7 ms·

Even if they're not authentic, it could just be a regular old lie. You know, lies? Like happen all the time in politics? Why does everything have to be a Rus

Even if they're not authentic, it could just be a regular old lie. You know, lies? Like happen all the time in politics? Why does everything have to be a Russian conspiracy. There was a front page article on HN the other day with people taking a Russian Death Ray seriously. Taking it seriously! Come on, people.

lliamander 6y ago
The timing if the this all coming out is super suspicious, but the "it's the Russians!" thing just made me groan. If Democrats had simply said it was a lie I would have found that much more believable.
- atemerev 6y ago
  But they can’t, because they know this is not a lie. It is actually quite possible that Russians have something to do with this — I say it as a Russian; they did nearly the same thing with DNC leaks in 2016. But the issue is not “who did it”, the question is whether the materials are authentic or not. DNC leaks were authentic, and that was enough for Americans to tip the election outcome in 2016. Hunter Biden materials look authentic, too.
  - deanCommie 6y ago
    I genuinely would like to understand the position of someone like you to whom this material looks authentic. How do you rationalize this series of events piling on top of each other? https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/jkjeib/how_a_fake_persona_laid_the_groundwork_for_a/gaji4e4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/jkjeib/how_a_fake... What about the material looks authentic to you?
    - atemerev 6y ago
      I think that it is quite likely that the laptop was planted, the whole acquisition story is fake, and this is an orchestrated campaign optimized for maximum impact. I am not an idiot. However, the contents of the laptop (emails and pictures — at least some of them) were corroborated by multiple sources. Their timings agree with the events of Ukraine affair, which led to Trump’s impeachment proceedings. I can’t say anything about the laptop; perhaps it was planted by the Russian intelligence or Trump campaign spinners. However, its contents looks real to me.
      - evgen 6y ago
        You do realize that the mechanism you use to 'wash' disinformation is to mix it in with other legitimate (hacked) data, right? If the party you are attacking denies the validity you have a few real bits of data you can point to and use to call the other party a liar. If the party you are attacking tries to explain the nuance that there is some true and some false data in there then you use that against them to try to claim it is all true or that they are admitting that your specific bits of disinformation are true, by the time people hear the full statement it is already too late. Seriously, it has been over four years since Clinton and the Podesta emails. How can anyone still be this naive?
        free_rms 6y ago
        Naive is buying into a jingoist narrative about how everything bad in our own country is because of the scary Russians and Chinese. We've got billion-dollar Presidential campaigns and 100M-dollar senate campaigns, but an office floor full of internet trolls are the ones swinging the balance of power in our country? Who's naive? Take some responsibility -- if we suck, that's on us.
        evgen 6y ago
        They are not swinging the balance of power, and at this point most of the trolls and disinformation artists are in the US working for conservative think-tanks and Republican campaigns. In case you hadn't noticed this big fat nothingburger is going nowhere. Like a lot of other new stories of late is mostly serves to separate the desperate and gullible from the rest of us.
        free_rms 6y ago
        I'm a reluctant Biden voter, but you're saying Hunter getting 600k for a bullshit job is totally above board? If I think that's fishy, I'm desperate and gullible? It's going nowhere, agreed, most blatant corruption goes nowhere. But I don't have to like it or defend it.
        6y ago
    - gitweb 6y ago
      When you are in a two party system you'd be surprised what your mind will do to either believe or deny as long as your team wins. You don't care if they cheat or lie as long as they win. You might know they are cheating or lying but you'll still deny it to the other team's fans because you see how much it gets under their skin, and afterall it's a sport because their are only two teams.
      - seppin 6y ago
        I always compare talking to a Trump supporter about his crimes to talking to a Pats fan about Bill Belichick or Brady getting caught cheating red-handed. Not only do they not care, they are confused as to why they should care. It's their team, nothing would convince a Pats fans to start rooting for the Giants. I'm afraid that's where our politics are at.
    - koolba 6y ago
      You’re getting played by NBC. Their story is totally separate from the Hunter Biden laptop / Bobulinski testimony. They deliberately mention the other story in an attempt to discredit it by association. To date, the only on the public record (in an interview, not testimony) statements are in favor of the allegations and evidence being true. The Biden’s have not public denied any of it. They, with the assistance of the media, simple delay and deflect.
      - seppin 6y ago
        > the Hunter Biden laptop / Bobulinski testimony. The WSJ, while their own op-ed page was trying to make the story real, thoroughly broke down and discredited all aspects of this story. There is no tie to Joe Biden at all. Why are you claiming otherwise with a straight face?
        lliamander 6y ago
        If this [1] is the WSJ report you are talking about, then your statement that it "thoroughly broke down and discredited all aspects of this story" is blatantly false. All they claimed was that there was no clear evidence in Bobulinski's text messages that Joe Biden was involved (though the "big guy" phrasing refering to Joe was not proved one way or the other). It does not discredit the emails, nor Bobulinski's own testimony. It's actually just a pretty reasonable and reporting of the information they had available. [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partner-alleges-father-knew-about-venture-11603421247 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partn...
        seppin 6y ago
        > no clear evidence Just say "no evidence". > (though the "big guy" phrasing refering to Joe was not proved one way or the other). Pizzagate all over again. "As long as some words mean other words than we have a full blown, fully-proven scandal!" Again, you aren't fooling anyone that isn't volunteering to be fooled so their worldview can be protected. The definition of a waste of time.
    - afiori 6y ago
      As reported by Greenwald, neither Hunter nor Biden's campaign ever claimed that the emails are fake. It is quite likely that someone orchestrated this for maximum impact, but for now these emails looks as authentic as any other leak in the last decade.
      - seppin 6y ago
        Right, the DNC's emails weren't fake either. They were stolen by a state and leaked via a third party for political reasons. That's the game.
        afiori 6y ago
        Yes, that is journalism. If the CIA managed to stop that hacking before it happened no journalist would have cried. If the journalist had participated in the hacking they would be criminally responsible. And if the journalist obtain proof of relevant stories (especially related to corruption in politics) they will publish them. There has never been a poisonous tree standard in journalism.
        seppin 6y ago
        > Yes, that is journalism. No that's the active measures of a spy agency.
        afiori 6y ago
        Just to agree on our respective positions, my understanding is that you are claiming that the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine should apply to journalism and news. I would argue that this has very easily exploited consequences: if you want something to be ignore just hire some hacker to surgically hack parts of that information. Not enough to be criminal, and you are safe from the court of public opinion.
        seppin 6y ago
        Wikileaks actively agreed to launder and selectively release Russian military hacked materials for specific political purposes. Referring to that as journalism is an insult to actual journalists.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      It's undisputed that Hunter was getting 600k from a ukrainian national gas company and that Joe Biden demanded a prosecutor be fired. That's the real story, and it stinks. The computer repair shop thing is laughable, but that doesn't mean the obvious conclusion is dastardly russians did it.. Hunter doesn't look like a model in operational security, any number of motivated people could have hacked him. Or maybe it was entirely made up to get the underlying scandal back in the news.
      - seppin 6y ago
        > It's undisputed that Hunter was getting 600k from a ukrainian national gas company It's unsubstantiated, at best: "However, the Daily Caller News Foundation could not confirm the accuracy of this figure, as there is no evidence the payments from Rosemont Seneca Bohai to Hunter Biden are necessarily for his work with Burisma." https://checkyourfact.com/2019/10/17/fact-check-hunter-biden-ukraine-burisma-payments/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/10/17/fact-check-hunter-biden... Why repeat something with full confidence when you have no idea if it's actually true or not (because no one does) ?
        lliamander 6y ago
        I'm sure he was only making minimum wage. /s
        seppin 6y ago
        Glad you are having fun backing up other people that are wrong too.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      They've been authenticated by a forensic analyst that has been used by "mainstream" media before: https://amp.dailycaller.com/2020/10/29/cybersecurity-expert-authenticates-hunter-biden-burisma-email https://amp.dailycaller.com/2020/10/29/cybersecurity-expert-... The 64 page article NBC is talking about here is unrelated.
