Something to consider if you think the laptop contains criminal material:

the way the information has come to light, via the Post through Rudy. has made it completely impossible to get any conviction for anything, even if there is clear evidence for criminal wrongdoing.
If you are at all interested in seeing any of the Biden in jail for crimes you think they have committed, you should be furious at Giuliani for giving Hunter and Joe the perfect excuse to have the evidence tossed out.

Look like a bunch of redacted emails from somebody to somebody else in the finance field. Scary stuff! Obviously somebody is implicated in something, because they rated a mention.

Oh, one quick Q: any chance these are NOT doctored? In any way? Hmmm?

Derp State in action.

Yesterday's Daily Beans podcast has an interview with Natasha Bertrand about her story which had the letter from 50 former intelligence agents saying this had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. There's some interesting context in there.

Host Allison Gill also says that the rumours she's heard is that this is all leading up to a big revelation. Giuliani has allegedly spent the last few months building a fake paedophile ring in Eastern Europe, complete with fake arrests, that he will tie Biden to.

I have no idea as to Gill's credibility or reliability when it comes to predictions and rumours, although I do know that she's not always 100% on the known facts and she wears her bias on her sleeve, but I thought I'd mention it in case that is how the story develops in the next couple of weeks.

Never mind.

If true, this rather puts the lie to the "Hunter left his computers at the repair shop" story:

https://www.businessinsider.com/time...ear-5m-2020-10

Yes, this was on the Daily Beans yesterday, too. IIRC, it was said that it was in fact Giuliani's pal Andreii Derkach shopping them around.

Remember, it's the Steele Dossier that is a fraud. American commercially-operating intelligence companies are con artists, but you can always trust Russian organized crime to sell you the real thing.

Yeah the chain of custody is so broken I’d doubt they’d even be allowed to use the laptop as a doorstop in the courtroom.

The last thing that the people touting this laptop around want is for it actually to be forensically examined - it'd be laughed out of court.

Much better for it to be out there, unexamined, as a source of lies and innuendo.

How does the information coming to light via the NYP and Giuliani impact anything if the FBI had the laptop already? Personally, I don't think anybody of any importance is going to jail over this, or even that that is the main issue. Is this a tainted jury pool thing, or what?

tainted jury pool, affected witnesses, chance for the perpetrators to tamper with evidence/coordinate statements (if you think that might be the case), and yes, as soon as the President tweets about a case, the Jury might as well never show up.

Really? Any trial would presumably have evidence about whether or not Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off, whether the laptop was Hunter Biden's etc.... That seems like where the questions are, and they seem like easily answerable questions. After that, I don't see how this differs from Gary Glitters laptop. Owner drops laptop off, repair person examines laptop, repair shop guy contacts authorities, repair shop guy hands laptop over to authorities. That doesn't seem like such a remarkable chain of custody. Implicit in here seems to be the assumption that at some point Biden denies that the material is genuine.

Honestly, I think there was no possibility of this seeing the light of day without those issues. In any case, prison time for this seems like the least important consequence.

So your point is that it is better to try the Bidens in the Court of Public Opinion than in an actual Court?

I don't know about better. Are Trumps tax returns not being discussed in public because they should be left to the auditors? Many things are non-criminal but change our view of people. We've had years of leaks and "an anonymous source says"... Grubby as it may be, it's ridiculous to pearl clutch over this. I agree that there are real problems with people using the court of public opinion to bypass the actual courts, but in the case of politicians you'd be asking for an end to investigative journalists digging into politicians.

...Who ensured a chain of custody. Here it was intercepted and handled by an intermediary (Gulliani) who, considering his alleged expertise in law should have known better. He has tainted the evidence if there was any. And with his background in the DA he definitely knew that the "evidence" would not be admissible. We can safely say that the primary aim of this "revelation" is to just muddy the waters.

Yup. The aim is to increase noise level, not unlike the various 9/11 Truther groups and their "publications" and "research".

Still no evidence of a laptop other than the fake NYPost documents.

Rudy is likely to have gotten hold of faked Hunter Biden documents and any photos in Ukraine last year:
https://time.com/5902557/hunter-bide...liani-ukraine/

I didn't think Giuliani had been involved in handing it over to the FBI. The subpoena is to the repair shop guy in December 2019. Supposedly the repair shop guy gave the copy of the hard drive to Guiliani's lawyer in September 2020. What has Guiliani got to do with any chain of custody on the laptop?

Is the theory here that the repair shop guy has forged multiple documents from the FBI including signatures of FBI agents and passing them around and the FBI haven't done anything about it? Why?

My theory is that the FBI got the laptop that the Repair Shop had (from whatever source), but is not doing much about it for pretty obvious reasons.

