Federal criminal investigation Hunter Biden focuses on his business dealings (Update: DOJ appoints special counsel) (2 Viewers)

[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.

 

[Devildog]

Reminds me of a sign I saw that someone put in front of their house where they referred to Kamala Harris, a well educated sitting US Senator as a “HOE” (in all caps like that). Only the best people, right?

Well, I mean, besides the fact that "hoe" is spelled wrong......

 

[MT15]

I think they wanted the optics to match with JOE (all caps also).

Also, now this is happening:

 

[Taurus]

I think they wanted the optics to match with JOE (all caps also).

Also, now this is happening:

And Trumplicans get all butthurt when we think of them as being stupid.

Jeez, guys! What the hell are we supposed to think?

 

[FullMonte]

I think the FBI letting the public know what they know is a good thing. I trust Christopher Ray. There may be child pornography on that laptop. That would make the legal problems for Rudy even greater than they already are.

If there is child pornography on the hard drive, and Rudy has a copy of the hard drive....wouldn't that mean that Rudy is guilty of being in possession of child pornography?

 

[B4YOU]

Ratcliffe says Hunter Biden laptop, emails 'not part of some Russian disinformation campaign'

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Monday said that Hunter Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” amid claims from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff suggesting otherwise.

www.foxnews.com

It looks like the Biden laptop is going to be a bigger issue if the intelligence community is going to refute D claims this is Russian interference.

I think Biden should seriously consider not doing the 3rd debate. This stuff is going to have enough legs after Thursday when Trump forces the question.

Rudy has had this for a year and the FBI for 10 months. WTF Hunter. If the child stuff is in anyway creditable, then Joe is toast and Hunter is going to jail.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

Ratcliffe says Hunter Biden laptop, emails 'not part of some Russian disinformation campaign'

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Monday said that Hunter Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” amid claims from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff suggesting otherwise.

www.foxnews.com

It looks like the Biden laptop is going to be a bigger issue if the intelligence community is going to refute D claims this is Russian interference.

I think Biden should seriously consider not doing the 3rd debate. This stuff is going to have enough legs after Thursday when Trump forces the question.

Rudy has had this for a year and the FBI for 10 months. WTF Hunter. If the child stuff is in anyway creditable, then Joe is toast and Hunter is going to jail.

If the child porn stuff is true and the FBI has had this for a year why the heck hasn't he been arrested yet? It doesn't make sense.

 

[FullMonte]

Ratcliffe says Hunter Biden laptop, emails 'not part of some Russian disinformation campaign'

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Monday said that Hunter Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” amid claims from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff suggesting otherwise.

www.foxnews.com

It looks like the Biden laptop is going to be a bigger issue if the intelligence community is going to refute D claims this is Russian interference.

I think Biden should seriously consider not doing the 3rd debate. This stuff is going to have enough legs after Thursday when Trump forces the question.

Rudy has had this for a year and the FBI for 10 months. WTF Hunter. If the child stuff is in anyway creditable, then Joe is toast and Hunter is going to jail.

So the DNI says that these are not part of a Russian disinformation campaign because there is no intelligence to support that. That's not how any of this works. It's fine to say "there's no intelligence to support this is a disinformation campaign," but it's laughable to say that it can't be a disinformation campaign because you have no intelligence to support it.

He says " The intelligence community has not been involved in Hunter Biden’s laptop. " I would think that is critical information because without examining it, I'm not sure how they can say it's not disinformation.

Finally, he says " Without commenting on any investigation that they may or may not have, their investigation is not centered around Russian disinformation..." Let's see...he says "they may or may not have" then confirms there is an investigation...then he says "without commenting on any investigation" and directly comments on what their investigation is NOT about.

So, to be clear...if we find out that the reports that the FBI is investigating whether or not this is a Russian disinformation campaign, that means that the DNI blatantly lied about the story, which means we should take anything else he said with a huge block of salt.

