The Biden Burisma Connection...

[CivilDiscourse]

Yes, you were initially skeptical. At what point did you decide it was "obvious"?

I said earlier that if they started showing the embarassing pictures of Hunter that they described it would go along way towards proving authenticity. That happened.

[rogue06]

Your timeline is a bit off.

There were rumors about things that were contained in it but it appears that the "dossier" itself wasn't compiled until after the election.

[Sparko]

According to Schweizer, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop show his father, President Joe Biden, “was the beneficiary” of funds from influential people in Ukraine, China and Russia.

“There’s a couple of things that people have to keep in mind,” Schweizer outlined. “The first is if you look at the three big flashpoints in American foreign policy today — Ukraine, Russia and China — the Biden family has received funds, millions of dollars — in some cases tens of millions of dollars — from powerful individuals connected to the government in each of those countries. That’s the first factor.”

He continued, “The second factor is this is not just a Hunter Biden story. The New York Times tries to paint it that way. The headline is even ‘Hunter Biden pays his back taxes, but broad investigation continues.’ But you’re right. They admit that the laptop is real, and what the laptop reveals, Maria, is that Hunter Biden received these funds, but the president of the United States, Joe Biden, was a recipient and a beneficiary of those funds. Hunter Biden and Joe Biden had intermingled finances; Hunter Biden was paying monthly bills, he was paying for repairs on his home. So, this is a story that goes straight to the president, and each of these countries, particularly China, has a policy of using commercial ties, financial ties, as leverage over foreign elites. And they clearly have that in this case with Joe Biden.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...the-president/

Yup. Remember when they tried everything they could to claim that Trump was receiving kickbacks? Now they are doing everything they can to ignore that Biden did.

[Stoic]

There were rumors about things that were contained in it but it appears that the "dossier" itself wasn't compiled until after the election.

It wasn't completed until after the election. However...

The founders of Fusion GPS have described how they did not hide the fact that they were researching Trump and Russia: "Fusion and Steele tried to alert U.S. law enforcement and the news media to the material they'd uncovered ..." and their office became "something of a public reading room" for journalists seeking information. In September they arranged a private meeting between Steele and reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ABC News, and other outlets. The results were disappointing, as none published any stories before the election.

Jane Mayer has described how, in "late summer, Fusion set up a series of meetings, at the Tabard Inn, in Washington, between Steele and a handful of national-security reporters. ... Despite Steele's generally cool manner, he seemed distraught about the Russians' role in the election." Mayer attended one of the meetings. None of these news organizations ran any stories about the allegations at that time.

Before the election, only two news sources mentioned allegations that came from dossier reports. Steele had been in contact with both authors. These were a September 23, 2016, Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff which focused on Carter Page, and an article by David Corn on October 31, 2016, a week before the election, in Mother Jones magazine.

[Stoic]

I said earlier that if they started showing the embarassing pictures of Hunter that they described it would go along way towards proving authenticity. That happened.

So your reasoning was that embarrassing pictures can't be faked, and authentic pictures can't be put on the same hard drive as fake emails.

I guess it's only fair that we should each conclude that the other is using motivated reasoning.

[CivilDiscourse]

So your reasoning was that embarrassing pictures can't be faked, and authentic pictures can't be put on the same hard drive as fake emails.

I guess it's only fair that we should each conclude that the other is using motivated reasoning.

Then Hunter's business partners came out and said that they had those same emails from their side. Eventually, the "disinformation" argument became a "god of the gaps" argument. That no matter how much WAS authenticated, you couldn't be certain the rest wasn't russian disinformation, therefore it was russian disinformation.

[rogue06]

So your reasoning was that embarrassing pictures can't be faked, and authentic pictures can't be put on the same hard drive as fake emails.

I guess it's only fair that we should each conclude that the other is using motivated reasoning.

