is a source of capital and potential future investments. I don't recall much outrage from Fox or the GOP in general. Wait, I don't recall *any* outrage from Fox or the GOP.
To be fair... doesn't seem like El Jefe pays much attention to any of his sons, so however much they called, how much did he listen?
(The deadbeat dad defense. More ironclad than Chewbacca.)
And yet Trump tried to blackmail Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Biden and the rightwingnutosphere wants to hear nothing about it. Their alternate reality must get dizzying at times.
They screech that Joe may have had a brief chat with one of Hunter's Burisma colleagues and this proves Joe lied when he said he never discussed Hunter's business affairs.
They also believe Trump when he says his sons never discussed his business with him after he became president, even though he spoke to them almost every day.
All Trump and Giulianin wanted Zelensky to do was annonuce that Hunter Biden was being investigated. No need to follow up on that announcement. Fox and GOP legislators would do what was needed after that. This is usually referred to by the followers of High Broderism in the press as "The country is polarixed." Not that half the country is delusional.
"polarized" not "polarixed," "Giuliani" not "Giulianin."
Kevin is missing the BIG story. The New York Times has thrown the notoriously corrupt Biden Inc under the bus to force Joe's resignation, paving the way for Kamala to take over! JUST AS TRUMP FANS HAVE ALWAYS PREDICTED WAS THE PLAN!!!
It only remains to be seen whether she makes Hillary vice president and then steps down herself. The boys on the Trumpropaganda websites haven't got the goss on that yet.
I think the current conspiracy is Biden stepping down, Harris serving as a lameduck since she knows she won't win a contested primary, & Hillary squaring off with Buttigieg for the right to cheat AOC out of the nomination in 24.
But Bernie still would have won…
Pretty much anyone would have won. Trump was probably the of Republican that Hillary could’ve beaten and she was probably the only Democrat he could’ve beaten.
Obviously we’ll never know but I think Bernie would’ve won. Bare minimum, he would certainly have campaigned in Wisconsin.
Fwiw, Hillary DID beat him. But we don't elect presidents by vote of the people in these United States.
I think that even with their widespread problems of voter suppression and election rigging through state legislatures it’s highly unlikely that a Republican will ever win the popular vote again.
No, she lost the election. I assume you’re referring to the popular vote, which is meaningless.
A sub-species of RW conspiracy theorizing holds that the Neocon Establishment is sore at Joe Biden for not going to war with Russia, so it's now time to ratfuck him.
Is it possible that Joseph Isidore Liebermann could be part of a second coup to depose joebiden?
(Yes, I am implying that Droopy Dogg was party to El Jefe Maximo's January 6, 2021, March on Washington. We already know that motherfucker is homies with Rudy G from the aftermath of 9/11/01...)
Baron trump is actually the spawn of the devil Putin and the Russian whore Melania. It happened while Donald was fucking porno women.
Why won’t democrats just make a campaign ad asserting this? Baron is molesting ivankas kids with jared too.
Just keep repeating it. Sooner or later The NY Times will report it as an accusation. Some people say…
Moscow refers to its actions in Ukraine as a "special operation" to weaken its southern neighbour's military capabilities and root out people it calls dangerous nationalists.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-uses-hypersonic-missiles-strike-ukraine-arms-depot-2022-03-19/
See… it’s not a war crime. It’s a police action.
Really more of a gentle suggestion than a war.
I've been thinking today that this de-nazification is a good thing, because all involved can just declare the Nazis eradicated, mission accomplished, and go home.
Thermobaric rocket launcher being fired in Ukraine,
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1505257107351867395
Not just a menace to it's target, it also sets fire to everything around it when it operates.
Trump is a Russkie loving jew boy
I’m not clear on how exactly The NY Times authenticated the laptops. There’s nothing that I could see in the story to establish ownership of the laptops. Perhaps I missed it but they seen to have “authenticated” in much the same way that they “authenticated’ the FBI’s leaks about Hillary and the way they “authenticated” the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
I see a lot of stuff about the conclusion but nothing from independent verifiable sources speaking on the record. The NYT does not have much credibility, particularly in their use of anonymity.
Some of the contents authenticated, but not the device where were found.
That’s where we were when we started. The entire point of the letter from the intelligence experts was that without authentication of the laptops themselves there was no way to know if this was a Russian disinformation operation. The experts pointed out in the letter, and others from different “five eyes” agencies have confirmed, that the normal way of “salting” the laptops would be to use mainly genuine but stolen emails mixed in with a sprinkling of forged emails and documents.
