Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
its been more than 3 months since the sale of assets to boots(BTZI), we were supposed to receive one share of BTZI for each share of BITCF we own PR of July 10th 2020, so far NOTHING. WHEN WILL WE RECEIVE THESE SHARES?
The government awards patents. The courts can be used to decide whether a company has violated a patent and the company can be ordered by the court to pay a reasonable royalty. If they refuse, the company can be ordered to stop selling their product or service. The following article gives a pretty good explanation of how Patents are enforced...
Patent Infringement: It's More Common than You Think
To understand what patent infringement is, and why and how patent infringement occurs, one needs to first look at the history of U.S. patents and how they came into existence.
The concept for U.S. patents was established by the founding fathers in Article I, Section 8 of the original U.S. Constitution that was adopted in 1787.
It gives Congress the power to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Since patents were included in the original version of the U.S. Constitution, patent rights are actually older than such other basic American rights, such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech -- rights that were not established until the adoption of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) in 1791, 14 years later.
A U.S. patent is a limited monopoly granted to an inventor by the federal government for his or her invention. A patent gives the patent owner (or "patentee") the right to exclude others from using his patented invention without his or her permission.
U.S. patents are governed by the federal law known as 35 U.S.C. (United States Code). According to Section 271 of that law, patent infringement occurs when an entity -- usually a business -- "makes, uses, offers to sell or sells" a product or service that uses a patented invention.
Permission to use a patent is given in the form of a license. The patent is licensed to a manufacturer, for example, and in return the manufacturer pays the patent owner a royalty based on unit sales, dollar sales or some other criteria.
The other option is for the patent owner to sell the patent, and patents can be bought and sold just like any other asset...
...Patent infringement is not a crime, so there are no criminal penalties.
It is a civil matter, and one of the reasons why patent infringement is so common is because the civil penalties are not severe. If a patent owner sues a manufacturer for patent infringement and wins, the redress awarded by the court is defined by law as "reasonable royalties."
In other words, what the patent owner is entitled to is the royalty he would have charged the manufacturer of the infringing product had the manufacturer licensed the patent in the first place.
As a result, it sometimes makes sense for a manufacturer to rush to market with a new product since the royalty he might end up paying to the owner of a patent is essentially the same as the royalty the manufacturer would have paid in the first place had it licensed the patent.
The exception to this is willful infringement. If the patent owner can prove that the infringer knew about the patent, and proceeded to willfully infringe it, the patent owner is entitled to treble (legalese for triple) damages.
The challenge, however, is that it is very difficult to prove willful infringement.
The other option a patent owner has is injunctive relief.
If the patent owner practices the patent (uses the patent in a product or service that is manufactured, used, sold or offered for sale), the court may order the infringer to cease sales of the infringing product.
If the infringing product is manufactured outside of the United States, the court can only order the company to cease importation of the product into the U.S...
If they're profitable enough, there's no need for a reverse split. I've just shown that based on the Crypto ATM patent alone, they could be worth more than $1/share in the next 12 to 18 months.
We're in a different world here folks. Bots is no longer a marijuana company. The banking system system is no longer closed off to them like it used to be.
BTW, Your a quarter billion off on your OS estimate. The OS as of yesterday was 771,874,596 shares.
I've read the patent. It's very descriptive. I don't see how any machine that collects and dispenses cash and interfaces with a cryptocurrency exchange can avoid it. This may have been the main reason for merging BITCF and BTZI in the first place given that Bots/mCig had already tried once before to deploy crypto ATM's. Bots probably ran into this roadblock before and saw the value, whereas First Bitcoin needed a vehicle to deploy the patent that wasn't tainted by a trading halt. JMO
OTC Markets lists the float at 380,753,902 shares as of 6/18/2020
There aren't any at the moment. The company needs to recruit some MM's before they can remove the trading halt that was imposed in 2017 but they don't seem to be in any hurry to do so. Right now they seem to be focused on building up their investment in Bots (BTZI).
Based on the analysis in my last post, a reverse split would not be necessary or desirable.