Earlier in the thread there was a link to a Twitter sleuth who examined the FBI document. The serial number of the hard drive named in the document wasn't manufactured until after the anonymous person who couldn't fake Hunter Biden's signature had supposedly dropped off the laptop. You might have missed that because of your ignore list (like you're missing this).

The date he believed the external drive was manufactured was April 18 2019. So before the repair guy said he coped the files. He also falsely believed that the laptop didn't have a removable SSD, and hence recovery would have been very difficult. He acknowledges he mistakes in part of the twitter thread that doesn't get screenshotted.

Very different scenarios.

How is the chain of custody significantly different?

So we are agreed that the FBI subpoena info you are relying on doesn't actually indicate that they have anything belonging to Hunter Biden? And your repeated attempts to claim that the FBI making no comment implies....something (?) are much more indicative of your desire to believe this story than indicative that this farcical story is true?

Not so different if you count Rudy Giuliani as "authorities". Of course, no sane person would, and it seems likely that Giuliani actually aquired this particular trove of Russian disinformation in Ukraine.

Not sure why you think that given the repair guy gave it to the FBI months before his intermediary contacted Giuliani's attorney Costello.

What are you talking about? You seemed to be claiming that I was missing some critical bit of evidence that the external drive that the repair guy copied the files to might not have been manufactured until the day after the laptop was dropped off with him. Where are you going with that?

What makes you think so?

I think that because of the issues I mentioned.
There could be a ton of illegal porn on that machine, and no one could get convicted, thanks to Rudy, Bannon, the Post and the White House.
You can thank them.

How'd they end up on a laptop the repair guy gave to the FBI months before Giuliani had any contact with the repair guy?

There is no issue with the evidence, that's wishful thinking on your part. The FBI had the laptop before Giuliani even knew it existed.

I will try to use smaller words: The FBI subpoena you think is important is for a hard drive made after the man pretending to be Hunter Biden dropped off the laptop. That doesn't mean the FBI has anything belonging to Hunter Biden. You have repeatedly (that means more than once) questioned why the FBI hasn't said anything about the ongoing investigation, as though their lack of comment is bad for Hunter Biden. In the real world, the FBI doesn't like to comment about ongoing investigations, so a lack of comment now is normal and means nothing.

Is that more clear?

And if you actually read the whole thread he gets shown why he was wrong, and dmits he doesnt know what he's talking about lol.

I think the claim is more around a child protection issue relating to Hunter's sister-in law/ex lover's daughter. It's not nothing, but I'd think any attempts to cover it up risks being more politically damaging than what ever may originally have occurred.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Giuliani has been working the Hunter Biden angle for well over a year now, and there's no reason to trust him when he says he only got the contents of the laptop recently. Since there's evidence that the person who dropped off the laptop wasn't Hunter, it's entirely possible that Giuliani (or his Russian handlers) is the one who arranged the whole thing, and paid someone to pose as Hunter. That makes Repair Guy nothing more than a patsy, and contradicts none of the actual information we current have.

The subpoena is for the laptop and the drive that the data on the laptop was copied to. You still haven't explained what the point of the Twitter thread is that suggests the drive the files were recovered to was manufactured the day after the laptop was dropped off and seven months before it was handed over to the FBI.

And Giuliani's psychic knew repair guy would call his attorney lol. Oh and repair guy is lying also when he says he contacted the FBI months before Giuliani was contacted. Lol

And sorry, it assumes nothing. Unless you want to say the repair guy is lying. If that's what you think, quit beating around the bush and say it.

Guess we need to revisit this issue next year.

Rudy&Trump are creating too much smoke, and the FBI and DOJ won't do anything before the election.

Do you believe in 2 Oswalds as well? Lol

This does sound like the sort of thing that should be fairly easily checkable.

Even if we agreed on that, no one else would. I concur though, the FBI isn't going to do anything publicly before the election.

The real secret that they are trying to hide is that it was nothing but Oswalds. It's Oswalds all the way down.

I don't know how to make it more clear to you. The subpoena was not for the laptop. Giuliani claimed to have the laptop. If the laptop was in his possession until he turned it over to the Delaware PD, then it was not in possession by the FBI.

No, the repair guy could have gotten played. Russian agents have been known to manipulate people on occasion, you know, sometimes even stupid people.

Where are you getting this from? This still has nothing to do with the Twitter thread that was so important.

When the repair guy contacted the FBI will probably come out. We know the repair guy has at various times claimed to have contacted the FBI over the laptop but other times claimed that the FBI were the ones to contact him. At this point we don't know which version of his story, if either, is true.

When the repair guy was in contact with Giuliani first probably won't be ever known. We certainly can't assume that he is being honest about it as he has given contradictory details about the rest of his story.