CRIME Hunter Biden Business Associate Flips From Prison, Releases Emails Detailing China Influence-Peddling Operation [main Hunter Biden]
- Thread starter marsh
- Start date
marsh
On TB every waking moment
The Biden 5: Breakdown of One of America's Most Corrupt Families
Peter Schweizer explained how Joe Biden's family members monetized political influence in a video interview with Breitbart News.
www.breitbart.com
‘The Biden Five’: The Definitive Breakdown of One of America’s Most Corrupt Families
Matt Perdie
WATCH VIDEO on site 34:20 min
ROBERT KRAYCHIK28 Oct 20205,204
13:47
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior contributor at Breitbart News, explained how Joe Biden’s family members — dubbed the Biden Five — monetized political connections and influence in an interview aired on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
The Biden Five is composed of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; his younger brothers Frank Biden and James Biden, his sister Valerie Biden, and his daughter Ashley Biden.
Marlow highlighted Schweizer’s latest book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, as “the gateway into understanding not just Joe Biden and the Biden family, but also the entire institutional Democratic Party at this moment and their corruption.”
Marlow described Schweizer’s investigation of the Biden family as yielding “indisputable evidence that Joe Biden is running a crime-like syndicate where he is, if nothing else, enabling his family members to get rich, without really any noticeable skill, using the American people’s good name.”
Schweizer noted the internationalization of the Biden family’s business dealings following Joe Biden becoming vice president.
“There’s no question about it. Joe Biden is the planet around which the moons of his family travel,” Schweizer said, “and the gravitational pull is Joe Biden’s power and his position, and the family has enriched themselves based on the positions he has.”
Schweizer continued, “Before Joe Biden is vice president of the United States, they’re really not doing many international deals, but once Joe Biden becomes vice president of the United States, suddenly, they’ve got foreign governments and foreign entities falling over themselves to cut them in on deals that they have no background or no expertise in. There’s a direct link between the corrupt acts of the family and the policy positions and power that Joe Biden has.”
1 – Hunter Biden
Hunter Biden joined his father aboard Air Force Two in December of 2013 on a flight to China. Ten days later, he secured over $1 billion in financing from the state-run Bank of China for a newly launched private equity firm he co-founded.
Schweizer explained, “Before Joe Biden becomes vice president of the United States, Hunter is a lobbyist for online gambling companies in Europe. That’s what he’s doing. That’s his professional background. Once his dad becomes vice president of the United States, he suddenly starts doing a whole host of global deals beginning with China. He flies with his dad on Air Force Two to Beijing China in December 2013.”
“Within 10 days of that trip, Hunter Biden joins the board of directors and gets an equity stake in a Chinese government-financed investment firm called BHR Partners, Bohai Harvest RST,” Schweizer added. “He has no backgroundin private equity. He has no background in China. They put him on the board precisely because his father is vice president and precisely because his father is taking pro-China positions on the global stage.”
Schweizer focused on Hunter Biden’s lack of expertise related to either private equity or China as indicative of the Chinese government’s rationale for funding BHR.
In 2015, the Obama administration approved the sale of a strategically sensitive American company, Henniges Automotive, in a joint-purchase shared by a Chinese military contractor and BHR. The foreign acquisition required special approval from the Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) due to the company’s manufacturing of technology with military applications.
Schweizer remarked, “Hunter Biden’s business partners were quite explicit that he doesn’t bring anything to the table. He’s not bringing any money. He’s not bringing any expertise. He was the, quote, ‘pipeline to the administration,’ meaning the Obama-Biden administration.”
The Chinese Communist Party viewed Hunter Biden as a conduit through which political influence with the Obama administration could be procured, Schweizer held.
“There’s a very clear reason why the Chinese government wants the son of the vice president sitting on their board involved in these deals,” Schweizer said, “because they need the approval of the Obama-Biden administration, which is, of course, what they get when they start acquiring these companies.”
Joe Biden repeatedly denied having discussions with Hunter Biden about his son’s foreign financial dealings. “I’ve never discussed my business or their business, my sons’ or daughter’s,” said Joe Biden in 2019. And I’ve never discussed them because they know where I have to do my job and that’s it and they have to make their own judgments.”
Joe Biden previously declared the existence of an “absolute wall” between himself and his family members’ business. He said, I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period.”
Laws prohibiting political bribery include transference of money to elected officials’ family members, Schweizer noted.
Schweizer pointed to a photograph of Joe Biden posing with oligarch Kenes Rakishev of Kazakhstan, who once reportedly explored business with Hunter Biden as further evidence of the former vice president’s deception in denying knowledge of his family’s financial dealings.
A recent report from the Daily Mail suggests the procurement of political favors from Joe Biden via Hunter Biden by Yelena Baturina, a Russian oligarch who wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca, a private investment firm co-owned by Hunter Biden. Baturina’s brother said the consultancy fee was “a payment to enter the American market.”
Schweizer identified Hunter Biden’s previous position on the board of directors for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, as further evidence of Joe Biden’s monetization of political influence through his son.
“[Hunter Biden] was getting a million dollars a year from a corrupt Ukrainian energy company,” Schweizer stated. “He had no background energy. He had no background in Ukraine. We now know with emails that have been released that he was working at Burisma’s direction to try to deflect investigations into Burisma, which is a very corrupt company run by corrupt oligarchs.”
Schweizer highlighted Joe Biden’s admission in 2018 that he pressured Ukraine to terminate Viktor Shokin during his vice presidential tenure. At the time, Shokin was a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating corruptio? on the part of Burisma.
The Biden family’s lack of expertise in fields within which they have been paid millions of dollars from foreign governments and interests reveals their sale of political influence through Joe Biden, Schweizer assessed.
“What are the Bidens selling?” asked Schweizer. “What product or what service are they providing these Chinese companies [or] a Ukrainian energy company? They don’t know anything about the energy business. They don’t know anything about private finance [or] equity companies. They don’t know anything about that, so the point is these foreign entities are paying the Bidens money — millions of dollars. The question is, what are they getting in return?”
Schweizer concluded, “These are not charities. These are not philanthropies. They are expecting and they are getting something in return, or they would stop paying.”
2 – Frank Biden
Companies owned by Frank Biden, Joe Biden’s youngest brother, received millions of dollars in taxpayer loans related to real estate development in the Caribbean during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.
Schweizer said, “[Frank Biden was] basically was a real estate agent — not very successful — in Florida. Suddenly decides he’s going to go into the renewable energy business. [He had] no background in any of that. He set up companies in Costa Rica [and] sets up another company in Jamaica, and lo and behold, gets involved in deals that get taxpayer-backed loans from the U.S. government — or more specifically, from the Obama-Biden administration, to do renewable energy projects in Costa Rica and Jamaica.”
Frank Biden’s business interests also received millions of dollars in grants from the Department of Education towards the construction of charter schools. Joe Biden’s youngest brother described his family name as a “tremendous asset” that delivered “automatic acceptance” for government approvals of school projects and securing public funding.
“These are our grants that are discretionary, which means the Department of Education can decide who they want to give them to,” Schweizer explained. “[Frank Biden] took in millions of dollars from the Education Department while his brother was vice president of the United States.”
Schweizer added, “[Frank Biden] actually had a meeting involving his companies in the Oval Office with Barack Obama and just a couple of other individuals. If his name had been Frank Jones instead of Frank Biden, I doubt any of that would have happened.”
3 – James Biden
James Biden, the younger brother of Joe Biden, worked as executive vice president of HillStone International, a firm that received $1.5 billion in government contracts during the Obama administrations, including a contract to build 100,000 homes in Iraq as part of an international development project.
Schweizer detailed the conflicts of interest related to James Biden’s position with HillStone International given Joe Biden’s oversight of ostensibly humanitarian government-funded development projects in Iraq during his vice presidency.
Kevin Justice, founder and president of Hillstone International, visited the White House in 2010 and met with Michele Smith, a top aide to then-Vice President Joe Biden who worked as a liaison to “global government officials and business executives.”
James Biden had no background in construction or international development when he joined the company. Hillstone International’s company profile of James Biden touted his familial connection to Joe Biden as a professional attribute.
“Within six months [of HillStone’s founding], they land these billion-dollar contracts to build homes in Iraq,” recalled Schweizer. “This is part of the Iraqi reconstruction after the war, and who is in charge of the Iraqi reconstruction at the time? Joe Biden, his brother. Now we have a third member of the family, who because of Joe’s position, is cashing in. In this case, taxpayer money is flowing to a member of the Biden family.”
4 – Valerie Biden
Joe Biden’s sister Valerie Biden, who previously managed Joe Biden’s senatorial campaigns in Delaware, financially benefited from donations to her brother’s later presidential campaigns. In 2008, she sent $2.5 million to her political communications firm from Citizens for Biden and Biden for President Inc.
Schweizer described Valerie Biden’s enrichment via Joe Biden’s campaign funding as “legal graft.” He recalled, “When Joe Biden ran for the senate in Delaware — obviously a very safe for him, there hasn’t been a Republican in there for 40 years — what does Joe do? Joe hires his sister to run his campaigns [and] hires her firm as a consultant. As a result, millions of dollars flow to Valerie Biden.”
“It speaks to the pattern [of] the Bidens looking at opportunities to take money, whether it’s taxpayer money, political money, or business money, and steer it to their family members for their benefit,” Schweizer explained.
5 – Ashley Biden
Joe Biden assisted his daughter Ashley Biden by helping her husband, Howard Krein, launch healthcare company StartUp Health in 2011. He arranged a meeting with former President Barack Obama in the Oval Office weeks after the company’s founding.
StartUp Health’s meeting with Barack Obama was a “huge hookup,” Schweizer explained, noting StartUp Health’s securing of an invitation to Health Data-Palooza, a joint conference run by federal government and health industry.
“Health Data-Palooza is very prestigious and very hard to get into,” Schweizer stated. “They get hooked up and they are put front and center in this very important conference, and that’s the beginning of the favors that happen.” Joe Biden gave several private speeches and briefings to the partners and investors of Howard Krein’s business.
Joe Biden’s inside knowledge regarding the Obama administration’s planned healthcare policies afforded Howard Krein a competitive advantage relative to competing healthcare companies, Schweizer held.
Krein is now advising Joe Biden’s campaign on coronavirus matters while StartUp Health plans to invest $1 million in companies developing goods and services pertaining to the novel virus. Politico reported, “Krein simultaneously advising the campaign and venturing into Covid investing could pose conflict-of-interest concerns for a Biden administration or simply create the awkward appearance of Krein profiting off his father-in-law’s policies.”
Schweizer credited the Biden family with expanding the frontiers of American political corruption.
“The Bidens, to me, are unprecedented in the extent and scope of the corruption, because I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Schweizer determined. “I’ve exposed Republicans and Democrats. The most that I’ve ever seen up to this point was a Republican senator from Missouri that had three family members engaged in this kind of behavior. The Bidens now have five, making the Biden Five, in my mind, the the reigning champs when it comes to corrupt behavior in Washington, D.C.”
Dobbin
Faithful Steed
Rudy Giuliani has released Episode 81 of his Podcast - outlining the life & times of the Biden Cartel.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL98YaI2xCg&feature=emb_logo
Much of what you see above told in Rudy's most entertaining way.
Dobbin
Much of what you see above told in Rudy's most entertaining way.
Dobbin
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:59:31 min
War Room: Pandemic Ep 463
•Started streaming 48 minutes ago
____Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam, and Jack Maxey are joined by Sam Faddis and Jack Posobiec to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as they discuss the depth of compromise by Joe Biden.
______________________
59:20 min
Steve Bannon's War Room - COAR
Watch Steve Bannon @citizensar, @RaheemKassam and @JackMaxey1 now. Watch on PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on
Last edited:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
9:03 min
Dan Ball Interview W/ Investigative Journalist, Matt Tyrmand [Biden Corruption]
•Oct 29, 2020
One America News Network
marsh
On TB every waking moment
National Pulse
Raheem Kassam The National Pulse
https://americasvoice.news/3c03c8bc-3aac-41ca-b4b0-3cf257fd6803 7:54 min More on the hard drive from hell
https://americasvoice.news/e575d515-133e-4637-b7e0-24e47048c1bf 7:54 min
Corroborated emails
https://americasvoice.news/4573aee3-b817-406d-9de8-c20316244d27 7:54 min
Huffy Hunter Expenses Emails, Biden Claims He is Managing Director
Raheem Kassam The National Pulse
https://americasvoice.news/3c03c8bc-3aac-41ca-b4b0-3cf257fd6803 7:54 min More on the hard drive from hell
https://americasvoice.news/e575d515-133e-4637-b7e0-24e47048c1bf 7:54 min
Corroborated emails
https://americasvoice.news/4573aee3-b817-406d-9de8-c20316244d27 7:54 min
Huffy Hunter Expenses Emails, Biden Claims He is Managing Director
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
UPS Suddenly Locates "Lost" Biden Evidence, Returning Docs To Tucker Carlson
Thu, 10/29/2020 - 15:45
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Delivery giant UPS confirmed Thursday it found a lost trove of documents that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said would provide revelations in the ever-growing scandal involving Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his overseas business dealings.
