Hunter's laptop

[bigbird 60,368]

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

21 minutes ago, bigbird said:

Plausible deniability, yeah, that’s the ticket.

[DKW 86 7,410]

Some pundits are saying that Biden is polling so badly that they are about to give Kamala a Cabinet post and name a real VP, so Joe can retire...

 

[jj3jordan 2,039]

4 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Some pundits are saying that Biden is polling so badly that they are about to give Kamala a Cabinet post and name a real VP, so Joe can retire...

 

Jill won’t go down that quietly.

[AUFAN78 3,889]

https://spectator.org/biden-burisma-big-guy-bag-men/

[DKW 86 7,410]

In America: 

Blue MAGA believe with all their heart in a pee tape that almost all of us, yours truly included in that, know doesnt exist. I rejected at least that part of the RUSSIANS!!! RUSSIANS!!! RUSSIANS!!! story in under a minute. They believe in GUILT that has never been proven and refuse to believe what witnesses actually said before Congress. trump, et al, are GUILTY proof or no proof and that is simply just that.

Red MAGA believe in a Stolen Election THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. Again we have looked into it and there is not enough evidence to flip even one precinct let alone a state's Electoral College Delegates. You are listening to pols that KNOW THEY ARE LYING to just get a wink or a nod from Donald Trump, a guy no one really wants to run again. 

The problem in this nation is that we have people totally sold out to support two 100% corrupt political parties that are both owned by the same people.  Our loyalties should be to each other and to the nation. **** both of the parties.

Edited April 13, 2022 by DKW 86

[bigbird 60,368]

[bigbird 60,368]

11 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

https://spectator.org/biden-burisma-big-guy-bag-men/

Here, you'll need this...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-spectator-uk/

[homersapien 11,352]

The forgotten — and ignored — context for the emergence of the Hunter Biden laptop story

By Philip Bump

National correspondent

March 18, 2022

 

When the New York Post reported on Oct. 14, 2020, that it was in possession of emails between a Ukrainian businessman and Hunter Biden, son of the then-Democratic presidential nominee, it would have been hard to predict what followed. This was less than three weeks before the election itself, and the content of the report was soon subsumed to the odd way in which the paper obtained the information. Mainstream outlets and social media companies balked at elevating the story’s claims, triggering frustrations on the right that remain to this day.

New reporting has re-elevated questions about how the story emerged and was handled. In light of that resurrection,it seems useful to articulate exactly why there was suspicion about the story’s origins — suspicion that itself has not entirely been resolved.

There are at least four questions that arose from the initial report. Those are:

• How did the information published by the New York Post purportedly get from Hunter Biden to the paper?
• Was that information legitimate?
• Was the media’s skepticism about the chain of custody and the information warranted?
• Was the social media blackout of the Post’s story warranted?

In this article, we’ll only look at the overlap of the first and third questions: Was the sourcing for information sufficiently dubious to justify caution by mainstream outlets? The answer, it seems clear, is yes.

You’ll remember the story. Hunter Biden allegedly showed up at a computer repair shop with three water-damaged laptop computers. According to John Paul Mac Isaac, the proprietor of that shop, one of the three computers was beyond repair, one simply needed an external keyboard and one required data recovery. Mac Isaac recovered the data, but no one ever came to pick the machine up. Eventually the data from the computer made its way to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney. It was Giuliani that gave it to the Post.

That summary excludes a lot of detail, some known at the time the Post story broke, some that only emerged afterward. Here, in the form of a timeline, is detail that seems salient to our current consideration of how the Post got the material from the laptop as well as what was known at the time.

The 2016 election. It’s critical to remember what happened in the 2016 election cycle. Then WikiLeaks published two large clusters of documents stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee’s network and from John Podesta, a top aide to the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. The Podesta material in particular was released in tranches for days beginning Oct. 7, 2016. It was real information, understood even then to have been a product of Russian efforts, that became fodder for criticism of Clinton.

After the election, we learned the full scope of Russia’s involvement in the election. Suddenly, the coverage of the WikiLeaks material took on a new light: It was stolen by a foreign government to try to influence U.S. politics. Media companies reconsidered their coverage; should there have been more caution about playing into the hands of a foreign influence campaign?

This question was very much on people’s minds in the months before the 2020 election — particularly given indications that Russia was again hoping to aid Trump’s election.

The 2019 impeachment. The other overlapping factor coloring the release of the Post story was the investigation into Trump’s effort to leverage Ukrainian aid to damage Biden the previous year.

