More than 50 former intelligence officials said alleged Hunter Biden emails show signs of a Russian disinformation operation

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-f…

"More than 50 former intelligence officials said emails alleged to have been found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden show signs of a Russian disinformation operation."

Honestly though, at this point you either support Trump and believe this stuff 100%, or you don't support Trump and don't believe this at all. 

Trump supporters will immediately point to the following and say that this disqualifies the former intelligence officials and is meaningless:

"Several of the signers have endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to Politico, which first reported the letter. The letter states that its signers do not have new information about the emails and their authenticity."

If you ask me, it looks like Russia has succeeded in causing the U.S. intelligence committee to lose all credibility with U.S. citizens across the political spectrum.

 

Because he doesn't have to waste time denying every idiotic conspiracy theory his political opponents invent to try and pin on him. 

There are actual problems in the country right now. He's focused on those. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Kind of orwellian how the media just covers any inconvienent information by telling you "don't believe your lying eyes - this is just what the russians want you to think". Seriously - given how the media refuses to acknowledge this story until they validate it....they have been more than happy to embrace the russian hoax narrative without any supporting evidence. 

I mean these are clearly real emails from Hunter Biden....does anyone actually think otherwise?

 
Most Helpful

Fucking obviously. 

No one outside of the right wing media cinematic universe believes or cares about this manufactured "scandal." Additionally, the three people who worked most closely with Rudy on this - Bannon, Fruman and Parnas - have all been arrested and are on their way to jail. The other collaborator is a Russian spy. 

200,000+ people are dead. Millions are unemployed. Our standing in the world has degraded dramatically. I can't possibly tell you how little every day people give a shit about Hunter Biden. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
Funniest

Mainstream media has actually suppressed much worse Biden scandals than this. When Biden was VP, he basically just treated the U.S. government as his own personal slush fund. Some examples below:

Hunter Biden's company in China wins trademark, Joe Biden does Chinese company a favor

Foreign officials bribing Biden by spending money on his businesses 

More examples of both foreign and local officials bribing Biden

Biden spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer money to fund Obama re-election campaign

Biden intervenes in billion dollar federal project to protect his own business

This is why nobody trusts the mainstream media, they hide corruption and promote establishment candidates that sell out US taxpayers like Biden. Trump will drain the swamp against crooked politicians like Biden and his son Hunter. 

 

Turnaround098

Trump will drain the swamp against crooked politicians like Biden and his son Hunter. 

Wow, four years of "draining the swamp" and the swamp only got more murky.

 

CRE Is it also manufactured that Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company with no experience?

Whether or not the laptop is real, this situation absolutely reeks of corruption. I personally don't need an e-mail to put two and two together. Most reasonable people don't either.

I definitely get that you don't want to believe information that is likely manufactured by Russian trolls. I think the laptop is pretty suspicious as well. At the same time, I don't think that it's appropriate to defend corruption on this level where the Bidens almost certainly were doing something sketchy.

 

NoEquityResearch

CRE Is it also manufactured that Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company with no experience?

Whether or not the laptop is real, this situation absolutely reeks of corruption.

No it doesn’t. It reeks of nepotism. 
 

Listen, man, I work in real estate. If I had a nickel for every time a kid of a rich and/or famous person got something he didn’t earn, I’d already be retired. That isn’t corruption. 
 

Do you think Ivanka & Don Jr. “earned” all of their positions and wealth too? Of course not. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Is that a joke?

1. An OpEd isn't news. It's one person's opinion. 

2. The WSJ is quite literally "right wing media." The news section has traditionally been center-right, which is perfectly fine, but the opinion section has been a far-right bastion for years. 

3. Biden has absolutely zero reason to respond to crackpot conspiracy theories, especially with how Trump already dominates the news cycle. It is terrible strategy to respond to every dumbass thing Trump and his allies cook up in an effort to distract from the atrocious job they're doing running the country. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

"200k people dead" Please tell me what the Dems would have done differently to prevent these deaths? Fucking nothing, Trump followed medical advice which is exactly what the Dems would have done, but for some reason they like to imply that "their way of following medical advice is better" Fuck off.

 

Whether Russia was involved or not, we still shot ourselves in the foot by 1) turning the media into giant propaganda machines for the 2 parties; 2) creating a giant distrust in the government and our intelligence agencies + law enforcement; and 3) creating a political system that resembles a high school popularity contest.

If Russians did it, then cool we can blame them. If they didn't, we screwed ourselves. Either way, we are complete idiots.

 
Controversial

To your points, in order. 

1. "The Media" isn't a giant propaganda machine. Fox News is. The instinct to "both sides" every political issue is strong, but pretending Fox News is the conservative equivalent to MSNBC or CNN is both incorrect and lazy. 

