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.

 

[MT15]

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.

 

[MT15]

As the article says - the big media companies were in a “no win” situation. The material being published by The NY Post was completely unverified (and mostly still is) at the time. It could easily have been the result of hacking. Some of the stuff on that Zip drive could still end up being the result of hacking. The Post didn’t have the laptop itself. Some of the stuff on that Zip drive has been added and altered. Some of the emails appear to be valid, but we still don’t know these emails came from the laptop. It was one month before the election, and I do think caution in repeating this was the correct call.

Also, if you are defending The New York Post, something has gone horribly wrong in your life.

 

[SystemShock]

It's in the past tense now. Do you really not know about the oldest newspaper in America banned on twitter over the story?

I didn't know The Hartford Courant had a Twitter account to begin with, much less that it was banned from Twitter; but why do I care who Twitter bans or not? Is Twitter some sort of news authority?

And we are talking about a forking newspaper... as if they don't have, I don't know, a newspaper or something... or did Twitter also remove the story from their printed paper and website?

And even if I cared...
Was the newspaper banned simply for posting the story? Or was it banned for posting hacked information, misleading information, and doxxing people?

Did Twitter ban all the newspapers that posted a story about Hunter Biden's laptop as well?

 

[SaintForLife]

I’m struggling with that. Twitter has the right to decide what it wants to have on its site. If it doesn’t that violates the First Amendment. You cannot force someone to promote something they do not wish to promote.

You act as if Twitter isn't a monopoly like Facebook, Google, & YouTube.

 

[CoolBrees]

You have no idea what a monopoly is.

And Alphabet (Google) owns YouTube so you named the same company twice.

 

[V Chip]

That can be true for pretty much any medium other than the public square. Banning someone from the virtual public square is censorship. That's pretty obvious imo. Now that doesn't mean Twitter is wrong. They have a right to ban someone for violating their rules. Same in the public square. Your rights to free speech aren't unlimited. But when someone is prevented from being able to speak through a public medium, it's censorship.

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.

 

[RebSaint]

I think what's really a shame (and described as pathetic by another poster) is that some on the far right trust Putin and Russian propaganda more than they would the "liberal media" or "Democrats"

I find it sad but not surprising, because the far right has increasingly demonized their political opponents as un-American, evil, and even sub-human and not deserving of the same rights and due process as others....you know, like what authoritarians advocate. Look how many just willy-nilly advocate locking up their political opponents. Of course, some on the far-left have engaged in similar behavior and used comparable language, but by no means is this trend a "both sides do it" thing. This language is both facist AND Stalinesque. The disdain and ignorance of due process, the law, and equal protection has allowed the rot of authoritarianism to infect our democracy. We saw these things play out in real time during the Trump presidency.

The evolution of the language describing Democrats/liberals directly correlates with how many more on the right willing to use violence to resolve political conflict.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

You act as if Twitter isn't a monopoly like Facebook, Google, & YouTube.

You act as if they are monopolies and not simply the free market playing out. If the right's viewpoint is so suppressed in this country how do you explain Trump and the eighty million nutballs that voted for him?

 

[J-DONK]

My position isn’t clownish at all. What’s clownish is your response actually.

Are you proposing that Twitter should be forced to allow anyone to say anything on their website? That they have zero say in what they choose to promote?

Why did they ban the Post? How would twitter have ever verified the source of the information? How many times in twitters history have they taken this action? It was an attempt at censorship, otherwise why take the action to begin with. They wanted to kill the story as much as possible, as did most other media outlets. That SHOULD be common knowledge at this point.

They got caught in a major screw up.

I don't know why anyone is comparing a website with probably less then 100 active users to Twitter or Facebook. You guys on the side of censorship are not making good arguments.

Here is common sense take from that WAPO article:

A crucial question is what role, if any, should they play in restricting articles by prominent news outlets, particularly when dealing with unverified or dubious sourcing?

“A company like Twitter should not be trying to make a determination on the veracity of information when it is impossible for them to have the type of information they would need to do so,”

The irony of this entire storyline is the largest piece of provable disinformation was the letter of ex-security officials claiming a Russian plot.

Edit to add: You can't endorse actions like this, and then laugh at conservatives who want to make their own platform. It's completely understandable why they don't want Twitter/Facebook deciding what is "disinformation".

 

[SystemShock]

You act as if Twitter isn't a monopoly like Facebook, Google, & YouTube.

There are plenty of alternatives out there.

Twitter - Mastodon, Diaspora, 4chan, Tumblr, etc.
Google - DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Bing, etc.
YouTube - Vimeo, Twitch, Vevo, etc.
Facebook - Mastodon, Diaspora, Reddit, etc.

 

[bdb13]

Why did they ban the Post? How would twitter have ever verified the source of the information? How many times in twitters history have they taken this action? It was an attempt at censorship, otherwise why take the action to begin with. They wanted to kill the story as much as possible, as did most other media outlets. That SHOULD be common knowledge at this point.

They got caught in a major screw up.

I don't know why anyone is comparing a website with probably less then 100 active users to Twitter or Facebook. You guys on the side of censorship are not making good arguments.

Here is common sense take from that WAPO article:



The irony of this entire storyline is the largest piece of provable disinformation was the letter of ex-security officials claiming a Russian plot.

I'm hesitant I guess to use the word "censorship" just because it's not government censorship.. but yeah I'm right there with you. It's definitely bad shirt when you have this big purposeful effort across media and social media platforms to suppress/kill a negative (but apparently fairly accurate, right?) story on a candidate/candidate's son for what can really only be viewed as political purposes.

I had the thought at the time how.. interesting... it was how all of these ex officials were so quickly just chalking it up to Russian disinformation. Of course it was just coordinated bullshirt to help bolster the idea that this wasn't a real story and therefore was justifiably being ignored and blocked from discussion.