      - seppin 6y ago
        To be clear, giuliani has refused to give the contents to anyone in the press. The Daily Caller (an extension of the Trump campaign) isn't to be trusted. No rational person would expect this to prove anything. Also, Hunter's emails and photos were circulated in Ukraine last year to the highest bidder. https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ Someone finally paid for them and this is the way they are being laundered. And no one is buying it.
        lliamander 6y ago
        > To be clear, giuliani has refused to give the contents to anyone in the press. I can't speak for Giuliani, and I agree that his involvement in this is strange, but NYP, Daily Caller, and National Pulse have all offered to share the contents of the drive with other journalists. I don't know to what extent they have been taken up on it. > The Daily Caller (an extension of the Trump campaign) isn't to be trusted. No rational person would expect this to prove anything. To assume that the news agencies that ran with the Steele dossier or the "Fine People" hoax have some fundamentally higher standard of journalistic standards than smaller right-wing publications is a bit rich. But I fully realize you wouldn't trust them directly. The point is that it's not just the reputation of these outlets now, but people without a partisan axe to grind like Robert Graham[1] and Tony Bobulinski who are providing evidence for the authenticity of the emails recovered. > Also, Hunter's emails and photos were circulated in Ukraine last year to the highest bidder. Irrelevant. All evidence so far points to the laptop (which is genuinely Hunter Biden's) being the source of these emails. The DOJ has already acknowledged that it received (what I believe is the original) laptop drive, and they have been pursuing an active criminal investigation against Hunter since last year. The DOJ, State Department, and DNI all have said there is no evidence of foreign involvement, and even a Washington Post journalist has acknowledged that this likely isn't the result of foreign interference. > And no one is buying it. Wishful thinking. [1]https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim
- achileas 6y ago
  The story literally originated in pro-Russian Ukrainian circles to fight against anti-corruption efforts there while Biden was VP: https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/
  - free_rms 6y ago
    If your kid is getting 600k/yr for a no-show job, you don't get to call your interventions "anti-corruption". Literally being involved at all is a conflict of interest.
    - seppin 6y ago
      Yes accuse Biden of corruption so Trump's corruption just doesn't bite as hard, and be maybe sneaks a few more votes. This is a cynical game and I'm sick of so many people playing it willingly.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        That's not very charitable at all. Can't one be upset at all corruption? Trump's gets coverage plenty of places, wall-to-wall. Yet any mention of Biden gets dogpiled by comments like yours. For the record, I'm a Bernie voter and reluctant Biden voter.
        seppin 6y ago
        Because getting a sweetheart deal b/c your dad was VP and money laundering / theft / bribery are not two sides of the same coin. One sucks but occurs everywhere, the other is illegal.
        free_rms 6y ago
        So who's gonna hold Biden accountable once he's President? You? The NYT and WaPo? Sure doesn't sound like it.

lliamander 6y ago

The timing if the this all coming out is super suspicious, but the "it's the Russians!" thing just made me groan. If Democrats had simply said it was a lie I would have found that much more believable.

atemerev 6y ago
But they can’t, because they know this is not a lie. It is actually quite possible that Russians have something to do with this — I say it as a Russian; they did nearly the same thing with DNC leaks in 2016. But the issue is not “who did it”, the question is whether the materials are authentic or not. DNC leaks were authentic, and that was enough for Americans to tip the election outcome in 2016. Hunter Biden materials look authentic, too.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  I genuinely would like to understand the position of someone like you to whom this material looks authentic. How do you rationalize this series of events piling on top of each other? https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/jkjeib/how_a_fake_persona_laid_the_groundwork_for_a/gaji4e4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/jkjeib/how_a_fake... What about the material looks authentic to you?
  - atemerev 6y ago
    I think that it is quite likely that the laptop was planted, the whole acquisition story is fake, and this is an orchestrated campaign optimized for maximum impact. I am not an idiot. However, the contents of the laptop (emails and pictures — at least some of them) were corroborated by multiple sources. Their timings agree with the events of Ukraine affair, which led to Trump’s impeachment proceedings. I can’t say anything about the laptop; perhaps it was planted by the Russian intelligence or Trump campaign spinners. However, its contents looks real to me.
    - evgen 6y ago
      You do realize that the mechanism you use to 'wash' disinformation is to mix it in with other legitimate (hacked) data, right? If the party you are attacking denies the validity you have a few real bits of data you can point to and use to call the other party a liar. If the party you are attacking tries to explain the nuance that there is some true and some false data in there then you use that against them to try to claim it is all true or that they are admitting that your specific bits of disinformation are true, by the time people hear the full statement it is already too late. Seriously, it has been over four years since Clinton and the Podesta emails. How can anyone still be this naive?