2. The modern degradation of this is squarely on Trump's shoulders. Historically, Vietnam and Nixon were catalysts, and Iraq 2 didn't help, but Trump has caused an entire political party to have more faith in our enemies than our allies and our own intelligence services. It is as disgraceful as attacking a candidate's son for having an addicition problem, or calling soldiers "suckers" for fighting for their country, or refusing to say you'll accept the outcome of a democratic election. 

3. This is the media's fault, but at the same time, they're only serving up what people are swallowing down. Most people aren't interested in policy, only politics. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

CRE

To your points, in order. 

1. "The Media" isn't a giant propaganda machine. Fox News is. The instinct to "both sides" every political issue is strong, but pretending Fox News is the conservative equivalent to MSNBC or CNN is both incorrect and lazy. 

MSNBC was always a liberal version of FOX News. I used to like CNN but it became pretty much anti Trump propaganda machine after 2016.only difference is that FOX News is shameless. And MSNBC + CNN try to be coy about it. But I honestly can't stand all 3, constantly spewing flat out lies or cherry picked evidence shaped to fit their message.

ABC still tries to be objective but who watches ABC nowadays?

2. The modern degradation of this is squarely on Trump's shoulders. Historically, Vietnam and Nixon were catalysts, and Iraq 2 didn't help, but Trump has caused an entire political party to have more faith in our enemies than our allies and our own intelligence services. It is as disgraceful as attacking a candidate's son for having an addicition problem, or calling soldiers "suckers" for fighting for their country, or refusing to say you'll accept the outcome of a democratic election. 

Sort of agreed. Trump was definitely the trigger point and continues to be (part of reason why I'm voting against him). But you have to admit that Trump is just part of the symptom. It easily could have been anyone else. People like AOC and Martha McSally comes to mind. Those people feed off on chaos and dissent.

3. This is the media's fault, but at the same time, they're only serving up what people are swallowing down. Most people aren't interested in policy, only politics. 

This feels like a chicken and an egg problem but it's really not IMO. There are lots of people who see a parallel btw the US political system and that of the Roman Republic, where politicians who come to power are ones who can raise funds, not ones smart and conscientious enough to run a country. Thays why things crumbled apart and they went from being a republic to an empire.

So essentially, it's the fault of the system that allows underqualififed people to become politicians. 

Tbh, I'd want anyone who runs for office to be able to pass standardized tests on US history, economics, and ethics.

 

The “suckers” reference came from the Atlantic which came from 2 “anonymous” sources. Plenty of people who were involved in the incident have denied the claim. That had even less evidence than this Biden Ukraine collusion has which is saying something.

Array
 

m8

Are the emails real or not? No one has said they're not. And that hill article says "The letter states that its signers do not have new information about the emails and their authenticity."

The Russia Russia Russia drumbeat is back I guess?

No one has said they're real. Guiliani and the Post claim its real, but it isn't definitive because it sounds way too political and not vetted. One of the bylines on the post didn't even know her name would be used and she's a close advocate of Trump and team.

 

m8

Are the emails real or not? No one has said they're not. And that hill article says "The letter states that its signers do not have new information about the emails and their authenticity."

The Russia Russia Russia drumbeat is back I guess?

No one has said if they are real or not.  However, this in and of itself is a red flag. The only version of the email that Giuliani/The Post have released is an image file. Most file formats have metadata that gives you further information as to the file's history.  Image files do not have that sort of data to document provenance or editing. 

Additionally the story itself is suspect: He lives in California, but it was dropped off in Delaware?  It sat there for over a year without being picked up? He clearly cared enough to have it looked at, but not enough to retrieve it.  The email address is also suspect: "[email protected]"  Gee, way to make it obvious this guy is Ukrainian.  I've never seen a person's country in an email address in my life, why would this guy do that unless somebody wanted to scream to the world that he's suspiciously from that place.  They also are using a gmail account.  If this was a formal communication why would they do that.  If this was meant to be kept quiet though why would they use Biden's work email.  Basic rules: if you want something kept quiet you go personal to personal.  Even I know that, and I only deal with industry scuttlebutt that doesn't rise to the level of MNPI.

Short TL;DR answer:

There are questions about the structure of the email itself: it seems designed to make Hunter Biden look bad in ways that do not make logical sense to do that way from a business perspective.  There are questions about it's prominence, and actions that seem designed to block independent verification.  If it could be verified who would stand to benefit? Giuliani &co. This adds an extra layer of suspicion, since they and/or the Post are the ones who did the blocking.  I believe that they even shopped it to several other papers who asked to verify first, then declined to go further because of the request.