UPS Senior Public Relations Manager Matthew O’Connor told Business Insider on Thursday afternoon that the documents are located and are being sent to Carlson.
It came after Glenn Zaccara, UPS’s corporate media relations director, confirmed Carlson used the company to ship the materials before they were lost.
During his Wednesday night broadcast, Carlson said that a UPS employee notified them that their package “was open and empty … apparently, it had been opened.”
On Tuesday night, Carlson interviewed former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who claimed that the former Democratic vice president could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party due to Hunter and brother James Biden’s business dealings in the country.
Joe Biden has not responded to Bobulinski’s allegations. Last week during his debate with President Donald Trump, he said he had “not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”
Biden’s campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails, suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden.
It’s now possible that a special counsel will investigate Joe Biden should he win the presidency.
UPS did not provide further details about the apparent mishap.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Report: DOJ Official Confirms FBI Investigating Hunter Biden for Money Laundering
A DOJ official has confirmed the FBI opened a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates in 2019, according to a report.
www.breitbart.com
Report: DOJ Official Confirms FBI Investigating Hunter Biden for Money Laundering
21,896
KRISTINA WONG29 Oct 20203,194
A Department of Justice (DOJ) official confirmed Thursday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates in 2019, focused on allegations of money-laundering, and that it remains “open and active,” according to Sinclair investigative reporter James Rosen.
Rosen tweeted Thursday afternoon:
Previously, the DOJ had confirmed to Breitbart News and other outlets that the FBI had possession of the laptop with the hard drive containing thousands of Hunter Biden’s emails where he discussed his international business dealings.
Hunter Biden has been involved in at least several questionable business endeavors.
As recently reported by Breitbart News’ Joel Pollak, Hunter Biden had allegedly acted as the personal attorney for the chair of a major Chinese energy firm in a deal to buy 14 percent stake in a Russian state oil company Rosneft, which would allow Rosneft to evade U.S. sanctions. The deal ultimately fell through, as the Chinese energy firm came under investigation by China and other countries as well.
The accusation was exposed by Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening.
Bobulinski also said that $5 million from the Chinese company that was meant to fund his own company went to an account controlled by Hunter Biden, instead. He cited a recent Senate report that described Hunter Biden’s diversion of that money for to his own firm, for “consulting fees.”
Bobulinski told Rosen that he was recently interviewed by the FBI in Washington, D.C., on October 23, 2020, for about five hours with up to six agents, and expects to be interviewed by the FBI again.
Another one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, Bevan Cooney, sits in jail over a bond scheme involving Native Americans that allegedly involved Hunter Biden. Another associate, Devin Archer, has also been charged.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Check our Steve Bannon's War Room document dump on Bidens
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Biden: Nothing Unethical About Son's Business Dealings While I Was VP
Biden claimed that "nothing was unethical" about his son Hunter Biden's business deals while he was vice president.
www.breitbart.com
Biden: ‘Nothing Was Unethical’ About Son Hunter Biden’s Business Dealings While I was Vice President
WATCH video clip on site 1:55 min
KRISTINA WONG22 Oct 20202,220
Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed Thursday during the final presidential debate that “nothing was unethical” about his son Hunter Biden’s business deals while Biden was vice president.
Moderator for NBC News Kristen Welker asked Biden: “Vice President Biden, there have been questions about the work your son has done in China and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were vice president. In retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?”
Biden responded, “Nothing was unethical.”
It has been widely reported that Hunter Biden traveled with his father to China in December 2013, and ten days later, his investment firm, Rosemont Seneca, secured a $1 billion investment from the state-owned Bank of China.
And recent New York Post reports have published emails indicating Hunter Biden made millions off his connections, for himself and his family members, including, allegedly, his father. The report said Hunter Biden secured a deal with a Chinese CEO for $10 million a month for “introductions alone.”
A recent Senate report also said a company named Hudson West III, that resulted from a joint business venture with a Chinese firm, opened a line of credit in September 2017 that enabled Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s brother Jim, and Jim’s wife Sara to go on a shopping spree worth $100,000.
Another New York Post report said Hunter Biden, who was sitting on the board of Ukrainian firm Burisma, introduced a Burisma executive to his father when he was vice president in April 2015.
The executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, texted Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, to thank him “for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and [spend] some time together. It’s [really] an honor and pleasure.”
Biden has claimed that as vice president, he never spoke to his son about Hunter’s overseas business deals.
During the debate, he also claimed that neither he nor his son have not made money from China.
“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had — the only guy that made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China,” he said.
He also denied he knew his son was sitting on Burisma’s board when Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire its then-prosecutor general, who was investigating Burisma.
“Here’s what the deal, with regard to Ukraine, we had this whole question about whether or not, because he was on the board. I later learned of Burisma.”
Lawyer Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, called Biden’s claims “breathtaking.”
Conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt suggested that Biden’s claims should be investigated.
“Nothing was unethical” says @JoeBiden. “Well now we have to find out,” he tweeted.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Jill Biden: 'Hunter Did Nothing Wrong'
On Saturday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Up," former Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden defended her son, Hunter, by stating he "did nothing wrong, and that's the | Clips
www.breitbart.com
Jill Biden: ‘Hunter Did Nothing Wrong’
16,968
IAN HANCHETT14 Dec 20198,069
On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Up,” former Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden defended her son, Hunter, by stating he “did nothing wrong, and that’s the bottom line.”
Biden said, “I know my son. I know my son’s character. Hunter did nothing wrong, and that’s the bottom line.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Report: Whistleblower to Meet with FBI Again over Biden Corruption Scandal
FBI agents will again interview Tony Bobulinski regarding his involvement in Hunter Biden's business dealings, Bobulinski said.
www.breitbart.com
Report: Whistleblower to Meet with FBI Again over Biden Corruption Scandal
120
JOSHUA CAPLAN29 Oct 2020114
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents will again interview Tony Bobulinski regarding his involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, Bobulinski told Sinclair Broadcast Group reporter James Rosen as part of a Thursday report.
A partial transcript is as follows:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
By Joe Hoft
Published October 29, 2020 at 3:45pm
The Biden Family wants America to believe that they are the typical hard working American family, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Joe Biden said his son Hunter had done “nothing but good things his whole life” per the Daily Mail in a report on Valentine’s day earlier this year:
Breitbart shared the following on Twitter:
Additional information uncovered this past week shows a different story.
On Monday it was uncovered that VP Biden and his wife colluded to suppress Hunter’s actions with a certain minor. On Tuesday we uncovered information showing how Hunter put his family at risk for Russian Blackmail after participating in seedy actions in West Hollywood with at least one Russian woman. On Wednesday we reported that Hunter took pictures exposing himself in the presence of a minor. This morning we reported that Hunter was accused of “Walking Around Naked Watching Porn Masturbating and Doing Drugs” in front of a minor.
This all is on top of accusations of Hunter being involved in the Vice President’s pay-for-play scandal around the world while the VP was in office. No Hunter does not appear to be all the VP claimed he was.
Today we completely destroy any idea that the Biden family and Hunter Biden are All American heroes.
Hunter Biden not only was involved in depraved activities, he filmed them and took pictures of these events too and today we have evidence that he published and promoted these activities at the porn website PornHub.
Below you can see an image from Hunter’s profile at Pornhub. Hunter established the user account RHEast where he called himself ‘Harper’.
We know this is Hunter’s account and one of the reasons is because of the screen shot below where one of his pages bookmarked is “Joe Biden Smiling”.
But we also are able to confirm this account with Hunter because the pictures and videos in the account are also on the Hunter Biden laptop that was recently uncovered. There are pictures of two women on top of Hunter on PornHub and these same pictures were located on his laptop.
One of the women in the picture with the two girls on Hunter’s PornHub account can also be traced back to a woman in a pool at a Hollywood location.
We’ve also tied another picture on his home page with another picture on his laptop. This account is not made up. It is Hunter’s account:
A shocking piece of information in this squalid story is found on Hunter’s site. The picture of the woman’s behind on his PornHub home page is that of a family member! Hunter also includes pictures of that same woman within his account.
Below is the entire composite.
Why would the Biden family use Hunter as their bag man in their pay-to-play scheme? Hunter was an animal and a mess. He admittedly did drugs. He was with seedy people in seedy places yet the family did all they could to cover it all up.
This tells you all you need to know about Joe Biden’s judgement. Joe Biden should never come close to the White House ever again.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
UPS Has Found Tucker Carlson’s Lost Hunter Biden Package
A UPS spokesperson says the company has located the package that Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged contained damning material on Hunter Biden.
dailycaller.com
UPS Has Found Tucker Carlson’s Lost Hunter Biden Package
LLIP NIETOCONTRIBUTOR
October 29, 20201:52 PM ET
A spokesperson for the United Parcel Service (UPS) said Thursday that the company has located the package that Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged contained damning material on Hunter Biden.
“After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return,” the spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right.”
Carlson claimed on Tuesday’s show that the package containing “damning” documents regarding Hunter Biden had disappeared after they were shipped from California.
“Tuesday morning, we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing. The documents had disappeared,” he told his viewers.
“Those documents have vanished. As of tonight, the company has no idea, and no working theory even, about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign just six days from now.”
Carlson interviewed a former business partner of Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, who claims former Vice President Joe Biden had direct knowledge of his family’s business dealings in China and other countries abroad.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Tucker Carlson Releases Alleged Audio Of Biden Allies: If ‘Story’ Is Verified ‘It Blows Up Big Time’
By Daily Wire News
•
Oct 28, 2020 DailyWire.com
Fox News host Tucker Carlson released new purported audio recordings from alleged Biden family business partners fretting about the possibility that the Hunter Biden laptop-email controversy would get into the media and that, if someone verified it, it would blow up “big time.”
“You’re are about to hear Rob Walker and James Gilliar, those are two of the Biden family’s business partners, on a call with Tony Bobulinski,” Carlson said. “They’re discussing how very worried they are that this story, the one we’re talking about now, would emerge into the press, that it would become public. And they wanted to figure out how to handle the fallout from that. This audio is very new.”
Carlson played the following alleged audio files:
WATCH:
“Also on that call, Tony Bobulinski pleaded with his partners to just tell the truth,” Carlson continued. “Just go ahead and tell the truth. Same thing he said during our interview last night. Instead of lying, Rob Walker and James Gilliar can come out and admit what happened—Hunter Biden was selling access to his father. Everyone knows that; why deny it?”
Carlson played the following audio file of Tony Bobulinski:
“Yeah. There’s no dispute about that,” Carlson said. “The Biden family have no marketable skills. They can’t actually do anything. They’ve never done anything except serve in government and make money from that service, okay? So, Rob Walker and James Gilliar didn’t refute what Tony Bobulinski said because they knew it was true.”
WATCH:
Later in the show, Carlson revealed that confidential documents that his show received about the Biden family allegedly went missing after someone at the network attempted to mail the documents to Carlson across the country and the package appears to have been opened at some point after it was sent.
“Tuesday morning, we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing. The documents had disappeared,” Carlson said. “Now, to it’s credit, the company took this very seriously and immediately began a search. They traced the envelope from the moment our producers dropped it off in Manhattan on Monday all the way to 3:44 a.m. yesterday morning. That’s when an employee at a sorting facility in another state noticed that our package was opened and empty, apparently had been opened.”
“So the company’s security team interviewed everyone of its employees who touched the envelope we sent, they searched the plane and the trucks that carried it. They went through the office in New York where our producer dropped that package off. They combed the entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for, they went far and beyond, but they found nothing.”
“Those documents have vanished, as of tonight, the company has no idea, and no working theory even, about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign just six days from now,” Carlson concluded. “We spoke to executives at that company a few hours, they seemed baffled and deeply bothered by this, and so are we.”
This report has been updated to include additional information from Carlson’s show.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:57:56 min
War Room: Pandemic Ep 465
•Started streaming 53 minutes ago
Steve Bannon's War Room - COAR
Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam, and Jack Maxey are joined by Sam Faddis to Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam, and Jack Maxey are joined by Jack Posobiec to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as the FBI confirms Hunter Biden and his associates have been under an active criminal investigation for money laundering. Calling in is Rudy Giuliani with his reaction.
______________________________________
57:58 min
War Room: Pandemic Ep 466 - The People's Pundit (w/ Jack Posobiec and Richard Baris)
•Streamed live 9 hours ago
Steve Bannon's War Room - COAR
Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam, and Jack Maxey are joined by Jack Posobiec to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as the FBI confirms Hunter Biden and his associates have been under an active criminal investigation for money laundering. Calling in is Richard Baris with his in-depth analysis of polling in battleground states.