There's nothing magical about $.25/share. Ultimately, the pps depends on what people think is the earnings potential of the company. Their estimate of this earnings potential is periodically verified or proven wrong by the company's financials.
For about the past year, BTZI shareholders have been giving the company the benefit of the doubt and, in light of its restructuring, have been treating it more like a startup with no revenue than an established company. At some point, however, they'll have to produce some revenue and positive earnings to maintain their pps.
The recent price spike seems to be driven by the patent announcement. If we assume my analysis of revenue in my post # 106827 is correct...
BTZI post # 106827
BTZI should realize about $15,000,000 in revenue the first year the patent is enforced with an additional $10,000,000 in subsequent annual revenue. Except for legal fees, these revenues would come at virtually no cost to Bots, and will grow each year as new ATM's are installed. There's also the potential that, at some point, all existing US ATM's will need to incorporate cryptocurrency transactions. This would make them all subject to the patent. However we won't get ahead of ourselves for now.
Let's just conservatively assume that BTZI could bring in $10,000,000/yr in earnings for now. I like to estimate what I refer to as a rational pps range using the following technique...
Using the NYU Stern School analysis of Price/Earnings (P/E) Ratios by Industry, I theorize that BTZI could be categorized under either Financial Services, which has a forward P/E of 16.93x or Software (System & Application) with a forward PE of 76.82x. BTZI currently (as of yesterday) has an OS count of 771,874,596 shares. Using these assumptions, we can estimate a rational price range as follows...
$10,000,000 earnings / 771,874,596 shares OS = $.013 Earnings Per Share (EPS)
$.013 EPS x 16.93 = $.22/share pps to
$.013 EPS x 76.82 = $1.00/share pps
Consequently, based on these assumptions, a price target in the range of $.22 to $1.00 is rational for BTZI. This doesn't mean that the company will hit either of these targets, only that they are possible if all the assumptions are met. Keep these estimates in mind and see if they're borne out by further facts about the company (e.g. future financials) as they come in.
BTZI would still be a separate public company with its own bookkeeping and it's own set of financials. Nothing would change. The changes would all be on First Bitcoin's financials which would include BTZI's financials.
First Bitcoin can't dissolve BTZI without buying out all of the public shareholders. We all own a percentage of Bots. As Bots grows, our ownership piece of the company (as represented by our shares) increases in value. This does not change.
Why do you think that BTZI would never surpass $.25/share??
Regarding how BITCF doesn't reap all of the benefits, since Bot's is a public company, if BITCF owns a majority interest (i.e. >50%) they can do a consolidated statement on their financials. They still end up claiming the value of only the portion of BTZI that they own as an asset. Here's how it works...
The Method of Reporting a Minority Interest in Consolidated Financial Statements
Minority Or Noncontrolling Interests
When one entity or person possesses the requisite majority control, all other business investors or owners make up the minority, or non-controlling, interest. For example, suppose you hold 70 percent of the outstanding voting shares in a corporation. Controlling more than 70 percent of shareholder votes requires you to prepare consolidated financial statements that include 100 percent of the corporation's income, losses and assets, as well as all other items that are disclosed on financial statements. But since you don't own 100 percent of the corporation, GAAP also requires you to report the amounts attributed to the 30-percent ownership of minority interest holders.
Consolidated Balance Sheet Reporting
Your consolidated balance sheet will already include all of the subsidiary's assets and liabilities, so it isn't necessary, nor is it correct, to report your investment in the subsidiary on the consolidated balance sheet. A consolidated balance sheet must disclose the minority interest holders' total share of the subsidiary's net assets. To illustrate, suppose the subsidiary has $100,000 in net assets -- which is reflected on your consolidated balance sheet. Thirty percent, or $30,000, of those net assets technically belongs to minority interest holders and must be disclosed on the consolidated balance sheet. This is done by reporting $30,000 on a line, such as “Minority interest in net assets,” before the equity section of the consolidated balance sheet.
