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On Tuesday, Fox News reported that “The FBI is in possession of the laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden which contained emails revealing his foreign business dealings, including contacts in Ukraine and China… [and] FBI and Justice Department officials concur with an assessment from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe that the laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign targeting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.” Fox News
Read our previous coverage of the controversy over Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop. The Flip Side
The right argues that the emails appear to be genuine and present serious allegations worthy of further investigation.
“Of course Fox News didn’t run with the story as soon as Giuliani served it up. Something that inflammatory showing up a few weeks before the election couldn’t simply be dumped out to the public without checking into it. But people did check and have since found two people copied on some of the emails who verified their authenticity. Then they reported on it with that supporting testimony to back it up…
“If [the FBI had] found anything tying the laptop to the Russians we’d probably have heard about it by now. I’ll even concede that it’s still possible that some bad actors, be they foreign or domestic, could theoretically have been involved in making the contents of Hunter Biden’s hard drive available as some sort of oppo project…
“But at the end of the day, the only real question is whether or not the emails are real and if they were composed by Hunter Biden. Neither Hunter nor his father’s campaign has once tried to deny the authenticity of the emails. And the previously mentioned confirmation offered by other recipients of the messages pretty much seals the deal.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
“Even if the information had been hacked, that would not make it inauthentic. The reason hacking is a serious offense that causes humiliation and wreaks financial and privacy havoc is because it exposes true information. The hacked Democratic National Committee emails were a problem for Democrats in 2016 because they were real. Media outlets published stories about them, and the Obama administration confronted the Russian regime over them, because the emails were authentic. Hacking is a bad thing… but there’s nothing about it that makes the stolen information suspect…
“The Biden campaign’s [initial] reaction was to check the former vice president’s official calendar — after which the campaign first lamely said there was no notation of any such meeting, and then meekly admitted that Biden might well have met with the Burisma executive. But notice what they didn’t say: Nobody claimed there was no need to check any official calendar because the email was a fake. They assumed it was authentic, because there was no good reason not to… At the moment, the known evidence overwhelmingly tends to establish that the laptop is exactly what it is represented to be: the repository of Hunter Biden’s authentic emails, documents, photos and videos.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, The Hill
“According to the emails, both Bidens were in line in 2017 to benefit from a deal with CEFC. One email… refers to financial payments in terms of ‘20’ for ‘H’ and ‘10 held by H for the big guy?’ Fox News says it has confirmed the veracity of the email with one of its recipients and that sources say the ‘big guy’ is Joe Biden…
“Mr. Biden was a private citizen in 2017 but was considering a presidential run. A transaction that would have made him—or his son—partners with an entity tied to the Chinese government raises questions about judgment and how he would handle China as President. Joe Biden ought to clear the air on this China business in his own political interest…
“President Trump, as usual, is muddying the story with inappropriate demands that the Department of Justice investigate a potential crime. But the real burden here should be on Mr. Biden and the press. Perhaps Joe Biden wasn’t involved, and Hunter was using his father’s name to advance his own business interests. But it’s also possible that Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC business and was unwilling to tell his son that he couldn’t trade on his father’s name and position. Whatever the truth, the public deserves better than Mr. Biden’s Trump-like dismissal of the CBS reporter who so far is the only one brave enough to ask about the emails.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Does anyone remember the Trump-Russia investigation? There were news stories that characterized a handshake and a chat between a figure in the Trump circle and a Russian, such as Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, as ‘contacts with Russians’ worthy of investigation. Robert Mueller's prosecutors investigated one such meet-and-greet moment at the 2016 Republican convention, taking testimony under oath from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Trump aide J.D. Gordon, and others. Prosecutors also questioned Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner about a handshake and chat with Kislyak…
“Now, when the Biden campaign allows that there might have been an ‘informal’ and ‘cursory’ encounter between Joe Biden and an executive from the corrupt Ukrainian company that was paying his son $50,000 a month to do nearly nothing, much of the political world's reaction is not only to deny the story without investigating but to praise social media companies for banning it.”
Byron York, Washington Examiner
“Nothing may be illegal here; voters can decide what to make of it. But 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. The New York Post revelations are unlike many things you’ve seen reported as ‘news’ lately: There is meticulous, transparent sourcing…
“The technician who ended up in possession of Hunter’s laptop is described in detail and has now been identified by name by other news outlets and even outed himself. The named persons of Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon vouched for how the data came into the Post’s hands. Compare this to the vague, anonymous sourcing of so many Russia collusion stories or the New York Times’s mysteriously sourced ‘tax-return data’ (not tax returns) of Donald Trump.”