 

[FullMonte]

Another good read about the absurdity of the story, from a more technical standpoint.

Suspect provenance of Hunter Biden data cache prompts skepticism and social media bans | TechCrunch

A cache of emails and other selected data purportedly from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden were published today by the New York Post. Ordinarily a major

techcrunch.com

 

[superchuck500]

It doesn't even matter to me whether or not this Hunter Biden story is true. What matters is how social media went about it. I've been an active twitter user for almost 10 years and have seen twitter allow some very sketchy stuff to trend and be shared around. 4chan hoaxes got major traction on twitter, especially the one where they set the media up with a massive troll when they stated the "ok" symbol was a new white power signal. Journalists over twitter literally signal boosted it and wrote many articles about it. 4chan posters laid this out as bait knowing some moron, blue checkmark "journalist" on twitter would run with it.

I'm making no bones about who I am casting a vote for this election, it will be a protest vote casted for Jo Jorgensen. I'm not a fan of Biden nor Trump but I will say this, twitter has allowed various hoax stories about Trump trend and gain traction over twitter since he was elected in 2016. I was not surprised how fast this story was shutdown over twitter and facebook because its been very obvious their guy is Joe Biden this election.

What is even more funny is after twitter and facebook shutdown this story, Republicans came out and basically cried on social media. The Republicans in 2017 knew social media had been censoring quite a few right leaning pundits and websites over facebook and twitter and did absolutely nothing about it when they controlled the house and senate. My guess is they were bought off, like Jim Jordan was. Ken Buck had a bi-partisan bill ready to go that dealt with section 230, and little ol Jim Jordan stopped it, my guess is he took money from someone in "big tech."

So a Senate Judiciary committee is going to subpoena Jack Dorsey, and my question is for what? It will be a toothless committee where nothing comes out of it. Republicans had their chance to enact meaningful legislation in 2017 and they chose not to do it. They get what they deserve at this point.

I don’t disagree that Twitter’s handling of the NY Post story was bumbling. I think Twitter is trying to evolve its misinformation strategy and struggling with it, in part, because determining what constitutes misinformation is difficult and ultimately a fool's game if you're going to attempt to appear objective or neutral. But I don't think that this kind of content moderation was something Twitter really tried to get involved with until more recently.

But I still think that there are two central problems for this "social media is biased against conservatives" argument. First, the degree to which is even appears to be true is very minor. Trumpism, GOP populisim, digital "conservatives" (all the same thing) have benefitted massively from social media, and continue to do so. Every week, the top performing Facebook links are Trump, Shapiro, Bongino, etc. The top 10 is entirely made of links involving that small group of people. On Twitter, those same people have large numbers of followers and tweet incessantly. Trump's tweeting is so central to his presidency that it is one of the key features that distinguishes Trump's political communication from any other president in history. Half a billion tweets per day are sent on Twitter, with just tiny sliver of them moderated. And Twitter has since come out and said that its response to the Hunter Biden NY Post went further than they now think that they should as a company. There still isn't that much evidence that these companies are meaningfully impeding the political communication of the American political right on their platforms.

But that gets to the second problem, which is 'so what?' You say that Congress could have done something about it in 2017, but what is it that they could have done? Certainly, they could have revised or repealed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but I don't think that's quite the tool that some believe it is - all Section 230 does is make it statutory that social media companies are distributors and not publishers for purposes of civil liability. But there remains a strong argument that even without that statutory protection, courts would have a hard time finding that Twitter or Facebook exercise enough control over the content on their sites that they should be vicariously liable for posts of non-employee users. Plus, Section 230 inures to the benefit of more than just Facebook and Twitter, and provides a valuable, standard, federal statutory treatment that allows these businesses (many of which are a significant part of US equities performance) to function with a known set of rules for determining how third-party content might be attributed to them. The consequences of repealing Sec. 230 could be significant, and more than Republicans in Congress bargained for.

