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Comment by chownie | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't follow, the laptop story's premise doesn't pass the sniff test at all.

A laptop is left with a computer repair salesman for some reason, in Delaware for some reason, and for some reason no contact information is given for the laptop's return, and for some reason the repairman both wanted to and was capable of getting a direct line to Rudy Giuliani who for some reason gave the only copy of the hard drive to the NYT without screening any other news outlets.

The repairman goes on to give contradictory statements repeatedly about the origin of the laptop. The FBI acquires the device for investigation into Russian disinformation campaigns.

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Adam Schiff's "Russian disinformation campaign" assertion was denied by the director of national intelligence, and yet it persists.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-ratcliffe-rejec...

“This is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign. The intelligence community has not been involved with Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter Biden is a U.S. person, and he would be subject to any investigation regarding fraud, or corruption would be rightfully the jurisdiction of the FBI. So, the FBI has had possession of this, and what I can say without commenting on any investigation that they may have in corruption or fraud — is to say that their investigation does not center around Russian disinformation, and the intelligence community is playing no role with respect to that,” Ratcliffe said. “Adam Schiff saying that this is part of some Russian disinformation campaign and that the IC has assessed that or believes that is simply not true, so I appreciate the opportunity to be able to tell the American people that that is the case."

What does it matter? The information on the laptop is still subject to all the normal procedures of journalism: follow-up, look for corroboration, seek confirmation, ask questions, look for evidence tampering, and so on. Instead, the story was buried and ignored. It boggles my mind that anyone could defend this as proper behaviour by the press.

> The information on the laptop is still subject to all the normal procedures of journalism: follow-up, look for corroboration, seek confirmation, ask questions

And The New York Post did none of this.

There are plenty of other articles written by about it by almost every news outlet[1]; it was never "buried". The difference was they treated the suspicious weird story as exactly that, instead of immediately rushing to conclusions.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hunter+biden+laptop

The laptop is/was real. Are you actually maintaining that it is fake?

We live in a world of subjective truths. "Hunter Biden laptop is fake" is to the left what "wide spread voter fraud" is to the right. People are too emotionally invested to have adult conversation on these topics.

There is ample evidence of a fair election I have seen zero verification that the laptop belonged to hunter Biden in the first place and a lot of reasons to believe that the story is largely fabricated. Specifically its entirely sure that the laptop exists. It's possible it contains some actual stolen data in the same way that a lot of celebrities nudes are now out there due to a vulnerability in icloud.

Its not clear to ME that the physical device ever belonged to Hunter Biden or that it contains anything like what they claim it contains. The single source of truth is massively tainted because the source is a lying scumbag with zero integrity. If you conclude otherwise I conclude its because its the answer you wish were true.

>If you conclude otherwise I conclude its because its the answer you wish were true.

Confession through projection.

You are totally missing the forest for the trees. Is there a single piece of information or revelation from the “laptop” that has been disputed, denied, or debunked? No. More importantly, have the mainstream American press managed to get the Bidens to address any of the insinuations stemming from materials? They haven’t even tried: they’ve decided to settle for whatever generic comment the Bidens put out through their press agents.

The story is unproven nonsense. The burden of proof lies with the accuser and it has never been met in the first place.

That doesn't really apply when theres a bunch of dick pics on an ACTUAL COMPUTER EVERYONE REFUSES TO LOOK AT. Jesus just check the saved wifi network passwords....if Hunter Biden's house network is saved on it, safe to say it's his laptop. Instead ppl like you unintelligently refer to it as "unproven nonsense" and bury your head in the sand.

I don't have access to the computer nor the raw data. I was underwhelmed by the original news article and never saw anything that changed my mind thereafter. I'm not refusing too look at a computer nobody has access to.

Maybe they ought to have leaked the raw data for me to look at.

Zero verification minus the dozens of Hunter Biden dick pics and pics of him around drugs or whatever. Could easily scrape metadata to figure out if it was def his laptop or not. Macs send data to their servers whenever an application is open...and also probably have location data on the specific device ID. Could simply cross reference that with the location of Bidens house. Or even look at the wifi connections....does it have the password saved for Hunter Biden's home wifi? Simple stuff to find some answers but the truth is you want to believe it's a conspiracy theory so you will instead bury your head in the sand and be ignorant of facts.