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr, Wall Street Journal
The left argues that the emails have not yet been verified and there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
The left argues that the emails have not yet been verified and there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
“Some news outlets view a trove of stolen emails and photographs as the starting point for an investigation; other news outlets view the same material as something worthy of nearly immediate publication… Like all slapdash political scandal stories, the New York Post’s version leaves the reader with more questions than answers…
“Did [the] ‘opportunity’ turn into an actual meeting? What, precisely, was the role of Pozharskyi? What was he working on? What of the computer that the email was recovered from? (It was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop and supposedly belongs to Hunter Biden.) And what did the New York Post know about all this?…
“Not enough to satisfy New York Post journalists, apparently. As reported by Katie Robertson of the New York Times, the story’s main author, veteran staffer Bruce Golding, declined to attach his byline to the piece over credibility concerns, as did at least one colleague. According to the Times, one of the bylined authors — Gabrielle Fonrouge — learned that she’d been credited only after the story was published. The other by-line belongs to Emma-Jo Morris, who had no previous New York Post bylines.”
Erik Wemple, Washington Post
“The Biden campaign denied that any substantive meeting occurred between the then-vice president and claims that there are no records of it. Biden’s foreign policy and energy advisers also said that they’d never heard of Pozharskyi; there’s a possibility, perhaps, that the Ukrainian executive briefly met Biden at a public event, several of which were scheduled for the vice president on the day in question. (Hunter Biden had previously arranged for a potential business partner from China to shake hands with his father in the lobby of a Beijing hotel.) But so far, it doesn’t look like the meeting described in this email happened at all…
“There are also strong indicators that Russia had something to do with this whole affair, though nothing has surfaced definitively proving this is the case. In January, the same Russian intelligence unit that hacked Hillary Clinton’s and the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016 was also able to infiltrate Burisma’s systems…
“U.S. intelligence analysts subsequently picked up chatter indicating that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked as part of an October surprise aimed at influencing the election. Analysts were further concerned that forged materials might be included in the leak—something that, without the original materials in question, journalists can’t verify for themselves, leaving everyone to take the New York Post’s word.”
Aaron Mak, Slate
“So far, the Hunter Biden laptop affair is a farcical retread of the Russian hack-and-leak operation that helped torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations in 2016. Now, as then, the Trump campaign appears to be hoping that the media will dribble out stolen private messages over the final weeks of the campaign, creating an illusion of scandal where none exists. And now, as then, someone in Trump’s inner circle is working directly with someone who is, at least according to the U.S. government, a Russian agent…
“The provenance of the alleged hard drive is murky, and the F.B.I. is reportedly investigating whether it’s linked to a foreign disinformation campaign. Giuliani claims his lawyer got it from a Delaware computer repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who says someone he thinks was Hunter Biden dropped off three laptops and never picked them up. Mac Isaac gave a halting interview to several journalists last week; The Daily Beast published the audio, so you can hear for yourself as his story shifts over the course of an hour. If there’s an important story here, it’s almost certainly about Giuliani’s dirty tricks, not any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.”
Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
“What’s clear, beyond the false scandal-mongering, has been evident for years: Hunter Biden made a mistake getting involved with a dubious company like Burisma. But the notion that the Burisma affair undermines Joe Biden’s case to be president is, as he would say, malarkey…
“Joe Biden said in January it was a ‘mistake’ for his son to join the board, and promised that if he becomes president, none of his family members will have ‘any involvement with any foreign government at all.’ Hunter Biden, too, said he made a ‘mistake’ for which he bore ‘full responsibility.’ That’s the sort of self-criticism we rarely hear from Trump or his family. This is smoke without a fire.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post
“Much is unknown about the Trump family’s business overseas—past and present. While serving in the White House, Ivanka obtained fast-track approval of trademarks in China for fashion gear, beauty services, and voting machines. (Yes, voting machines.) She also received quick okays for trademarks in Japan…
“According to the New York Times, the tax records the paper unearthed reveal that Trump, in the first two years of his presidency, received millions of dollars from projects in foreign countries, including $1 million from Turkey, $3 million from the Philippines, and $2.3 million from India. Has Trump been involved with those projects as president? Let’s see all the emails… Last year, Donald Jr. visited Indonesia to work with a Indonesian billionaire on a hotel project for the family business—and declared there was no connection between this deal and his dad’s foreign policy actions. (At one point, the project had Chinese financing.) Let’s see all the emails about this, too.”
David Corn and Russ Choma, Mother Jones
