jimb ignores KEY FACTS. The original laptop (and there appears to be 3 or so) were damaged and thus it was necessary to transfer files to a different storage unit for electronic files (the "hard drive"). Also, Hunter Biden REQUESTED that the files be transferred to the hard drive. So to argue that there is NO LAPTOP is (1) false; (2) misleading, and (3) does not address the issues that many of the files are legitimate, beyond question, and give credence that some of the OTHER files may be and are likely valid files that point to illegal activity by Hunter Biden. I assume that the FBI is still investigating the matter. The FBI is in possession of the original laptop in question.
This matter is a extremely sensitive and puts the FBI in a bad position, to investigate matters that may implicate the President Biden in POSSIBLE illegal or unethical matters. I merely ask that (a) folks stay open minded and (b) we await investigation and (c) be patient.
To cite my source and give background:
The man behind the counter at the Mac Shop didn’t know about any of this personal turmoil. Like all his customers, this one was just a blur to Mac Isaac. He says he was first drawn to computers as an artistic kid with a medical condition, albinism, that impaired his eyesight — 20/400, he says — and kept him from driving but did not prevent him from seeing magnified images on a screen. He says that what he recalls of the man who brought in the laptops is a smudge of blue and gray clothing, a strong whiff of alcohol, and an air of entitlement.
Mac Isaac was a Mac guy in every sense. He had a tattoo of Apple’s smiley-face Finder icon on his bicep and a triangular FireWire icon on the back of his neck. In an unlucky twist for Biden, he was also a Trump supporter, and like everyone in Delaware, he knew the name of Joe Biden’s younger son.
The three laptops, Mac Isaac recalls, were all liquid damaged. One was dead. One was easily revived. The third, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, had a sticky, ruined keyboard. But Mac Isaac thought he could still salvage its data. The job would cost $85 and take a few days.
After the customer left the store, Mac Isaac says he closed up shop, popped open an Amstel Light, and started to work on the recovery. He dragged and dropped folders from the broken laptop onto an external drive. Almost immediately, Mac Isaac claims, he saw that the computer contained a large quantity of homemade pornography sitting right on the desktop. “It’s not like I hadn’t seen anything like that before,” he says. “It was probably the most I’ve ever seen in one place.”
A few days later, the blurry customer returned, this time to drop off a portable hard drive to hold the contents of his laptop. “When you see a grown man in a rainbow boa and a jock strap,” Mac Isaac says, “it’s hard not to have that image in your mind when he’s staring you in the face.” (It was pink, in truth, and it was an average scarf.) But he finished the job, made the backup, and called the cell-phone number the customer had given him to say he was done. The customer didn’t come back and never paid the $85. Mac Isaac says he put the broken laptop and the portable drive in a locked closet. Two weeks after the customer’s visit, on April 25, Joe Biden officially launched his presidential campaign.
jimb also fails to acknowledge that SOME of the files released are legitimate:
Since then, mainstream news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have come to verify that at least some of the information contained in the cache is authentic.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/hunter-biden-laptop-investigation.htmlSeveral last notes, for now:
1) I used jimb's own source to show he is posting misleading statements.
2) I offer another source that is a lengthy summary of events.
3) jimb offers NO other sources and does not quote from any source. His allegations and assumptions are not validated.
4) jimb fails to acknowledge facts that are contrary to his myopic conclusions. I have shown his falsehoods from his OWN source and from at least one other source.
5) Sorting out this "mess" is not easy. I have already acknowledged that.
The laptop lacked a clean chain of custody, and was considered a mess from a forensic standpoint by analysts.[6] The drive contained emails marked to and from Hunter Biden[2] and other digital files relating to him. PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that it is possible that "copies of a laptop" were obtained, instead of Hunter Biden's actual laptop.[5] The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that their sources had authenticated a number of emails, including one that was the subject of the New York Post reporting.[7][6] No more than 22,000 of the almost 129,000 emails on the hard drive were confirmed as authentic in 2022 by two forensic analysts who independently examined the data for The Washington Post; however, the analysts could not verify the vast majority of the data. The unverifiable emails included some prominently reported previously by other news outlets.[6] The analysis found that people other than Biden had written files and folders to the drive before and after the original report by the New York Post, but only after it had been taken into FBI custody. It also found that data had been accessed and copied off the drive by people other than Biden over nearly three years.[6] Despite extensive scrutiny of the laptop contents by multiple parties, by September 2022 no clear evidence of criminal activity by the Bidens had surfaced.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversymore to read, if you want:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-examining-if-alleged-hunter-biden-emails-are-linked-foreign-n1243620another interesting fact:
The Post said the shop owner, who has been identified as Mac Isaac, called the FBI, and also called a Giuliani associate. The shop owner said he believed the laptop was among equipment left by Hunter Biden, because a sticker on the laptop bore the name of the Beau Biden Foundation, a charity named after his late brother.
and, same source:
The Post published a grand jury subpoena for the laptop and hard drive. The subpoena had been issued by a federal prosecutor who already had the serial numbers of the devices when they were ordered to be handed over in early December 2019, indicating federal law enforcement was aware of the specific devices they want to examine.
“Other material extracted from the computer,” the Post said, “includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.”
Many commentators have said it is hard to believe that Hunter Biden would abandon a Mac laptop full of incriminating information at a repair shop.
Hunter might have if he were "strung out" on drugs.
Some have speculated that the material could have been hacked from Hunter Biden’s accounts and put on the laptop as a cover story to offer a plausible explanation of how the material became public.
speculation proves nothing
In January, it was reported that Burisma’s networks had been breached by Russian hackers
This complicates the investigation some more.