      - free_rms 6y ago
        Naive is buying into a jingoist narrative about how everything bad in our own country is because of the scary Russians and Chinese. We've got billion-dollar Presidential campaigns and 100M-dollar senate campaigns, but an office floor full of internet trolls are the ones swinging the balance of power in our country? Who's naive? Take some responsibility -- if we suck, that's on us.
        evgen 6y ago
        They are not swinging the balance of power, and at this point most of the trolls and disinformation artists are in the US working for conservative think-tanks and Republican campaigns. In case you hadn't noticed this big fat nothingburger is going nowhere. Like a lot of other new stories of late is mostly serves to separate the desperate and gullible from the rest of us.
        free_rms 6y ago
        I'm a reluctant Biden voter, but you're saying Hunter getting 600k for a bullshit job is totally above board? If I think that's fishy, I'm desperate and gullible? It's going nowhere, agreed, most blatant corruption goes nowhere. But I don't have to like it or defend it.
      - 6y ago
  - gitweb 6y ago
    When you are in a two party system you'd be surprised what your mind will do to either believe or deny as long as your team wins. You don't care if they cheat or lie as long as they win. You might know they are cheating or lying but you'll still deny it to the other team's fans because you see how much it gets under their skin, and afterall it's a sport because their are only two teams.
    - seppin 6y ago
      I always compare talking to a Trump supporter about his crimes to talking to a Pats fan about Bill Belichick or Brady getting caught cheating red-handed. Not only do they not care, they are confused as to why they should care. It's their team, nothing would convince a Pats fans to start rooting for the Giants. I'm afraid that's where our politics are at.
  - koolba 6y ago
    You’re getting played by NBC. Their story is totally separate from the Hunter Biden laptop / Bobulinski testimony. They deliberately mention the other story in an attempt to discredit it by association. To date, the only on the public record (in an interview, not testimony) statements are in favor of the allegations and evidence being true. The Biden’s have not public denied any of it. They, with the assistance of the media, simple delay and deflect.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > the Hunter Biden laptop / Bobulinski testimony. The WSJ, while their own op-ed page was trying to make the story real, thoroughly broke down and discredited all aspects of this story. There is no tie to Joe Biden at all. Why are you claiming otherwise with a straight face?
      - lliamander 6y ago
        If this [1] is the WSJ report you are talking about, then your statement that it "thoroughly broke down and discredited all aspects of this story" is blatantly false. All they claimed was that there was no clear evidence in Bobulinski's text messages that Joe Biden was involved (though the "big guy" phrasing refering to Joe was not proved one way or the other). It does not discredit the emails, nor Bobulinski's own testimony. It's actually just a pretty reasonable and reporting of the information they had available. [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partner-alleges-father-knew-about-venture-11603421247 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partn...
        seppin 6y ago
        > no clear evidence Just say "no evidence". > (though the "big guy" phrasing refering to Joe was not proved one way or the other). Pizzagate all over again. "As long as some words mean other words than we have a full blown, fully-proven scandal!" Again, you aren't fooling anyone that isn't volunteering to be fooled so their worldview can be protected. The definition of a waste of time.
  - afiori 6y ago
    As reported by Greenwald, neither Hunter nor Biden's campaign ever claimed that the emails are fake. It is quite likely that someone orchestrated this for maximum impact, but for now these emails looks as authentic as any other leak in the last decade.
    - seppin 6y ago
      Right, the DNC's emails weren't fake either. They were stolen by a state and leaked via a third party for political reasons. That's the game.
      - afiori 6y ago
        Yes, that is journalism. If the CIA managed to stop that hacking before it happened no journalist would have cried. If the journalist had participated in the hacking they would be criminally responsible. And if the journalist obtain proof of relevant stories (especially related to corruption in politics) they will publish them. There has never been a poisonous tree standard in journalism.
        seppin 6y ago
        > Yes, that is journalism. No that's the active measures of a spy agency.
        afiori 6y ago
        Just to agree on our respective positions, my understanding is that you are claiming that the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine should apply to journalism and news. I would argue that this has very easily exploited consequences: if you want something to be ignore just hire some hacker to surgically hack parts of that information. Not enough to be criminal, and you are safe from the court of public opinion.