Giuliani was central to that effort. In late 2018, he began exploring the idea that Biden, as vice president several years before, had improperly tried to influence Ukraine to block an investigation of Burisma, a company for which Hunter Biden served as a board member. This story, promoted by an investigator targeted for termination by the U.S. government, was later debunked, but it seemed a promising line of attack. On April 1, 2019, a writer linked to Giuliani named John Solomon wrote the first of several stories about the allegations.

On April 12, the laptops were dropped off at Mac Isaac’s repair shop. Mac Isaac is legally blind and was not able to identify Hunter Biden by sight. One of the laptops, though, bore a sticker for the Beau Biden Foundation, an organization dedicated to Hunter’s late brother.

At some point in the middle of this month, Hunter Biden left Burisma’s board. Presumably he was by that point aware that questions were being asked about his role. If not, it became very clear on May 1, when the Times elevated the Burisma question in its coverage.

In the meantime, Volodymyr Zelensky had been elected president of Ukraine, and efforts to pressure him to announce an investigation into Biden began. In early May 2019, Giuliani planned a trip to Ukraine to dig up information that might damage Biden — a plan that was covered in the press. After broad outcry, he scrapped the trip. But the signal was sent: Giuliani was seeking information deleterious to Biden.

Later that month, someone in Kyiv was approached about buying Hunter Biden’s emails. This was not reported until Oct. 21, 2020, a week after the Post’s story about the laptop.

“The two people who said they were approached with Hunter Biden’s alleged emails last year did not know whether any of them were real and they declined to identify who was behind the offers,” Time’s Simon Shuster wrote. “ … The two people said they could not confirm whether any of the material presented to them was the same as that which has been recently published in the U.S.” At least one, though, said the material in the Post was “familiar-looking.”

It’s not clear what this was or what the source was. It could have been from Biden’s business partners in Ukraine. It could have been from a hack of Biden’s account; his primary email address was an Apple iCloud account, meaning that emails and photos probably sat online where hackers might be able to access them. In mid-September 2019, the other person who spoke with Shuster was offered similar material.

When the Post first reported on its possession of material from Hunter Biden’s laptop, it shared a PDF of an email included in that material. That PDF carried metadata indicating that it was created on Oct. 10, 2019, meaning that either it was created on a machine that had the wrong date set or that it was created after the laptop came into Mac Isaac’s possession.

It’s possible that Mac Isaac himself created the PDF, as the beginning of the impeachment investigation into Trump for his interactions with Ukraine had begun the previous month. Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender reported in his book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election” that Mac Isaac, hearing Hunter Biden come up as part of the impeachment investigation, asked his father for advice on the laptop. Eventually, a connection was made to the FBI and, on Dec. 9, the FBI appeared with a subpoena for the laptop and for a hard drive. It’s not clear what was on that hard drive, though it may have been a backup made by Mac Isaac.

At the time, incidentally, Giuliani was in Ukraine looking to dig up dirt disparaging Joe Biden. That included meeting with a member of the Ukrainian parliament who was later sanctioned by the Treasury Department as a Russian agent.

In spring 2020, Joe Biden secured the Democratic presidential nomination.

At some point, Giuliani came into possession of the material from the laptop. The Daily Mail reported in December 2020 that the material was turned over to Giuliani’s lawyer no later than May of that year. According to Bender’s conversation with the lawyer, Robert Costello, that didn’t happen until August — purely by chance.

“In August 2020 — on a whim, as Costello described it to me — he asked Giuliani’s assistant to keep an eye out for any strange political tips coming into the email boxes for Giuliani’s various companies. Costello had a couple of dozen emails within a few days, including one from J.P. Mac Isaac,” Bender wrote.

We do know that by September 2020, Stephen K. Bannon, another ally of Trump’s, was bragging about having it. On Sept. 28, he gave an interview with a Dutch television network hyping his possession of the laptop.

There were already strange rumblings about Hunter Biden at the time. Earlier that same month, someone was passing around a lengthy dossier of allegations about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China, created by a nonexistent entity. That document was shared, among others, by an employee of the Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.

Guo is also the owner of the boat on which Bannon had been arrested for fraud in August 2020. After the Post report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Daily Beast uncovered claims promoted by outlets linked to Guo focused on a Hunter Biden laptop.

“3 hard disk drives of videos and dossiers of Hunter Biden’s connections with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been sent to Nancy Pelosi and DOJ,” one tweet read. “Big money and sex scandal!” That was published Sept. 28, the same day as Bannon’s interview with Dutch TV. Similar allegations had been made days before.