While you had a slew of former intelligence people (nearly all then employed by CNN and MSNBC) saying the laptop was "Russian misinformation" (and by their own admission had no evidence to support the claim) you also had the actual heads of the FBI and CIA rebut that assertion while neither Hunter or old Joe denied it when the Post broke the story (one would normally expect them to denounce something if it was a lie, instead they merely deflected). The MSM didn't care about the latter and took the fig leaf's worth of coverage that it was Russian disinformation to do what they wanted to do -- bury the story and keep anyone else from talking about it. Twitter even made up an excuse to suppress the story by falsely claiming the information was hacked or stolen (although they admitted they had no proof that it was). Facebook also suppressed the story saying they needed third party verification -- a policy never used before and I don't think since.

[rogue06]

Then Hunter's business partners came out and said that they had those same emails from their side. Eventually, the "disinformation" argument became a "god of the gaps" argument. That no matter how much WAS authenticated, you couldn't be certain the rest wasn't russian disinformation, therefore it was russian disinformation.

After the Post story the MSM descended on the repair shop where the owner confirmed it was Hunter's. Further, several of those who had exchanged e-mails with Hunter attested to their accuracy in the days and weeks that followed. But the MSM and Big Tech decided that the story was too damaging and continued to suppress it as "misinformation." I'm not sure if any of the network news (ABC, CBS, NBC) have even mentioned it after the NYT validated them as authentic (they hadn't as of yesterday morning -- over three days after the story broke).

[Mountain Man]

So your reasoning was that embarrassing pictures can't be faked, and authentic pictures can't be put on the same hard drive as fake emails.

I guess it's only fair that we should each conclude that the other is using motivated reasoning.

The fact that the Biden family attorney was asking for the laptop to be returned (while simultaneously denying that it was Hunter's laptop) pretty much sealed the deal in terms of authenticating the information it contained.

[rogue06]

After the Post story the MSM descended on the repair shop where the owner confirmed it was Hunter's. Further, several of those who had exchanged e-mails with Hunter attested to their accuracy in the days and weeks that followed. But the MSM and Big Tech decided that the story was too damaging and continued to suppress it as "misinformation." I'm not sure if any of the network news (ABC, CBS, NBC) have even mentioned it after the NYT validated them as authentic (they hadn't as of yesterday morning -- over three days after the story broke).

Just read that MSNBC mentioned it in passing over the weekend.

[seanD]

So your reasoning was that embarrassing pictures can't be faked, and authentic pictures can't be put on the same hard drive as fake emails.

I guess it's only fair that we should each conclude that the other is using motivated reasoning.

Once Bobulinski, their business partner, came forward and handed his phone texts (like an idiot) over to the FBI, it should have been clear this wasn't a hoax.

[Stoic]

Then Hunter's business partners came out and said that they had those same emails from their side. Eventually, the "disinformation" argument became a "god of the gaps" argument. That no matter how much WAS authenticated, you couldn't be certain the rest wasn't russian disinformation, therefore it was russian disinformation.

Didn't we learn from the Steele Dossier that no matter how much is authenticated, you can't assume everything else is authentic?

(If you think none of the Steele Dossier was authenticated, you might want to look here.)

[Stoic]

After the Post story the MSM descended on the repair shop where the owner confirmed it was Hunter's. Further, several of those who had exchanged e-mails with Hunter attested to their accuracy in the days and weeks that followed. But the MSM and Big Tech decided that the story was too damaging and continued to suppress it as "misinformation." I'm not sure if any of the network news (ABC, CBS, NBC) have even mentioned it after the NYT validated them as authentic (they hadn't as of yesterday morning -- over three days after the story broke).

It may be that the fact that the emails don't directly implicate Joe makes it relatively unimportant news.

[seanD]

It may be that the fact that the emails don't directly implicate Joe makes it relatively unimportant news.

Just the fact this was falsely brushed off as "russian misinformation" by the opposing party and the democratic nominee himself for election reasons alone should be a major news story.

[CivilDiscourse]

Didn't we learn from the Steele Dossier that no matter how much is authenticated, you can't assume everything else is authentic?

(If you think none of the Steele Dossier was authenticated, you might want to look here.)

A large difference is that the steele dossie was a collection of stories from various sources. The veracity of one doesn't lend much credence to the rest.

Info from a single laptop? Its a bit more weighty. But again, yours is god of the gaps reasoning.