So, in fact, the Times has relied upon its usual Republican sources in the DOJ and the FBI rather than developing different, more reliable unbiased sources.
There was this interesting story in Time in 2020 that reported that the same, or very similar, trove of emails Giuliani ended up leaking to the NY Post was being offered for sale by some shady actors in Kyiv a year or more earlier. Time doesn't name its sources, but claims that they were approached by an individual in Ukraine who wanted $5 million in return for a bunch of emails supposedly from Hunter Biden alleging his involvement in some corrupt scheme or another during his time on the board of Burisma. The unnamed sources says they passed hard on the offer, but were then surprised to see what appeared to be those same emails turn up in the NY Post courtesy of Giuliani and the laptop discovered at that repair shop in Delaware. Run by a *legally blind* guy who couldn't even confirm if Hunter Biden was the individual who had in fact dropped it off. It just screams "legit."
https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/
This was so obviously a Russian ratfucking scheme to damage Biden, which is why all the MSM outlets wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. We know Russians hacked Burisma's servers. They found Biden's emails, sprinkled in their own forged material alongside genuine emails, and shopped it around to pro-Trump operatives in Ukraine. When that didn't work, well, slap a Beau Biden sticker on a laptop and leave it at a computer repair shop in Delaware and tell Rudy Giuliani where to find it.
In the end, the few emails in the batch that the NYT *could* actually verify as coming from Hunter Biden appear to show him acting ethically. Go figure.
I think that’s the most likely scenario. What I don’t understand is the apparent difficulty is placing ownership of the laptops with Biden or the foundation. There must be a record of the purchase so it would seem to be extremely simple to determine who bought the laptops. Yet, the Times never seems to question their sources about whether those fairly conclusive records were obtained; an omission which is suggesting that the laptops were bought in a timeframe or method or with no corroborating documents that doesn’t fit the Republican/GRU scenario.
Yeah, it's weird. I can't find any article where the reporter says they reached out to Biden to confirm or deny if he ever left a computer at that store. The owner's story is still suss as shit, though.
The original laptop(s) and the hard drive were seized by the FBI. I don't think they've released any info on what they have or haven't determined about them at this point. What Giuliani had, and leaked to the NY Post, was supposedly a copy of the data made by Mac Isaac, the store owner.
But the implication is that the Trump prosecutor and the FBI have definitely proven these were Hunter’s laptops and the all (as opposed to only some) of the documents are genuine. If that’s the source, the NYT should say so and then ask for proof of what the government’s claiming as opposed to just taking their word for it.
But if it’s second hand but from a “reliable” source, the Times should tell us that and, again, ask the source for proof. This is just the same BS we’ve seen from the Times on so many occasions. I don’t think Kevin should have accepted that the provenance of the laptops has been established and he should amended his headline and post accordingly.
See Josh Marshall's comments today on news coverage by the old gray lady. His feeling is the Times likes to take the view from 30,000 feet and is good at talking to bigwigs about their view of what's going on, but generally avoids digging into the nitty gritty details on the ground.
I think he’s right about the big picture but this seems to be more of a combination of supplication to Republicans to show that the Times isn’t a “liberal” paper and a very dogged determination to stick with a group “well placed” sources, mostly in the DOJ or FBI but also almost certainly including Rudy Giuliani even after it becomes clear to everyone else that those sources have a political agenda and are not providing accurate information.
We’ve seen the same pattern in the endless Whitewater “investigations”, in the Wen Ho Lee case, in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, and in the 2016 election. At this point, the NYT must know that these sources are dubious but I think the Times somehow believes that nobody would dare to trick them. It’s a consistent pattern and it’s done more damage to the paper’s reputation than anything else. I grew up reading the New York Times and always thought it the greatest paper in the world. Now, I read stories in the Times and I remain skeptical until the reporting is confirmed by a more reputable source.
We were also longtime NYT subscribers; still have digital subscription, but increasingly disappointed. Coverage of the 2016 campaign was terrible - breathless and endless coverage of the Clinton Foundation non-scandal, while the actually illegal activities of the Trump ‘Foundation’ (tax avoidance, personal benefit) was brief and cursory. Never explained what might actually have been illegal or unethical about Secy. Clinton’s email, that was barely worth a mention when other high government officials did similar, including Trump administration advisors and Cabinet.
Stopped reading the Times 5-6 years ago and switched to the Post; no comparison on the level of reporting and willingness to say it like it is, instead of going to difficult to understand lengths to avoid taking any kind of stand about anything that's not perfectly 'safe' from criticism and/or controversy. It seems to be an organization that's lost its way, or has been corrupted by hubris, indolence, power, what have you, or possibly tied into the international power structure in ways that compromise its ostensible mission of journalism. Chomsky more or less proved the last one years ago; perhaps this tendency has expanded as instabilities threaten international structures of power and privilege.
