3 ms·

> The story you linked is about a completely separate and unrelated story. WikiLeaks and Assange were not involved here. I am aware. My point is that there is

> The story you linked is about a completely separate and unrelated story. WikiLeaks and Assange were not involved here. I am aware. My point is that there is a precedent for this behaviour and neither Trump nor Republicans are credible. > As for the provenance of the laptop: Hunter Biden never denied giving the laptop to the repair shop. And the repair shop gave the laptop and all its contents to the FBI, who would presumably have found any foreign involvment, if it existed, in their investigation of the matter. Let me be clear: I have no doubt in the veracity of any of the information or materials leaked. I distinctly recall seeing posts on /pol/ containing videos of Hunter smoking crack and banging hookers (that have since been scrubbed from the Internet), and people allegedly attempting to hack his iCloud account. However, the I do not find the story and chain-of-custody of his laptop credible. I have been looking further since your prior comment and I cannot find anything that unambiguously confirms its provenance. On the flip side, I also do not find a lack of official condemnation or attribution to Russia to be sufficient in disproving it. Joe Biden and the Democrats were clearly trying to kill the story and scrub any mention of it, so acknowledging it only gives it legitimacy. Happy to ammend my comment if you can point me to something that proves otherwise, though. Jeffrey Epstein was discovered in part because a woman stumbled across his black book on the sidewalk — sometimes unlikely coincidences happen.

Georgelemental 4y ago
> neither Trump nor Republicans are credible ~~Donald J. Trump was not directly involved in the breaking of the laptop story.~~ (edit: my bad) "Republicans" is a group containing tens of millions of people (though I am not aware of the repair shop owner's party affiliation, if any?)
- richbell 4y ago
  > Donald J. Trump was not directly involved in the breaking of the laptop story. Do you really believe that Rudy Guiliani, a man acting as Trump's lackey for numerous things, received bombshell information and publicized it without Trump having any knowledge or involvement? Michael Cohen testified under oauth that Trump knew about leaked DNC emails in advance of the 2016 election. Fast-forward to ~2019 and Trump had already personally tried to pressure Ukraine into providing damaging information about Joe Biden. There is very little plausible deniability here. > "Republicans" is a group containing tens of millions of people (though I am not aware of the repair shop owner's party affiliation, if any?) I am obviously not referring to a collective conspiracy of between hundreds of millions of American citizens. I meant the Republican Party.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    My mistake, I had forgotten about Rudy Giuliani's involvement. > I meant the Republican Party. Which contains many thousands of people, many of whom do not get along. It's a minor miracle that it is still holding together at all!
    - richbell 4y ago
      > My mistake, I had forgotten about Rudy Giuliani's involvement. That's okay, I had to go back and re-check the details of the story multiple times. Based on your other comments, I think we're probably share a similar view about it. All I'm saying is that, while the validity of the content itself unimpeachable, the story about how it was uncovered is highly suspicious. > Which contains many thousands of people, many of whom do not get along. It's a minor miracle that it is still holding together at all! Of course, but they demonstrably put up a rather unified front against the Democrats; Catholics and Protestants hated each other, yet put aside their differences to vote for common interests. Aren't the GOP currently spearheading an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop? https://twitter.com/housegop/status/1593253229747265545 https://twitter.com/housegop/status/1593253229747265545 https://i.redd.it/4yfum3kpzy0a1.jpg https://i.redd.it/4yfum3kpzy0a1.jpg (I'm too lazy to find the actual tweet)
      - Georgelemental 4y ago
        I don't think it's suspicious. If the Russians (or whoever) had stolen the personal labtop of a close Biden family member, it doesn't seem plausible to me that the Bidens would not make that fact public. Joe Biden would not cover up a foreign adversary's crimes when both political and financial incentives run the other way.
        richbell 4y ago
        > it doesn't seem plausible to me that the Bidens would not make that fact public It makes sense to me, considering how damaging and embarrassing the content was. If they confirm it, they lose plausible deniability in being able to claim it's fake. For a large period of time there was a coordinated effort to purge everything from the Internet and paint anyone bringing it up as a conspiracy theorist. It's harder to get away with that if you call attention to the leak and confirm it's authenticity. Perhaps the laptop truly belonged to Hunter Biden. Without a confirmation or proper chain of custody, it's hard to say either way. It's not implausible that an advanced threat actor, especially one backed by a nation-state, could create an elaborate laptop forgery to 'layer'[0] hacked material into a legitimate news story and avoid the hack itself taking centre-stage like in 2016 — of course, this is speculation on my part. [0] https://www.moneylaundering.ca/public/law/3_stages_ML.php#:~:text=The%20Layering%20Stage&text=The%20primary%20purpose%20of%20this,link%20with%20the%20original%20crime https://www.moneylaundering.ca/public/law/3_stages_ML.php#:~...