The first time the Post saw the material was on Oct. 4. By Oct. 11, Giuliani had handed over the entire duplicated contents of the hard drive and the newspaper began debating how to handle it.

The Times would later report that this was contentious even at the conservative publication. Fox News had already passed on it, apparently in part because of the questions about provenance. A number of Post employees questioned whether the paper had done enough to vet the material. Speaking to the Times, Giuliani insisted that this was exactly why the Post was given all of it: “either nobody else would take it,” he said, “or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”

After the story came out, the Post didn’t share the material with other outlets for them to do their own investigations. In other words, coverage necessarily depended on taking the Post’s word for things, which is by itself a disincentive for other outlets.

After the story published Oct. 14, media outlets tried to assess its credibility, without luck. Mac Isaac gave a lengthy, odd interview to reporters that same afternoon in which he repeatedly gave evasive answers and appeared to change his explanations for how he knew whose laptop it was and how it got to the FBI. In the days that followed, the Time and Daily Beast reports reinforced questions about how the material was obtained and how it was being used explicitly to aid Trump’s campaign.

Even today, the full story isn’t clear. Is the story straightforward — Mac Isaac obtained a laptop, thought it might be relevant to national politics and then found only one taker, Giuliani, for the material? Was the material reportedly circulating in Ukraine the same stuff? Nonexistent? Obtained from an iCloud hack independently? Did Guo learn about the laptop from Bannon, with mentions of the material in September following from there? It is of course always easy to ask infinite questions when you’re skeptical, but that the answers to this aren’t known now reinforces the reasons for skepticism 18 months ago.

The reticence to aid possible Russian interference probably had one unintended effect: It made the contents of the drive itself as reported by the Post seem more important than it would likely have been considered otherwise. But that is a subject for a different article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/18/forgotten-and-ignored-context-emergence-hunter-biden-laptop-story/
 

Seriously, does this really sound like a cover-up of vetted, reliable information?

Or does it sound more like news sources being appropriately skeptical of information with such a dubious provenance? 

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,352]

Unraveling the tale of Hunter Biden and $3.5 million from Russia

By Glenn Kessler

Staff writer

April 8, 2022

 

“She [Russian billionaire Elena Baturina] gave him [Hunter Biden] $3.5 million so now I would think [Russian president Vladimir] Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it. I think we should know that answer.”

— Former president Donald Trump, in an interview with Just the News, March 29

“The FBI knew of the laptop, knew that Hunter received a $3.5 million wire transfer from the former mayor of Moscow’s wife.”

— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” April 3

Less than 50 days before the 2020 presidential election, the Republican staff of the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees issued a joint report with a startling claim — that Joe Biden’s son Hunter had received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the widow of the former mayor of Moscow.

Trump quickly weaponized the factoid, mentioning it 42 times in the final weeks of the campaign. He sharply questioned Biden during the first presidential debate: “They were the ones involved with Russia, turns out not me, it was the opposite. But why did your son get three and a half million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow?”

An attorney for Hunter Biden denied the allegation in 2020 but it has lived on, especially in the right-wing media. Recently Trump called on Putin to reveal what he knows about it.

Trump’s call-out to Putin inspired us to dig deep into this story again. We interviewed people familiar with the transactions, reviewed property and real estate documents and probed for leads in the emails contained on a hard drive copy of the laptop Hunter Biden supposedly left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019. None of our sources would speak on the record because of continuing investigations of Hunter Biden and his business practices, but we sought confirmation from corporate filings and other records.

The flimsiness of the allegation was apparent from the start merely by carefully reading the Senate GOP report itself.

The executive summary offers a seemingly definitive bullet point almost exactly the same as Johnson’s comment: “Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.” But the two pages in the report that deal with this transaction are considerably more nuanced, never saying outright that Hunter Biden received this money and making no claim that any laws were broken.

The GOP report itself does not provide evidence to back up the claim that became a talking point — and our reporting has unearthed the best explanation about what really happened. It’s a complicated story, involving a web of corporate entities, that eventually leads to the purchase of millions of dollars worth of real estate in Brooklyn by the Russian billionaire. We found no evidence that Hunter Biden was part of those transactions.

A deal in China

Let’s start our story in China, where Hunter Biden invested in a private investment fund backed by Chinese state entities at a time when his father was vice president — a controversial practice that has raised ethical questions. The allegation that he received this payment hinges on his involvement with a firm called Rosemont Seneca Thornton that initially invested in the fund, generally known as BHR Partners.