Consolidated Income Statement Reporting
Like the balance sheet, your consolidated income statement also includes 100 percent of the subsidiary's revenue and expenses. To compute consolidated net income, however, GAAP requires that you subtract the income or loss attributed to minority interest holders and disclose that amount on a line such as, “Net income attributable to the non-controlling interest.” In other words, if the subsidiary reports net income of $100,000, the full amount is included in the consolidated income statement but you'll disclose that $30,000 of it is attributed to minority shareholders.
If BITCF takes a majority hold in BTZI how would that be good for BTZI shareholders?
First Bitcoin transferred the patent to Bots as part of the price they paid for Bots stock. Technically, First Bitcoin is still listed with the patent office as the patent owner but BITCF's ownership of and agreement with Bots takes precedence. Bots will claim all of the revenue. However, assuming BITCF owns more than 20% but less than 50% of Bots, as they do now, First Bitcoin will also claim a percentage of the earnings on their financials that's equal to the percentage of Bots that they own. If/when First Bitcoin inc increases their ownership of Bots above 50%, they then will be able to produce a consolidated statement which includes all of Bots' financials within the BITCF financials. The following link explains how the accounting works...
Consolidation vs. Equity Method of Accounting
How the Accounting Works
Suppose you buy 30 percent of the stock in a $1 million company – a $300,000 expense. Under equity accounting, you report the $300,000 acquisition as an asset on the balance sheet. When the second company announces earnings, you report 30 percent of the earnings as your own income.
If it reports $240,000 of net income for the year, you report $72,000 of that – 30 percent – as earnings on your income statement. The value of the asset on your balance sheet increases by $72,000. If, instead, the company reports losses, you adjust the asset's value down.
If you control the other company, you have to draw up consolidated financial statements. These add the subsidiary's income, expenses and assets to your own. If, say, your company generates $250,000 in revenue and the subsidiary brings in $160,000, you report income of $410,000.
However, if you do any business with the subsidiary – contracting with it for services or supplies, for example – you have to eliminate those deals from your income statement. Consolidated accounting doesn't count the sale as income, because you're really selling to yourself.
That's a severe move by the sec to impose on a company solely based on association alone.
Maybe you should look in the mirror. There's some doubt that your guy is eligible for a White House gig...
The Trump Files: When Donald Had to Prove He Was Not the Son of an Orangutan
Donald Trump has a well-documented tendency to file lawsuits when someone hurts his feelings. In 2013, the guilty party was Bill Maher, the late-night HBO talk show host known for his liberal leanings and biting commentary.
After Trump had insisted in 2012 that President Barack Obama release his college transcripts and passport records, Maher pushed back on the mogul’s request with a demand of his own: that Trump show proof that he is not “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.” Maher, interviewed on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show, cited the similarity in color between Trump’s coif and an orange orangutan’s fur, as split-screen images of Trump next to the animal were displayed. If Trump complied with the request and proved him wrong, Maher promised he would give Trump $5 million for the charity of his choice. The charities Maher suggested? “Hair Club for Men” or the “Institute for Incorrigible Douchebaggery.”
Trump took the jab personally. He filed a $5 million lawsuit against Maher for breach of contract, alleging that when he provided his birth certificate to Maher proving he is not, in fact, the son of an orangutan, Maher never came up with the $5 million. Alas, the lawsuit didn’t get very far. Trump wound up dropping it, but the threat to Maher remained.
Stock promotions are never a good thing.
For whatever reason, they've apparently decided to turn First Bitcoin into a holding company by transferring all of its assets to Bots. The owners of First Bitcoin now own most of Bots and indirectly still own all of their former assets, including the patent, and the profits that come from them.
First Bitcoin was never singled out for suspension. It was suspended in 2017 along with all of the other cryptocurrency companies because there was no reliable way to value new cryptocurrency issues. That problem appears to have been solved by the sale of the crypto assets to Bots for a defined value. Consequently, they now have a cost basis from which to derive profit or loss for proper GAP accounting.