        seppin 6y ago
        Wikileaks actively agreed to launder and selectively release Russian military hacked materials for specific political purposes. Referring to that as journalism is an insult to actual journalists.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    It's undisputed that Hunter was getting 600k from a ukrainian national gas company and that Joe Biden demanded a prosecutor be fired. That's the real story, and it stinks. The computer repair shop thing is laughable, but that doesn't mean the obvious conclusion is dastardly russians did it.. Hunter doesn't look like a model in operational security, any number of motivated people could have hacked him. Or maybe it was entirely made up to get the underlying scandal back in the news.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > It's undisputed that Hunter was getting 600k from a ukrainian national gas company It's unsubstantiated, at best: "However, the Daily Caller News Foundation could not confirm the accuracy of this figure, as there is no evidence the payments from Rosemont Seneca Bohai to Hunter Biden are necessarily for his work with Burisma." https://checkyourfact.com/2019/10/17/fact-check-hunter-biden-ukraine-burisma-payments/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/10/17/fact-check-hunter-biden... Why repeat something with full confidence when you have no idea if it's actually true or not (because no one does) ?
      - lliamander 6y ago
        I'm sure he was only making minimum wage. /s
        seppin 6y ago
        Glad you are having fun backing up other people that are wrong too.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    They've been authenticated by a forensic analyst that has been used by "mainstream" media before: https://amp.dailycaller.com/2020/10/29/cybersecurity-expert-authenticates-hunter-biden-burisma-email https://amp.dailycaller.com/2020/10/29/cybersecurity-expert-... The 64 page article NBC is talking about here is unrelated.
    - seppin 6y ago
      To be clear, giuliani has refused to give the contents to anyone in the press. The Daily Caller (an extension of the Trump campaign) isn't to be trusted. No rational person would expect this to prove anything. Also, Hunter's emails and photos were circulated in Ukraine last year to the highest bidder. https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ Someone finally paid for them and this is the way they are being laundered. And no one is buying it.
      - lliamander 6y ago
        > To be clear, giuliani has refused to give the contents to anyone in the press. I can't speak for Giuliani, and I agree that his involvement in this is strange, but NYP, Daily Caller, and National Pulse have all offered to share the contents of the drive with other journalists. I don't know to what extent they have been taken up on it. > The Daily Caller (an extension of the Trump campaign) isn't to be trusted. No rational person would expect this to prove anything. To assume that the news agencies that ran with the Steele dossier or the "Fine People" hoax have some fundamentally higher standard of journalistic standards than smaller right-wing publications is a bit rich. But I fully realize you wouldn't trust them directly. The point is that it's not just the reputation of these outlets now, but people without a partisan axe to grind like Robert Graham[1] and Tony Bobulinski who are providing evidence for the authenticity of the emails recovered. > Also, Hunter's emails and photos were circulated in Ukraine last year to the highest bidder. Irrelevant. All evidence so far points to the laptop (which is genuinely Hunter Biden's) being the source of these emails. The DOJ has already acknowledged that it received (what I believe is the original) laptop drive, and they have been pursuing an active criminal investigation against Hunter since last year. The DOJ, State Department, and DNI all have said there is no evidence of foreign involvement, and even a Washington Post journalist has acknowledged that this likely isn't the result of foreign interference. > And no one is buying it. Wishful thinking. [1]https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim
achileas 6y ago
The story literally originated in pro-Russian Ukrainian circles to fight against anti-corruption efforts there while Biden was VP: https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/ https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/
- free_rms 6y ago
  If your kid is getting 600k/yr for a no-show job, you don't get to call your interventions "anti-corruption". Literally being involved at all is a conflict of interest.
  - seppin 6y ago
    Yes accuse Biden of corruption so Trump's corruption just doesn't bite as hard, and be maybe sneaks a few more votes. This is a cynical game and I'm sick of so many people playing it willingly.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      That's not very charitable at all. Can't one be upset at all corruption? Trump's gets coverage plenty of places, wall-to-wall. Yet any mention of Biden gets dogpiled by comments like yours. For the record, I'm a Bernie voter and reluctant Biden voter.
      - seppin 6y ago
        Because getting a sweetheart deal b/c your dad was VP and money laundering / theft / bribery are not two sides of the same coin. One sucks but occurs everywhere, the other is illegal.
        free_rms 6y ago
        So who's gonna hold Biden accountable once he's President? You? The NYT and WaPo? Sure doesn't sound like it.