It's unfortunately inherent in prioritizing big government over the individual that there is a stronger belief in the government doing the thinking for you.
Funny how you don’t question a blind repair technician handing a hard drive to Rudy Giuliani who just happened to hold onto the story until a couple of a weeks before an election. Remember how Rudy went to Ukraine looking for dirt on the Biden’s and ended up getting Trump impeached? Y’all are so singularly focused on censorship, you don’t really care about the details.
He turned it over to the FBI first. Then he turned it over to a lawyer that turned it over to Rudy Giuliani. Are those the details that you care about? If the provenance of the laptop is the concern, why are all the responses from Dems about Hunter's nudes?
He turned one copy to the FBI in 2019 and gave another to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani then held onto this for almost a year until several weeks before the election. This legally blind repair technician was subpoenaed by the FBI under Trump in 2019, which wasn’t known until after the initial NY Post was posted. Considering Trump and Giulani got into trouble for looking for dirt in Ukraine in quad pro quo scheme…. Seems pretty reasonable to be suspicious of the NY Post story. Otherwise, nothing has come out from this story yet except that the laptop was real.
I think the claim is that people within the FBI were internally against Trump, and they chose not to open an investigation on the laptop to avoid inconvenient details from it emerging that could somehow help Trump's candidacy. They wanted to bury the story and not have a repeat of what happened in 2016 with the Clinton email server investigation. They may not have realized that the repair shop owner would have kept copies of the drive and was willing to reach out and share them with the Trump campaign if he heard nothing back.
I think your timeline is off. Giuliani's lawyer received it in August of 2020. So, he had it for just a few months. This goes over the details of what happened in depth: The Sordid Saga of Hunter Biden’s Laptop (nymag.com)
You're right, I am mixing up the timeline. At any rate, it seems perfectly reasonable to question's Giuliani's veracity and timing considering what Trump and Giulani got caught doing in Ukraine and how Russia was caught interfering in our elections and who they preferred. The WSJ is part of the conservative and they are getting a pass or being ignored when they decided the story didn't meet their standards either.
more tin foil from Turley https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/...ives-plan-swat-force-on-hunter-biden-scandal/ Turley: Below is my column in the New York Post on the very public plan to target potential witnesses — and even media — in the Biden influence peddling scandal. It is rare to see such a scorched Earth campaign intentionally made public. When Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded the Steele dossier, it hid its role and even denied the funding when asked by reporters. This was clearly an effort to not only reveal the plan but to specifically declare the potential targets, including key witnesses, against the Bidens. Here is the column: Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family “allies” planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes. Republicans will see it more like the gathering of the Legion of (Democratic) Doom. Some of the most controversial political operatives are involved in the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect the Bidens. The California meeting’s host was none other than Hunter Biden’s friend, agent and lawyer Kevin Morris. After Hunter was placed under investigation for, among other possible charges, tax evasion, Morris reportedly paid off as much as $2.8 million in back taxes for Hunter. Morris, per The Washington Post, called for a “more aggressive” response to those seeking to investigate the alleged influence peddling. That plan includes hitting critics, such as Fox News, with possible defamation lawsuits. (For full disclosure, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.) The paper also reported Morris “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.” “Spurned” is hardly the sole or most relevant description of Bobulinski: The businessman was recruited by the Biden family to manage foreign deals and later directly contradicted President Joe Biden’s claims he knew nothing of those dealings. His testimony could present a serious threat in the coming House investigation in establishing not only the president’s knowledge but his possible receipt of proceeds from the deals. Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden. What’s most interesting about the piece is why The Washington Post was given such access and such a detailed account. Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses. For key witnesses like Bobulinski, the message is about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. The Washington Post is viewed as one of the most pro-Biden newspapers in the country and only recently admitted the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic after pushing the false Russian-disinformation claim. Now the paper is detailing a plan that could create an open season on those who might try to substantiate the Biden family’s influence peddling. Notably, the article stresses this effort is “operating separately from the White House. [David] Brock said his organization also remains independent of Hunter Biden and his team and is following its own strategy.” The separation is important to deflect any allegations of witness intimidation. Media and political figures leveled such claims against the Trump White House when impeachment witnesses were attacked in the press. Congressional Democrats denounced criticism of the witnesses as an effort to silence or deter witnesses from coming forward. (For the record, I also criticized the targeting of witnesses against Trump even if it did not constitute chargeable witness intimidation). Those who view this as a not-so-veiled threat will likely cite the inclusion of David Brock, one of the most controversial and reviled Democratic operatives in Washington. Long a radical figure closely associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaigns, Brock has repeatedly been at the center of controversial attack campaigns and was most recently tied to news sites criticized as fakes or ploys. Many see him as the lowest common denominator of Democratic operatives, someone willing to take extreme measures to support Democratic figures and causes. Even Biden senior adviser Neera Tanden allegedly once remarked, “I hope Hillary truly understands now how batshit crazy David Brock is.” Brock, however, has always given figures like Clinton deniability for direct responsibility for his actions. He described his new group, Facts First USA, as a “SWAT team” designed to “ensure that the media and public do not accept the false narrative that flows from congressional investigations.” The Post described the meeting as a “glimpse into a sprawling infrastructure that is rapidly, almost frantically, assembling to combat Republicans’ plans to turn Hunter Biden into a major news story when the GOP takes over the House next year.” It also discussed an array of well-known lawyers the Biden family has assembled as well as plans by the White House and Democratic National Committee. Various Democratic groups plan to attack efforts to disclose the Bidens’ multimillion-dollar efforts by attacking Donald Trump’s family. These include the Congressional Integrity Project, which recently hired Jeff Peck, the chief of staff to Biden when he was a senator. These talking points are already appearing in the media, which are heavily invested in denying any scandal connected to the family. That’s why the Post article looks like a shot across the bow of any potential witnesses. This is not to say these reporters are knowing agents of this campaign, but Democratic operatives clearly wanted people to know about this alliance. The article touches all the bases to insulate the Bidens and the Democratic National Committee from responsibility for what Brock and Morris may unleash. However, with the inclusion of former Biden staff and allies, it’s a line that can be quickly lost as investigations heat up. Targeting witnesses like Bobulinski could invite congressional investigators to look more closely at these groups and their funding. Morris could also be taking a real risk. There are already questions about whether he was acting as counsel, agent or friend in reportedly paying off tax debts for Hunter Biden. Rules of professional ethics demand clarity in legal representation. Moreover, Morris himself could be called as a witness and face questions over his own role in the scandal and its suppression in the media. That makes orchestrating an aggressive public campaign more problematic if it targets or intimidates other witnesses. This is, of course, well known to these sophisticated political operatives, which makes the effort to publicize this campaign all the more concerning. House Democrats have blocked efforts to investigate any Biden influence peddling. They will have to take ownership of that refusal if the investigation now establishes a massive and corrupt operation. But the new campaign is designed to give plausible deniability and comfortable distance from planned attacks on witnesses and commentators. Hunter Biden may have collected millions in selling access and influence, but anyone investigating or accusing the Bidens is now fully warned: Proceed at your own peril. Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
and yet it's amazing how many people click on Hunter Biden threads over the course of a single day. astounding, actually.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/2020s-...-media-11670965437?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s Hunter Biden’s Laptop and 2020’s First Big Lie Our national press outlets need a ‘Team B’ approach to the story. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Dec. 13, 2022 5:47 pm ET When you say the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, Democrats and their media allies respond that the private embarrassments of Hunter Biden aren’t news. When you say a large retinue of former top intelligence officials lied when they portrayed the laptop as a Russian intelligence operation, they say there’s no evidence that Joe Bidenprofited from his son’s activities. When you say Twitter censored a legitimate news story and active-duty FBI officials may have encouraged the company to do so, they insist that Twitter is a private company and that Hunter’s activities were not illegal and had already been widely reported to the public. In other words, the defenses now filling the media evade every important question. Only one intellectually honest statement has been heard anywhere and that was offered months ago by liberal philosopher and podcaster Sam Harris: Yes, the laptop story was true and newsworthy. Yes, intelligence veterans and the press lied in suppressing it to help Joe Biden. And he supports their doing so. At least this response owns up in healthy fashion to realities, which is more than you can say for the national media. It’s a good moment to remind ourselves: The allegory of the emperor’s new clothes is not a parable of stupidity. It’s a parable of cowardice. When 51 ex-intelligence officials said the laptop’s emergence “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” they were lying. In the long history of Kremlin dirty tricks, there’s no precedent for so implausible a caper. The officials couldn’t even say clearly what they meant. A real laptop had been stolen by the Russians and leaked to the press? A fake laptop had been created with thousands of uncannily real-looking documents, photos, videos and emails, most of them diabolically designed to have no news or scandal value? The New York Post produced not only a complete and sufficient account of how it obtained the laptop data. It produced a dated subpoena showing the FBI was already in possession of the original laptop for months and would know if the data were fake. The absurdity of the intelligence veterans’ claim was obvious at the time. The people who run America’s major news outlets (at least those who aren’t idiots) knew it. So obvious was the lie that America’s biggest news organizations have to remain silent now because of their own complicity. What I wrote in week one remains true: “It ought to register with you how cravenly some in the mainstream media are trying to convince you something isn’t true that they know is true.” So compromised are the national reporting staffs of the Washington Post, the New York Times and other outlets that they can’t be trusted on the biggest story of the day. A Jeff Bezos, say, would have to take a page from the CIA’s own history and recruit a “Team B” off-site from his Washington Post to investigate the laptop ruse, then require his newspaper to report the truth however discomfiting to its newsroom and leadership. The laptop ruse also ought to have you rethinking the FBI’s and Robert Mueller’s dragging out of the collusion inquiry to damage a president they distrusted. It ought to have you rethinking James Comey’s convenient resolution of the Hillary Clinton email matter based on secret “Russian intelligence” that he made sure would remain hidden from you even today. Our press would bring these stories to light if it could refute them, but it can’t so it ignores them. And no, Twitter and Substack aren’t a substitute for institutions that can deploy teams of reporters and substantial resources to investigations. The point has long since stopped being whose ox is gored, Mr. Trump’s or Mr. Biden’s. American voters whatever their sympathies don’t want their government and media lying to them to shape their political choices. (Put aside lying in a way that falsely incriminates a nuclear-armed hostile power as trying to fix a U.S. election on behalf of one of the candidates—an element of this episode that none want to confront.) The election is over; the truth is kept from you now to protect the guilty, not to save the country from the supposed menace of Trumpism. In a different universe far, far away—that is, America pre-Donald Trump—a conscientious press would be reporting the hell out of all this. Now House Republicans will have to do the job instead, implicitly holding the press to account in the process. Whether Joe Biden actively promoted his son’s ventures is a secondary question but will yield to further investigation. Whether active-duty officials joined in lying to news outlets about the laptop origins will become clear as the Twitter revelations are followed up. One question I think we can say is already resolved conclusively: The 51 former officials lied to the public with deliberation and premeditation to influence a presidential election, and the national press abetted them. Appeared in the December 14, 2022, print edition as '2020’s First Big Lie'.
The article makes several leaps that either aren't true or are inaccurate. There isn't clear evidence that Joe Biden benefitted from his son's dealings. There is enough to further investigate, perhaps. It wasn't obvious that the story wasn't a Russian operation. The article makes that claim but doesn't say why it was obvious. The article goes on to say that the media outlets that weren't idiots knew it was a lie. It still didn't say how they would know.
The National Archives wants to release hundreds of pages of emails about Hunter Biden and Burisma — and the White House won't say whether it will let it happen https://www.businessinsider.com/bid...ge-foia-hunter-burisma-ukraine-emails-2022-12