Last edited:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Biden Whistleblower Calls Out Media for Corruption Silence
Tony Bobulinski is lashing out at the media for undercutting his allegation that Joe Biden was involved in son Hunter's business dealings.
www.breitbart.com
Biden Whistleblower Calls Out Media for Corruption Silence: ‘History Will Not Judge Kindly’
303
HARIS ALIC30 Oct 2020944
Tony Bobulinski is lashing out at the media for undercutting his allegation that former Vice President Joe Biden was involved in his youngest son Hunter’s business dealings.
Bobulinski, a one-time business associate of Hunter Biden, released a statement to Breitbart News and other outlets on Friday criticizing the media for suggesting his claims, and the corresponding documentation he has provided, are illegitimate.
“I would like to make clear that the emails, text messages, and other evidence that I have provided came from my own phones or computers and that those documents have been authenticated by an independent, nationally recognized forensic analysis firm,” he said. “Moreover, the suggestion that I would provide falsified documents to the [United States] Senate and the Department of Justice is patently absurd.”
“The media should focus on the very serious national security issues raised by the evidence I have provided, instead of ignoring this issue or writing process stories to serve as a distraction to help their favored candidate,” Bobulinsk added. “History will not judge kindly those in the media that are sweeping under the rug one of the most significant and legitimate national security scandals involving a candidate for the presidency.”
Earlier this month, Bobulinski came forward to accuse the former vice president of lying about his involvement in his son’s business dealings. Bobulinski claims that he met the Bidens in 2017 and became involved in a venture with Hunter and the former vice president’s younger brother, Jim.
Since coming forward, Bobulinski has agreed to cooperate with an ongoing probe the Senate Homeland Security Committee has into the Biden family’s business ventures. Staffers for Sen. Ron Johnson, the committee’s chairman, told the Daily Caller earlier this week that as of now the information that Bobulinski has provided to the committee appears to be credible and has been verified.
On Friday, Bobulinksi told the Sinclair Broadcast Group that he’s also been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding his ties to the Bidens and his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s tenure on the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas conglomerate.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Report: NY Posts' 'Smoking Gun' Hunter Biden Email Is Legit
A forensic analysis concluded that an April 2015 email suggesting Hunter Biden introduced his father to a Burisma executive is authentic.
www.breitbart.com
Report: Forensic Analysis Shows ‘Smoking Gun’ Hunter Biden Email Is ‘Unquestionably’ Legit
397
EDWIN MORA30 Oct 2020226
A forensic analysis reportedly concluded this week that an April 2015 email suggesting Hunter Biden introduced his then-vice president father to an executive at the corruption-linked Ukrainian gas conglomerate Burisma is authentic.
The April 2015 message — which lies at the heart of the bombshell emails obtained by the New York Post, purportedly from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter — suggests Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden likely lied about not being involved with his son’s overseas business dealings, described as shady by critics.
This week, the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), which obtained the emails on Hunter’s laptop from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday, shared the April 2015 message with a cybersecurity expert who determined it was “unquestionably” legit.
On Thursday, the Daily Caller reported:
“[T]he contents are provably legitimate,” Graham said, referring to the email.
The New York Post first reported the April 2015 email in mid-October, describing it as a “smoking gun” showing Hunter arranged a meeting in 2015 between Pozharskyi and Joe.
In the email, Pozharsky reportedly thanked Hunter for “inviting me to [Washington,] DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”
Hunter’s work for Burisma between 2014 and 2019, when then-VP Joe was in charge of U.S. policy towards Ukraine, including anti-corruption efforts, raised eyebrows even among Obama officials, who saw it as a conflict of interest.
As VP, Joe leveraged $1 billion in U.S. aid to push Ukraine to oust its top prosecutor in March 2016. The Ukrainian prosecutor wanted to investigate Burisma for corruption.
Joe and his presidential campaign have denied any wrongdoing related to the Hunter emails but have not disputed their authenticity.
Biden’s presidential campaign asserted earlier this month that his schedule shows the 2015 meeting never took place.
Nevertheless, the campaign later told Politico it could not rule out the possibility Joe had an informal, cursory interaction with the Burisma executive that did not appear on the former VP’s official schedule.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed to Breitbart News and other outlets that it has the laptop with the hard drive containing thousands of Hunter’s emails in which he discusses his overseas dealings.
DOJ, its FBI component, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have all dismissed allegations peddled by Democrats and their mainstream media allies claiming the emails are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The NY Post and Breitbart News have extensively reported on the contents of what has come to be known as Hunter’s “laptop from hell.”
Meanwhile, the Democrat-allied mainstream media and Big Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google have tried to censor the story.
On Thursday, a DOJ official confirmed the FBI is actively investigating Hunter and his associates as part of a “money-laundering” probe opened in 2019.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Senate Committee Verifies Bobulinski Evidence On Bidens (So Why Is MSM Covering It Up?)
Fri, 10/30/2020 - 11:50
Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed Wednesday the information exposed by former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski that connects the former Vice President to companies and ventures in China. But you wouldn’t know it by following the main stream press.
Bobulinski’s bombshell interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson Tuesday, along with Carlson’s follow up exclusive on Wednesday, revealed that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business questionable overseas business dealings. It should be a huge story. After all, Joe Biden has publicly denied knowing about his son’s business ventures in China, Ukraine and other parts of the world.
So why isn’t this story on the front page of every newspaper and covered by every cable network?
How is it possible that the majority of main stream media outlets, newspapers and cable networks had no problem running unsubstantiated stories about President Donald Trump, his family and his businesses only to find out later – without corrections- that the information they published was bogus.
Here, there is an eye witness to the Biden family operations: Bobulinski. He has come forward and shown his credibility. He has verified documents, photos, receipts from Hunter Biden’s hard drive that the FBI had obtained, along with President Trump’s friend and personal lawyer former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Why hasn’t the FBI done anything with this before the election? The bureau has had it for almost a year. Giuliani then did the only thing he could do – he turned over the documents to The New York Post. Those documents obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop are the massive breadcrumbs to a real political scandal.
These documents raise serious questions as to whether or not our possible future president really is compromised by foreign adversaries, or whether or not he was using his position in government to profit his family.
Still, it’s only crickets from the main stream media. At the same time, big tech giants like Twitter, Google and Facebook are also working diligently to squash the story and keep the truth from the American people.
Tucker Carlson had the highest ratings – historic ratings – at Fox News Tuesday night with more than 7 million viewers tuning in for the Bobulinski story. Yet, the Bobulinski interview wasn’t trending on Twitter, and in fact, it appeared that his story was non-existent on the other networks.
Not even the Senators, who held a hearing on Wednesday, could get a straight answer from Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey on why his platform banned The New York Post stories.
Sen. Ted Cruz said on Twitter “What @Jack told the Senate, under oath, is false.”
“I just tried to tweet the @nypost story alleging Biden’s CCP corruption. Still Blocked.”
Censorship in full force. However, this is not like the old Soviet censorship – this is a bizarre new self-censorship by elitist leftists who believe they know what’s best for the American people.
Think about this – what if this story was about information these news agencies discovered on Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump. How would they treat it?
Let’s start with the most widely discussed and central to the issue of alleged corruption was Hunter Biden’s paid position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings. Despite the fact Hunter Biden had no background in energy he was being paid more than $50,000 a month and in some instances as much as $83,000 a month.
What about the most concerning connection for the Biden’s with China’s CEFC, an energy giant that is compared to Goldman Sachs. It is directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party and according to Bobulinski, as well as senior lawmakers investigating, possible used as leverage against the Bidens by the communist government.
“Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised” said Bobulinski in Tuesday night’s hour long interview with Carlson. He said he turned over evidence to the FBI and openly spoke about his alleged meetings with then Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is referred to by his son Hunter Biden in emails obtained by the FBI and first published by The New York Post as the ‘Big Guy’ and or ‘the Chairman.’
Bobulinski revealed that he “held a top-secret clearance from the NSA and the DOE. I served this country for four years in one of the most elite environments in the world, the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, and to have a congressmen out there speaking about Russian disinformation or Joe Biden at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation when he knows he sat face-to-face with me, I traveled around the world with his son and his brother. To say that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me.”
Joe Biden, however, has publicly denied having any financial gain from his son’s, Hunter, business ventures. He said at the second Presidential debate, “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.” However, Biden has refused to answer any questions regarding the allegations or address some of the accusations against him or his son.
The American public has the right to know if their next president has been compromised by their families business dealings with the communist Chinese. Moreover, many of the business ventures his son was connected with were during his tenure as Vice President.
Our nation has been divided but not by President Trump. It’s been divided by an army of bureaucrats, liberal elites, the New Democratic socialists, special interests and more importantly a biased partisan media.
For now, Americans will be left in the dark. On Wednesday committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R- WI, told The Daily Caller, that Bobulinski will not be called to testify before the Nov. 3 elections. He said the committee is working to review all the information that has been provided to the committee by Bobulinski.
The information has to be verified, as it is subject to the same false information to Congress laws that verbal or written testimony does.
However, a Johnson spokesperson told the Caller that all the material provided by Bobulinski to the committee is legitimate and verified.
The committee has “also” not come across any “signs” or evidence to suggest the content Hunter Biden and Bobulinksi content is false, the spokesperson added.
It’s tragic to think that if by chance – a small remote chance – that Biden actually wins the election justice will never be served and our nation will fundamentally change.
America will be at a crossroads on November 3. The main stream media is doing its part to ensure that the American people are not informed, so it is up to you to vote your conscience and seek out the truth.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
7 Key Corruption Questions Joe Biden Must Answer After FBI Bombshell
Fri, 10/30/2020 - 08:25
Authored by Tyler O'Neil via PJMedia.com,
On Thursday, a Department of Justice official confirmed that the FBI opened an ongoing criminal money-laundering investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates last year. Tim Murtaugh, communications director for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, urged the press to ask Democratic nominee Joe Biden seven important questions involving the corruption scandal.
News of the FBI investigation came days after Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner with Hunter Biden, spilled the beans on Joe Biden’s involvement with his son’s business deals in China, Ukraine, and elsewhere in an hour-long interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Bobulinski first came forward before the final presidential debate, and a Senate committee has confirmed that his documents are genuine.
Bobulinski came forward after Facebook and Twitter took unprecedented action to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s emails, which first revealed Joe Biden’s involvement.
As Murtaugh noted in the call with the press, Bobulinski claimed he had met face-to-face with Joe Biden twice, and he presented evidence that the Biden family made a concerted effort to keep Joe Biden’s involvement off the books and to ensure “plausible deniability.”
The Biden campaign has not disputed the veracity of the emails or Bobulinski’s claims that he met with Joe Biden face-to-face. Instead, they pushed the narrative that the entire scandal is “Russian disinformation” or a distraction from the real issues in the campaign.
Murtaugh noted that only The New York Times saw President Trump’s tax returns before running the story and that many media outlets ran with the story despite not having seen the documents, yet most of the legacy media seems intent on entirely ignoring Bobulinski and the Biden corruption scandal.
Given this background, Murtaugh posted seven questions to Biden:
- Were you aware that Hunter and his associates have been under FBI investigation since last year?
- Did you meet with Tony Bobulinski?
- Have you ever met with any of your son’s business associates?
- Are any of these emails not authentic?
- Why did Rob Walker say Bobulinski could burn all of us?
- Do you, Joe Biden, deny that you were making business decisions about this foreign business venture?
- Were you, Joe Biden, in fact, a beneficiary… to receive a 10 percent stake in the deal [with a Chinese energy company]?
Indeed, the legacy media’s attempt to bury the story despite increasing confirmation and evidence is utterly damning. In fact, Glenn Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, the online news outlet he co-founded, because his editors aimed to censor his article on the Joe Biden corruption.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Fri, 10/30/2020 - 08:15
Via Glenn Greenwald's substack,
I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden - the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept’s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me - to shorten it, fix typos, etc - but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not “edit” but completely gut as a condition to publication:
An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept
THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS
Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.
One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions -- the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election -- journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.
After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.
Individuals included in some of the email chains have confirmed the contents' authenticity. One of Hunter’s former business partners, Tony Bubolinski, has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden's brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the published email chains, appeared to confirm the authenticity as well, though he refused to answer follow-up questions about it.
Thus far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall Street Journal says that it found no corporate records reflecting that a deal was finalized and that "text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture."
But nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated -- so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.
Beyond that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents and "found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post," including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday reached a similar conclusion: while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, "records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy," and "make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his 'family’s brand' as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture."
These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, "that the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president." Strassel noted that "a May 2017 'expectations' document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for 'the big guy'—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden." And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden's attempt to replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.
All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son's business associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation's most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.
Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the censorship and reversed the policy that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two weeks.
After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donated almost entirely to the Biden campaign, it was the nation's media outlets and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin responsibility for the story.
Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept, quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the “classic trademarks" of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times reported that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”
The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed -- by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged conspiracy theories -- that contained this extraordinary proclamation: "We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren't."
Even the letter from the former intelligence officials cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:
Despite this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation," said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate. Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: “if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation."
The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a "smear."
That it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor, in an anazing statement representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
To justify her own show’s failure to cover the story, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different justification. “It can’t be verified,” the CBS reporter claimed when confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program’s failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply repeated the same phrase: “it can’t be verified.”Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletterhttps://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf
— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020
After the final presidential debate on Thursday night, a CNN panel mocked the story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow -- a self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network's media reporter Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned either on CNN or MSNBC. As the New York Times noted on Friday: "most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails.... CNN’s mentions of “Hunter” peaked at 20 seconds and MSNBC’s at 24 seconds one day last week."
On Sunday, CNN's Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC's Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: "We're not going to do your work for you." Watch how the U.S.'s most mainstream journalists are openly announcing their refusal to even consider what these documents might reflect about the Democratic front-runner:
These journalists are desperate not to know. As Taibbi wrote on Sunday about this tawdry press spectacle: " The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies."
All of those excuses and pretexts — emanating largely from a national media that is all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win — served for the first week or more after the Post story to create a cone of silence around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden. As a result, the front-running presidential candidate knows that he does not have to answer even the most basic questions about these documents because most of the national press has already signaled that they will not press him to do so; to the contrary, they will concoct defenses on his behalf to avoid discussing it.
Part 1 of 3
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Part 2 of 3
The relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know, including:
The Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:
First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified -- the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and Christiane Amanpour, among others -- is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.
With an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed, proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of the email or text conversations in which they participated. One investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.
This is the process that enabled the largest and most established media outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.
The Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake.
Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.
The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
Second, the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the published emails and texts were “Russian disinformation” was, from the start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none — has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim that this was "Russian disinformation" was published in countless news outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA officials.
Worse is the “disinformation” part of the media’s equation. How can these materials constitute “disinformation” if they are authentic emails and texts actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about "Russian disinformation" is alarming in the extreme. But they did it because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and that the materials were "disinformation," became their placeholder until they could figure out what else they should say to justify ignoring these documents.
Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.
But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption.
“Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as,” wrote the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in what the Post calls a “fact-check.” Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima, not good for it. “The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky,” Kessler claims.
But that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been.
Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.
Beyond that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden's goal in working to demand the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all, had "no legal background as general prosecutor," was principally known only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in 2009 to "resign as interior minister after being detained by police at Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly," and "was subsequently jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said the sentence was politically motivated."
Is it remotely convincing to you that Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that's exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his appointment was announced. Whatever Biden's motive was in using his power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting Ukrainian corruption was not it.
As for the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied — that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not justify that assertion.
The relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know, including:
- whether he claims any the emails or texts are fabricated (and, if so, which specific ones);
- whether he knows if Hunter did indeed drop off laptops at the Delaware repair store;
- whether Hunter ever asked him to meet with Burisma executives or whether he in fact did so;
- whether Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant and,
- how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective.
The Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:
First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified -- the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and Christiane Amanpour, among others -- is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.
With an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed, proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of the email or text conversations in which they participated. One investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.
This is the process that enabled the largest and most established media outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.
The Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake.
Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.
The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
Second, the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the published emails and texts were “Russian disinformation” was, from the start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none — has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim that this was "Russian disinformation" was published in countless news outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA officials.
Worse is the “disinformation” part of the media’s equation. How can these materials constitute “disinformation” if they are authentic emails and texts actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about "Russian disinformation" is alarming in the extreme. But they did it because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and that the materials were "disinformation," became their placeholder until they could figure out what else they should say to justify ignoring these documents.
Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.
But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption.
“Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as,” wrote the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in what the Post calls a “fact-check.” Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima, not good for it. “The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky,” Kessler claims.
But that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been.
Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.
Beyond that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden's goal in working to demand the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all, had "no legal background as general prosecutor," was principally known only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in 2009 to "resign as interior minister after being detained by police at Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly," and "was subsequently jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said the sentence was politically motivated."
Is it remotely convincing to you that Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that's exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his appointment was announced. Whatever Biden's motive was in using his power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting Ukrainian corruption was not it.
As for the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied — that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not justify that assertion.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Part 3 of 3
It is true that no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden's motive in demanding Shokhin's termination was to benefit Burisma. But nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and, while noting that "no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal," this is what its reporters concluded about Shokhin and Burisma:
By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by Vice President Biden, "initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking office."
So whether or not it was Biden's intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin's firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly inexperienced Lutesenko "cleared [Burisma's founder] of all charges within 10 months of taking office."
The new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:
Taibbi reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing. In sum, Taibbi concludes, "one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky's assets] that got him fired."
And, Taibbi notes, "the story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular." In sum: "it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month."
The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar or worse scandals the Trump family has.
But the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice President’s misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S. media. As Taibbi’s headline put it: “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.”
The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.
It takes an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable of separating such an intense partisan preference from their journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win.
But much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies were suggesting Russia was responsible, not negate the newsworthiness of the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly reported on their contents.
Nonetheless, journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic — large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeniety:
That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump's tax returns and -- despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? -- the Times reported on its contents.
When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions -- (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? -- but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them:
A media outlet that renounces its core function -- pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people -- is one that deserves to lose the public's faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.
As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: "The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear."
Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: "The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it's true."
It is true that no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden's motive in demanding Shokhin's termination was to benefit Burisma. But nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and, while noting that "no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal," this is what its reporters concluded about Shokhin and Burisma:
The Times added: "Mr. Shokhin’s office had oversight of investigations into [Burisma's billionaire founder] Zlochevsky and his businesses, including Burisma."
By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by Vice President Biden, "initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking office."
So whether or not it was Biden's intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin's firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly inexperienced Lutesenko "cleared [Burisma's founder] of all charges within 10 months of taking office."
The new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:
Taibbi reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing. In sum, Taibbi concludes, "one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky's assets] that got him fired."
And, Taibbi notes, "the story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular." In sum: "it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month."
The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar or worse scandals the Trump family has.
But the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice President’s misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S. media. As Taibbi’s headline put it: “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.”
The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.
It takes an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable of separating such an intense partisan preference from their journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win.
But much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies were suggesting Russia was responsible, not negate the newsworthiness of the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly reported on their contents.
Nonetheless, journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic — large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeniety:
Wanting to avoid a repeat of feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles, national media outlets have spent four years inventing standards for election-year reporting on hacked materials that never previously existed and that are utterly anathema to the core journalistic function. The Washington Post's Executive Editor Marty Baron, for instance, issued a memo full of cautions about how Post reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their authenticity is not in doubt.
That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump's tax returns and -- despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? -- the Times reported on its contents.
When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions -- (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? -- but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them:
The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.
A media outlet that renounces its core function -- pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people -- is one that deserves to lose the public's faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.
As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: "The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear."
Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: "The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it's true."
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Cybersecurity Expert Authenticates New York Post’s ‘Smoking Gun’ Hunter Biden Email, Report Says
By Ryan Saavedra
•
Oct 29, 2020 DailyWire.com
A cybersecurity expert has reportedly authenticated a key email at the center of the growing controversy surrounding a laptop that allegedly belongs to the son of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The New York Post broke the story two weeks ago when they reported on emails that were found on the laptop that allegedly belong to Hunter Biden.
The Post reported:
The Daily Caller News Foundation provided a copy of the email and its metadata to Robert Graham, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Errata Security, who confirmed that the email is real.
“Graham, who has been cited as a cybersecurity expert in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Wired, Engadget and other news and technology outlets, told the DCNF that he used a cryptographic signature found in the email’s metadata to validate that Vadym Pozharsky, an advisor to Burisma’s board of directors, emailed Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015,” the DCNF reported. “Graham used the DKIM signature within the email to verify with a private key on Google’s servers that the sender, recipient, subject, date and body of the message that the DCNF obtained from Giuliani were unchanged from when the email was originally sent in April 2015.”
The controversy widened when former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski came forward and gave the following statement:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
28 Congressional Democrats Sign Letter Demanding Department Of Education Allow Biological Males in Girls' Sports - Tennessee Star
Twenty-eight congressional Democrats signed a letter Wednesday condemning the Department of Education for ruling that public schools that allow biological males who identify as transgender to play girls’ sports are violating Title IX civil rights legislation.
tennesseestar.com
Commentary: New Revelations on the Biden Family Scandal; October’s Surprise Part Two and Counting
October 28, 2020 Admin
by Julie Strauss Levin
It is hard to keep up with the Biden Family Scandal (yes, it’s worthy of a title) because more information unfolds daily. Joe Biden is counting the hours, no minutes, until this election is over. For every moment that passes and the Democrat media, in lock step with Democrat Big Tech, censors, Joe is hoping few will learn that the Biden family got millions of dollars from foreign entities and even foreign governments by using Joe’s position as Vice President of the United States.
Put another way: The Biden family used, exploited and abused the Office of the Vice Presidency to enrich the Biden family by millions and millions of dollars. Biden ducks and denies, but all the hair-splitting in the world and all of the carefully crafted wording by his campaign spinners and surrogates doesn’t negate that.
Here is a brief synopsis. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, reportedly abandoned his laptop with about 40,000 emails on it. These emails show that the Biden family made millions of dollars from deals with foreign entities (think China, Russia and the Ukraine for starters), beginning when Joe was Vice President. (We won’t get into potential activity during his 35 plus Senate years). The FBI has verified that these are Hunter’s emails, as has Congressman Jim Jordan.
Add to that, separate and corroborating emails and texts provided by Tony Bobulinski, ex-CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, an entity run by Biden family members in partnership with a now defunct, bankrupt Chinese energy company. Mr. Bobulinski has come forward to turn over to the FBI and the Senate three cell phones bursting with information concerning the Biden Family business deals, including involvement by Joe Biden himself.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee already issued an 87-page interim report last month, revealing details about the web of business deals and the millions of dollars flowing from foreign countries to Biden coffers. Committee chairman Senator Johnson put it succinctly when he recently said:
Recall that son Hunter was awarded a paid position to sit on the board of Ukraine energy company Burisma at a tune of $83,000 a month, despite having zero experience in or knowledge about the energy world. A coincidence that his VP father Joe had been placed in charge of America’s foreign policy decisions in the Ukraine during the Obama-Biden years? We think not. Suspicious that Burisma’s 2014 website featured a photo of VP Biden and Hunter’s business associate Devon Archer (now awaiting sentencing for unrelated securities fraud and conspiracy convictions), yet Biden has unequivocally denied knowing about his son’s business deals? Highly suspicious.
It is also not only a coincidence but also suspicious that in late 2015 Burisma executive Pozharskyi sent an email to Hunter and Devon asking for the assistance of U.S. officials to provide positive PR about Burisma. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US [sic] policy-makers to Ukraine in November, aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support.” The purpose of that visit, according to the email, was to “close down for [sic] any cases/pursuits” against the head of Burisma in Ukraine.
It was certainly no coincidence that one month later, Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, DC public relations firm hired by Burisma, participated in a conference call with the White House regarding Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to the Ukraine and later provided notes of that conference call to Hunter. Thereafter, Joe went to the Ukraine and called upon the country’s prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, to be fired. Voila, Shokin was fired.
Joe Biden later assumed his tough guy stance when he recounted how Shokin came to be fired. Biden explained that he told the Ukraine president that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in aid to the Ukraine if Shokin wasn’t fired. We know this is true because Joe said it on video and has yet to disavow his own statement. (Yes, we know Joe’s propensity to lie even when caught on videotape; think fracking, but I digress.)
Indeed, Biden bragged, “I’m leaving in six hours. If he’s [Shokin]not fired in six hours, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, they fired him.” Biden also boasted that if the Ukraine president didn’t believe him, the president could go ahead and call Obama. There’s more about the Ukraine and the Biden family, but you get the drift.
And then there’s Joe’s strong kinship with China that has been present for many years. His 2011 speech in China at Sichuan University provides a glimpse into the Biden China mindset: “In order to cement this[U.S. and China] robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms.”
In 2017, Biden proclaimed, “I want China to succeed. The idea that they’re going to eat our lunch? They don’t have enough energy. They don’t have enough water.” And then there’s Biden’s 2019 declaration in Iowa. Yes, he actually pulled a classic Joe with his rhetorical, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”
Biden’s statements defy all credulity. A basic understanding of geopolitics warrants the conclusion that China poses perhaps the single greatest threat to U.S. security in the world. And yet, Joe has said a “rising China is a positive, positive.” This from the man who seeks to be the President of the United States and the leader of the free world.
