Federal criminal investigation Hunter Biden focuses on his business dealings (Update: DOJ appoints special counsel) (1 Viewer)

[SaintForLife]

Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, Senate Republicans revealed in their report on the younger Biden’s work in Ukraine.

Baturina is referenced in the 87-page report, which was released Wednesday, addressing her payment to Biden’s investment firm in early 2014.

“Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” it said in providing background on the businesswoman.

The report described her involvement with Biden as “a financial relationship,” but declined to delve deeper into why the wire transfer was made.

The probe also found that Baturina sent 11 wires transfers between May and December 2015 to a bank account belonging to BAK USA, a tech startup that filed for bankruptcy in March 2019.

Nine of those 11 wire transfers were first sent to Rosemont Seneca Partners, the investment firm founded by Biden and Chris Heinz, stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, before being transferred to BAK USA.

Hunter Biden received $3.5M wire transfer from Russian billionaire: Senate report

Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, Senate Republicans revealed in their r…

nypost.com

We all know their is massive corruption on both sides of the aisle. Here is an alleged allegation against Hunter Biden who was allegedly enriching himself because his Dad was Vice President.

 

[coldseat]

I get your points in the first paragraph there and they're reasonable and ones that I have thought about especially back when we first heard about this stuff.. but I guess to just illustrate how I feel, I'm very confident in saying that if the roles were reversed and this was in regards to Trump Jr instead of Hunter Biden that there would not have been the rush and decisiveness in labeling it as disinformation.

I don't know. I feel there is a whole lot of nefarious stuff that the Trump's kids and family have done that have been ignored or not reported extensively by the media because of the of the megaphone coming from Trump's mouth and the craziness of his administration. As much reporting as there has been on Trump, a lot has also gotten washed over because of the volume of crap.

Also, there's still nothing there tying it to Biden himself. Especially given the fact that the FBI has the laptop and Biden still isn't implicated or being investigated.

 

[SaintForLife]

In researching the book, I spoke to a person who had had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails. This person was not in a position to compare the leaked emails word-for-word with the originals, but they said Hunter Biden had in fact received an email containing the “10 held by H for the big guy?” language and another from a Burisma representative thanking him for the opportunity to meet Joe Biden.

I also obtained a cache of the purported laptop files from people working with the right-wing operative Steve Bannon, one of the people behind the original leak. I was able to confirm that some other parts of the material are genuine. Two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden in the months leading up to his father’s 2019 campaign launch confirmed to me the authenticity of emails in the cache. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of being embroiled in a global controversy.

Finally, emails in the cache matched emails released to me by the National Property Board of Sweden, a Swedish government agency, under the country’s freedom of information law. (For a time, Hunter Biden had an office inside the complex that houses the Swedish embassy.)

While at least some of the laptop material is genuine, it remains possible that fake material is mixed in.

‘Hiding the Ball’: Hunter Biden Complicates White House Anti-Corruption Push

Questions about the First Son could detract from the president’s efforts to position himself as a global good-government crusader.

www.google.com

Other interesting parts of the article:

...In December, Hunter Biden acknowledged the existence of a federal criminal investigation of his tax affairs, which has focused on his dealings overseas, including in China. POLITICO also reported on the FBI’s interest in one of Biden’s brothers, James Biden, as part of an ongoing investigation of a hospital operator to which he was tied. That investigation, which remained active as of late last year, focused in part on alleged representations James Biden made in investment pitches about the value of his last name and influence, according to a former official with firsthand knowledge of it.

On his first day in office, Biden named a law partner of his son’s defense attorney as interim head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, an arrangement that risked running afoul of the department’s conflict-of-interest rules. On the same day, Biden’s brother Frank highlighted his relationship to the president in a newspaper ad for a Florida law firm. Since then, Biden’s other brother, James, bowed out of an energy venture in the U.K. following a White House ethics review, according to the Financial Times.

...Hunter Biden’s work for MBNA, a Delaware-based bank whose employees were at one time among his father’s top campaign donors. After leaving the bank and becoming a federal lobbyist, Hunter Biden received outside consulting fees from the bank.