That's BS. He can't sell his own shares because he hasn't owned them long enough. If he owns more than 5% of the OS he also is subject to SEC reporting. His only incentive to promote the shares is to eventually benefit his own investment. If that helps anyone else, like the shareholders on this board, so be it. He was hired for promotion and that's what he's doing and expected to do. There's nothing sinister about this except in your imagination.
The stop sign is only a warning to investors that BTZI isn't current on their financials. It doesn't actually stop anyone from trading.
BTZI is still in the process of evolving into a new business plan. I doubt if they've had much revenue to report for the past nine months. Consequently, they're probably not in any hurry to reveal their financials.
I expect that will change significantly in the next nine months. JMO
After you spread a baseless rumor that the SEC was planning on shutting Bots down, it seems to me the only people pumping anything here is your side.
Folks, pumping negative stories can be just as profitable for some people as pumping positive stories is for others. The difference is that people granted shares by a company have to wait a minimum of six months before they can dispose of them. Short sellers can profit immediately.
You have the link to the patent. Feel free to try to identify a loophole.
Regarding...
Where are these ATMs exactly?
The last minute October surprise smears are falling on deaf ears this time. There's still zero evidence that any crime was committed or that Joe Biden was actually involved. Hunter Biden isn't running for president. Joe Biden is and more than half the swing states have already voted early. Your only hope is cheating with massive voter suppression and legal gymnastics to not count valid votes.
Too bad bubby!
Read the patent! I did. It was granted in 2014 and last registered to First Bitcoin. It's very detailed and describes all aspect of an ATM servicing Bitcoins at both a general and detailed level.
Bitcoin ATM Patent
I find it hard to imagine any Bitcoin ATM that wouldn't be subject to it. Unlike with mCig's ATM strategy, which required convincing franchisee's to invest $20,000+ per ATM, all Bot's has to do is hire a lawyer on contingency (i.e. he/she only gets paid if they win) to enforce the patent on existing and future ATM's.
The PR states that there are roughly 9,000 ATM's currently in the US. Let's say that the purchase price averages around $10,000 per unit and that each ATM nets about $2,000 per month in fees. Using a very conservative 5% royalty (royalties can run as high as 25%), we can estimate a one time royalty on the sale of currently installed units as...
9,000 x $10,000 x 5% = $4,500,000 one time on current units
$500/unit on future sales
Moreover, since the patent applies to the use of these machines, we can anticipate continuing royalty payments per month of...
9,000 x $2,000 x 5% x 12 = $10,800,000/yr ongoing
$1,200/yr/unit on each future unit sale
This is virtually free revenue folks!
Wake up folks! This is big news! Free money on the horizon...
BOTS INC. Owns the Only USPTO Granted Patent for Bitcoin Kiosk/ATM
San Juan, PUERTO RICO, Oct. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BOTS, Inc. (OTC: BTZI), an emerging innovator of products, technologies, and services for the rapidly growing cyber-security, digital robotics automation and AI for manufacturing industry announced today that it has/owns the rights to U.S. Patent No. 9,135,787 - “Bitcoin Kiosk / ATM Device and System Integrating Enrollment Protocol and Method of Using the Same.” Known as the “Bitcoin ATM patent” this patent is related to the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies utilizing a Bitcoin ATM or kiosk that allows customers to purchase Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies by using cash, debit or credit cards.
Bitcoin ATMs do not require their users to have bank accounts, so customers can simply pay and instantly buy or sell Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Paul Rosenberg, Company’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “We own one of the most important intellectual properties in this space, as we believe that this patent will provide us a unique and leveraged position, in addition to our other businesses. This patent complements our innovation in the field.”
The United States still houses a significant percentage of all the Bitcoin ATMs installed globally. According to Coinatmradar, cryptocurrency ATMs have been installed in 9,187 locations in the US (https://coinatmradar.com)
All Bitcoin ATMs and Kiosks manufactured and sold in the U.S., and all Bitcoin ATMs and Kiosks operated in the U.S. are believed to be subject to this patent and the company intends to enforce its right.