Son Hunter clearly shares Joe’s affinity for China. Like father, like son. Recall that Hunter travelled to China with Joe on Air Force Two in 2013. Joe met with Hunter’s Chinese partners while they were in Beijing, and, ten days later, Hunter’s company signed a multi-billion dollar deal with a subsidiary of the Communist-owned Bank of China, creating a private billion dollar equity fund known as Boahi Harvest RST. As a gentle reminder, at the time the Bidens flew to China, it had just extended its sovereignty, air rights, over the South Pacific, namely the South China Sea. Instead of confronting China over its belligerent and aggressive actions in the region, Joe met with Hunter’s partner Jonathan Li, and Hunter ended up with a lucrative business deal. Hmmm.
And then there was the sale of a Michigan-based automobile company, Henniges, in 2015 to the same Boahi Harvest RST and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). That sale required the approval of the Obama-Biden administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) since AVIC was a Chinese government subsidiary and Henniges produced certain technology with U.S. “military applications.” Surprise (or maybe not at this point), CFIUS approved the sale. Yes, CFIUS approval was Obama-Biden approval. As an industry newsletter noted, the sale was the “biggest Chinese investment into U.S. automotive manufacturing assets to date.” And this passes the national security smell test?
And let’s recall Mr. Bobulinski, mentioned earlier, as the prior CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, the entity run by Biden family members in partnership with Chinese energy company CEFC Energy. Mr. Bobulinski recently spoke about a 2017 email that reveals the offer by the Chinese company to wire $10 million into an account, $5 million of which was a loan to “BD family … interest-free.” The “BD family” refers to the Biden family. Less than two weeks later, $5 million was wired from China to a Delaware LLC. As an aside, Mr. Bobulinski only learned about that wiring after Senator Johnson reported on the same.
Mr. Bobulinski said he has come forward now because he had heard Joe say he had never spoken to Hunter about his business dealings. Mr. Bobulinski is now correcting the record and Biden’s false statements. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business. They said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”
Mr. Bobulinski also revealed that Biden was referred to as the “Chairman” or the “Big Guy,” and that it was understood that Joe Biden was not to be mentioned in writing. The Bidens, Mr. Bobulinski said, were “paranoid” about keeping Joe’s name secret.
There’s so much more to the Biden Family Scandal and yet Joe emphatically, indignantly and angrily has said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” He refers to any mention of the Scandal as a “smear,” and he and his surrogates (including the Adam Schiff, John Brennan crowd) shrug off the Biden Family Scandal as Russian disinformation. Mr. Bobulinski has confirmed that he personally met with Joe Biden. Director of National Intelligence John Radcliffe has unequivocally rejected the “blame it on Russia” election interference mantra.
And consider last Thursday night’s debate. The Democrat-supporting moderator reluctantly asked of Biden whether “in retrospect,” any of son Hunter’s business relationships were “inappropriate” or “unethical” (milquetoast to say the least). Biden was vexed with her question. He looked into the camera and proclaimed, “I have not taken a penny from a foreign source in my life.” You “doth protest too much, methinks,” Joe.
If Joe has got nothing to hide and is truly indignant about a smear on the Biden family name, then pull Hunter out of the proverbial witness protection program and let’s have the entire Biden clan come clean. Call for a special counsel to investigate, go before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, knock on the door of the FBI and DOJ and answer questions, make a lengthy public statement and walk the American people through the Biden Family Scandal. Just level with the American people.
They say oftentimes the cover up is worse than the crime. Not sure here though. The American people are smart. This mere sampling of the depths of the Biden Family Scandal is instructive. Imagine if the media did its job. Marvel how much the American people would learn if Big Tech didn’t behave like a fascist regime. Indeed, the American people are well-poised to understand all of this.
Let’s be clear. The Biden Family Scandal isn’t election season rhetoric. This is an extremely serious matter involving potential violations of multiple laws (SEC, IRS, FCPA, FARA to name a few) and abuse of power that reach the highest levels of public office straight into the people’s house, the White House.
There is no way Joe Biden should be anywhere near the Oval Office, ever. Voting for this man is a vote for Kamala Harris because she will be the first to boot him out, ironically using the Biden Family Scandal as the pretext. That she is the most radical member of the U.S. Senate according to the nonpartisan GovTrack (yes, she surpasses Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) says it all.
Biden-Harris, Harris-Biden, whichever way you look at the ticket, both must be rejected. Joe Biden must, in any case, come clean with the American people about his Biden Family Scandal once and for all. If only a fraction of the information to date is accurate, the security of the United States of America has already been threatened, and numerous laws and regulations have been compromised. Yes, the American people are long overdue a complete explanation about all of the sordid details surrounding the Biden Family Scandal.
They deserve it immediately if not sooner.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
30 Capitol Police Officers Under Investigation, and Six Suspended, for Roles in the Capitol Protests - Tennessee Star
The United States Capitol Police (USCP) announced on Thursday that the department is currently investigating 29 officers, and has suspended six, for their actions during the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, according to CNN.
tennesseestar.com
Tony Bobulinski Says FBI Interviewed Him for Five Hours About Bidens, Chinese Business Deal
October 30, 2020 Admin
by Chuck Ross
Former Biden family business partner Tony Bobulinski said on Thursday that the FBI interviewed him for five hours last week about his business dealings with Hunter Biden in a proposed joint venture with a Chinese energy company.
Bobulinski said in an interview with Sinclair Broadcasting that FBI agents told him in an Oct. 23 interview that he was a material witness in their investigation.
The FBI has not said whether it is conducting any investigations related to the Bidens. Sinclair reporter James Rosen said that a Justice Department source said that a money laundering investigation was opened in 2019 of Hunter Biden and unnamed associates.
Bobulinski said that FBI agents asked him about his work with “the Biden family, CEFC, and other operations around the world involving other countries.”
CEFC is a Chinese energy company with links to the communist regime that paid Hunter Biden at least $5 million in 2017.
“It was a very cooperative deep dive,” Bobulinski said of his FBI interview.
EXCLUSIVE: Tony Bobulinski tells @WeAreSinclair he was questioned by six @FBI agents, with counsel present, for five hours on October 23, listing him as a "material witness" in an ongoing investigation focused on Hunter Biden and his associates. His cell phones were examined. pic.twitter.com/5lPzRTREJN
In May 2017, Bobulinski and two other businessmen partnered with Hunter Biden and James Biden to form a company called SinoHawk.
The initial plan for the partnership was to invest $10 million from CEFC in various energy and infrastructure projects in the U.S. and other countries.\
The SinoHawk-CEFC joint venture fizzled out by August 2017, but Hunter and James Biden continued doing business with the firm.
A Senate report released last month said that CEFC wired Hunter Biden at least $5 million beginning on Aug. 7, 2017. Some of the wire payments were flagged for possible criminal financial activity, the Senate report said.
Bobulinski came forward last week with details about the business deal with the Bidens and CEFC. He said he did not know that CEFC paid the Bidens until he read it in the Senate report.
Bobulinski provided a trove of emails, text messages and business records related to his dealings with the Bidens to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and FBI.
The Daily Caller News Foundation also obtained the documents.
One of the documents shows that Hunter Biden arranged a meeting for Bobulinski with Joe Biden in Los Angeles on May 2, 2017. Bobulinski said at a press conference last week that they discussed the Biden family’s plans for doing business in China.
He said that Joe Biden’s denials were “false,” and that he had “firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden.”
Bobulinski has also said that Joe Biden was referenced as “the big guy” in an email laying out the equity stakes for the partners in the joint venture.
The email allocated 20% equity to Hunter Biden and 10% for “the big guy.”
The Biden campaign has said that Joe Biden never held equity in his son’s companies.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
2:00:25 min
War Room: Pandemic Ep 467 - Biden Family Crime Syndicate Pt.1
•Streamed live 6 hours ago
Steve Bannon's War Room - COAR
Steve Bannon and Jack Maxey are joined by Noah Benjamin to bring you a special episode of War Room: Pandemic as they walk through the Biden Family's crimes on the weekend before the election. Calling in are Matthew Tyrmand, L Todd Wood, and Jack Posobiec to go into details about these crimes.
____________________________________
59:30 min
War Room: Pandemic Ep 468 - Biden Crime Family Syndicate Pt.2
•Streamed live 5 hours ago
Steve Bannon's War Room - COAR
Steve Bannon and Jack Maxey are joined by Noah Benjamin to bring you a special episode of War Room: Pandemic as they walk through the Biden Family's crimes on the weekend before the election. Calling in is Bill McGinley with an update on Election Day lawfare. Richard Baris calls in with an update from Pennsylvania polling. Liz Preate Havey calls in from a poll watcher training session. Frank Andrews calls in with an update on Northeastern, PA. Brian Burch calls in with a quick update on the national Catholic vote.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Book: Obama Administration 'Bothered' by Hunter Biden's Burisma Role
The Obama administration was "bothered" by Democrat candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter's ties to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
www.breitbart.com
Book: Obama Administration ‘Bothered’ by Hunter Biden’s Burisma Role
123
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ31 Oct 2020196
The Obama administration was “bothered” by Democrat candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s ties to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father served as vice president, according to a recent book.
New Yorker writer Evan Osnos first published the revelations in a book titled Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, according to the New York Post.
“In the Spring of 2014, at the same time Biden was playing a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in Ukraine, Hunter joined the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas producers,” Osnos wrote.
The administration allowed the arrangement to continue even though the “distance” between both Bidens “was becoming harder to maintain.”
Obama administration veterans continue to deny that Hunter’s business ties affected foreign policy throughout the Obama administration.
Obama veteran David Axelrod called the Hunter Biden story a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”
Osnos’s book comes after a whistleblower and Biden insider, Tony Bobulinski, released a statement that he personally witnessed the former vice president discussing business deals with his son, Hunter.
Bobulinski’s statement also backed up a bombshell report from the New York Post that said Hunter introduced his father, who was then vice president at the time, to a top executive at Burisma less than a year before former Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian government officials into firing a prosecutor investigating the company.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Report: Second Hunter Biden Laptop Seized by DEA
A second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was reportedly seized in February during a DEA raid on a "celebrity psychiatrist."
www.breitbart.com
Report: Second Hunter Biden Laptop Seized by DEA
11,412
JOEL B. POLLAK30 Oct 20203,678
A second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was reportedly seized in February during a raid on a psychiatrist by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Hunter Biden was reportedly not the target of the raid.
NBC News first reported the best Friday afternoon at the end of an article in which it defended its reporting — or lack thereof — about the emails on an abandoned laptop, which purportedly connect Joe Biden to his son’s businesses.
The first laptop was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December 2019.
NBC reported on the second:
The Washington Examiner expanded on NBC’s reporting:
A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not immediately return a request for comment. The Washington Examiner also reached out to the DEA for comment. Hunter Biden has struggled with substance abuse. He was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2013 after testing positive for cocaine.
Data and files on the original laptop, left at a repair store in Wilmington, Delaware, purportedly connect Hunter Biden to it.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
CNN Claims Hunter Biden "Burisma Deal" Stinks; Story On ABC News Confronting Hunter Biden Resurfaces
Sat, 10/31/2020 - 10:41
Update (1030ET): Now that the dam has broken, more MSM "journalists" are jumping on the Hunter Biden story, including CNN's Jake Tapper, who acknowledged on Saturday that Hunter Biden's relationship with Burisma - initiated just weeks after his father became the top US diplomat responsible for purging corruption in Ukraine - "stinks"
CNN followed that up with something even more surprising: An opinion piece arguing that Trump does deserve a second term.
'Wow', indeed.
* * *
Last night, after a 16-day blackout, Twitter finally relented and released the NY Post's account from 'Twitter jail', punishment for the paper's work publishing stories about Hunter Biden's financial dealings in Ukraine and China. Some of the emails clearly contradicted Hunter Biden father's claims that he had never discussed business with his son.
On the contrary, it was later revealed, Joe Biden was "the big man", a "Godfather"-like figure overseeing the business dealings of his son, and his brother, Jim Biden, from a relatively safe distance. As former Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski affirmed, the Bidens saw Hunter's dealings abroad as part and parcel of the family business. "They were putting the Biden name on the line," Bobulinski said.
For the last two weeks, big tech and their allies in the mainstream media have been dreaming up every excuse imaginable to continue censoring the Hunter Biden stories. Meanwhile, a network of conservative blogs led by a new Chinese news site called G-News have released an unceasing stream of pornographic images purporting to show Hunter Biden using drugs and engaging in sexual acts.
But after Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai were dragged in front of a Senate Committee this week and mercilessly pounded by Ted Cruz, followed by a historic selloff in Twitter shares on Friday - and after Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald quit and appeared on Tucker Carlson to accuse the outlet of censoring criticism of Biden - it seems the entire mainstream media ecosystem has finally run out of excuses, and just like that, Hunter Biden and the issue of foreign corruption exposing the former VP to international blackmail is back on the table.