Whatever the root cause(s), the bias of editorial decision there, as far as I'm concerned, is clear in the structure and content of the reporting. It's almost as thought the institution sees itself as a kind of baronial power independent of but forced to operate within the limitations of a democracy. Definitely its own little world, however you frame it.
I hear what you’re saying. But I’ve been reading the NYT all my life. I’ve really considered it indispensable and have kept a digital subscription. I can’t understand their right wing political bias in terms of their editorial judgment and the paper’s inability to stop making or even acknowledging the same mistakes time and time again.
Oh, it's mot lost its way or become corrupted by hubris, at least, not any more than it already was.
It is, however, bleeding subscriptions at a horrendous rate, and right-wing loony subscribers are still, after all and in the end, subscribers.
The Sulzberger Advertiser only does on the ground reporting FROM THIS OHIO DINER.
So first Kevin blows the most elementary (and very well-publicized) basics on the Texas election law and now he completely muffs what the Times story said?
Usually so good on the facts but clearly not having a good week....
The biggest tell that someone is an idiot is using the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” in an accusatory way.
I do think Kevin owes it to us to explain where he's seen the proof that the laptop was Hunter's.
The Times article certainly doesn't prove it.
Prolly in some newsletter that his Republican friend in Irvine showed him the last time they had lunch.
Putin is attacking Ukrainian.people of Germanic descent. Period. Amazing how.pseudo populists don't tell people that. Where is jew boy Trump??? Only a classical leftist is a true populist.
Another issue with this brings up is how much respect Bakurin and Lenin had for Germanic peoples, which is why they wanted Ukraine's sovereignty to not be questioned. For the white nationalist, they now understand they have been mislead for decades..
Putin's DNA is 2/3 Germanic and 3rd Slavic.
Well, that NYT story is the very definition of a story written for NYT editors rather than the public. I can't make heads or tails of it other than coming away with a general impression Hunter B has paid off some possible taxes because he feels the IRS might hand him a big bill and he wants to be able to say "I paid this already!"
Anyway it really sounds like Hunter B should follow his stepmom into teaching or something and get away from the buckraking.
What's unlikely is dropping it off ANYWHERE without the repair shop getting contact information and, depending on why it needed repair, a deposit. And HB not going back to pick it up OR having his father pick it up for him.
Although, since the shop did not get down contact information and it was not clear how the proprietor knew it was HB who had dropped it off. The story I read was he assumed it belonged to HB based on Democratic themed stickers - maybe, sort of - but it was supposedly based on statements by Giuliani - who was already acting like he was crazy-drunk full time by then. Did anybody get a clear story directly from the repair shop owner or an employee who actually accepted the laptop?
Yeah, they actually did track the guy down. He's blind. He can't even do computer work anymore because of his eyesight, and he could not confirm who originally dropped off the computer.
Reads like a goddamn Beckett play.
Thanks for the memory jog - now I recall mention of the the computer repair guy having seriously impaired vision.
Blind? Then how does he manage repairs? How did he somehow read a big tranche of emails??
God's yes, you nailed it! This reads something like American Buffalo.
It's called "estimated taxes", it's a normal thing, often done if you have an irregular income stream, get some kind of unexpected windfall, or somebody screws up your tax withholding - like the US Government did a few years back - quietly dropped withholding amounts - but NOT the actual tax I was going to owe by April 15.
When I saw my first pay statement of that year going up several hundred dollars even though I had made no adjustments to my withholdings I set up an estimated payment for Q1, calculated what I needed to pay - and just set up an extra calculated withholding for subsequent quarters. Good thing too - some of my colleagues got a nasty shock the next year at tax time.
I did the same thing for my 2021 taxes - the company handling my retirement pay did a small screw up at the beginning of the year. I calculated that we would wind up owing about 6 grand for 2021, adjusted the withholding to the right level, and then made two estimated tax payments in Q3 and early Q1 2022. Came out just right - small refund for 2021.
The IRS even has a pretty well designed web site to allow you to set up the payments.
It appears that this is not about missed estimated payments. This is more like "records show you made $500k from foreign consulting in 20xx but your tax return says you made only $37k working at Starbucks. Where's the consulting payments?"
FOAD, you abusive troll. You owe everyone an apology for the insults above.
I should say I missed the quotes the first time around. If they are not, and you do not agree with them, my apologies. My sincere and profound apologies, in fact.