The Company has already begun negotiations with a major law firm that has a very successful track record in enforcing patent rights when working on a contingency basis.
About BOTS, Inc.
Headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico, BOTS, Inc., a publicly traded OTC Markets innovator trading under the symbol (BTZI) - is a diversified company developing and servicing blockchain and robotics solutions for its clientele. The Company is committed to driving the innovations needed to shape the future of digital robotic automation management through digital technology and decentralized blockchain solutions. Management is dedicated to the strong growth of Distributed Asset Technology and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Shareholders, potential investors, and others should note that we announce material events and material financial information to our shareholders and the public using our website and the social media addresses listed below, as well as in our SEC filings, press releases, public conference calls, and webcasts. We also use social media to communicate with our subscribers and the public about our Company, our services, and other issues. It is possible that the information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information. Therefore, we encourage shareholders, the media, and others interested in our Company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media channels listed below. This list may be updated from time to time.
Track BTZI news on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/Bots.Bz/
Follow BTZI news on Twitter @Bots_bz www.Twitter.com/Bots_bz
Find BTZI news at http://www.bots.bz
Bots, Inc. has been featured in media nationwide, including CNBC, Bloomberg, TheStreet.com.
For more information, visit http://www.bots.bz
Visit BTZI on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Bots.Bz/
Follow BTZI on Twitter @Bots_bz
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as may be disclosed in the Company's filings. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. Such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's website and filings.
Contact:
Paul Rosenberg, CEO
paul@bots.bz
Source: Bots, Inc.
Thanks, I do the same thing on my facebook page (i.e. keep the trolls around) but I do it not only for people to see how idiotic their arguments are but also to show people how to launch a counter argument and reveal the true facts. If you let people repeat lies over and over without refuting them, people start believing there's some truth to the lies. Clearly, our Trump Chump trolls believe in the power of repetition over reality.
PS I've noticed people have stopped attacking the ACA on this board LOL
If the two of you have finished your circle jerk, no one believes your Russian propaganda claims anymore. You lost all credibility during the impeachment when it was proven to everyone, except spineless sitting Republican Senators, that Trump was trying to leverage US foreign aid for Ukraine in order to get them to fabricate evidence against Hunter Biden. The Russians are still trying to feed you lies about Hunter and the laptop but real news sources aren't falling for them this time. BTW Hunter isn't running for President. Joe is, and you guys can't even settle on what crime your accusing him of!...
Politifact - Facebook posts stated on October 18, 2020 in a text post: Says “Hunter Biden had 25,000 pics of him torturing and raping children under age 10 in China on his laptop.”
- There is no evidence that a laptop previously belonging to Hunter Biden contains child pornography. The allegation originated on an anonymous internet forum that’s a known source of online disinformation...
...On Oct. 15, Chanel Rion, the chief White House correspondent for One America News Network — a pro-Trump cable TV network — tweeted that she had seen the contents of the hard drive at the center of the New York Post story.
"Drugs, underage obsessions, power deals," she said in the post. "Druggie Hunter makes Anthony Weiner's down under selfie addiction look normal."
The tweet, which was shared more than 53,000 times, then made its way to 4chan, where users anonymously speculated that it meant the FBI was investigating Hunter Biden. One user posing as Rion affirmed that speculation, saying the hard drive contained child pornography.
The real Rion tweeted Oct. 16 that she did not write the posts.
"For the record: I do not post on chat forums," she wrote. "I understand there are hoaxers posing as me."
But it was too late. Social media users dedicated to QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory that claims Trump is secretly fighting a cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic, left-leaning pedophiles, took the 4chan posts as evidence that the FBI was investigating Hunter Biden for potentially possessing child pornography...
...Remember these points as you see claims about the laptop and stories around it.
- It's unclear if the name on the back of the subpoena actually belongs to Joshua Wilson, or if there’s more than one FBI agent who goes by that name. It’s also unconfirmed if the subpoena in the Post’s story was for the laptop.