As CNN and other media outlets start to ask more questions about Hunter Biden, conservative and independent journalists are resurfacing this ABC News reporter from 2019 where Tom Llamas confronts Biden in person and lobs several hardball questions about the Hunter Biden scandal. Did Joe Biden allow his son to earn millions in shady deals in foreign countries.
"It's a question we tried to ask repeatedly...but kept getting blocked."
The questions were about deals involving Hunter Biden in countries where his father was "working as America's top diplomat".
Delving deeper into the backstory than any mainstream media report we've seen, ABC explains how Joe Biden was dispatched to Kiev to fight the "cancer of corruption" as civil war broke out.
But then something strange happened: "just three weeks later, a Ukrainian national gas company, Burisma, which had been accused of corruption, promotes Hunter Biden to its board, and paid his firm millions of dollars a year."
Llamas pointed out that the younger Biden had just been discharged from the Navy reserves for testing positive for cocaine, and that although he had sat on corporate boards before, he had no experience in the natural gas business.
Watch the full report below:
Now, as we wait to see if more mainstream media outlets will turn critical of Biden in the waning days of the election, we can't help but wonder if CNN, ABC and others might be forever be blamed as the 'James Comey' of 2020 if Trump pulls off another 'surprise' triumph.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
https://americasvoice.news/b541c79b-08bc-4ae2-857a-3ebd803d101e 7:55 min
National Pulse - Raheem Kassam and Natalie Winters discuss emails requesting formal meetings with Joe Biden followed up with his Chief of Staff.
____________________________
EXCLUSIVE: Hunter E-Mails Request ‘Formal Meetings With Dad’ To Secure Billion-Dollar Deals
THE NATIONAL PULSE HAS IDENTIFIED EMAILS FROM HUNTER BIDEN’S HARD DRIVE APPEARING TO REVEAL HIM AND HIS BUSINESS PARTNERS COORDINATING INTRODUCTIONS TO THEN-VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN TO SOLIDIFY A DEAL INVOLVING BILLION-DOLLAR BONDS.
An email thread entitled “Engagement” from June 2011 reveals a Hunter Biden business associate – Sean Conlon – telling the former Veep’s son: “we need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad. For follow on they can talk to Chief of Staff.”
AN E-MAIL TO HUNTER BIDEN ATTEMPTING TO TRADE ACCESS TO THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR POTENTIAL BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS DEALS.
In full, the e-mail leveraging a meeting with Joe Biden in exchange for “more bonds to move” reads:
“So we have engagement letter if they get other 10 bonds they have a face value of 10b. While it is far fetched Devon said he talked to his professor and these get traded. We get 10% in fees. We need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad. For follow on they can talk to Chief of Staff. Let me know how soon we can do that. V brief. If Nagi get that done we get more bonds to move. Regards your hard working partner in Positano! Sean”
Per subsequent e-mails, “each bond is worth over $2.1 billion.”
HUNTER SPECIFICALLY ASKED WHAT HE COULD DO TO SECURE THE DEAL.
The e-mail came less than 30 minutes after Hunter Biden inquired “what do we need to do moving forward” – his response to Conlon forwarding an e-mail with the payout configuration for a deal accompanied by “need to discuss.”
Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner Devon Archer later responded to Conlon forwarding him the email thread insisting he was “in” on the “interesting” deal despite him finding it “difficult to imagine working out.”
While it remains unclear whether or not the meeting and follow-up arrangements with Biden and his Chief of Staff materialized, the unearthed emails reveal how the Vice President was used as a point of leverage in his son’s business dealings. Yet again.
READ THE ORIGINAL E-MAIL:
4K
National Pulse - Raheem Kassam and Natalie Winters discuss emails requesting formal meetings with Joe Biden followed up with his Chief of Staff.
____________________________
EXCLUSIVE: Hunter E-Mails Request ‘Formal Meetings With Dad’ To Secure Billion-Dollar Deals
THE NATIONAL PULSE HAS IDENTIFIED EMAILS FROM HUNTER BIDEN’S HARD DRIVE APPEARING TO REVEAL HIM AND HIS BUSINESS PARTNERS COORDINATING INTRODUCTIONS TO THEN-VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN TO SOLIDIFY A DEAL INVOLVING BILLION-DOLLAR BONDS.
An email thread entitled “Engagement” from June 2011 reveals a Hunter Biden business associate – Sean Conlon – telling the former Veep’s son: “we need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad. For follow on they can talk to Chief of Staff.”
AN E-MAIL TO HUNTER BIDEN ATTEMPTING TO TRADE ACCESS TO THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR POTENTIAL BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS DEALS.
In full, the e-mail leveraging a meeting with Joe Biden in exchange for “more bonds to move” reads:
“So we have engagement letter if they get other 10 bonds they have a face value of 10b. While it is far fetched Devon said he talked to his professor and these get traded. We get 10% in fees. We need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad. For follow on they can talk to Chief of Staff. Let me know how soon we can do that. V brief. If Nagi get that done we get more bonds to move. Regards your hard working partner in Positano! Sean”
Per subsequent e-mails, “each bond is worth over $2.1 billion.”
HUNTER SPECIFICALLY ASKED WHAT HE COULD DO TO SECURE THE DEAL.
The e-mail came less than 30 minutes after Hunter Biden inquired “what do we need to do moving forward” – his response to Conlon forwarding an e-mail with the payout configuration for a deal accompanied by “need to discuss.”
Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner Devon Archer later responded to Conlon forwarding him the email thread insisting he was “in” on the “interesting” deal despite him finding it “difficult to imagine working out.”
While it remains unclear whether or not the meeting and follow-up arrangements with Biden and his Chief of Staff materialized, the unearthed emails reveal how the Vice President was used as a point of leverage in his son’s business dealings. Yet again.
READ THE ORIGINAL E-MAIL:
4K
Last edited:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
EXC: Huffy Hunter Expenses Emails – Biden Claims He Is 'Managing Director' At Chinese Military-Linked Firm, Demands Massive Cash Reimbursements - The National Pulse
Emails found on Hunter Biden’s hard drive reveal he served as the “Managing Director” of CEFC China Energy – a company that has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s military, the PLA.CEFC China Energy recently made headlines following a New York Post exposè highlighting how Hunter Biden...
thenationalpulse.com
EXC: Huffy Hunter Expenses Emails – Biden Claims He Is ‘Managing Director’ At Chinese Military-Linked Firm, Demands Massive Cash Reimbursements
EMAILS FOUND ON HUNTER BIDEN’S HARD DRIVE REVEAL HE SERVED AS THE “MANAGING DIRECTOR” OF CEFC CHINA ENERGY – A COMPANY THAT HAS DEEP TIES TO THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S MILITARY, THE PLA.
CEFC China Energy recently made headlines following a New York Post exposè highlighting how Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s name to ink deals with the Chinese government-linked entity.
The article – ‘Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm’ – also outlines how Joe Biden may have benefitted financially from the deal.
The company, founded by the now-missing Chinese tycoon Ye Jianming, has been identified as collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since its founding.
CEFC’s PLA ties come through Ye. Even CNN acknowledges it:
“For years, rumors had circulated in China that Ye was a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) princeling […] Onlookers theorized that Ye Jianming’s grandfather was a high-ranking Communist Party official called Ye Jianying. A biography of the younger Ye in a 2012 financial report seemed to support claims of high-level PLA ties. It states that from 2003 until 2005 he was the deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC). That group is a purported political arm of the Chinese military, according to a report by the Project 2049 Institute, a US-based organization that researches Asia security issues.
Stylistic similarities between the CEFC China Energy and CAIFC logos did nothing to dispel the idea that Ye was linked to the military.”
What’s more, the Wall Street Journal noted the company was a supplier of the PLA in 2018:
“The company reports over $40 billion in annual revenue including Middle East oil production, financial holdings in Central Europe, trading in Singapore and oil storage depots for China’s strategic national reserve. A person with knowledge of the situation said CEFC supplies the People’s Liberation Army.”
Despite these ties, Hunter Biden identifies himself, “unequivocally with no room for different opinions or interpretation” as a Manging Director of CEFC.
“I am the managing director of CEFC. I have complete authority as to who I hire and who I fire. I have only employees that work for me in DC,” the former veep’s son wrote.
Hunter Biden continued: “I am not in a JV with CEFC. I am not partners with CEFC. I am not employed or funded by CEFC. My expenses will not be reviewed by any CEFC employee. The President of CEFC has no right reason nor ability to terminate HW3.”
EMAIL OBTAINED BY THE NATIONAL PULSE.
The email thread, which contains Mervyn Yan, the Chinese Communist Party-linked GongWen Dong, and Joe Biden’s brother Jim, alludes a dispute over money owed to Hunter Biden from “Mervyn and Kevin.”
In full, the email thread entitled “RSA Expenses June-Dec 2017.numbers” reads:
Mervyn and Kevin,
The house of Sweden is my D.C. Office space. It will be reimbursed. As for a Cefc accountant going over my expense report I will personally sue you Kevin and the accountant if you forward my expense to them.
I am sorry to be so direct but for the final time I am not In Business with CEFC. I have never been a partner with nor an affiliate of CEFC.
I am amazed that my fellow board members do not see the inherent conflict such an arrangement if true would create for the chairman and Mervyn and Kevin and Jaqi personally.
Under US law if the Chairman and equity holder of a corporation partnered with a US LLC (Owasco) through ownership of his wholly owned US llc (Hudson West) was in reality and practice using CEFC employees and money to operate a privately held company there would be an enormous conflict of interest.
The notion that you and Kevin and Jackie are insisting that such an illegal scheme is in fact your understanding of how this company is organized – well then I would say in light of the ongoing investigation you should not be surprised by warrant being issued related to this.
That is why I am stating unequivocally with no room for no different opinions or interpretation – I am not in a JV with CEFC. I am not partners with CEFC. I am not employed or funded by CEFC.
My expenses will not be reviewed by any CEFC employee. The President of CEFC has no right reason nor ability to terminate HW3.
I am the managing director of CEFC. I have complete authority as to who I hire and who I fire. I have only employees that work for me in DC.
Reimbursement of expenses is not a matter for the board. The decision lies with the managing director alone.
If you refuse to sign the wire Kevin I will seek to have you removed from the board for unjust obstruction of equity holder rights. I am the only equity holder on the board. I will bring suit in the Chancery Court in Delaware- which as you know is my home state and I am privileged to have worked with and know every judge on the chancery court.
Because the chairman is unavailable and his equity according to you has been transferred to the president ( in direct violation of the LLC agreement I am certin [sic] the court will issue subpoenas for both the president and the chairman and if they refuse to comply the court will seek to “pierce the corporate veil” of CEFC through any of its remaining holdings in the US.
I could go on but I don’t think it necessary.
All expenses submitted will be reviewed for any obvious error in the moment and a accountant hired by HW3 will review when preparing HW3 taxes.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation. If my expenses as submitted are not wired into the Owasco account today I will file an injunction to freeze all HW account at Cathay Pacific and simultaneously seek a determination of control of HW3.
My fellow board members – your insistence on control of my capital in my account for my company is counter productive in the extreme. Your insistence on control by an entity that has no legal connection to HW3 by contract or any verbal agreement will be the single biggest reason you will become even more entangled in issues that will swallow your careers for the next ten years.
Sincerely,
R. Hunter Biden
Managing Director
Partner and
50% Equity Owner
Roughly an hour after this email was sent, Jim Biden followed up with a correction to a typo included in the previous email. He also appears to “insist that the mo draw of 165,000 be up to date and current”:
I would also insist that the mo draw of 165,000 be up to date and current! They have done us great harm, monkey island was a deal that your partner had said we were moving forward on. We are completely in the dark.
EMAIL OBTAINED BY THE NATIONAL PULSE.
One day prior, Mervyn Yan emailed Hunter Biden individually requesting the “third expenses report.” Yan also adds that “a lot of things were not HW3 business related, like house in Sweden,” referencing Hudson West III which was owned by Hunter Biden’s Owasco law firm.