The report says that on Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, which it said was “co-founded” by Hunter Biden. The payment was listed as “Consultancy Agreement DD12.02.2014,” the report said.

The report attributes details on financial transactions to a “confidential document” obtained from the Treasury Department. Johnson and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in 2019 had announced they had sought Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on individuals and entities, including Hunter Biden. SARs are akin to an informant’s tips, not evidence of fraud.

Rosemont Seneca Thornton was created on May 28, 2013 according to corporation records, and was incorporated in Delaware, which does not require shareholders or directors to be revealed. But Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, sometimes used “Rosemont” in company names and Biden used “Seneca.” Thornton referred to Thornton Group, run by Jim Bulger, who brought expertise in investing in China.

But almost as immediately as Rosemont Seneca Thornton was created, the partners decided to dissolve it, according to a person with access to the board minutes. The original structure had added unexpected regulatory burdens to Thornton, and so Bulger’s lawyers advised that the group split up, this person said.

Within a year, Chinese corporate records reflected that the foreign investors in BHR were Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, with 20 percent, and Thornton Group LLC, with 10 percent. Corporate records show Rosemont Seneca Bohai, the replacement corporate vehicle, was formed on Feb. 13, 2014, the day before the Baturina transfer.

In theory, for Hunter Biden, Rosemont Seneca Thornton was no more.

RST unexpectedly lives on

But Rosemont Seneca Thornton was not dissolved as planned. Four people familiar with the company said that Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, controls it. Archer had kept the vehicle alive for his own real estate business, Rosemont Realty, which raised money from Eastern European and Central Asian investors, two people knowledgeable about his activities said. But he did not inform either Hunter Biden or Bulger, they said.

Archer’s secret was exposed when the Senate report was published. Confronted, Archer told Bulger that he had used Rosemont Seneca Thornton to transfer funds from Baturina to purchase real estate in Brooklyn, according to a participant in the conversation.

Archer and his attorney, Matthew Schwartz, did not respond to queries. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, declined to comment.

Baturina did not respond to emailed questions. When the report was released, she told the Daily Mail she was “not interested” in explaining an alleged consultancy fee. Her estranged brother Viktor Baturin claimed to the news organization that “it was a payment to enter the American market.” Baturin, who is reported to be in custody after losing a fraud case filed by his sister, could not be reached for comment.

Hunter Biden’s laptop does not contain significant evidence of direct interaction between Hunter Biden and Baturina, according to a review of emails that have been verified by experts working with The Washington Post as well as emails that the experts were unable to verify.

Here’s how The Post analyzed Hunter Biden’s laptop

Her name, for instance, appears as a possible guest for a 2015 dinner that then-Vice President Biden later briefly visited, according to our reporting, but it’s unclear if she attended.

There’s also no sign of a $3.5 million payment in Hunter Biden’s reported income for 2014, the year of the wire transfer. That year, he reported earning almost $1.25 million, according to information contained in a verified laptop email he sent to his lawyer. The email said $400,000 of the income was related to Biden’s board seat at Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

Archer did a lot of business with Hunter Biden and had originally brought him into the BHR deal. But Archer also had many side deals in that period unconnected to his business with Biden. So doing his own deal with Baturina would appear to be part of that pattern.

In February, Archer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being convicted of defrauding Native American tribes and various clients in relation to the fraudulent issuance and sale of tribal bonds between 2014 and 2016. “I was doing too many things at once and not paying enough attention,” said Archer before he was sentenced. “I have deep remorse for the victims of the crime.”

Baturina’s deals in Brooklyn

Besides the allegation about Hunter Biden, the GOP report made other claims about payments from Baturina to Rosemont Seneca Thornton. But that part of the report showed sloppiness in the reporting and calls into question the thoroughness of the investigation. The report critically misidentified the recipient, mixing up two entities with virtually the same names.

The Fact Checker identified the correct owner of the entity that received the funds — and traced the money to real estate purchases in Brooklyn that match a statement by Baturina as well as Archer’s admission that he used Rosemont Seneca Thornton to transfer funds for Baturina for real estate investments in Brooklyn.

The Senate report said that “between May 6, 2015 and Dec. 8, 2015, Baturina sent 11 wires in the amount of $391,968.21 to a bank account belonging to BAK USA LLC,” with the transactions listed as “loan agreement.” The report said that nine of the transactions, totaling $241,797.14, were sent to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton bank account, which then transferred the money to BAK USA.

The report said “BAK USA was a start-up technology company headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y., that produced tablet computers in cooperation with unnamed Chinese business partners.” It turns out there were two BAK USA LLCs, but the one that received the payments had a comma in its name — BAK USA, LLC, which corporate records show was formed on May 28, 2014.

In 2016, Baturina issued a statement saying she had opened a representative office in New York to oversee investments in the United States. “Baturina’s company has acquired the first set of commercial buildings next to Barclay’s Centre, a very popular sports and entertainment venue. The company owns the buildings with a total area of 1,500 square meters, and the investment that went into their acquisition totaled US $10 million,” the statement said.

New York City real estate records show that BAK USA, LLC, using the same business address as Archer’s firm Rosemont Capital, on June 27, 2014 had purchased two parcels in Brooklyn within a half mile of Barclays Center. One parcel was bought for $4.1 million and another for $5.4 million, or a total of $9.6 million. The properties had been auctioned by the unclaimed and seized assets program of the United States government.

The property records and a property tax bill directed us to Helen Gotman, who is active in New York City real estate. She confirmed to the Fact Checker she managed the properties on behalf of Baturina.

In 2018, the properties were sold for about $11.7 million each, property records show, for a gain of more than $14 million.

J.P. Folsgaard Bak, a Danish lawyer who moved to the United States to become an entrepreneur, headed the Buffalo company misidentified in the report. The company had closed its doors in 2018 after Trump’s Chinese tariffs made Chinese components more expensive and the tablets unprofitable. Bak said he was reading the Daily Mail in 2020, shortly after the Senate report was released, and was stunned to see an article saying his company had received payments from a Russian billionaire.

The committee staff had not contacted the company before publication of the report. Bak said the story exploded on social media and threats were being made against him and his wife. He sought an immediate correction from the committee but said the company’s appeals were not heeded, with officials being told the burden of proof was on the company.

After the election, on Nov. 18, 2020, the committee issued a supplemental report that on Page 16 included a footnote stating: “It appears that the tablet company did not receive the wires, but rather the other entity under the name BAK USA LLC was the recipient of those funds.” Bak said he did not learn of the footnote until May of the following year, when he received a letter from the Grassley’s chief of staff alerting him to it.

The GOP response

Alexa Henning, a Johnson spokesperson, said he stood by the report.

“Our report cited information from factual statements in U.S. government records,” said Taylor Foy, a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee Republicans, in a statement. “We’ve been provided no evidence to change our findings or dissociate Hunter Biden’s financial connections to Devon Archer and Yelena Baturina.” In an apparent reference to the Biden laptop, he added: “In fact, additional evidence has come to light that suggests Hunter Biden and Devon Archer collaborated on financial transactions with Yelena Baturina around the time of the transaction in question, and were involved in additional financial ventures together than had been previously known.”

As for BAK USA, Foy said, “Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and their associates would routinely set up multiple corporations with similar names for limited use.” He said that “the committee received angry messages” from “combative” BAK company officials but sought to clarify the record with the footnote in the supplemental report.

Bak said as far as he knows, no news organization ever corrected its reporting on BAK USA. “Our old company officially is still identified as the receiver of the funds, if you look it up at the Internet,” he said. “Typical Washington strategy: October surprise on front page and subtraction at Page 11 next to the crossword.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/unraveling-tale-hunter-biden-35-million-russia/

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

From the NY Post:

The laptop — infamously abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 — does not contain any direct evidence of such money transfers, but does show that Hunter was routinely on the hook for his father’s household expenses while Joe Biden was vice president. 

The expenses are spelled out in an email to Hunter from business partner Eric Schwerin from June 5, 2010, entitled “JRB Bills.” They concerned the upkeep of Joe Biden’s palatial lakefront home in the wealthy Greenville enclave of Wilmington, Del. JRB are President Biden’s initials.

There were $1,239 in repairs to an air conditioner at “mom-mom’s cottage,” and another $1,475 to a painter for “back wall and columns at the lake house.” There was also another $2,600 for fixing up a “stone retaining wall at the lake” and $475 “for shutters.”

In an email five days later, Schwerin said he received Joe Biden’s “Delaware tax refund check,” which suggests he had personal access to the veep’s finances. 

Schwerin was serving as president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter Biden’s Chinese-linked investment firm. The email ties President Biden even closer to the messy web of his son’s business dealings.

There’s also evidence Joe Biden sometimes reimbursed his son.

“I am depositing it in his account and writing a check in that amount back to you since he owes it to you. Don’t think I need to run it by him, but if you want to go ahead,” Schwerin wrote. 