While MBNA was paying Hunter Biden, Joe Biden championed a bill sought by the bank that made it more difficult for people to shed credit card debt through personal bankruptcy. Progressives, especially then-law professor Elizabeth Warren, opposed the bill, but Biden was able to help secure its 2005 passage.

...James Biden’s sale of land in the Virgin Islands to Scott Green, a former Biden Senate staffer working as a federal lobbyist and government contractor. James Biden also received a loan from the lobbyist, who later indicated it had been repaid. Green and some of his clients benefited from Joe Biden’s actions in the Senate and the Obama administration. That included Biden’s work securing funding for the non-profit Drug Abuse Resistance Education program and for a Department of Homeland Security program meant to improve communications systems for first responders.

• James Biden’s receipt of an executive role at construction firm HillStone International during his brother’s vice presidency, despite a lack of previous experience in the industry. Following James Biden’s arrival, the firm and its parent company landed contracts worth an estimated $1.5 billion to build housing in Iraq. The deal came via a South Korean firm that had received a contract from Iraq’s U.S.-supported government. At the time, Joe Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s Iraq policy.

 

[bdb13]

So, how is it “mostly accurate”? The NY Post story?

From what I have read, the only thing we know for sure is that a computer store guy in Delaware had a laptop he said was dropped off by Hunter Biden and never picked up. He called the FBI, and eventually they picked it up. He says he made a copy of the hard drive which he gave to Rudy. The laptop hasn’t been seen since the FBI picked it up.

Here’s the important part: The collection of files that some very unreliable people are calling the laptop has been manipulated multiple times. It had many folders and files added to it by multiple people after the date the FBI took possession of the actual laptop.

It does contain some material that seems to be legitimate emails from or to Hunter, about 2% of the material on the hard drive. Experts cannot determine whether these emails were actually copied from the computer hard drive or the result of hacking of Hunter’s email. Even so, there’s nothing alarming in the verified emails. All of the supposedly salacious stuff was added to the files after the date when the FBI picked up the laptop.

Reminder: the NY Post is the paper who had an unverified story that the government was buying Harris’ book and giving it to migrant children at the border. They knew it was false and they told the reporter to file it anyway. The reporter later quit and exposed the management for running a false story.

Twitter and FB were in a no-win situation. They did what they thought was best. I’m fine with it. We can certainly imagine that more of the story will eventually come out, but from what they knew at the time, it was highly dubious. Heck, the slant that the NY Post was putting on the story is still highly dubious.

Here is a contemporaneous NYT article. I find it interesting to note what was being reported by an actual competent outlet as opposed to the NY Post, which is anything but that.

What We Know and Don’t About Hunter Biden and a Laptop (Published 2020)

President Trump’s allies have promoted claims of corruption aimed at the former vice president’s son in an effort to damage the Biden campaign.

www.nytimes.com

Well I said 'fairly accurate' not mostly accurate lol, but I was sort of asking there too honestly hence the question mark, but I digress..

From The Washington Post article:

The portable drive provided to The Post contains 286,000 individual user files, including documents, photos, videos and chat logs. Of those, Green and Williams concluded that nearly 22,000 emails among those files carried cryptographic signatures that could be verified using technology that would be difficult for even the most sophisticated hackers to fake.
..
Green, working with two graduate students, verified 1,828 emails — less than 2 percent of the total — but struggled with others that had technical flaws they could not resolve. He said the most common problems resulted from alterations caused when the MacBook’s mail-handling software downloaded files with attachments in a way that made cryptographic verification of those messages difficult.

Williams verified a larger number of emails, nearly 22,000 in total — which included almost all of the ones Green had verified — after overcoming that problem by using software to correct alterations in the files. But he encountered obstacles with other emails that were only partially downloaded onto the drive, creating incomplete files that could not be verified cryptographically. Most of these files, he said, were probably just snippets of emails that would allow a user to preview the messages without downloading the full files.

