For what it's worth, NY Post (sorry for the link) is reporting that the Biden campaign isn't denying most of their claims: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-deny....
To be clear, this is a separate question from how the emails were obtained. That story is beyond weird and surely bogus. To be fair, it also seems to me an indication that Biden is more honest than Trump. Trump would just say the emails were fake whether they were or not.
This doesn't necessarily mean that the story is true, just that the campaign has made a deliberate choice.
>"We have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place," it said.
>"Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague, have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official US policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing," said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr Biden.
>"Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath."
I'm not sure what there is to deny.
Instead of responding, I would hope the Biden campaign talks about policy.
That's absolutely ridiculous logic.
Not denying something doesn't make true any more than not confirming something makes it false.
I neither confirm nor deny that I have a bank account at a large commercial bank. What does that tell you?
Nothing.
> He appeared not to have a grasp on the timeline of the laptop arriving at his shop and its disappearance from it.
He owns a computer repair shop and doesn't keep basic records of the devices he services? The moment he knew what he had, he didn't start taking any kind of notes?
> Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.”
How does he not remember who contacted who regarding the device? Also, how would the FBI know that he had to device to reach out to him first? This inconsistency is absolutely damning.
> Social media postings indicate that Mac Isaac is an avid Trump supporter and voted for him in the 2016 election.
> Mac Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post article’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”
Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah, shit.”
So Rudy was your lifeguard? the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.
He wasn't comfortable admitting he had been in contact with Giuliani, even though it's pretty obvious at this point that he was? That doesn't sound like a citizen fulfilling their civic duty if he was in contact with a political operative.
This story absolutely stinks to high heaven.
0: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
Being nervous in an interview is one thing, trying and failing to wing it through basic questions is entirely different. His comment about the lifeboat particularly stood out to me because he very obviously didn't want to explicitly talk about Giuliani, but he was comfortable speaking in hyperbole about it. If you're so uncomfortable to answer a question, how would you then be comfortable enough to "say it" without saying it? If I was concerned that a question could threaten my safety or legal standing, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. This guy clearly wanted the reporters to know that he had been talking to Giuliani, and once that's out there, the context of the entire story changes.
If it's a legit scandal, there's no reason that a whistleblower should reach out to a political operative in addition to the authorities. The very fact that he did this says so much about his state of mind, that he was acting in support of a candidate.
Slinging unsubstantiated mud at your opponent is an old trick in politics and relies on the idea that you can make your opponent look bad just by having them address it at all.
The fact that Biden isn't addressing it is strong evidence that the story isn't getting the traction the hacks that put it out there wanted. It is not strong evidence of its truth.
NY Post doxxed their own source when put under scrutiny, who went on to do an interview yesterday. What John Paul Mac Isaac is saying isn't adding up.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
He can’t get something as simple as who initiated contact over the device straight? If I was a small fish about to source a story of this size, I’d have every single detail rehearsed and committed to memory. This guy doesn’t come across as legit at all.
In that case, all articles that include "sources say" etc should be banned from Twitter, shouldn't they?
In this case, NY Post threw their source to the wolves when they couldn't verify any of the information, so this story is not congruent with "sources say".
This is blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies. This action is exactly the kind of thing everyone blamed social media for not taking last time and they're finally doing the right thing.
This is exactly what they tried to do in the 2016 election by getting Comey to announce a new investigation that, surprise, turned up absolutely nothing. There is no substance to these allegations. At all.
Before you get up in arms about a slippery slope about arbiters of truth keep in mind that these sources have burned any credibility they have. Their ideas do not have a right to a fair trail in the public discourse because they are all acting in bad faith.
Twitter bans any posts about it and now it’s taking off like a firestorm.
What do you mean by disenfranchise, while we're at it? Even if we were to stipulate it's a lie, is it your position that to lie during campaign season is literally the same as taking away the right to vote?
So far, there doesn't seem to be much that hasn't already been confirmed. One new piece of information is the email that implies a Burisma exec. was at least introduced to Joe Biden. The Biden hasn't issued a categorical denail of this, only to say that such a meeting "wasn't scheduled."
What substantive allegation against Hunter Biden are you disputing, exactly?
Besides, the burden of proof applies here. "You can't prove it's not fake" is not a sensible approach. The burden is on the accuser to prove that the story is true, and the Post story does not do that.
Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire that prosecutor, that's not in dispute, he's on video saying he did it. What is in dispute is whether he did it out of a corrupt motivation to benefit his son and the business he was working for. That's not asserted in the article. It merely lays out the timeline of events -- granted, in an order which is meant to point the reader in a given direction. They even include a section with the Biden campaign's take on the prosecutor's firing.
When presented with the video of Biden admitting to it in his own words; he pressured to fire the prosecutor, but the prosecutor wasn’t investigating Burisma.
When shown that the prosecutor was actively investigating Burisma; well he pressured to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating Burisma, but it was in the national interest!
I’m not sure if there’s another round in the typical exchange. Best to just skip to the last phase to move the conversation forward.
Because that implies something far worse than the censored article's accusations about Hunter Biden.
What if I accuse someone of something, and then post that I accused them. The accusation maybe bogus but the post is technically not false.
Pre-framing a topic is malpractice.
In this case, the following are true: (1) Hunter Biden was a highly paid board member of Burisma while his father handled Ukraine policy for the U.S. (2) A computer repair store owner claims to have his data and to have given it to Rudy Giuliani (3) There was a Grand Jury summons to seize the computer as evidence in an unknown investigation.
This is far more than is usually needed to cover a story.
Your argument is “I don’t believe it, so it must be false”