Gongwen Dong’s response to Jim’s email counters Jim Biden’s claims about the numbers included on the expense report. The email also reveals that Jim Biden had been “reimbursed more than $220,000 for July to September expenses”:
Dong follows up again insisting that the Biden couldn’t sue “for not paying incorrect expenses,” also emphasizing they “have no interest in the company”:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
EXC: Hunter Biden 'Brought Every Single Person to White House, VP's House' That Foreign Business Partner Wanted, Received Resort Villa Stays, Artwork In Exchange - The National Pulse
E-mails obtained by The National Pulse appear to reveal Hunter Biden – son of the former Vice President and current Democratic nominee for President Joe Biden – arranging meetings with White House officials including his father for a Mexican businessmen. In return, Hunter appears to have...
thenationalpulse.com
EXC: Hunter Biden ‘Brought Every Single Person To White House, VP’s House’ That Foreign Business Partner Wanted, Received Resort Villa Stays, Artwork In Exchange
E-MAILS OBTAINED BY THE NATIONAL PULSE APPEAR TO REVEAL HUNTER BIDEN – SON OF THE FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AND CURRENT DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN – ARRANGING MEETINGS WITH WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS INCLUDING HIS FATHER FOR A MEXICAN BUSINESSMEN. IN RETURN, HUNTER APPEARS TO HAVE RECEIVED ARTWORK, STAYS AT RESORT VILLAS, AND POTENTIAL INVOLVEMENT IN BUSINESS DEALS.
The individual who provided Hunter with these gifts is Miguel Aleman Magnani.
Magnani, the grandson of a former Mexican President and son of one of Mexico’s richest men, is the CEO of Mexican airline Interjet.
In an email dated February 24, 2016, Robert “Hunter” Biden contacted Magnani, appearing to lament being ignored by a man he claimed to have given White House access to.
In the email, Hunter reveals he “delivered on every single thing [Magnani] ever asked.”
Favors Hunter complete for Magnani appear to involve bringing “every single person [Magnani] ever asked me to bring to the F’ing WHite House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration”:
I haven’t heard from you since I got you a mtg for Carlos and your Dad. We have been talking about business deals and partnerships for 7 years. And I really appreciate you letting me stay at your resort villa…but I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing WHite House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.
In addition to the email revealing Magnani let Hunter “stay at [his] resort villa,” additional correspondence shows “Miguel” gifted Hunter artwork.
An email from January 9th, 2017 shows Rosemont Seneca Partners Senior Advisor Joan Peugh listing one of Hunter’s “outstanding to dos” as “need[ing] to say thank you” in response to a piece of artwork from Miguel.
Hunter’s close relationship with the Mexican businessman extends to being invited to his 50th birthday party, which the email below describes as being postponed:
TRANSLATION:
Dear friends,
I have been very pleased with the incredible response and interest that we have received in relation to my 50th birthday celebration.
Unfortunately due to a stronger force, we must postpone the party for a new date, which we will inform you soon with the hope of being able to count on your presence for the celebration.
Greetings,
Miguel Aleman Magnani
ONCE UPON A CRIME IN MEXICO:
Burisma, a controversial Ukrainian oil company where Hunter served on the Board of Directors, was also in business with Pemex – a state-owned, Mexican petroleum company.
Emails reveal that Burisma, a scandal-ridden and oligarch-led company, was granted the ability to pursue a “Pemex privatization opportunity,” per an email from Hunter on January 27th, 2015 in partnership with Magnani’s family company, the Aleman Group.
The email lays out how the stakeholders in the deal – Hunter, Magnani’s Aleman Group, and other associates of Hunter such as Devon Archer and Jeff Cooper – would need to figure out remuneration if the deal was to materialize.
Hunter also references a meeting in Mexico City on February 27th – just days after then-Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the area to talk with Mexico’s President and a host of high-level advisors. It remains unclear whether or not Joe Biden attended the meeting referenced below:
Once we have the above accomplished we should be in a very good position to make the most of the planned meeting on 2/27 in Mexico City.
Subsequent emails reveal Devon Archer attempting to coordinate the payment side of the deal:
Dear Laura:
According to your email, bellow you will find information requested, and attached please find passport’s copies for all the attendants:
https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php...everaged-meetings-for-art-vacations-and-more/
marsh
On TB every waking moment
EXCLUSIVE: Emails Reveal Biden Family Lobbied For ‘Nepotistic’ Presidential Appointments AND Received Them - The National Pulse
Emails between Hunter Biden and his cousin Missy Owens show that the president of Hunter’s Chinese Communist Party-linked firm, Eric Schwerin, repeatedly asked Hunter for an appointment to an Obama/Biden-era presidential commission – a position he ultimately received, The National Pulse can...
thenationalpulse.com
EMAILS BETWEEN HUNTER BIDEN AND HIS COUSIN MISSY OWENS SHOW THAT THE PRESIDENT OF HUNTER’S CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY-LINKED FIRM, ERIC SCHWERIN, REPEATEDLY ASKED HUNTER FOR AN APPOINTMENT TO AN OBAMA/BIDEN-ERA PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION – A POSITION HE ULTIMATELY RECEIVED, THE NATIONAL PULSE CAN EXCLUSIVELY REVEAL.
After the announcement of Schwerin’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, Owens emailed with Hunter to enquire if it was the same person. Or as she put it: “our Eric.”
She followed up by asking how she could secure a position for herself or her mother, Valerie Biden Owens, to which Hunter replied:
“I don’t know how much 2016 and nepotism plays into” the selection process.
Hunter Biden then pledged to consult with Joe Biden’s Chief of Staff Steve Richetti about a potential appointment for his family members.
Roughly one year later, Valerie Owens was nominated by the Obama-Biden administration to be an Alternate Representative of the United States to the 71st Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The news flies in the face of the idea that Hunter Biden remained separate and apart from his father’s work as Vice President – a claim often made by Joe Biden and his campaign.
Owens is the niece of Joe Biden, who, after a brief stint in the Obama White House joined Coca-Cola as a multi-million dollar lobbyist and government relations specialist.
Schwerin – who Missy refers to as “our Eric” – has deep business ties to the Biden family, as a Partner at Hunter’s lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair and a Founding Partner and Managing Director at Rosemont Seneca Partners. Schwerin later became President of Rosemont Seneca – the notorious company founded by Hunter which partnered with Chinese state-owned banks on a $1.5 billion investment fund and a host of other million-dollar deals with Chinese Communist Party-linked companies.
Following a press release revealing Eric Schwerin joining the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, Owens emailed Hunter inquiring “is this our Eric?”:
The following day, Hunter responded “yes”:
Later that day, March 11th, 2015, Owens responded:
how did he/we find that one, and do you think we can find something for my mom? I wanted to do it, but i think Mom needs it more than I… what do you think?
Hunter responded two days later, revealing that Eric “asked” for an appointment “the day after the election in 2008,” a request that evidently materialized. Hunter also promises to “go through the list with Steve and see what makes sense,” appearing to reference Steve Richetti, Biden’s Chief of Staff and current campaign Senior Advisor, to find a potential position for Valerie Biden Owens.
I didn’t know she wanted to do that me of these. Eric asked for one of these the day after the election in 2008. You know better than me what are real and interesting appointments. Let’s go through the list with Steve and see what makes sense. I don’t know how much 2016 and nepotism plays into it.
Owens responded the same day, insisting her mom needs an appointment “more than [Owens] does right now” before adding “if you know what I mean”:
I don’t know if she wants to, I just think it would be something good for her. I really want to get on something, but btwn me and mom, mom needs it more than I do right now, if you know what I mean…
marsh
On TB every waking moment
20:12 min
Rudy Gave Us The Hard Drive, Accused Biden Of Two Specific Crimes
•Premiered Oct 30, 2020
Daily Caller
Subscribe to our channel! http://bit.ly/2VNeuZQ Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says that information contained on a hard drive allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden provides evidence of two potential crimes committed by former Vice President Joe Biden. Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, made the claim during an exclusive interview with Daily Caller's senior White House correspondent Christian Datoc on Friday afternoon. Datoc had previously pressed Giuliani to hand over the hard drive so that outside investigators could determine the veracity of his claims. Giuliani had refused to hand over the drive until Wednesday evening. Datoc stated during Friday's interview that though certain communications contained on the hard drive had been verified, no direct evidence directly implicating Joe Biden in any lawbreaking had yet surfaced. Giuliani countered by accusing the Biden family of defrauding their former business partner Tony Bobulinski and doing business with Chinese intelligence assets in a manner that gets "pretty close to an espionage charge." "They stole from the business. They defrauded Bobulinski and the other partners," he stated. "They're doing business with Chinese communist spies, and taking money from Chinese communist spies." "I would think even the most ill-informed would figure out taking money from a Chinese communist spy, gee, that could be espionage," Giuliani continued. "None of the morons in the press pick that up."
marsh
On TB every waking moment
DEA Agents Seized Second Alleged Hunter Biden Laptop During February Raid, Report Says
By Tim Pearce
•
Oct 31, 2020 DailyWire.com
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) took a second alleged Hunter Biden laptop into custody after agents raided the office of a former celebrity psychiatrist in February.
Two sources familiar with the situation told NBC News that DEA agents found a second laptop purportedly belonging to Biden during a raid on the offices of former psychiatrist Keith Ablow.
According to NBC News:
Ablow’s medical license was suspended after he faced accusations of sexually exploiting his patients and illegally diverting prescription drugs. Ablow has not been charged with a crime.
The laptop that was reportedly in the hands of the DEA is the second alleged Biden laptop suspected to have been in the hands of federal agents. The first was allegedly dropped off by Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. When no one came back to pick it up, the shop owner took possession and eventually turned the laptop over to the FBI at the end of the year.
The computer store owner turned over a copy of the hard drive of Biden’s alleged laptop over to Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer. Batches of emails, verified by The Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday, allegedly from the laptop, were first published by the New York Post. Another number of emails and documents came from a batch turned over by Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Biden, to congressional investigators.
Bobulinski has accused Biden’s father, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, of knowing about and, in at least one case, attempting to personally benefit from Hunter’s foreign business deals. The former vice president has denied Bobulinski’s allegations, though he has not challenged the veracity of the emails published in the press from Hunter’s alleged laptop.
Bobulinski said in a statement:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
NBC Finally Responds To Hunter Biden Story... With An Exhaustive Exposé Of An Unrelated Document
Sat, 10/31/2020 - 17:50
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
We have been discussing the continuing blackout on the Hunter Biden story, even as reports have surfaced that the FBI not only rejected claims that the story was “Russian disinformation” but confirmed that it has an ongoing investigation into possible money laundering. Now, NBC has finally responded with an expose into allegations against the Biden. However, the article entitled “How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge,” does not deal with the laptop or its content. It instead focuses on an obscure document that no one has covered or discussed.
[ZH: while we agree with Turley's perspective that this is a blatant distraction from the actual content of the laptop, we disagree that the Typhoon report is 'unrelated' and 'obscure' since all the points made by the report are completely backed by actual data, making the author irrelevant even as he has effectively done the media's homework for them.]
The value for the Bidens was simply the headline, which was immediately used to warn people not to follow up on the Biden story as Chinese disinformation.
The NBC is breathtaking in its careful avoidance of the real story and its apparent duplicity in seeking to shield the Bidens from any inquiry before the election.
There is something incredibly insidious in this story. The media has allowed itself to be boxed in by the Biden campaign. Reporters willingly bought into the narrative that there is no real story to pursue over the laptop. The longer they have ignored the story; the more difficult it is to admit that there are real issues raised by these disclosures. Reporters simply cannot walk back from the dismissal of a story even as it grows daily with new disclosures. The only recourse is to discredit another story and another source.
The emails on the laptop have now been verified by various sources and those emails support allegations of an influence peddling scheme by Hunter Biden and James Biden, the brother of Vice President Joe Biden. Yet, the media has maintained a tight protective cocoon around Biden protecting him from any questions, even after a former business associate Tony Bobulinski directly accused Biden of lying in his denial of past knowledge or involvement in the dealings. President Trump’s re-election campaign Thursday accused NBC News of “actively running interference” for Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter via a widely ridiculed report that critics feel was designed to dupe voters into thinking recent allegations that are harmful to the former vice president are simply part of a conspiracy.
That is why the NBC News story is so unsettling. Rather than ask a simply question of the Bidens about the laptop (like is this Hunter’s laptop and emails), NBC went to extraordinary lengths to find another document to discredit. It focused on a 64-page document with “questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing” that it claims as a source by “far-right influencers” to “baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.” What is equally concerning is that the story makes reference to the laptop story and the Bobulinski allegations but does nothing to verify or address those allegations. It spends considerable time and resources addressing what it says is a complete fabrication in this document while steadfastly refusing to address verified emails discussing influence peddling by the Biden family and direct references to Joe Biden.
The House Foreign Affair Committee immediately jumped on the story to discourage people from looking into the Hunter Biden scandal despite the fact that it does not address the allegations and evidence in the scandal.
I will say it again. These emails are not proof of criminal conduct. There are a lot of unanswered questions on these sources and emails. However, this is a major story either way. It is either disinformation (with criminal acts committed in lying to the FBI and Congress) or it is evidence of potential crimes and clear influence peddling by the Biden family. On its face, Joe Biden’s past denials of knowledge or involvement have been contradicted by a witness who has repeated those allegations to the FBI at his own legal peril. That is why the media blackout makes no sense. You can probe the specific allegations which now involve detailed dates, locations, and individuals — exposing lies on either or both sides. That is what the media normally does when the possible next president has been tied to possible influence peddling, suspicious foreign contracts, and direct alleged contradictions.
