He’s back. Or rather, it’s back.
Hunter Biden’s laptop is in the news again. (See story here.)
Given its dodgy provenance (see Wikipedia comments here), it’s far from a sure bet that the water-soaked laptop allegedly dropped off, and then abandoned, at a rabid (and legally blind) Trump supporter’s computer shop ever existed — or, if it did, that it ever belonged to Hunter Biden.
It was full of emails, photos, and other stiff linked to him. But those could be forged, or stolen by hackers and then planted on a laptop in turn planted to be “found”. There’s just a whole lot about the story that stretches credulity.
Back in October 2020, which was still before the election, the website truthorfiction concluded, “It remains unclear whose laptop this actually was, how it came to be dropped off at the Maryland computer store in April 2019, [or] whether the emails and other materials found on it are indeed legitimate …. However, one thing is clear: The New York Post ‘smoking gun’ story — packed to the brim as it is with half-truths, outright lies, innuendo, smears, and foreign actors credibly accused of U.S. election meddling — is disinformation.” Meaning wherever it came from, it has Russian fingerprints on it.
The most convincing evidence it’s real is this: “Hunter Biden stated in an interview published April 2021 that he was not sure whether the laptop belonged to him; he said there ‘could be a laptop out there that was stolen from’ him, or he could have been ‘hacked’ by Russian intelligence.” (From the Wikipedia link above.) Given that choice, I’d vote for the latter.
By June 2021, PolitiFact was saying (here), “It was real in the sense that it exists,” and “over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden, though how the laptop came to be obtained by Trump allies and Trump-friendly media outlets is unclear.” But, PolitiFact added, “it didn’t prove much.”
That’s because Hunter Biden, the black sheep of his clan, wasn’t and isn’t running for public office; and “as for the Biden who was actually on the ballot, there was very little from him personally in those messages other than an exchange where he comforts his despondent, drug-addicted son,” as Vox magazine points out here.
In other words, it’s not a story because even if the laptop and its alleged contents are real, those who made a big deal of it in the runup to the election, including Trump and his henchman Giuliani, “didn’t have the goods” on Candidate Biden.
Hunter Biden may be guilty of all sorts of this. He could even go to prison, convicted by the contents of the laptop. As far as that goes, let the chips fall where they may. I’m of the opinion that people who break laws should be held accountable no matter who they are.
But none of that changes the fact that America elected the right president in 2020, who’s now doing everything possible — short of World War 3 — to stop Putin’s aggression, having legitimately defeated a corrupt ex-president who would’ve disbanded NATO and handed Ukraine to Russia on a silver platter.
On March 30, 2022, a poster on HorsesAss.org raised the prospect that even if the laptop is authentic, its contents were tampered with. He asserts (without providing links or attribution) that NSA experts found “less than 8%” of the laptop’s contents have verified cryptographic signatures, and the verified contents “consist entirely of routine email exchanges with lawful business partners, investors, vendors, and personal associations.” The other 92%, he says, is “corrupted garbage” added by other persons “during the time period when the data images were in the possession of Republican political operatives.” (HorsesAss.org, 3/30/22, #7)