Because prosecuting a major politician for non-violent crimes sows political chaos that far outweighs the value of enforcing the law.
Shit! we forgot an election thread for the midterms. Here it is now.
- Thread starter Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)
- Start date
I don't believe, and nor did I say, that they faked the actual device and gave it to the repair guy. You're not listening.
No, the rationale is that it's mighty suspicious that they hack Burisma and compromise security credentials, and then very shortly later their contacts create a media storm over Burisma's dealings with a mutual political opponent, based on emails that became public in untraceable circumstances.
We have the context that the emails themselves were (mostly) shown to be genuine. Which the experts made no claims about.
LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!
Sure, PROSECUTION causes major chaos
Lastly, are you legitimately saying that if Hunter Biden has done something terrible, we should prosecute because him would cause chaos?
Hunter Biden is not a politician, and if we locked him up it would likely be for the drugs and guns and hookers. That is a different scenario in multiple ways than prosecuting presidential contenders for mishandling documents.
And timestamps on documents from the hard drive match operating system indexes. No evidence has been found that any of the files were manipulated by hackers. No evidence has been found to tie the data to Russia in any way. Do you really imagine that Russian hackers, who we very frequently know are the culprits immediately after they hack into something, managed to access Hunter's email, and his icloud, and either access his local files as well or create convincing enough fakes for the FBI to take seriously, and compile this all onto a machine without leaving any traces that they were involved?
The experts made large claims based on no firsthand information. They reached a false conclusion.
Nobody has said the documents aren't from the OS, or that the laptop's files were manipulated. You're still not listening: you're just providing counterarguments against specific methods that nobody has actually said the Russians used.
The fact that they gained illicit access to security credentials for the company, and then that it was their known contacts that broke the story, is in itself evidence they had a hand in the story breaking (and when). It's not conclusive evidence, but it looks damn shifty to anyone being honest here.
No, which is why I didn't claim any of that, and neither did the letter's authors.
You're not actually listening. You're creating your own scenario and then incredulously asking if I believe it.
They based it on a series of highly suspect characteristics of the incident, coupled with their own experience. They made no factual claims about the provinence of the data itself, and they were upfront about that. None of the claims they've made have been shown to be false.
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Edit: I'd also like to point out tstorm is exaggerating the "verified" credentials of the laptop's contents.
<20% of the emails (and excluding the one the first stories were based on) were verified as coming from the accounts they said they were. And since some of those accounts were associated with Burisma, and we know Russia compromised Burisma company security credentials, that still doesn't prove very much.
It was also shown that OS timestamps match the email times. Analysts have pointed out these can be illicitly edited.
On the other hand, it was also shown that the cache and history of the laptop had been repeatedly wiped (including after the repair shop had it); that people other than Hunter had both added and removed files (including after the repair shop had it); and that files showed hundreds of modifications. The contents were even shown to have been accessed and amended after the FBI had it in their damn possession-- emails stored on it had been created up to a year after Hunter no longer had it.
...and meanwhile, Giuliani-- who we know was in close contact with Russia-- happened to get his hands on a copy of the hard drive. Which he had long before it was handed to law enforcement. And Giuliani's Ukrainian colleague, who signal-boosted the story, is then exposed as a Russian intelligence agent.
It stinks to high heaven.
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I may as well ask...
What malfeasance is being inferred from the laptop's contents and how is Papa Biden implicated?
What malfeasance is being inferred from the laptop's contents and how is Papa Biden implicated?
There are two main allegations that formed the basis of the early reports on this shit.
1) That Hunter provided a means of access to Joe Biden for an advisor of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. This is based on a fleeting mention of the two men meeting in an email on the laptop. No details of any such meeting are known.
2) That there was discussion about providing equity stakes in the Chinese energy company CEFC to Joe Biden. This is based on an email (which was not one of those to be verified) saying stakes were set aside for him. In a later email in the same chain, Hunter says that his father turned down the stakes.
There's also the (very valid) point to be made that if it was indeed Hunter who left this laptop at a repair shop, then he's catastrophically mishandled proprietary information.
But most of this is unverified, there are dozens of unknowns and huge question marks (Giuliani obtained a copy of the laptop's contents before it was ever reported? Files had been added and modified even after it was in the FBI's hands!?).
1) Hunter Biden would not be charged with anything. He would only be charged because he's the president's son. This does not mean he didn't do those things. Many sons do the same thing and dont get any attention. This is specifically to cause chaos and one other reason...
2) Donald Trump did those things plus sexual assault. Targeting Hunter Biden is also meant to make Donal Trump more palatable. Note: I find neither of these people palatable
Or... or, bear with me, because this has only happened hundreds of thousands of times... the prosecution didn't see anything worth prosecuting.
You don't think people get put in jail for drugs and guns and hookers? What?
I am listening, I just happen to also hear the negative space where you aren't saying things, and the things you aren't saying are as important as the things that you are. Because for years now, the majority of the public has been led to believe that the laptop is fake, it's Russian disinformation, and the signatories of that letter are partially to blame. Biden said in one of the debates:
Biden: "Look, there are 50 former National Intelligence folks who said that what this, he's accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics-- four-- five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him, his, and his good friend Rudy Giuliani."
You want to say "well, they never said the emails were faked or talked about any specific mechanism", but that does not matter. It genuinely does not matter what technicalities or nuances they built into their rhetoric. They wrote a public letter with the specific intent to guide public opinion. Democrats and the media used their letter to propagate the idea that the laptop is "a bunch of garbage" and "nobody believes it", and I haven't heard a word from any of the people who signed it to say "well actually, we never said that the information was fake, we only said it was consistent with Russian information activities." How many people here still think it was a Russian plant? Too many. Way too many. Because people set out to shape public discourse in that way, and they ought to be blamed for the falsehoods they used their collective authority to plant.
They're to blame, even though they very clearly said in the same letter that they didn't know if it was real or fake?
If someone says one thing, and you listen and take away the opposite thing, that's kind of on you. You can't blame them for your own failure of comprehension.
Yep, pretty misrepresentative statement from Biden there. Almost a quarter as bad as some of the milder lies his opponent vomited forth.
Donald Trump also utilised the laptop to push a certain narrative, of course: in the same debates, he used it to push corruption allegations against Joe Biden that were completely unsupported by anything actually on the laptop. Can I expect the same outrage at his misrepresentation of the facts?
It matters a great deal whether or not they said they were fake, because you're accusing them of discrediting something credible. When in fact, they didn't do that: nothing they said was untrue. Most of the information is unverified, including the emails that formed the basis for the original reporting. The chain of custody is completely undocumented-- and involves Giuliani getting his hands on it long before the authorities, and making a copy. And that unverified stuff was accessed and modified by bodies unknown long after Hunter had it. There are massive question marks hanging over it, and that's all very valid and worth pointing out.
It's extremely common and characteristic of disinformation campaigns to mix accurate information with inaccurate. That's how they're done. And that's how you end up with (for instance) 22,000 emails that are verifiably from the accounts they say they're from (though that proves little, considering the accounts they're from were also potentially compromised), and you also get 150,000 unverified emails and other files being tampered with on the same device.
Can I expect the same defense from you for Trump?
Trump: "If this stuff is true about Russia, Ukraine, China, other countries, a wreck-- If this is true, then he's a corrupt politician. So don't give me the stuff about how you're this innocent baby. Joe, they're calling you a corrupt politician--"
He said if. He didn't make any hard statements on the facts, only vague speculations. Obviously, that means he bears no responsibility for people believing the laptop shows Biden as a corrupt politician, right? Or do you have a double standard here?
To be honest, no, I don't feel the same outrage from Trump's behavior, because few people take Trump as an authority on anything. Trump wasn't intending to say truth or lie there, rather the truth isn't relevant to him, because he's saying whatever is advantageous to him. Which is what you expect from a politician on a debate state, they say the things that are advantageous to them, to the surprise of nobody. People see through it. What angers me about that letter is that they are acting just like Trump in a debate, they wrote that letter to say what would be politically advantageous, and they succeeded based on the idea that they weren't doing exactly what Trump was. I have been telling you people for years, Donald Trump isn't unique, he acts exactly like the Democrats. You just refuse to see it.
Not if their rich like Biden, Clinton, Bush or Trump
Wait, wait, wait... what? Did you miss the whole MAGA movement? Jan 6th? The fact the Republican party became Trump's party? (might be changing due to all his losing)
There sure are a lot of people who take Trump as an authority on everything, and you should know that, they support the same party you do.
He said "if" in that specific quote. In plenty of other statements, he made direct accusations. So no, it isn't a double standard.
The one instance in which Biden's actions and Trump's actions are comparable is that they both misrepresented the laptop debacle to attack the other. For which I condemned Biden, but you've just refused to condemn Trump.
Misrepresentations and lies are extremely common to both the Republicans and the Democrats; you've just decided to fully characterise one side, and to let the other off the hook, for partisan reasons.
And in this case, the experts-- who weren't just "Democrats", but included numerous figures who served under Republican presidents-- didn't even lie. They didn't even misrepresent: what they said was fully true, and they explicitly distanced themselves from the claim you're insisting they made. Meanwhile, Trump made explicit claims, never distanced himself from a damn thing... and you've got zero problem with it.
That is pretty much the opposite of what's happening here. I don't have zero problem with Trump, if someone came in here insisting something was true based on Trump saying so, we would both be laughing them off the site. But I'd give that same response independent of whose authority was being appealed to, where you're picking and choosing who people are allowed to blindly trust.
I literally just condemned Biden for misrepresenting the laptop, and then asked if you applied the same condemnation to Trump's misrepresentation of it as an attack line.
Your response was just "but Biden" again.
I'm not blindly trusting these people. I've independently checked the facts of the case here, and found that the letter's authors didn't lie or misrepresent, and explicitly distanced themselves from the claim you're trying to foist on them.
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Why do you think Tstorm spends so much time trying to prove Trump did nothing wrong?
Specifically because Trump clearly did lots of things wrong and is using people to wrangle out of it
This is pretty much I"ve given up on talking to him. He insists he doesn't like or support Trump, but then takes every opportunity to either defend him or switch the topic to something/anything else. Also the fact he's fixated the laptop despite saying it wasn't important because I don't fucking know why but apparently it's the hill he insists on fighting on now, regardless.
I applaud those of you still taking this on, but it's reached a point I know that nothing I say is going to even register or be addressed by him, at which point there's no point in continuing the conversation.
I want to be clear. Look in the laptop all you want. If it comes up with no evidence like last time in 87 pages, don't expect anyone to believe what you say.
Just like a pizza basement didn't have child sex trafficking. Or election fraud. Or Hillary killing an ex-staffer. Or Hillary claiming Putin told Trump to do Jan 6.
Things require evidence to be true