So the two experts are expressing a high level of confidence in the authenticity of those 22,000 emails and within that you have the one referenced here:

One of the verified emails from Pozharskyi, which was the focus of one of the initial stories from the New York Post, was written on April 17, 2015. It thanked Hunter Biden “for inviting me to DC and giving me an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.

When the email first emerged in the New York Post about three weeks before the 2020 election, the Biden campaign and Hunter Biden’s lawyer both denied that Pozharskyi had ever met with Joe Biden. Asked recently about the email, the White House pointed to the previous denials, which The Post has examined in detail.

Anyway.. at the very least it's all a bad look and ripe for criticism.

 

[bdb13]

I don't know. I feel there is a whole lot of nefarious stuff that the Trump's kids and family have done that have been ignored or not reported extensively by the media because of the of the megaphone coming from Trump's mouth and the craziness of his administration. As much reporting as there has been on Trump, a lot has also gotten washed over because of the volume of crap.

Also, there's still nothing there tying it to Biden himself. Especially given the fact that the FBI has the laptop and Biden still isn't implicated or being investigated.

I think the volume of crap thing with Trump is the biggest thing there man.. a corrupt Don Jr story can't really even have the same impact as a corrupt Hunter Biden story as there's so much out there and we've all already known and assumed that the Trumps are nothing more than corrupt pieces of shirt.

 

[MT15]

Here is the main point of the Politico article that SFL posted:

“Biden’s relatives have denied allegations of wrongdoing, and none have been accused of criminal misdeeds related to their business dealings. The president has said that he does not discuss his relatives’ dealings with them, and no proof has emerged that he has taken official actions on account of their business interests.”

Everything else is bad appearances on the part of some of Joe’s relatives and speculation.

The total hypocrisy of people like SFL, who cared not one whit about truly appalling and rampant corruption during Trump’s term, is probably causing me to just not care about this stuff. Sorry, not sorry. Everything SFL claims to hate about the freaking Steele dossier, which was never that big of a story and wasn’t all that important, he is doing himself with this crazy laptop story.

When we get files from the actual laptop, not these manipulated files from the zombie Zip drive, I will maybe take this seriously.

 

[SaintForLife]

Here is the main point of the Politico article that SFL posted:

“Biden’s relatives have denied allegations of wrongdoing, and none have been accused of criminal misdeeds related to their business dealings. The president has said that he does not discuss his relatives’ dealings with them, and no proof has emerged that he has taken official actions on account of their business interests.”

Everything else is bad appearances on the part of some of Joe’s relatives and speculation.

The total hypocrisy of people like SFL, who cared not one whit about truly appalling and rampant corruption during Trump’s term, is probably causing me to just not care about this stuff. Sorry, not sorry. Everything SFL claims to hate about the freaking Steele dossier, which was never that big of a story and wasn’t all that important, he is doing himself with this crazy laptop story.

When we get files from the actual laptop, not these manipulated files from the zombie Zip drive, I will maybe take this seriously.

OMG. It just keeps getting better. I'm the reason you don't care about the corruption? Seriously?

That's a bald faced lie about the Steele Dossier and you know it.

I had said plenty of times in the past that Trump was corrupt, was probably guilty of money laundering and that both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of corruption. I just didn't foam at the mouth like you guys did for 4 years.

Remember I've said multiple times, the cover up and censorship of the Hunter Biden story is way bigger than the actual corruption.

It's funny how you picked the denial from the Biden’s as the main part of the article. What does their denials prove,

 

[MT15]

No, you sure think a lot of yourself. Lol.

So, now you’re admitting there really isn’t corruption, that it’s the “cover-up”? That’s awesome. I feel like this is a real break-through.

And it’s not a lie about the Steele Dossier, it’s an opinion. It is shared by many people, though, it’s not merely my own.

 

[DaveXA]

For example: this site. If Andrus loses the ability to decide who and what can be here, especially if he loses that ability through a government action, like a law, his First Amendment rights will have been violated. Twitter isn’t any different.