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

For those of you in here arguing that the emails aren't legit: A former Biden business associate who is on the emails, Tony Bobulinski, has just released a statement that the emails are legit, and that the "big guy" is Joe Biden. He goes on to say that Hunter and Joe discussed business matters all the time, and that the Bidens were using their name to get paid by the Chinese.

https://twitter.com/johnrobertsFox/status/1319223988455878659

Enjoy

 

It's cute that they just reference 50 unnamed members of intelligence to say what is purely an opinion with no evidence as to what these "signs" to support their conclusion are. Meanwhile the Director of National Intelligence has said quite the opposite. And let's not forget Biden and his campaign have not put out a denial of anything in the emails saying they are fake or otherwise, while the media continues to dodge asking him questions and the NYPost is still banned from Twitter.

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly" - Robert A. Wilson | "If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

John Ratcliffe is a political hack whose only qualification for the role of Director of National Intelligence is that he used to whine that our intelligence operatives were too mean to Donald Trump. He was only selected for his loyalty, totally unfit for the role when sworn in, and remains unfit to this day. 

Using him as some sort of source is comical. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
 

I mean, these aren't wrong. The Russia Investigation was entirely fabricated from the start with false information from the Steel docs, and the quid pro quo investigation into Trump's call with Ukraine for impeachment was directly tied to this entire email chain link with Hunter Biden. This new leak would constitute new evidence that Trump was correct, and further go to prove that entire months long debacle was also a lie. There is almost certainly a part of the intelligence community which is aligned with the Democratic party and working against Trump, the multiple failed attempts the intelligence community + Democratic House have made to remove him are evidence of this. So if what discredits him are the desire to balance the bias against Trump in the intelligence community and his criticism of an investigation that has got it's official start off the bases of proven false documents then this is a weak debunk. He has more experience for the role than Trump had for being President.

But nah we'll keep chalking everything up to big scary Russia using trolls and other IT hacks to get Trump into office. Meanwhile the two largest social media companies in the world are actively taking direct action to stop the spread of the story. Even IF Russians are the ones who gave the emails to Giuliani with a motive for sowing more chaos, that doesn't automatically make the emails fake. It doesn't remove Biden from the question of whether or not this is true. It doesn't address the fact that no one in his entire campaign can come forward and say the content of the NYPost story is false/fake, only try to discredit the source. 

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly" - Robert A. Wilson | "If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

PrivateTechquity

It's cute that they just reference 50 unnamed members of intelligence to say what is purely an opinion with no evidence as to what these "signs" to support their conclusion are. Meanwhile the Director of National Intelligence has said quite the opposite. And let's not forget Biden and his campaign have not put out a denial of anything in the emails saying they are fake or otherwise, while the media continues to dodge asking him questions and the NYPost is still banned from Twitter.

Can't be quoting the propaganda machine directly and telling me it's unbiasedly sourced.

 

This is what happens when you elect a racist reality star as your president. Everyone qualified and intelligent who worked for Trump quit years ago. The president is a narcissistic imbecile and no one in his circle is able to effectively check his child-like impulses. 

He is comically down in the polls, so he has resorted to conspiracy theories like QAnon and embracing disinformation campaigns like everything involving Hunter Biden, who of course is not even on the ballot. All of this is just so that when he gets defeated in two weeks, he can claim that he still won, and refuse to go gracefully. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Bizkitgto

The real problem here is that two major tech platforms, Twitter and Facebook, took third-world style steps to limit the distribution of the story.

Twitter and Facebook aren’t governments

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

The claim is that Hunter Biden’s job was the ‘payment’ for Ukraine to influence Joe Biden. So if this is true (I like many others are at least mildly skeptical , Joe Biden would be engaging in illegal activities).

Array
 

Because Hunter Biden was not qualified to do much of anything, much less sit on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. He has no energy expertise, and does not speak Ukrainian. His only qualification is that his father just so happened to be the VP and in charge of handling Ukrainian affairs.  Joe Biden was using his position of power to enrich his family. This was also being replicated in China and Russia (ex-Moscow mayor wife paid Hunter millions, for what?).

There are also pieces of the emails saying that Joe Biden himself was benefitting from these relationships - "save 10% for the Big Guy", and "Pops takes half of all my income". Rudy said last night that evidence will be presented in the next day or two stating definitively that Joe is the Big Guy. 

That's why Hunter Biden matters.

 

Claim is also that Hunter was given equity in a company to hold on behalf of Joe. Directly profiting off of your son running around selling access to you is a big deal. These are the claims, and nobody from the Biden campaign has yet to deny the authenticity of these e-mails. I don’t buy that they’re not denying it because it’s a made up story or that Biden is too busy. Biden hasn’t campaigned one time this entire week.

 

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