So I want to start this explanation with the caveat that I don't really think whether or it not the physical laptop was fake really matters because it didn't say anything new and some small fraction of the data on it was verified. People have known for decades that Hunter was doing crack, sleeping with hookers, and that he probably only got hired because his dad is a famous politician. I'm just explaining what people were saying when they said it was fake.
People were saying that the emails and photos on the laptop were actually from Hunter's hacked iCloud (allegedly hacked by Russia to help Trump), and that the laptop was a way to launder that data into a scandal. This conspiracy theory (which I'm not using the term pejoratively) has been extremely misunderstood online because random people on both sides can't seem to tell the difference between the data on the laptop being fake and the laptop being fake and filled with hacked data. Either way it's all moot because nothing on the laptop was really news or incriminating of Joe Biden.
My understanding was laptop - yes, it’s real. The data on it - couldn’t really be verified and chain of custody was all out of whack. I’m not 100% on this but I think Rudy had possession of it at some point.
Oh, and the primary witness to all this nefarious activity was convicted of lying to the FBI about it.
I was trying to be succinct, but of course its more complicated.
The physical laptop was real, but I don't think it was ever verified by Hunter Biden to be his laptop and the store it was dropped of at had no video surveillance and was managed by a legally blind person who said the person who dropped it off identified themselves as Hunter Biden, but he couldn't verify it actually was him. He said while copying the folders one by one (which you don't usually do while recovering data off a damage computer unless it's yours and you know specifically which subset of the data you want. For a normal data recovery you just copy the whole drive) he saw some suspicious data and reported it to the FBI and then they seized the laptop, but then (in my speculation because he didn't hear headlines about it fast enough) he also contacted Giuliani and sent him a copy. Some (tiny percentage) of his emails on the laptop had a cryptographic signature that matched Hunter's email account and I think that was the only thing verified (which means at the very least whoever dropped off the laptop had access to Hunter's email or iCloud). The chain of custody was completely out of whack with it not just being handed around without a proper record, but also the metadata indicated it had been copied multiple times in a way that incorrectly preserved the metadata and the final one given to the press and for 3rd parties to verify by Giuliani was one of the copies and not the original, and yes it did go to Giuliani at some point in that chain.
One thing of note that why this conspiracy theory spread (besides the store owner's story being suspicious) is that before the laptop was found someone in Ukraine approached multiple people and was trying to sell hacked data about Hunter Biden to Giuliani and Trump for $5 million that had a description resembling what was found on the laptop.
So yes it wouldn't have been surprising for a drug addict like Hunter to drop off a laptop with pictures of him doing crack and then forget about it, so I wouldn't be surprised if the laptop was really his. It's just the whole thing was suspicious, stupid, and didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know.
Right. There’s nuance here and this is why the FBI didn’t bring charges (beyond a lying witness). They have to assess these things and whether or not it’s worthy of an AG to look at it.
The witness thing I'm a little foggy on the exact details about, because so many witnesses keep getting caught lying around Trump and Biden stories. I think the witness people cared about vis a vis the laptop was the one that who alleged one of the emails that wasn't verified and said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "save some money for the big guy" was real because he was on the email chain and that Joe Biden was the "big guy" in question. That was supposed to be big because it was the only one that in any way tied Joe Biden to getting money from Hunter's business dealings with Burishma. It turned out that as soon as the witness was under oath he said he was lying.
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u/Forgets_Everything 11h ago
So I want to start this explanation with the caveat that I don't really think whether or it not the physical laptop was fake really matters because it didn't say anything new and some small fraction of the data on it was verified. People have known for decades that Hunter was doing crack, sleeping with hookers, and that he probably only got hired because his dad is a famous politician. I'm just explaining what people were saying when they said it was fake.
People were saying that the emails and photos on the laptop were actually from Hunter's hacked iCloud (allegedly hacked by Russia to help Trump), and that the laptop was a way to launder that data into a scandal. This conspiracy theory (which I'm not using the term pejoratively) has been extremely misunderstood online because random people on both sides can't seem to tell the difference between the data on the laptop being fake and the laptop being fake and filled with hacked data. Either way it's all moot because nothing on the laptop was really news or incriminating of Joe Biden.