Twitter is definitely a lot different than a message board like this. Twitter has well over 300 million users. Facebook has billions of users. While they're not monopolies, and there are other alternatives, they are unique public facing companies where people from all over the planet interact and it while they are privately owned, publicly traded companies, there's a massive public interest in how these companies influence public thought and dialogue. There's a reason Congress and public institutions have a keen interest in the breadth of influence they have.

It's effectively censorship to prevent a user from saying anything or using their platform. They can go to SR.com or MAP, but they absolutely won't get the same exposure. The companies do have a right to ban users from using their platform. It's not any different than bad language being censored or similar restrictions placed on speech. The companies have a right to censor propaganda, deliberately fake accounts, among other things.

To be clear, I'm delineating between First Amendment rights and censorship. They're separate issues. It's why I haven't mentioned the First Amendment in any of my posts. Because someone is banned or censored doesn't mean their First Amendment rights have been violated.

 

[DaveXA]

I disagree with your take. If Andrus (or the admins) ban someone from this website, they aren't censoring them. People still have hundreds of outlets to get the same information out. Is it harder, since Twitter and Facebook and the like are huge platforms? Yep. If Netflix bans a movie or documentary or whatever from their distribution/system they haven't censored the movie. It's a convenient and massive way to get the movie seen, but it isn't censorship for that private company to deny the use of their platform/service to anyone.

But they are censoring them. Censorship generally defined is preventing someone from using a medium to speak a given message. Censorship had many forms. I'm seeing some conflating the First Amendment and censorship. TV censorship happens all the time. Media both public and private ban users for violating their terms of service. That's a form of censorship by that company or agency.

 

[V Chip]

But they are censoring them. Censorship generally defined is preventing someone from using a medium to speak a given message. Censorship had many forms. I'm seeing some conflating the First Amendment and censorship. TV censorship happens all the time. Media both public and private ban users for violating their terms of service. That's a form of censorship by that company or agency.

But if you're arguing that, then nearly anything is censorship -- I mean, people "self-censor" themselves all the time by not saying things they either really mean, or regulating their own speech around kids, family, friends, etc. Just thinking about a reply and choosing the words to have the most impact or get a point across better would then also be a form of censorship. And while technically true to the definition of the word, it's not the meaning most think of when saying something is censored. Just because Twitter or Facebook or ABC or a website forum restricts words, ideas, or statements it considers offensive doesn't mean those ideas/words are truly censored (I guess more in a free speech sense). I think too many are claiming "censorship" as if they are being wronged or silenced when they are not.

 

[DaveXA]

But if you're arguing that, then nearly anything is censorship -- I mean, people "self-censor" themselves all the time by not saying things they either really mean, or regulating their own speech around kids, family, friends, etc. Just thinking about a reply and choosing the words to have the most impact or get a point across better would then also be a form of censorship. And while technically true to the definition of the word, it's not the meaning most think of when saying something is censored. Just because Twitter or Facebook or ABC or a website forum restricts words, ideas, or statements it considers offensive doesn't mean those ideas/words are truly censored (I guess more in a free speech sense). I think too many are claiming "censorship" as if they are being wronged or silenced when they are not.

Right, not all censorship is the same. I'm not arguing for example that Twitter banning Trump from the platform is a violation of his First Amendment rights, but it is censorship. Now, if all media outlets agree to ban him across the board, that gets into murky territory. I'm not a fan of that, and I'm definitely not in favor of government getting involved in curtailing free speech. Not saying that's happening, but we're seeing it happen in other countries, namely Russia, and I don't ever want that here.

 

[bdb13]

But if you're arguing that, then nearly anything is censorship -- I mean, people "self-censor" themselves all the time by not saying things they either really mean, or regulating their own speech around kids, family, friends, etc. Just thinking about a reply and choosing the words to have the most impact or get a point across better would then also be a form of censorship. And while technically true to the definition of the word, it's not the meaning most think of when saying something is censored. Just because Twitter or Facebook or ABC or a website forum restricts words, ideas, or statements it considers offensive doesn't mean those ideas/words are truly censored (I guess more in a free speech sense). I think too many are claiming "censorship" as if they are being wronged or silenced when they are not.