- Federal investigators are looking into whether emails found on the laptop could be linked to a foreign intelligence operation to discredit Joe Biden. (More than 50 former intelligence officials told Politico they appear to be. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe says they’re not.)
- Staffers at the Post expressed concerns about the story’s credibility before it was published. Fox News passed on the story until the emails could be properly vetted.
- The owner of the computer repair shop told reporters that, while he couldn’t confirm it was Hunter Biden who dropped off the laptop because he is "legally blind," he also said he didn't see child pornography on the computer.
- No other news organizations have seen or corroborated the data supposedly on the laptop's hard drive...
...Several Facebook posts claim "Hunter Biden had 25,000 pics of him torturing and raping children under age 10 in China on his laptop."
There is no evidence to support that.
The allegation originated on an anonymous internet forum that’s a known source of online disinformation, and conspiracy websites that reported the claims relied on anonymous sources to back them up. The New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop is unconfirmed — but it also does not mention child pornography. The owner of the computer repair shop where the laptop came from told reporters he didn’t see child pornography on it.
Without information to support the allegations, we rate the posts False.
This is about as low as I've seen you go. Spreading a false rumor about the SEC shutting a company down is like a pump and dump in reverse.
BTW First Bitcorp wasn't singled out by the SEC when it got shut down. It was shut down at the same time as virtually all of the other cryptocurrency companies because the SEC was worried that there was no established verifiable way to value new cryptocurrency issue assets.
That story was so obviously Russian propaganda that even your right wing media icon, The Wall Street Journal, wouldn't publish it as news...
Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It.
By Ben Smith
Oct. 25, 2020
Inside the White House’s secret, last-ditch effort to change the narrative, and the election — and the return of the media gatekeepers.
By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Trump’s re-election campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Va., to launch one.
The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Mr. Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Mr. Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.
The three had pinned their hopes for re-electing the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Mr. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.
The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Mr. Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.
As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Mr. Bender and Mr. Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Mr. Areddy interviewed Mr. Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.
Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for President Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Mr. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Mr. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Mr. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.
While the Trump team was clearly jumpy, editors in The Journal’s Washington bureau were wrestling with a central question: Could the documents, or Mr. Bobulinski, prove that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s lobbying? Or was this yet another story of the younger Mr. Biden trading on his family’s name — a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.
Mr. Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Mr. Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late — and could shape that week’s news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An “important piece” in The Journal would be coming soon, Mr. Trump told aides on a conference call that day.
His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal.
“The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a Journal reporter who wasn’t directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House’s frantic timeline.
Finally, Mr. Bobulinski got tired of waiting.
“He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not,” Mr. Bannon said.
At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Mr. Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville to attend the debate as Mr. Trump’s surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son’s business dealings.
When Mr. Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. “You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not,” he told Mr. Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.
As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Mr. Areddy and Mr. Duehren’s reporting. The core of it was that Mr. Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden,” The Journal reported.
Asked about The Journal’s handling of the story, the editor in chief, Matt Murray, said the paper did not discuss its newsgathering. “Our rigorous and trusted journalism speaks for itself,” Mr. Murray said in an emailed statement.
And if you’d been watching the debate, but hadn’t been obsessively watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, you would have had no idea what Mr. Trump was talking about. The story the Trump team hoped would upend the campaign was fading fast.
The gatekeepers return
The McLean group's failed attempt to sway the election is partly just another story revealing the chaotic, threadbare quality of the Trump operation — a far cry from the coordinated “disinformation” machinery feared by liberals.
But it’s also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.
It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn’t. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.
By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn’t control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read — and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn’t mean much.
But the last two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn’t reach that conclusion.
Perhaps the most influential media document of the last four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged — and that the mainstream news “revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set.”
Mr. Bannon had known this, too. He described his strategy as “anchor left, pivot right,” and even as he ran Breitbart News, he worked to place attacks on Hillary Clinton in mainstream outlets. The validating power of those outlets was clear when The New York Times and Washington Post were given early access in the spring of 2015 to the book “Clinton Cash,” an investigation of the Clinton family’s blurring of business, philanthropic and political interests by the writer Peter Schweizer.
