Did You say “Laptop”?

The next time you hear a Republican bring up Hunter Biden’s laptop, which will probably be within the next 30 seconds, just ask, “What’s on it?” His answer will most likely be a blank expression. But, let’s back up.

This entire laptop thing started when a legally blind right-wing goon who owns a computer repair shop took a laptop he claimed belonged to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, and gave it to Rudy Giuliani. Right out of the gate, it’s suspect.

The man says Hunter Biden brought his laptop to his repair shop and never returned to pick it up. Since the man is legally blind, he can’t tell you if the computer’s owner looked like Hunter Biden but he did sign his name as Hunter. The computer repair dude claims he called the FBI in regards to this laptop before handing it over to Rudy Giuliani, but to his horror, he discovered that owning a laptop is not a crime. You would think a guy who repairs computers for a living would have known this. He said the FBI expressed no interest in Hunter’s laptop, but Rudy called him back immediately. The laptop was dropped off at the shop in Delaware in April 2019. The goons started circulating a story about this laptop in October 2020.

So, according to this story, Hunter took a laptop with incriminating evidence of his illegal activities, that would also implicate his father, dropped it off at a repair shop with a bunch of MAGA signs on the windows, and never came back for it. There should be an investigation into how Rudy actually acquired this laptop.

The repair guy saw a lot of stuff on the laptop he found scandalous, so he made a copy onto a hard drive and gave the laptop to Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer. Copies of this hard drive were then given to The New York Post, Steve Bannon, and other assorted MAGA goons. I’m not a computer expert but I do know that when you make copies from copies from copies, and not from the original source, they get damaged. Data will be missing. And with it coming from Republicans, it’s as trustworthy as if it came from Sputnik through Weekly World News through Breitbart through RT through Daily Wire through Tucker Carlson through Jeanine Pirro through Newsmax through InfoWars through Donald Trump Jr through Kyle Rittenhouse through Ted Rall, and finally to you.

The laptop contained a lot of information about Hunter’s personal life, including details of his drug addiction and his sex life. But there were also emails and files pertaining to his foreign work with a Ukrainian gas company and Chinese businesses. Republicans claimed this is evidence of Hunter Biden’s corruption, which implicated his father, who is now president of the United States of America.

The mainstream media mostly ignored the story. Why would they do that? They ignored it because there was no authenticity to the story and it was coming from Rudy Giuliani, who had spent the past few years screaming about Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine without anything to prove anything. There was also concern this was a story being pushed in October of an election year by Russian propaganda. The media didn’t want to help that. Neither did social media as Twitter blocked most stories on the laptop, even suspending the New York Post’s account for over a week, and Facebook did fact-checks on stories from the Post.

The New York Post is a right-wing sensationalistic tabloid. It often runs headlines that aren’t supported by the articles. Several employees of the Post protested the publication of the laptop story for the failure of any verification and even questioned why it was a story. One of the reporters who wrote the article refused to have his name on it.

Republicans who cried that the mainstream media ignored the story are now shouting that they’re running corrections…but you don’t run corrections and retractions on stories you didn’t publish.

Republicans who screamed about the Steele Dossier and had high standards for FISA warrants were all about exposing Hunter Biden’s private emails and documents in a goon tabloid.

Now, it’s back in the news after The New York Times published a story about the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter’s taxes and foreign work, and cited emails it described as “from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop.”

The New York Post ran an editorial stating, “The Times finally admits: Hunter’s laptop is real.” But, the Times didn’t do that. Technically, the Times only vouched for certain emails they’d “authenticated” with the help of “people familiar with them and with the investigation.” The Washington Post hired two computer forensic experts to authenticate the files from the laptop, which was given to the Post by Jack Maxey, another Republican operative. The Post’s forensic people were able to verify 22,000 emails from over 286,000 user files.

Note how it was given to the Post by a Republican activist. Note how it was passed around from one Republican to another Republican. Note that the drives were copied and re-copied and re-copied repeatedly. Also, since the FBI finally took possession of the laptop, with a warrant, for their investigation into Hunter’s taxes, the files keep changing. Someone, or someones, with access to the drive from a cloud keeps changing and adding to the drive. This laptop is damaged goods and after all the handling through the hands of partisan political hacks, it would be hard to ever enter into a court of law, even if there was evidence of corruption.

But, what’s on it? What’s on the laptop that makes it so relevant? Again, if you ask a Republican, they’ll give you a blank look. They believe there being a laptop is enough to prove President Biden is corrupt. But I’m here to tell you the best they got is nothing.