Also, there's ample evidence of an unfair election as well and zero credible verification of any results.

Of course there is a real laptop, and the content published from it is probably real too, and the laptop may very well have belonged to Hunter. But we don't have the full context, and the initial reporting was suspicious as hell.

And none of this means the narrative it's used for is real (i.e. the claim that Joe Biden has corrupt connections to Ukraine). We saw this with previously leaked emails of DNC, Weiner, etc. where the intended meaning was twisted to "prove" some grand conspiracy. The emails were real, the conspiracy was bullshit.

That Hunter Biden is a bit of a screw-up is not controversial. That this somehow automatically reflects badly on his father is.

I suggest you read up on the scandal more, you either leave out details willingly or you are severely ignorant of the facts.

When you say "for some reason" you are alluding that there is no answer and you're trying to downplay it, you are lying.

The laptop was turned in by Hunter because it was waterlogged. He signed the form. When he didn't come back in to get it and the owner noticed the illegal things on it, a copy of the hard drive was first given to the FBI, another was later given to Rudy because nothing was done by the FBI.

The emails and photos on the laptop have not been disputed. His business partner has confirmed the emails, and the DKIM of at least one of the emails have been verified.

Nothing I said is false, any of you downvoters want to dispute what I said?

No, because when you're so deep, you can't be saved. I'm sorry. I wish you all the best.

Projection. This is scary to you because you're not allowed to know it's true. Your President and his son are corrupt.

--- to others in the thread ---

> After obtaining a copy of the hard drive, DailyMail.com commissioned top cyber forensics experts Maryman & Associates to analyze its data and determine whether the laptop's contents were real.

Company name is listed. You'd have to go ask the cyber-firm they used, any outlet could verify it and write a story debunking it if they wanted. Something tells me they don't want to because they know it's true.

An email from the laptop has been DKIM validated, here's the repo: https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim

What are you suggesting was made up?

He literally presented all facts and hard evidence, but your brain somehow rejected all that, offered no response to anything he presented, and instead came up with this completely unintelligent response.

You should seriously reanalyze how you reach conclusions and look up what cognitive dissonance is.

Ironically, DM did enough journalistic leg work that they managed to get their hands on a copy of Hunter Biden's hard drive and had "forensic expert" examine it. Something the rest of the "reputable" media couldn't do.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9445105/What-Hunter...

Based on the source how do we know they just didn't literally make it up?

> After obtaining a copy of the hard drive, DailyMail.com commissioned top cyber forensics experts Maryman & Associates to analyze its data and determine whether the laptop's contents were real.

An email from the laptop has been DKIM validated, here's the repo: https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim

What are you suggesting was made up?

That an individual stolen email could be released without ever having a laptop belonging to you. If they had jack shit they would have leaked everything.

They did "leak" everything, from Hunter fucking prostitutes, high on crack, missing his teeth, and all his business emails,

Look how hard you're trying to ignore and twist facts to mold them to what you want to believe. It's literally astonishing to see.

Look up what cognitive dissonance is. You're experiencing a serious case of this here. I'd urge you to reanalyze how you reach conclusions moving forward, there's probably other areas of your life where you're doing the same thing.

Giuliani is an incredibly unreliable source, a known and prolific liar. Without the ability to interogate the evidence directly anything that comes from him is as reliable as he is.

That is literally how human communications networks work reliability of speaker is a pre filter for analysis of evidence. Do you specifically suggest that Giuliani is a reliable source?

If he's not anything whose exclusive providence is established through him is contaminated. Anything anymore including video is trivial to fake if you have resources and the laptop which whose very existence seems so unlikely turned up with maximal political convenience.

In brief we are supposed to believe Hunter filled a laptop with incriminating evidence, then dropped it off at a trumptards computer repair shop in a state he doesn't live in and forgot about. We are also to believe that he happily gave him the login to unlock the encrypted drive full of potentially election killing data that just happened to come into ghoulianis hands.

It's amazing that you believe this shit without hard evidence.

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