Georgelemental 4y ago

> neither Trump nor Republicans are credible ~~Donald J. Trump was not directly involved in the breaking of the laptop story.~~ (edit: my bad) "Republicans" is a group containing tens of millions of people (though I am not aware of the repair shop owner's party affiliation, if any?)

richbell 4y ago
> Donald J. Trump was not directly involved in the breaking of the laptop story. Do you really believe that Rudy Guiliani, a man acting as Trump's lackey for numerous things, received bombshell information and publicized it without Trump having any knowledge or involvement? Michael Cohen testified under oauth that Trump knew about leaked DNC emails in advance of the 2016 election. Fast-forward to ~2019 and Trump had already personally tried to pressure Ukraine into providing damaging information about Joe Biden. There is very little plausible deniability here. > "Republicans" is a group containing tens of millions of people (though I am not aware of the repair shop owner's party affiliation, if any?) I am obviously not referring to a collective conspiracy of between hundreds of millions of American citizens. I meant the Republican Party.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  My mistake, I had forgotten about Rudy Giuliani's involvement. > I meant the Republican Party. Which contains many thousands of people, many of whom do not get along. It's a minor miracle that it is still holding together at all!
  - richbell 4y ago
    > My mistake, I had forgotten about Rudy Giuliani's involvement. That's okay, I had to go back and re-check the details of the story multiple times. Based on your other comments, I think we're probably share a similar view about it. All I'm saying is that, while the validity of the content itself unimpeachable, the story about how it was uncovered is highly suspicious. > Which contains many thousands of people, many of whom do not get along. It's a minor miracle that it is still holding together at all! Of course, but they demonstrably put up a rather unified front against the Democrats; Catholics and Protestants hated each other, yet put aside their differences to vote for common interests. Aren't the GOP currently spearheading an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop? https://twitter.com/housegop/status/1593253229747265545 https://twitter.com/housegop/status/1593253229747265545 https://i.redd.it/4yfum3kpzy0a1.jpg https://i.redd.it/4yfum3kpzy0a1.jpg (I'm too lazy to find the actual tweet)
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      I don't think it's suspicious. If the Russians (or whoever) had stolen the personal labtop of a close Biden family member, it doesn't seem plausible to me that the Bidens would not make that fact public. Joe Biden would not cover up a foreign adversary's crimes when both political and financial incentives run the other way.
      - richbell 4y ago
        > it doesn't seem plausible to me that the Bidens would not make that fact public It makes sense to me, considering how damaging and embarrassing the content was. If they confirm it, they lose plausible deniability in being able to claim it's fake. For a large period of time there was a coordinated effort to purge everything from the Internet and paint anyone bringing it up as a conspiracy theorist. It's harder to get away with that if you call attention to the leak and confirm it's authenticity. Perhaps the laptop truly belonged to Hunter Biden. Without a confirmation or proper chain of custody, it's hard to say either way. It's not implausible that an advanced threat actor, especially one backed by a nation-state, could create an elaborate laptop forgery to 'layer'[0] hacked material into a legitimate news story and avoid the hack itself taking centre-stage like in 2016 — of course, this is speculation on my part. [0] https://www.moneylaundering.ca/public/law/3_stages_ML.php#:~:text=The%20Layering%20Stage&text=The%20primary%20purpose%20of%20this,link%20with%20the%20original%20crime https://www.moneylaundering.ca/public/law/3_stages_ML.php#:~...