There is one email the New York Post labeled as “blockbuster” from an executive at the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, thanking Hunter for the “opportunity to meet your father” in 2015. There was a dinner in Ukraine that the then-vice-president attended along with at least a dozen other people. If you’re not a Republican and you’re capable of comprehension, you’ll see this is not a smoking gun. If this dinner is a smoking gun then what was that meeting at Trump Tower with the Russians?

What Republicans were trying to prove in 2019 and 2020 was that as vice president, Joe Biden used his influence to have a prosecutor in Ukraine fired to protect the gas company his son worked for from being investigated. The problem with this claim is that the entire European Union were with the United States in having this prosecutor fired, not because the EU was so interested in protecting Hunter Biden, but because this was a prosecutor who they deemed as corrupt who WOULD NOT investigate corruption. And even if the Burisma was corrupt, that doesn’t prove all the people who worked for it are corrupt. Republicans suck at comprehending this stuff.

There’s a second email the GOP is harping on about involving a business venture Hunter was embarking on in China in 2017. Joe Biden was NOT in office in 2017. The email mentions the equity split would include “10 held by H for the big guy.” A former business partner of Hunter’s claims “the big guy” was Joe Biden. But, there’s a reply to this email from Hunter stating his “Chairman” gave him “an emphatic no,” and a further email clarifies that the chairman is his dad. Oh my gosh…did the GOP inadvertently expose that Joe Biden refused a payoff and is not corrupt? Yes, yes they did.

The emails don’t have the goods the Republicans claim they do. Out of over 22,000 emails, they can only cite three that don’t even suggest Hunter’s corrupt, not to mention his father.

Is it unseemly, or at best, tacky for the child or relative of an elected official to make money off that official’s name and position? Yes. I’m not naive enough to believe Hunter Biden was able to swing big money energy deals in foreign nations without any experience with energy companies. But, it’s not illegal.

These Republicans don’t really care about corruption because if they did, wouldn’t they have asked over the past five years about Ivanka Trump’s trademarks getting fast-track approval in China while her dad was president (sic)? Wouldn’t they have asked about Jared Kushner’s businesses getting multi-million dollar bailouts from Persian Gulf nations? Wouldn’t they have asked about all the Trump towers and resorts in foreign nations? Wouldn’t they have asked about Trump’s hotels and resorts doing big business with foreign diplomats? Wouldn’t they have asked about Trump holding mini-summits with the leaders of Japan and China at Mar-a-Lago, where I’m sure he didn’t give them free rooms and meals. wouldn’t they have asked about the president (sic) having debts to foreign banks? Wouldn’t they have asked about the president (sic) not paying taxes? Wouldn’t they have asked about the president (sic) lying on tax filings and loan applications about the value of his businesses? Wouldn’t they have asked about the president (sic) raising campaign money and spending all that money for events at his resorts? Wouldn’t they have asked about his scam university or scam charity? Wouldn’t they have asked why a business partner paid off Trump’s $25 million settlement to Trump University victims? Wouldn’t they have asked about Trump offering a bribe to Vladimir Putin to build a Trump Tower in Moscow? Wouldn’t they have asked why the government had to pay millions to Trump for Trump to play cheating golf at his shitty bedbug-ridden resorts? You’d think at least one would ask why Trump charged the Secret Service golf cart rentals to protect him.

Do they make hard drives large enough to contain all of Trump’s corruption?

Donald Trump is corrupt. We have real evidence of that and he’s under multiple investigations, criminal and civil. The man tried to overthrow the government and told a Secretary of State to “find the votes.”

There is nothing about President Joe Biden being corrupt. Nothing at all. He has a long history in politics and he’s squeaky clean. Is his son a bad guy? Possibly, but this laptop doesn’t seem to prove that he’s a criminal. And if there’s something on it that did, I think the GOP would have shown it to us by now after having the laptop for nearly three years. And again, why should we trust anything on it after they’ve had it for three years? Have you heard all their lies about the stolen election?

So with this laptop, I have to ask Republicans, “where’s the beef”? There isn’t any. There’s a lot of bark and no bite.

And that’s why you don’t hear any of them telling you what’s on the laptop or what makes it relevant. Don’t believe me? Next time you see someone post about it, ask. When you read headlines and articles on this laptop story, comprehend them. Republicans aren’t.

Music note: I had my window open in 50-degree weather and listened to the traffic in the rain while drawing this.

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