 

[MT15]

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

 

[bdb13]

This board is so clownish sometimes.

Yes, you can, and here is the conservative rag WAPO discussing this very topic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/31/hunter-biden-laptop-findings-renew-scrutiny-twitter-facebook-crackdowns/

So trying to work my way through this and wrap my head around it.. more or less the cited justification for banning the NY Post article was that they weren't going to allow for distribution and discussion of this presumed to be 'Russian disinformation' because in 2016 they didn't block similar type things (the DNC and Podesta hacked emails) published by WikiLeaks.

So I'm curious, was any of the Wikileaks stuff from back in 2016 determined to be "disinformation" or was it all hacked information?

Because if it's all just been bullshirt previously then it does seem more justifiable in nature to say "yeah we're not going to let this happen again." But if what you had before wasn't actually disinformation.. then it seems logical to me that this NY Post story wouldn't have automatically been presumed to be disinformation unless there was an ulterior motive for saying it was so.

And I think the immediate labeling of the story as disinformation was the card they had to play in justifying blocking it, otherwise it's pretty difficult to justify blocking something like this if it's legitimately plausible that it's something other than a fabrication. But they removed the space from that with the disinformation label.

Edit: I'll add that I remember being personally skeptical of the story due to Giuliani's direct involvement, so there's that as some factor I guess.. but still. It's plainly not good for it to have been banned as disinformation for political purposes right before an election only to then be confirmed later to not have been disinformation.

 

[Lapaz]

That can be true for pretty much any medium other than the public square. Banning someone from the virtual public square is censorship. That's pretty obvious imo. Now that doesn't mean Twitter is wrong. They have a right to ban someone for violating their rules. Same in the public square. Your rights to free speech aren't unlimited. But when someone is prevented from being able to speak through a public medium, it's censorship.

It's not censorship by the media, anymore than anything that Breitbart or Truth censors qualifies as censorship by the media. Twitter may have censored, but the statements were generalizing to the media. The media didn't censor discussions about the laptop. I knew about it well before the election. I also believed, and still do, that it was most likely unrelated to Joe Biden.

 

[SaintForLife]

You have no idea what a monopoly is.

And Alphabet (Google) owns YouTube so you named the same company twice.

In a sweeping report spanning 449 pages, House Democrats lay out a detailed case for stripping Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google of the power than has made each of them dominant in their fields.

The four companies began as "scrappy underdog startups" but are now monopolies that must be restricted and regulated, the report from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel says.

"These four corporations increasingly serve as gatekeepers of commerce and communications in the digital age, and this gatekeeper power gives them enormous capacity to abuse that power," a lawyer for the subcommittee's Democratic majority said in a briefing with reporters.

The lawmakers say Congress should overhaul the laws that have let the companies grow so powerful. In particular, the report says, Congress should look at forcing "structural separations" of the companies and beefing up enforcement of existing antitrust laws.

How Are Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google Monopolies? House Report Counts The Ways

House Democrats recommend Congress look at ways to force the companies to split off some of their businesses, saying the tech giants have exploited their power to benefit themselves and hurt rivals.

www.npr.org

 

[bdb13]

It's not censorship by the media, anymore than anything that Breitbart or Truth censors qualifies as censorship by the media. Twitter may have censored, but the statements were generalizing to the media. The media didn't censor discussions about the laptop. I knew about it well before the election. I also believed, and still do, that it was most likely unrelated to Joe Biden.

Yes, we all knew about the laptop prior to the election because the story was out there.. but there was certainly a purposeful effort throughout left-leaning mainstream media to downplay and dismiss and label it all as Russian disinformation which more than anything was born out of the obvious fear that it was going to harm Biden's chance at defeating Trump.

 

[coldseat]

Yes, we all knew about the laptop prior to the election because the story was out there.. but there was certainly a purposeful effort throughout left-leaning mainstream media to downplay and dismiss and label it all as Russian disinformation which more than anything was born out of the obvious fear that it was going to harm Biden's chance at defeating Trump.

We still don't know that the files that were added to the flash drive aren't Russian disinformation. Also, all information doesn't have to be fake for it to be disinformation, the best disinformation campaigns usually have some nuggets of truth in them. So that possibility hasn't been ruled out.

At the time I just remember all of the news reports saying that Hunter's laptop story was unverifiable and could possibly be Russian disinformation. Twitter didn't make that declaration of their own accord. It was reasonably questionable given the sourcing.

I still don't think it was the wrong call by Twitter or Facebook. They made the best decision they could with the information they had. And it's a stretch to say they did it to protect Democrats or Biden when so much of what is allowed on those platforms in the form of lies and conspiracies hurts Democrats/Biden.

 

[bdb13]

We still don't know that the files that were added to the flash drive aren't Russian disinformation. Also, all information doesn't have to be fake for it to be disinformation, the best disinformation campaigns usually have some nuggets of truth in them. So that possibility hasn't been ruled out.

At the time I just remember all of the news reports saying that Hunter's laptop story was unverifiable and could possibly be Russian disinformation. Twitter didn't make that declaration of their own accord. It was reasonably questionable given the sourcing.

I still don't think it was the wrong call by Twitter or Facebook. They made the best decision they could with the information they had. And it's a stretch to say they did it to protect Democrats or Biden when so much of what is allowed on those platforms in the form of lies and conspiracies hurts Democrats/Biden.

In that particular post I was really more so referring to the news organizations rather than the social media ones.. and the phrasing and lack of curiosity and everything that they had in covering it.

I just try to call this shirt like I see it as best that I can.. and as much as I despise Trump and wanted him to lose I also perceived at that time just how freaking fast the Russian disinformation label was slapped onto it and how by doing that it really ceased any further discussion of the content.

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.