I just despise those sort of rhetorical tricks.
...a few weeks before the 2020 election a bunch of ex-intelligence folks wrote an open letter saying they suspected it was part of a Russian disinformation plot. That turned out not to be true—something the New York Times recently confirmed.
It may indeed be the case that the NY Times has "confirmed" that a Russian disinformation plot played no role in the laptop story. But I don't see that specific claim in the Times article Kevin links to. All I could find was this:
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.
In addition to not mentioning anything about how the "Russian plot" explanation can now be brushed aside, The NY Times article in question goes into zero detail to back up its statement that the laptop "appears" to have been owned by Hunter Biden (and dropped off by him at a shop in Delaware). Needless to say, the fact (if it's a fact) that emails are real hardly means that a laptop containing the emails is of any particular provenance.
Maybe there are other sources (or other NY Times articles) providing details as to why we can now conclude the laptop is the real deal, or that the Russians weren't involved? I haven't looked yet, No doubt Glenn Greenwald is on the case.
Emails declared to have been "authenticated" means what, exactly?
Were they sent and received by that device?
Why only emails? Strange that nothing from the Documents folder is mentioned.
I want to see a breakdown of the drive contents and logs of activity. That's not going to be published, but a tech person could look and convey the essence of the situation. That has yet to be done.
I presume "authenticated" means that they've located the person to whom the email was sent and that they also have a copy of it and corroborate that it was indeed correspondence from Biden.
You may ‘presume’ that, but the reporters should show their work, it’s their job.
Yes, agree completely.
I think a fair reading of that NYT article tells you this is another Trump-era investigation which is Going Durham (meaning, started with huge tales of international conspiracy, and has devolved to lack of evidence, and nothing much, but the prosecutor has bet his career on it, so they gotta produce something, anything...)
Seems like what really prompted that article is that the prosecutors are worried Hunter Biden has outmaneuvered them by paying the back taxes upfront. All they've got now is "he shoulda paid those taxes earlier!"
As to the "authentication", there's nothing in the article that indicates anything other than prosecutors believe the stuff is real. Note that no mention is made of the supposedly authenticated information saying anything of interest.
I do IT support and like many of my colleagues, we would *never* snoop around a hard drive. Only go to those files pertinent to a particular problem.
So with that understanding, the laptop repairman who said he got the device *and* found emails, comes off as someone of low character. And that's enough to hold back reporting until more is known about the laptop's provenance and the chain of custody of the computer.
As to the technical aspect: Few people have an email client on their laptop. If that's the case for Hunter, then emails would have to have been obtained by going to yahoo or gmail or whatever, and log in or resume a session. I think either way amounts to impersonation to obtain private materials, which is, or should be, a crime.
I know, right? That jumped right out at me when this story started gaining legs: this repair shop guy has a laptop that some customer hasn't picked up, so he hacks into the harddrive and recovers the customers emails? And then passes them on to Rudy Giuliani? Way to run your computer business, buddy. What's your motto? "Bob's Computer Repair: We might not search your personal files!"
I should add: supposedly the job Biden requested was to recover any data on the hard drive. At some point, I think most of us have had to have this done on a computer that just won't work anymore. What the shop usually does is remove the harddrive, boot it up on a working computer, download whatever files are on there onto a disc or stick drive or something, and return it to you.
They don't usually go through your email folders looking for evidence that you did something unethical or illegal while serving on the board of a foreign energy firm and then turn it over to the FBI and inform the Trump campaign.
I agree with all of your points. Yeah, pass the data to Rudy Giuliani, of all people.
As to a technician, sure, maybe do a quick check of folders to see if there is anything there, see the range of dates of files, poke around in downloads or recycle bin, and then xfer. Who has the time to go deeper?
On occasion, I've had to take my laptops in to a shop. Someone asked me, aren't you worried they might view (adult) porn on your PC? I replied, "Believe me, there's nothing there that they haven't seen".
Would being legally blind be a serious drawback in computer repair?
I guess it wouldn't preclude you from owning a computer shop where others did the work. On the owner, Mr. Isaac, there's this from a 2020 Times rundown on the budding "scandal":
"Mr. Isaac, who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, declined to answer many questions about the laptop and his contacts with the F.B.I. He also would not talk about his communications with the Trump loyalists who orchestrated the plan to make the computer’s contents public just before the election."
Because of course.
Legally blind is not quite the same as being unable to see at all. At one company I worked for, one of the key SW engineers was legally blind, but made use of a DOS package and a HUGE computer monitor that allowed him to magnify pieces of code to the point he could work on them. (He also must have had incredible memory to scroll through a line of code, remember it and previous/subsequent lines, and make the correct changes.)
