Prove to me the laptop is real.
FBI has the laptop and only they can tell you. We know it contained real emails. There is enough evidence that I don't know what it would be besides real.
Based on what has leaked to the public so far, I believe some combination of drug possession, prostitution, money laundering, corruption, and abuse of an elected office for personal profit.
> if the FBI has evidence of a crime, why wasn't he charged?
That's what a lot of people would like to know.
And let’s not forget Trump and various others for Jan 6th, let alone what we’re seeing unfold now with these documents he took. Federal criminal investigations like this take a bit of time.
And no, this isn’t whataboutism. Anyone who breaks the law, particularly those who are “in charge” need to be held accountable. This includes Hunter Biden if he broke a law, but it also includes Trump and others.
But the more likely answer is that after relentless grilling at the behest of Republican lawmakers under Trump and actual testimony there probably wasn’t anything there worth pursuing from a legal perspective so no charges were filed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/08/colin-powell...
“But Hunter Biden’s laptop!”
“But Hillary’s emails!”
Etc.
Here’s the growing list:
Hillary Clinton
Hunter Biden
Donald Trump
Matt Gaetz
Lindsey Graham
Kevin McCarthy
Lauren Boebart
Rudy Giuliani
Whatever number of Jan 6th co-conspirators (growing list)
Note Joe Biden should also be on your list for bribery, as the most concerning crimes Hunter was involved with appeared to be selling access to Joe.
And especially don’t forget Obama for the “paperwork crime” possessing government records.
Probably most current and former government employees should be charged on the same basis too.
Agreed. I'm hopeful we can get Trump here (Jan 6th + these documents seems like enough to reasonable assume guilt though that as always needs to be determined via due process), start with the worst offenders. Enough is enough. Then we can build from there.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/oct/09/donald-tru...
>Clinton’s staff received a subpoena for Benghazi-related emails March 4. An employee managing her server deleted 33,000 of Clinton’s emails three weeks later.
The Politifact article then goes on to say the FBI didn't believe they were deleted for the purposes of avoiding the subpoena, which may be true, but that doesn't make it less of a crime.
I'm going to give my personal opinion now. The crime Clinton committed is a paperwork technicality crime and I don't think it would have been a good idea for the country to charge her.
With the information we know so far about Trump keeping some docs that might have been government property, that also seems to be a paperwork technicality crime and if we don't find out something really insidious about it, I don't think it would be a good idea for the country to charge him.
> these "paperwork" claims.
In other words “I won’t accept anything that contradicts my pre-established belief”. It’s very similar to discussions I have with fervent religious believers. Better to take an engineers approach and change your mind when the facts change.
It's easy to imagine if you restore the Constitutional authority of civilian management of the military (and all other aspects of government). A reasonably responsible US voter should have nothing hidden from them, even military secrets.
>In other words “I won’t accept anything that contradicts my pre-established belief”.
I'm sorry, how many secret military documents have you personally seen?
Quite a few. I was on active duty in the US Army and deployed to Iraq where we planned and conducted air assault and VIP transport missions. I also had TS-SCI clearance.
> It's easy to imagine if you restore the Constitutional authority of civilian management of the military (and all other aspects of government). A reasonably responsible US voter should have nothing hidden from them, even military secrets.
Yea sure. Totally. Nuclear secrets, CIA operative locations, all plans and contingencies and movement of assets across the globe. Hell maybe I can take a UH-60 for a spin. My tax dollars paid for it!
Good, then you know that everything classified is only for protecting important things and not hiding embarrassing things right?
>Yea sure. Totally. Nuclear secrets, CIA operative locations, all plans and contingencies and movement of assets across the globe.
Why not? The point of a clearance is to prevent foreign spying, not government oversight. Do you not believe all Americans are equal before the law?
> Why not?... Do you not believe all Americans are equal before the law?
I think the absurdity of your suggestion speaks for itself.
Interesting. What is absurd about the people understanding exactly what the government is doing?
Framing this as "what's so wrong with the lil ole' people knowing a few things the government is hiding" is disingenuous at best. And if you wanted to make a concrete argument about "no secrets" you would make an attempt to do so abstracted away from the current geopolitical reality of the world because it's extremely obvious why this not only wouldn't ever occur but also shouldn't occur in the reality that we experience today. Idealism is only useful to the extent that it is also pragmatic. A better principle here would be something like maximizing the amount of information that American citizens have access to (why limit it to Americans and America though? Why can't I have access to all Chinese documents?) excluding national defense capabilities or some realistic parameter/line.
I do not wish to abolish secrets - merely to make it clear that US citizens are the rulers of the country and therefore nothing should be kept from them. I can imagine many ways that could be done without the kinds of dire consequences you extrapolate.
When you go down this path, you're just stating your opinion about how things should be and trying to anchor that to an interpretation you have of what "we the people" means. That's ok, but the problem you run into is that it's wildly open to interpretation. For every "we the people' argument you make, someone can put forth any number of contradictory but equally correct arguments.
“Working from underlying ideas about consent, early Americans assumed that a rule could have the obligation of law only if it came from the constitutionally established legislature elected by the people, and that a judicial decision could have legal obligation only if it came from a constitutionally appointed judge exercising independent judgment. The U.S. Constitution therefore places the power to bind Americans in Congress and the courts, not in executive or independent agencies.“
Sorry, what now? The subpoena was for related emails. They claim they deleted unrelated emails and the FBI agrees. It’s not a crime to delete emails unrelated to a subpoena, especially when the subpoena (according to your link) did not request those emails. And doubly so when the FBI agrees those deleted emails were unrelated. So where do you see a crime in this?
Second, the documents were happily stored because they were not under the purview of her political opponents. If Republicans on the Benghazi Committee wanted those documents they could have subpoenaed those documents. But they didn't. So why are we supposed to be upset that she deleted documents that weren't under the scope of the subpoena?
Third, I notice you failed to articulate any crime, so again I ask: what was the crime? If Republicans didn't ask for unrelated into, and FBI couldn't find she deleted related info, then what unique insight do you have that she was attempting to evade a subpoena, aside from a vague hypothetical?
Or how some people found a backup of his phone and got videos of Hunter?
You probably never saw those because most of those are suppressed, too, but it's out there. Hunter misreads the scale with the 20g or so of white powder on it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220826030459/https://www.nytim...
>People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.