Yeah.. basically agree and why I was trying to use 'block' instead of censor when referring to this stuff because I feel like censor evokes a specific connotation referring to the government.

 

[DaveXA]

Yeah.. basically agree and why I was trying to use 'block' instead of censor when referring to this stuff because I feel like censor evokes a specific connotation referring to the government.

I suppose so. I've never really thought of censorship in strictly that sense. I guess a lot of people think 1st Amendment when talking censorship, but I've not really thought that way.

 

[FullMonte]

I'm so confused about why this email about "10 for the big guy" is such a big deal. Ok, let's say that those people who think Joe Biden is a huge criminal are 100% correct...and that meant that the Chinese energy company was going to give 10% of the proposed deal to Joe Biden. So what? That email was sent in March 2017. That was 2 months after Biden left office. He was a private citizen at that time.

Is there some problem with a foreign company paying an American citizen as part of a business deal? Are we supposed to believe that they knew, in March of 2017, that he was going to run for president and be elected in 2020, so they were bribing him early?

The only way I could see if being an issue would have been if the deal completed, and Joe Biden was, in fact, given 10% ownership. In that case, if he didn't divest of that asset after being elected, I could see a conflict of interest. But, as I understand it, the deal never happened.

 

[SamAndreas]

I'm so confused about why this email about "10 for the big guy" is such a big deal. Ok, let's say that those people who think Joe Biden is a huge criminal are 100% correct...and that meant that the Chinese energy company was going to give 10% of the proposed deal to Joe Biden. So what? That email was sent in March 2017. That was 2 months after Biden left office. He was a private citizen at that time.

Is there some problem with a foreign company paying an American citizen as part of a business deal? Are we supposed to believe that they knew, in March of 2017, that he was going to run for president and be elected in 2020, so they were bribing him early?

The only way I could see if being an issue would have been if the deal completed, and Joe Biden was, in fact, given 10% ownership. In that case, if he didn't divest of that asset after being elected, I could see a conflict of interest. But, as I understand it, the deal never happened.

I think it's perfectly alright to blow this BS off altogether, without any regard.

This BS wasn't made with regard, so regard is not necessary to regard it.

Just pee on it with the familiar warm throbbing yellow stream.

 

[MT15]

OMG. It just keeps getting better. I'm the reason you don't care about the corruption? Seriously?

That's a bald faced lie about the Steele Dossier and you know it.

I had said plenty of times in the past that Trump was corrupt, was probably guilty of money laundering and that both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of corruption. I just didn't foam at the mouth like you guys did for 4 years.

Remember I've said multiple times, the cover up and censorship of the Hunter Biden story is way bigger than the actual corruption.

It's funny how you picked the denial from the Biden’s as the main part of the article. What does their denials prove,

Oh, and BTW I picked that paragraph because if you read the article using critical reasoning you will see that this paragraph, which was used early in the article, is the disclaimer. It tells you that the rest of the article is speculation and supposition. But you have to read critically, not just looking for what you want to see.

 

[MT15]

I suppose so. I've never really thought of censorship in strictly that sense. I guess a lot of people think 1st Amendment when talking censorship, but I've not really thought that way.

I believe that defenders of the right and the critics of MSM have used that term deliberately, in an attempt to make this seem like a conspiracy of some sort. When we have two very different companies, Twitter and FB, who came to the same conclusion, but absent proof they conspired.

MSM actually covered the laptop story, they just didn’t cover it in the way these critics and the far right wanted it covered. Well, except for Fox, and some of the rest of the media on the right. IIRC, though, even Fox was a little bit skeptical of this story. I read recently that the reporter who wrote the original story in the NY Post had so many misgivings about the story that he insisted his name not appear. I remember reading that before, but was just reminded upon rereading some of the contemporaneous articles.

I think I’ve wasted enough time on this story. Way more than it’s worth.

 

[SaintForLife]