Beyond that, these are corporate entities and legislative efforts to constrain their operations with respect to content will have to be seen through a First Amendment lens. Sure, there's always a possible anti-trust angle but those efforts largely come from the Justice Department, they don't need Congress unless existing anti-trust law is unable to get the result you're after . . . but then new law would have to pass constitutional muster.

 

[DaveXA]

If the child porn stuff is true and the FBI has had this for a year why the heck hasn't he been arrested yet? It doesn't make sense.

Yeah, if it was a month or two of vetting, then I could understand it. But, a year? Doesn't make sense indeed.

 

[MT15]

Please also consider that John Ratcliffe is totally a Trump loyalist. He is not a trustworthy source of information. He went on record not that long ago touting there would be many more indictments coming from the Durham investigation.

Also, there is no way that the FBI has had child pornography for over a year and done nothing about it.

Rudy has been comporting with Russian intelligence agents for over a year now. Allegations of child pornography and sexual abuse are stock in trade for Russian intelligence, they allege it constantly. Come on, guys, don’t give it oxygen by considering it might be true.

 

[EmBeeFiveOhFour]

Lock the reporters up!!!!!!!!@1

 

[DaveXA]

Lock the reporters up!!!!!!!!@1

I just saw that and lol'd. He just can't help himself. But not really surprising. Calling the press criminal was comical.

 

[MT15]

Did anyone ask him to specify why Joe Biden needs to be locked up and cannot be President? What crime is he alleging that Joe committed? I know he won’t answer because to him just opposing him is a crime, just like it’s a crime when a reporter doesn’t report what he wants reported.

This isn’t funny, sorry, Dave, this is dangerous. This is an autocrat or a dictator. He doesn’t want to be president, he wants to control the US and run it according to his whims. He wants to deny everyone their rights given to them by the US Constitution and he wants to decide what rights he will allow.

I cannot find it funny because nobody within his party is standing up to him. I cannot laugh because if he wins another term, I may very well lose some of my rights along with a large portion of people in far worse shape than I am.

 

[DaveXA]

Did anyone ask him to specify why Joe Biden needs to be locked up and cannot be President? What crime is he alleging that Joe committed? I know he won’t answer because to him just opposing him is a crime, just like it’s a crime when a reporter doesn’t report what he wants reported.

This isn’t funny, sorry, Dave, this is dangerous. This is an autocrat or a dictator. He doesn’t want to be president, he wants to control the US and run it according to his whims. He wants to deny everyone their rights given to them by the US Constitution and he wants to decide what rights he will allow.

I cannot find it funny because nobody within his party is standing up to him. I cannot laugh because if he wins another term, I may very well lose some of my rights along with a large portion of people in far worse shape than I am.

Read it again. I was talking about his comment about the press, not Biden. It was a ridiculous and laughable comment. Something you'd expect on a TV show, not from the President.

 

[MT15]

Yes, I know. It’s dangerous autocracy. We just disagree. it’s okay, I know it sounds ridiculous so you laugh, but I just cannot laugh right now. If he loses the election and actually concedes and leaves office, I’m sure it will become more laughable to me. Right now, it is unsettling and makes me afraid for my country.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

Yes, I know. It’s dangerous autocracy. We just disagree. it’s okay, I know it sounds ridiculous so you laugh, but I just cannot laugh right now. If he loses the election and actually concedes and leaves office, I’m sure it will become more laughable to me. Right now, it is unsettling and makes me afraid for my country.

This is where I am as well. Until he is out of office (not just loses the election) I can't laugh at this stuff because I know he means it.

 

[MT15]

He was serious as a heart attack.

Our free press is under attack right now from other quarters than Trump. As an aside I just saw this article, and it’s pretty disturbing.

As Local News Dies, a Pay-for-Play Network Rises in Its Place (Published 2020)

A nationwide operation of 1,300 local sites publishes coverage that is ordered up by Republican groups and corporate P.R. firms.

www.nytimes.com

I won’t threadjack any further.