In a July 6, 2010 email titled “JRB Future Memo,” Schwerin said he was in touch with the vice president about his personal financial matters and was eager to start discussions with him about how to cash in when he left office.

“Your Dad just called me (about his mortgage) and mentioned he’d be out a lot soon and not really back until Labor Day … He could use some positive news about his future earnings potential.”

In May 2018 during a drug and alcohol binge in Los Angeles, Hunter Biden accidentally transferred around $25,000 to an escort named “Gulnora.” He was immediately visited by the Secret Service — suggesting that the money came from a joint account with his father.

Hunter received a series of text messages from a former agent who repeatedly urged him to come out of his hotel room and reminded him “this is linked to Celtic’s account.” “Celtic” was Joe Biden’s Secret Service code name when he was vice president.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/hunter-biden-frequently-covered-family-expenses-texts-reveal/

[CoffeeTiger 5,082]

13 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

From the NY Post:

The laptop — infamously abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 — does not contain any direct evidence of such money transfers, but does show that Hunter was routinely on the hook for his father’s household expenses while Joe Biden was vice president. 

The expenses are spelled out in an email to Hunter from business partner Eric Schwerin from June 5, 2010, entitled “JRB Bills.” They concerned the upkeep of Joe Biden’s palatial lakefront home in the wealthy Greenville enclave of Wilmington, Del. JRB are President Biden’s initials.

There were $1,239 in repairs to an air conditioner at “mom-mom’s cottage,” and another $1,475 to a painter for “back wall and columns at the lake house.” There was also another $2,600 for fixing up a “stone retaining wall at the lake” and $475 “for shutters.”

In an email five days later, Schwerin said he received Joe Biden’s “Delaware tax refund check,” which suggests he had personal access to the veep’s finances. 

Schwerin was serving as president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter Biden’s Chinese-linked investment firm. The email ties President Biden even closer to the messy web of his son’s business dealings.

There’s also evidence Joe Biden sometimes reimbursed his son.

“I am depositing it in his account and writing a check in that amount back to you since he owes it to you. Don’t think I need to run it by him, but if you want to go ahead,” Schwerin wrote. 

In a July 6, 2010 email titled “JRB Future Memo,” Schwerin said he was in touch with the vice president about his personal financial matters and was eager to start discussions with him about how to cash in when he left office.

“Your Dad just called me (about his mortgage) and mentioned he’d be out a lot soon and not really back until Labor Day … He could use some positive news about his future earnings potential.”

In May 2018 during a drug and alcohol binge in Los Angeles, Hunter Biden accidentally transferred around $25,000 to an escort named “Gulnora.” He was immediately visited by the Secret Service — suggesting that the money came from a joint account with his father.

Hunter received a series of text messages from a former agent who repeatedly urged him to come out of his hotel room and reminded him “this is linked to Celtic’s account.” “Celtic” was Joe Biden’s Secret Service code name when he was vice president.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/hunter-biden-frequently-covered-family-expenses-texts-reveal/

Ooohh... $6,000 dollars for repairs on a family property!?!? 

AND evidence that Joe gave money to his own son? 

The scandal's just keep on coming hot and heavy.

 

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

17 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Ooohh... $6,000 dollars for repairs on a family property!?!? 

AND evidence that Joe gave money to his own son? 

The scandal's just keep on coming hot and heavy.

 

Commingling of funds for a politician of an account that is not in his name is illegal.  Having a family member pay for repairs to your home is also illegal if you are a politician.  The dollars that are being talked about with the China Government officials will take more than just emails to prove.  The point being there is enough evidence to start an investigation.  Probably in January or so of next year IF the Republicans can take the House.

[CoffeeTiger 5,082]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

Commingling of funds for a politician of an account that is not in his name is illegal.  Having a family member pay for repairs to your home is also illegal if you are a politician.

 

 

That doesn't sound right.....what laws are you talking about that would make any of that illegal? 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

 

 The dollars that are being talked about with the China Government officials will take more than just emails to prove.  The point being there is enough evidence to start an investigation.  Probably in January or so of next year IF the Republicans can take the House.

let em. Chances are slim it'll go any better than all the investigations that Trump's Justice Department tried to launch against Democrats. 

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

43 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

 

That doesn't sound right.....what laws are you talking about that would make any of that illegal? 

 

 

 

let em. Chance’ts are slim it'll go any better than all the investigations that Trump's Justice Department tried to launch against Democrats. 

Emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop revealed that the father and son potentially shared at least one bank account and paid each other’s bills, an issue that raises questions about possible corruption.

https://wset.com/news/nation-world/emails-show-hunter-and-joe-biden-shared-finances-bank-account

This is the commingling I was referring to and is considered unethical.  These are just emails and, as the article states, raises questions about possible corruption.  I can’t say anything is illegal until is it proven, which I can’t, but that is why they investigate things.

I don’t know how slim the chances are, but I agree, let them.  Please, it would be entertaining at least. Do you think Joe’s feeble mind could take two years of questions about Hunter?  And still *run* the country?

[CoffeeTiger 5,082]

10 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop revealed that the father and son potentially shared at least one bank account and paid each other’s bills, an issue that raises questions about possible corruption.

https://wset.com/news/nation-world/emails-show-hunter-and-joe-biden-shared-finances-bank-account

This is the commingling I was referring to and is considered unethical.  These are just emails and, as the article states, raises questions about possible corruption.  I can’t say anything is illegal until is it proven, which I can’t, but that is why they investigate things.

I don’t know how slim the chances are, but I agree, let them.  Please, it would be entertaining at least. Do you think Joe’s feeble mind could take two years of questions about Hunter?  And still *run* the country?

 

Can't wait for Republicans to impeach Biden for using Hunters "dirty" money to get his homes air conditioner repaired. 

Should make for thrilling television. 

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

50 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

 

Can't wait for Republicans to impeach Biden for using Hunters "dirty" money to get his homes air conditioner repaired. 

Should make for thrilling television. 

If you think that’s all they will find, I doubt they would bother.  I believe the *big guy* is in for a long last two years.

[CoffeeTiger 5,082]

21 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

If you think that’s all they will find, I doubt they would bother.  I believe the *big guy* is in for a long last two years.

Wouldn’t bother? 
If the Republicans win the house they’ll impeach Biden for jaywalking if that’s all they can dig up on him. The GOP base will demand revenge for the Trump impeachments. The specific ‘reason’ will be mostly secondary to the performance. 
 

 

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

19 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Wouldn’t bother? 
If the Republicans win the house they’ll impeach Biden for jaywalking if that’s all they can dig up on him. The GOP base will demand revenge for the Trump impeachments. The specific ‘reason’ will be mostly secondary to the performance. 
 

 

That’s what I meant to say, wouldn’t bother.  I do believe with all that has happened at the boarder and the laptop there would be a high probability of an impeachment or at least an investigation.

[DKW 86 7,410]

Many will find it odd that anything that concerned one political side was met with wild, extreme, breathless, mindless, baseless speculation for four years. 
 

and that when it came to Biden’s Laptop we waited a year or more, poo poo any speculation at all, poo poo any facts. Instead of uncovering an explosive blockbuster story we see the media dragging their feet at every instance. This is obvious to even the most casual observer. 
 

emails seldom come as pdfs. If someone had turned an email into a pdf, for record keeping and making it near impossible to be altered it would of course have the date of that conversion in the meta data. Simple. Explanation, nothing nefarious.

same old same old. 

[jj3jordan 2,039]

15 hours ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Wouldn’t bother? 
If the Republicans win the house they’ll impeach Biden for jaywalking if that’s all they can dig up on him. The GOP base will demand revenge for the Trump impeachments. The specific ‘reason’ will be mostly secondary to the performance. 
 

 

Yes exactly. Use the democrat playbook.

[homersapien 11,352]

While we investigate Biden's son (which I am all for), let's not omit investigating Trump's son-in law:

 

Kushner’s Saudi deal must be scrutinized to protect U.S. democracy

By Ali Al-Ahmed

 

The Saudi Arabia business managers knew the deal didn’t make sense, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved it, perhaps knowing that what he was buying couldn’t be measured as a simple dollars-and-cents return on investments.

That’s how Saudi Arabia ended up giving $2 billion to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the former president who served as a senior adviser to Donald Trump in the White House. The deal has raised alarms for the obvious corruption in reflects — but the implications could be even more consequential.

Managers of the Saudi Public Investment Fund objected to the investment, citing “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management” — the firm was founded just last year by Kushner — and other risk factors. But MBS was quick to overrule their objections and ordered the transfer.

For MBS, Kushner represents another powerful domestic proxy to interfere in American politics. The crown prince has not forgiven President Biden for speaking ill of him during the campaign and now he is out for blood. MBS has picked a side and has carefully cultivated ties with Republican leaders and former Trump officials.