Mr. Schweizer is still around this cycle. But you won’t find his work in mainstream outlets. He’s over on Breitbart, with a couple of Hunter Biden stories this month.
And the fact that Mr. Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Mr. Bannon’s nightmare, and Mr. Benkler’s fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden’s doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Mr. Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent.
“SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK,” the conservative writer Glenn Reynolds complained Oct. 20, posting the article instead to his blog. President Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News.
“This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Mr. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Mr. Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.
The media’s control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can’t actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business. But what Mr. Benkler’s research showed was that the elite outlets’ ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.
We should have known it, of course. Many of our readers, screaming about headlines on Twitter, did. And Mr. Trump knew it all along — one way to read his endless attacks on the establishment media is as an expression of obsession, a form of love. This week, you can hear howls of betrayal from people who have for years said the legacy media was both utterly biased and totally irrelevant.
“For years, we’ve respected and even revered the sanctified position of the free press,” wrote Dana Loesch, a right-wing commentator not particularly known for her reverence of legacy media, expressing frustration that the Biden story was not getting attention. “Now that free press points its digital pen at your throat when you question their preferences.”
On the other side of the gate
There’s something amusing — even a bit flattering — in such earnest protestations from a right-wing movement rooted in efforts to discredit the independent media. And this reassertion of control over information is what you’ve seen many journalists call for in recent years. At its best, it can also close the political landscape to a trendy new form of dirty tricks, as in France in 2017, where the media largely ignored a last-minute dump of hacked emails from President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign just before a legally mandated blackout period.
But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. “The media’s new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see — not to ignore it,” my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.
This fall, top media and tech executives were bracing to refight the last war — a foreign-backed hack-and-leak operation like WikiLeaks seeking to influence the election’s outcome. It was that hyper-vigilance that led Twitter to block links to The New York Post’s article about Hunter Biden — a frighteningly disproportionate response to a story that other news organizations were handling with care. The schemes of Mr. Herschmann, Mr. Passantino and Mr. Schwartz weren’t exactly WikiLeaks. But the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.
I’d prefer to put my faith in Mr. Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them.
Who the hell would remain silent if they were accused of smoking crack, harboring child porn, and posing seductively w/ their underage niece?
Just more suspect BS from the usual sources. No October surprise this time...
Trump to bring Hunter Biden's ex-business associate Tony Bobulinski to final debate, claims Fox News
Donald Trump intends to bring Hunter Biden’s reported former business associate, Tony Bobulinski, as his guest to the final presidential debate.
The news of Mr Trump’s guest was reported by John Roberts, Fox News’ Chief White House Correspondent.
Mr Bobulinski claims that he was CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, a firm that he alleged was “a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family", Fox News reported.
Mr Bobulinski’s emails formed a large part of the story published this month by the New York Post, which claimed that Hunter Biden had connected a Ukrainian board member of the energy company, Burisma, with his father while he was vice president.
Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lawyer, appears to have been a source for the story, as was Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who is now facing federal fraud charges.
Other outlets, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times have been unable to independently verify or authenticate the story. The Times reported on Wednesday that some New York Post reporters would not allow their bylines to be added to the story.
More than 50 senior intelligence officials signed a letter earlier this month saying that the Hunter Biden emails story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.
In a conference call with reporters ahead of Thursday night’s debate, Mr Biden’s campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said that Mr Trump would be “amplifying Russian disinformation” if he brings it up.
What travel ban? You mean the one Trump keeps lying about?
430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced
There were 1,300 direct flights to 17 cities before President Trump’s travel restrictions. Since then, nearly 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers have made the trip, some this past week and many with spotty screening.
Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries.
The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States.
Flights continued this past week, the data show, with passengers traveling from Beijing to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, under rules that exempt Americans and some others from the clampdown that took effect on Feb. 2. In all, 279 flights from China have arrived in the United States since then, and screening procedures have been uneven, interviews show.