I have no reason to question the veracity of the NBC story, just its relevancy. Rather than find some unknown, obscure document to debunk, NBC could start with simply asking Biden for a specific response to allegations of meetings and discussions about these foreign dealings. Otherwise, the most relevant post-election article could be “How an evasive press report laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy denial.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
EXCLUSIVE: Seamus Bruner Provides Comprehensive Roadmap to Biden Family Corruption and Documents How VP Joe Biden Compromised U.S. National Security While Biden Family Profited from Deals with America’s Enemies - coreysdigs.com
EXCLUSIVE: Comprehensive roadmap to Biden family corruption with documents and evidence showing how he compromised US National Security and family profited.
www.coreysdigs.com
EXCLUSIVE: Seamus Bruner Provides Comprehensive Roadmap to Biden Family Corruption and Documents How VP Joe Biden Compromised U.S. National Security While Biden Family Profited from Deals with America’s Enemies
October 30, 2020 / 1 Comment
By Seamus Bruner
Executive Summary of Seamus Bruner’s revelations below:
- This report is a one stop shop for all Biden Inc. email revelations. This roadmap to Biden corruption is full of information you won’t find in a single article anywhere else and contains brand new emails provided EXCLUSIVELY to Corey’s Digs
- Documents Reveal New Details Proving Biden Inc’s Cozy Ties with Chinese Communist Party Leadership Via Chinese Billionaires
- New messages show Joe Biden son’s expletive-laced rant that his lucrative Ukrainian pay was in jeopardy after father left office. Biden: “I was fighting for the only income I have left”
- Insider Documents Reveal How Hunter Biden Associates Helped Chinese Military Contractor Acquire Michigan Dual-Use Manufacturer Under a Secret Project the Chinese Code Named “Project Hanson”
- Biden Defector’s Emails Reveal Hunter’s Associates Viewed Direct ‘Pipeline’ to Obama-Biden Administration as ‘Currency’
- ‘This is China, Inc.’: Emails Reveal Hunter Biden’s Associates Helped Communist-Aligned Chinese Elites Secure White House Meetings
Thanks to three brave Americans, we now know that Joe Biden has long misled the public about his involvement with his family’s foreign business entanglements while he served as vice president.
At considerable personal risk, former Biden family business partners Tony Bobulinski and Bevan Cooney, and computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, have come forward with tens of thousands of primary-source documents — internal corporate records, emails, and text messages — detailing years of business dealings that centered on trading on the Biden name.
This material suggests that, despite Joe Biden’s insistence that he knew nothing about his family’s business deals, he was well aware of his son Hunter Biden’s business ventures in China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere.
These new troves constitute hard evidence of Biden family corruption, and confirm our reporting dating back to my close friend and colleague Peter Schweizer’s 2018 book “Secret Empires.”
In 2018, when Schweizer first broke the foreign influence scandals that have now engulfed the former vice president, it seemed apparent that China and Ukraine were not paying Biden’s family members for their expertise, they were buying access to the vice president of the United States. This was never a scandal solely about Hunter or Joe’s brothers, James and Frank. It was, and has always been, a Joe Biden scandal.
For nearly three years, Biden and his surrogates have responded to the scandal with an increasingly unconvincing series of denials — including another from the former vice president in his last debate with President Trump.
In response to “Secret Empires,” one of Joe Biden’s aides said “we aren’t going to engage on a politically motivated hit pieces …” Team Biden did not bother to respond to specific allegations that the Biden family vacuumed up millions, in the exact locales where Biden was President Barack Obama’s policy “point man.”
When the issue re-emerged during the campaign, Team Biden continued to call it a “conspiracy theory” but this time, Joe Biden firmly put himself on record. “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses — period,” he told reporters in August 2019.
“I never talk with my son or my brother or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period.” He repeated similar blanket denials on numerous occasions. These denials all proved to be untruthful. Period.
We now know that Joe Biden met directly with his son’s Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, in a Chinese hotel lobby on a fateful trip in 2013 (a trip that allowed Hunter to spend hours with his father, the vice president, on a transoceanic flight to Beijing aboard Air Force Two). Ten days later, Hunter landed an unprecedented $1 billion private equity deal, bankrolled by the Chinese government.
But this was not the only meeting Joe Biden had with Biden family business partners. As the New York Post reported, emails on Hunter Biden’s hard drive reveal that on April 16, 2015, Joe Biden met with a high-level official of a controversial Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, which had put Hunter on its board. And a recently unearthed photo shows that Vice President Biden met with Hunter’s Kazakh business associate in Washington, DC.
After first dismissing the gathering scandal as a “conspiracy theory,” the Biden team shifted to the position that Joe had never talked with his family about their business dealings, then shifted again to the position that he’d never met with his family’s business partners. Now, with the latest document revelations, Joe Biden unveiled his latest defense in the recent debate: “I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.”
Team Biden points to Joe and Jill Biden’s tax returns as evidence that Joe did nothing improper. It is worth noting that the family members upon whom foreign entities showered money are not required to disclose their finances.
We now know the Biden paydays were anything but conspiracy theories. Hunter was getting roughly $1 million per year from Burisma. Treasury Department alerts reveal that Russian oligarch Elena Baturina wired $3.5 million to Biden’s interests. New text messages reveal that China Energy Company Ltd (CEFC) apparently paid $5 million to the Biden family. Another email indicates Hunter demanded a $10 million-per-year “fee” from one of his Chinese business partners. There is no more doubt.
The New York Post broke news last week that Joe Biden himself may have benefited from his son’s dealings. The Post quoted a cryptic message from one of Hunter’s partners, saying that “10 [percent] held by H for the big guy?” The recipient of that message, Tony Bobulinski, says “there is no question” that “H” stands for Hunter and the “big guy” is Joe Biden.
We gain further insight into the operations of Biden Inc. in emails provided to us by Bevan Cooney, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. Cooney, who is currently in prison for his role in the Indian Bond Scheme that is sending Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer also to jail, shared 26,000 emails that show what Hunter’s role was in their business ventures. The Biden name was considered “currency” for their foreign business ventures, and was a “direct … pipeline” to the Obama-Biden administration. Deals involving Hunter benefited from the “Biden lift,” the help that the name would provide in overseas dealings.
What might the Bidens’ foreign benefactors have expected in return for all this largesse? We can’t say. But some may see a correlation between that foreign money and Joe Biden’s policy posture toward the sources of that money.
Consider the case of the Penn Biden Center, a DC think tank named after Joe Biden. According to the center, its mission is to “Address Threats to the Liberal International Order.” The center analyzes the threats of “Russia” and “climate change” in detail. But China — the largest violator of basic human rights on the planet — does not make the list. Why?
Perhaps we now know why.
The following information—a roadmap to Biden corruption—is based on a comprehensive analysis of multiple batches of Biden-related files and correspondences that Biden’s associates, including Tony Bobulinski and Bevan Cooney, provided to my colleagues and me, exclusively.
[Go to website to continue - very long]
marsh
On TB every waking moment
New Biden Corruption Documents! - Judicial Watch
Justice Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation a Victory for the U.S. Constitution. Biden ‘Unmasked’ General Flynn – Judicial Watch Sues for Answers Burisma Lobbying Firm Tied to Democrats Met with U.S. Officials New Strzok-Page Emails Show ‘Missing’ Meeting Entries Overwhelming Majority of MS-13...
www.judicialwatch.org
Burisma Lobbying Firm Tied to Democrats Met with U.S. Officials
We now know that the anti-Trump State Department knew about the shady Biden-Burisma connections and were desperate to monitor Biden’s conservative critics.
This revelation comes in 116 pages of records from the State Department that include a briefing checklist of a February 22, 2019, meeting in Kyiv between then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Sally Painter, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm which was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.
The briefing checklist notes that Painter also planned to meet with Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) Officer Martin Claessens “regarding the Burisma Group energy company.” (Painter was implicated in the Clinton-era fundraising scandal we exposed that involved the alleged sale of seats on Commerce Department trade missions to Democratic National Committee donors.)
We received the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:20-cv-00229)).
At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was serving on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma until April 2019.
The records we obtained also include a May 18, 2016, email from a redacted sender to Amos Hochstein, senior advisor to Vice President Joe Biden on international energy affairs, under the subject “Burisma News Devon Archer.”
The email includes links to two articles, one by the New York Post on May 12, 2016, which detail how Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden and also a member of the Burisma board of directors, had been arrested on suspicion of securities fraud in a “$60 million scam that ripped off impoverished South Dakota Sioux and others.”
The records also include several emails in which officials in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closely monitored media and social media reaction to John Solomon’s reporting for The Hill on Yovanovitch and Ukraine corruption. Individuals whose statements were flagged included Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Jack Posobiec, and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Ukrainian journalists and politicians.
A March 23, 2019, email from a redacted sender to several Kyiv embassy officials, including Yovanovitch and Acting Deputy Chief of Mission George Kent, cites a Dan Bongino tweet reacting to Solomon’s reporting.
The email reads: “Host of the Dan Bongino Podcast and Fox News Contributor Dan Bongino (with nearly a million Twitter followers) tweeted about 20-30 minutes ago (in a string of separate tweets):
They knew, The entire time. #MediaBias
Marie Yovanovitch
George Kent
Yuriy Lutsenko
Scrhiy Leshchenko
Fusion GPS
Joe Biden
Hunter Biden
Burisma
Devon Archer
The most important piece you can read today: “Top Ukrainian justice official says US ambassador gave him a do-not prosecute list” (link to earlier Hill article) I’ll explain more on my show Monday.
A March 22, 2019, email from a redacted sender to several Kyiv embassy officials, including Yovanovitch and Kent, notes: “@JackPosobiec of One America News Network (with about 440 thousand followers) tweeted about 15 minutes ago: “U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Maria (sic) Yovanovitch, an Obama holdover, has told U.S. Embassy employees and Ukrainian officials that they need not pay attention to Trump since he is going to be impeached.”
The email continues: “(This appears to be in the line stated by (Joe) DiGenova on the air with Hannity a couple days ago; just flagging that it is being recirculated now by a Twitter user with a large number of followers, in case it leads to new press inquiries in DC, etc).”
A March 22, 2019, email from a redacted sender to sender to several Kyiv embassy officials, including Yovanovitch and Kent, cites a tweet from Giuliani: “See tweet below from Rudy Giuliani, directing people to content released by Dan Bongino (host of The Dan Bongino Podcast and a Fox News Contributor, per his Twitter profile). The Dan Bongino video is an hour long, I’ll try to skim through and get key points now….”
The email then quotes the tweet in which Giuliani writes: “Pay attention to @dbongino for an analysis of some real collusion between Hillary, Kerry and Biden people colluding with Ukrainian operatives to make money and affect 2016 election.”
The email then cites a tweet in response to Giuliani’s in which Bongino writes: “Joe Biden is going to have A LOT of explaining to do regarding Ukraine. A LOT.”
Here’s some context.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 20, 2020, voted to subpoena Blue Star Strategies as part of its investigation into Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board. Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) is also seeking depositions from Painter and Blue Star CEO Karen Tramontano. Painter was a senior adviser in the Clinton administration.
The Wall Street Journal noted in an October 8, 2020, report that a federal appeals court reinstated the conviction of Archer on securities fraud and conspiracy charges, ruling a lower-court judge erred last year in vacating a jury’s verdict.
Bevan Cooney, another a former business partner of Hunter Biden, was also convicted and in July 2019 was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Cooney was recently moved out of his jail cell in Oregon by federal agents for his protection after he provided emails and alleged Biden family corruption to Breitbart News, a, October 20, 2020, Breitbart report said.
In September 2020, we uncovered State Department records showing Russia-linked media “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s business.”
In a related case, also in September, we made public records we received from the State Department that confirmed our prior reporting that the Ukraine Embassy under then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch monitored, in potential violation of law, Donald Trump, Jr. Rudy Giuliani, and major journalists on Twitter on their commentary on Ukraine, “Biden-Burisma 2020”, and George Soros.
The documents list the targeted such persons as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, John Solomon, Jack Posobiec, Ryan Saavedra, Sara A Carter, Donald Trump Jr., Michael McFaul, Lou Dobbs and Pamela Gellar. The search terms that were flagged to be monitored by State Department officials on social media included Yovanovitch, Ukraine Ambassador, Ukrainian Ambassador, Ukraine Soros, Clinton campaign, and Biden-Burisma. The emails show that Yovanovitch was aware of the social media monitoring program.
As you can see, one doesn’t need Hunter Biden’s laptop for evidence of Burisma/Biden corruption – the FOIA documents that Judicial Watch uncovered provide more than enough evidence for further inquiries by law enforcement