Below is my column on Fox.com on the recent filing of the Justice Department confirming the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The filing comes at a time when the media seems to be resuming practices from 2020 in censoring news and characterizing opposing views as disinformation.
Here is the column:
After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, many in the media in the last year have belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) in hearings. The Justice Department has now again confirmed the authenticity and added details on why these denials are unsupported.
This week, the Justice Department confirmed that the laptop was authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the Cloud and “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”
That is only the latest such confirmation, but some have continued to desperately cast doubts the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop.
Goldman attacked Journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared “You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.”
Goldman has never revealed the “actual evidence” showing that the laptop is fake or why the Justice Department and FBI are making the same false claim in court if such evidence exists.
The same week that the Biden Administration again confirmed the authenticity of the laptop, one of the loudest laptop deniers wrote a telling column on why the public should avoid researching such questions on their own.
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has repeatedly pushed false stories from Lafayette Park to Russian collusion to the laptop. Even after many in the media admitted that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Recently, in response to a column on these false claims, the Post remarkably declared that Bump’s original claims on Lafayette Park, the Hunter Biden laptop, and Russian collusion were true and they stand by them.
This week, Bump warned citizens that they needed to continue to get their news from the media and not try to learn the truth on their own. In a column titled “Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong,” Bump states without an sense of self-awareness that citizens will often “embrace dubious information supporting their belief than information that corroborates the allegations” — precisely what critics have accused Bump of doing for years on the laptop and other false stories.
Bump’s column is a must read for understanding the sense of entitlement of columnists in today’s age of “advocacy journalism.” It is consistent with what Bump said in an interview last year before he walked out after being confronted about false stories.
In a podcast interview with Noam Dworman, Bump became exasperated and said “I’m gonna lose my mind” when Dworman offered facts contradicting his view. Ironically, when Dworman noted that half of the country does not believe his positions, Bump shot back “I know, because half the country doesn’t actually dig into the issues.”
However, Bump does not believe that they should actually dig into the issues but accept his view.
He chastised Dworman and the public “because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen … you refuse to listen to what I’m saying to you. You asked me on to present evidence. I keep telling you.”
Indeed, Bump and others kept telling people that the laptop was a “conspiracy theory” and possible Russian disinformation. Now, he is reminding people not to do their own research as the Post expressly declared that the prior false claims in his columns were actually true.
This is why, at the start of our Republic, alternative media sprang up with pamphleteers like Thomas Paine. Citizens rejected the state-supporting media and searched for their own sources. Today citizen journalists can be found on the Internet in blogs and other sites that carry opposing views or accounts.
The media is already moving to be sure that the public is limited in what they are allowed to see or hear. After Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained to viewers that the network had decided that they should not hear Trump’s victory speech because he would only tell them “untrue things.”
As noted by Bump, citizens are much safer to just accept what they are given and avoid the temptation to do their own research. Censorship is now actually proclaimed as a form of virtue signaling, assuring viewers that they will not have to hear certain opposing views or figures.
There is little tolerance for those who insist on seeking out such news. After all, as the Post’s Bump explained, “I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”
Rep. Goldman obviously got the radical-left-turned-reactionary-right ‘torch’ ( this kind of torch burns the Truth to ashes…) passed to him from Rep. Schiff.. great teamwork…!!!
As I have said before the Laptop has ongoing issues.
And since I wrote this, I found another lawyer/legal connection that worked on this deal for a known Hunter Biden associate in William Mardsen Miller.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJDM8XHG
The following is an intelligence analysis gathered from Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell and publicly available records such as SEC filings. However, unlike his other known dealings and depravity, specifically enumerated by Marcopolousa.org, this dossier targets Hunter’s active (and) hidden role in the exporting of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas). It is one’s analysis that Hunter & his CCP-connected associates have acquired a substantial percentage of 2 LNG projects: Magnolia and Texas LNG. This acquisition is guised yet again behind an LLC (limited liability corporation) and SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) with the added twist of being held as a Sponsor ownership.
Starting in February 2023, one stumbled upon these connections in reviewing emails sent between Xiaopeng “Rick” Niu and JiaQi Bao to Hunter Biden. In these emails, the above LNG projects, their preferred financier (Natixis), tied back to a shared physical address 399 Park Avenue, Floor 2, New York City, New York where Rick worked (at Starr Insurance) and Magnolia LNG was held by First Wall Street Capital. Other intriguing connections involved the highest levels of the intelligence apparatus of the United States of America; and yet again, a Ukrainian geopolitical angle arose tied to LNG exports and Titanium mining.
Project White Light was the name given to the 240-page, 3-phase master BRI (belt and road initiative) agenda assigned to Xiaopeng “Rick” Niu, for consultation and business preparation, in emails. Niu was contacting CEFC (China Energy Fund Committee) top director in China and regularly emailing with Hunter’s key partners (Tony Bobulinski, Rob Walker, James Gilliar, Jim Biden) in the Spring of 2017. But it was in the Fall of 2017, after Hunter and Jim (and cutting out Walker, Gilliar, Bobulinski) received over $5 million from CEFC to set up Hudson West’s operations in New York that this Project began in earnest, for China, at least.
Enter JiaQi ‘Jackie’ Bao (CEFC), the seductive Chinese secretary for Hunter, to provide Chinese translation of all U.S. energy assets in presentation form and to recommend which projects enticed CEFC (& the CCP’s) appetites the most. Even with project disruption tied to the arrest of Patrick Ho in November 2017, Jackie was undeterred. By January 2018, she provided the investing financier – Natixis – that happened to be used by EnfraGen Capital and Glenfarne Group. Glenfarne is the company that acquired the rights to Magnolia and Texas LNG. As it turns out, Hunter knew Texas LNG’s owner personally in Third Point Management CEO Dan Loeb, a billionaire, and emailed Third Point personnel from 2010-2016.
Hunter’s involvement in CEFC seems to have ended in March 2018 with a final $1,000,000 deposit to his Wells Fargo account and “wrap-up emails” from China Jackie. But in March 2019, just days before his laptop was taken to a repair shop, both China Jackie and Slick Rick contacted Hunter Biden out of blue to encourage that Joe run for the presidency.
The story of how Hunter Biden (and/or his CCP-connected buddies) potentially acquired a stake in two export LNG projects lay inside this intelligence briefing.
The final question is: who owned Glenfarne Sponsor LLC?
And just how much benefit did they acquire?
By October 2020, there was no valid reason not to give Trump’s team the benefit of the doubt that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden, and the contents of that laptop are authentic.
Rep. Goldman should be reminded at every opportunity that he is a dadblamed liar and scoundrel. Every opportunity. Cheezus this pisses me off.
I read the filings.
Unless I am missing something, the FBI had the contents of Hunter’s iCloud account months before Trump was impeached for the Zelensky call. They also had that information before they had the laptop. It looks like the transcript of the call was leaked about the same time the FBI got Hunter’s iCloud data.
At the very least, that means the FBI had evidence that Trump’s request of Zelensky to look into Hunter’s dealings with Bursima was a reasonable ask during the runup to impeacment. It also begs the question, was the call transcript leaked as a way to preemptively set the narrative regarding Hunter’s Bursima work?
Jonathan, of course, doesn’t delve into the implications of these revelation, namely that government actors, in collusion with the Biden campaign (and Biden himself) worked to keep this information from the public. By definition, that alone made the 2020 election unfair. Couple that with the tossing of ballot integrity standards, and you have an election that is illegitimate. (Unless you want to argue that unfair elections are legitimate–go right ahead.) If the election is illegitimate, then the government only has power, not any moral authority whatsoever.