When Microsoft started reducing support for DOS, he was afraid he'd have to retire early. His IT guy mentioned that to me so I did some research and found out that the same features had been built into Windows - but our IT guys didn't realize it. I told his IT guy to set up a system for him and demonstrate the enhanced visibility features - and also to take credit for setting him up. (Paid off in getting really good support from IT for a few years!)
!
(hoping that suggests a thumbs up sign as I've never once used an emoji).
Actually, I'd have to dispute that "Few people have an email client on their laptop." If you are running windows and have Office installed, you have Outlook available (for a price). Most of my colleagues at DEC and then EMC used that as their primary mail interface - one of the features was that it kept a local copy in a database on your computer, allowing you to work on emails while off-line. Outlook can be configured to support any email server that handles standard protocols (IMAP/SMTP/POP3).
On business trips I've written a lot of email on planes and in hotel rooms (in the days before wired and wireless connectivity became common. Then when I got to my local company office, I'd connect to the internet, fire up Outlook, and trigger a synch. Out goes the new email I'd created, and Outlook downloads copies of all the email sent to me while I was off-line. The web interfaces are getting better, but I still primarily use Outlook. It also allows me to archive old emails in secondary local databases - very handy if you need to keep things for long term reference without paying extra to your mail provider for THEIR storage.
Good points. I forgot about Outlook because I don't see it often. People usually put the Office Home & Student suite with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Also, (my bias), I've hated Outlook Express, Mail, and Outlook because they make it nearly impossible to transfer a user's full set of emails to another PC. I usually recommend Thunderbird. But Outlook has calendar and other features that a person who works with their computer need. I presumed Hunter was not that kind of user.
Guiliani tried to whip up a frenzy about HIS LAPTOP!! in the weeks before the election, with dubious "evidence" that nobody was ever allowed to see and a story that was near incredible.
The only thing that's amazing about that is that the media, particularly the Times, didn't jump on it and air it 24x7 every day until Election Day, like they did with Secretary Clinton. Savaging Dems disproves the "Librul Meedia" accusation, right? And that former guy was great for getting clicks. What would they have had to lose?
Rather than being the brilliant political & campaign tactician they were purported to be after threading the 2016 needle, Rudy G & Co. just proved they were no better than the 3am drunks at the blackjack table at Reno's no. 6 casino who got lucky one time.
They tried to replay the game from 2016... not knowing it was a different casino, dealer, & deck entirely. & anyway, the first time was a million to one shot.
Plus, I think most voters not already completely in the tank for Trump looked at a story that suggested Hunter Biden may have traded on his family name to advance his career, and then took a look at the *entire Trump family* which is nothing but an egregious name trading grift, and went "are you kidding me?"
Jared Fucking Kushner couldn't get a security clearance to work in the WH until Trump ordered him cleared. When Joe makes his son a special adviser and then threatens to fire the prosecutors looking at his case and then overrules the security clearance process to let him through, yeah, then we'll talk about Hunter Biden.
+1
That is because it's irrelevant and nobody cared. Do you need a nostril grab to understand that???
I couldn't make out much about him but he walked with a limp like his hip was shattered in combat, and he had a tattoo on his hand, just above the missing middle finger, of a skull with it's tongue sticking out and it's hair on fire, and he wore an eyepatch which didn't conceal the subtle though huge scar he had, like he got too close to a crop duster in the fog on a small airstrip on an island, $4K Armani loafers and a minty pink though tortoiseshell complexion, and a neatly trimmed beard and he said he needed his computer back pronto because otherwise he'd be out mucho dollaro and people you don't want to get angry were gonna get angry. Didn't leave his name or address, so I guessed it was Hunter Biden.
Nice!
If they've "authenticated" that this is HB's laptop, why doesn't someone just return it to them? Is it illegal for Democrats to use email or something?
Rudolph Giuliani has achieved that level of brain damage where his face is permanently cemented in the expression of someone wondering if everything he orders in a restaurant is supposed to taste like cat food, maybe another drink or two will clear that up.
Some people have the point of view that right and wrong, justice and fair play, are meaningless and naive because it's really all about crime and legitimate crime --where it's all about what you can get away with.
If Putin succeeds in violent conquest of another country and subsuming it into his imperium that would legitimize crime because he's demonstrating that all he needs to get away with it is brutality, that brutality is the only needed legitimacy.
This would promote crime everywhere.
Joe Biden will never turn on his last son, no matter how much of a fuck up he is or how crooked he turns out to be
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