MBS expects a substantial return for the billions he is showering on Republican figures. Of course, Saudi interference in U.S. elections is not new. Donations made by foreign agents hired to act on behalf of Saudi interests exceeded $1.6 million in the 2018 election cycle, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

But these days MBS can be even bolder. He is obviously confident that he is immune to any pressure coming from the United States — in fact, he’s confident enough to go on the offensive.

He is encouraged by the Biden administration’s continued support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and American senior officials’ promise to protect the monarchy against external and domestic threats. There have been reports that Biden officials have discussed traveling to Saudi Arabia to repair the relationship and convince the kingdom to pump more oil.

MBS is responding with contempt. He has not condemned Russia on Ukraine, refused to increase oil production and probably leaked the news of him refusing to take Biden’s call. A few days ago a sketch on a state-funded TV station mocked Biden as a sleepy, forgetful old man.

The prospect of a dictator using his deep pockets to wield influence at the highest levels of the U.S. political system should be cause for deep concern and targeted action. Not all attacks on American democracy will take the shape of violent insurrections — the corruption of the Saudi-Kushner deal is an attack on democracy, too.

The Biden administration and Congress should look carefully into this and other suspicious transactions. Deals of this sort should trigger a legal and security review to guard the U.S. political landscape from foreign actors, especially dictators with blood on their hands, whose actions affect regular Americans at the pump every day.

Failing to scrutinize the deal will further erode trust in U.S. democracy, at home and abroad. This week, 30 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking him to review Saudi-U.S. relations and chart a new path that addresses human rights concerns long ignored by the United States. More pressure such as this is needed to get the Biden administration to move forward with an actual policy change — a long, overdue departure from unconditional support for the Saudi monarchy.

But MBS appears to be ready to counter any change. It’s clear he is willing to use his vast resources to get what he wants.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/14/saudi-arabia-kushner-deal-protect-us-democracy/

 

Haven't heard much about this from the conservative media. 

 

Oh wait,

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/14/jared-kushner-deal-saudi-arabia-mohammed-bin-salman-collections-opmiddleeast/

......Mr. Kushner and partners stand to get a $25 million per year management fee, plus a share of any profits, according to the Times.

It’s a troubling arrangement — in many ways. Mr. Kushner is well-known as having been the crown prince’s top advocate within the White House during the four years Mr. Trump occupied it. His ostensible rationale for courting MBS was to win Saudi backing for Arab recognition of Israel, which several countries did confer — though not Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kushner’s solicitude continued even after it became evident that MBS ordered the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a regime critic and Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Playing down that crime and the MBS regime’s cover-up, the Trump administration later blocked efforts in the United Nations and Congress to curb Saudi excesses in its proxy war with Iran over Yemen. Instead, Mr. Trump boosted U.S. arms sales to Riyadh.

The crown prince’s financial backing despite contrary business considerations looks to all the world like a lucrative reward to Mr. Kushner. And it creates the additional impression that what MBS is really investing in is not some real estate venture but the Trump family’s political future — specifically, a possible White House comeback by Mr. Kushner’s father-in-law if he runs again, and wins, in the 2024 presidential election. It is yet another sign — along with his refusal to raise crude oil production when the Biden administration sought help tamping down gas prices — that MBS sees his government not as a U.S. ally, but as the ally of one side in domestic partisan politics.

Mr. Kushner’s dealings are, to be sure, similar in kind to the influence-peddling in Ukraine and China of President Biden’s son, Hunter. The important difference is that Mr. Kushner, unlike the younger Mr. Biden, was not just a high official’s family member, but a high official himself: assistant to the president and senior adviser. We look forward, though not with bated breath, to Republican outrage over the Saudi-Kushner connection being at least equal to that being vented over Hunter Biden. There should be nothing partisan about ridding U.S. foreign policy of even the appearance of self-interest by those who conduct it.

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by homersapien

[I_M4_AU 7,762]

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

While we investigate Biden's son (which I am all for), let's not omit investigating Trump's son-in law

But What about _______?  I thought whataboutism was frowned upon?

[aubaseball 2,583]

Might be wrong, but didn’t he start this fund after leaving office?   If so, what is the problem?   

[CoffeeTiger 5,082]

16 minutes ago, aubaseball said:

Might be wrong, but didn’t he start this fund after leaving office?   If so, what is the problem?   

 

lol 

So you aren't curious at all why one of America's enemies suddenly give $2 Billion dollars to a former senior white house advisor and Trump family member soon after leaving office? $2 billion dollars to a brand new "investment" company that has no track record? 

 

You don't see anything weird...curious...or suspicious about it.?