Replies to post #119119 on Politics and Money

[lesgetrich]

You should have suspected something was wrong with the story when they said the emails and laptop were found by a blind computer repair guy. How does a blind guy repair computers??? The only people spreading this propaganda are what the FBI calls "useful idiots" or Russian plants. Even Trump's FBI knows this story is russian misinformation and they're focused, not on investigating Biden, but on going after Giuliani...

A tabloid got a trove of data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is probing a possible disinformation campaign

When the New York Post published the alleged contents of a computer hard drive purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business activities of Hunter Biden, the newspaper cast the information as a "smoking gun."

Enter the FBI.

Less than three weeks before one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, federal authorities are investigating whether the material supplied to the Post by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia.

The inquiry, according to a person familiar with the matter, is at least in part, aimed at determining whether Russia has set its sights on a familiar target: Biden's father, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The person is not authorized to comment on the matter publicly and asked not to be named in order to speak candidly...

...After months of investigation, two Republican-led Senate committees unveiled a report in September that found no evidence of wrongdoing or corrupt actions by the former vice president in connection with his son Hunter's business dealings in Ukraine.

But Trump and Giuliani have continued to lob allegations at the Democratic nominee, despite multiple investigations, including the recent GOP probes, that had found no basis for the claims...

...Explainer:Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn't pursue corruption cases

Giuliani, through his lawyer, declined to provide the material to USA TODAY for examination.

When Twitter initially blocked the sharing of links to the story, citing a "lack of authoritative reporting" on the origin of the source materials behind the story, the newspaper hit back in an editorial, calling the criticism "ridiculous."

The Post has not responded to requests for comment...

...The Democratic-controlled House last year approved two articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The impeachment probe was set off by an anonymous whistleblower complaint accusing Trump of using the levers of U.S. diplomacy to try to cajole Ukraine into pursuing investigations of Biden for the president's own political benefit.

Multiple senior Trump administration officials testified that they became alarmed about a July 25, 2019, call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he urged his counterpart to announce an investigation into the Bidens. Administration officials also testified of concerns that Giuliani was carrying out a "shadow diplomacy" in Ukraine focused on pressuring officials to investigate Trump's political rivals.

The Republican-controlled Senate this year acquitted Trump of the charges after a trial.

Trump and Giuliani have accused Joe Biden of seeking the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to thwart an investigation of Burisma – a claim that independent fact checkers and investigators have debunked.

Shokin was widely and publicly viewed by international organizations such as the European Union and International Monetary Fund, as well as anti-corruption investigators in Ukraine, as an impediment to reforming the country’s culture of graft.

Biden helped to oust Shokin because the prosecutor was not aggressively pursuing corruption cases. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

An examination of the matter by PolitiFact in 2019 said there was "no evidence to support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son's interests in mind. ... It's not even clear that (Burisma) was actively under investigation or that a change in prosecutors benefited it."

Last month, the two Republican-led Senate committees investigating the claims said in an 87-page report that Hunter Biden's role on the Burisma board was "problematic" but said it was "unclear" whether it ever affected U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration...