COLLEGE FOOTBALLden claims still nebulous
Trump allies attack foe’s campaign over mysterious laptop
President Donald Trump’s allies have long promoted claims of corruption about Joe Biden’s son Hunter in a bid to damage Biden’s presidential campaign. The accusations intensified in recent days whensome ofTrump’s associates, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, provided material for aNew York Post article detailing some of the allegations. The Post reported that the FBI had seized a computer that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden.
The Biden campaign has rejected the accusations. Many questions remain about the origins of the allegations themselves, the laptop and what, if anything, agents are investigating.
What are the allegations Trump and his allies are making?
The Post article relied on documents purportedly taken from the computer to try to buttress an unsubstantiated argument peddled by Giuliani and other Trump supporters: that as vice president, Biden had shapedU.S. foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit his son. The events are the latest chapter in a more thantwo-year effortby the president and his allies to uncover damning information about the Bidens, a pursuit that also helped prompt Trump’s impeachment.
Biden has long said he knew nothing about his son’s business activities in Ukraine. But the article suggested that the former vice president met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company whose board Hunter Biden sat on, Burisma Holdings. The article referred to an email that the adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi, sent to Hunter Biden, thanking him for
“giving an opportunity to meet your father” and to spend “some time together.”
A Biden campaign spokesman said Biden’s official schedules did not show a meeting between the two men. A lawyer for Hunter Biden, George Mesires, told TheWashington Post that “this purported meeting never happened.”
The New York Post reporter who wrote most of the article refused to put his name on it because of concerns about its credibility, two Post employees have said.
How did the laptop surface?
A computer repair shop owner inWilmington, Delaware, namedJohnPaulMac Isaac has saidHunter Biden left a damaged Apple computer at his shop in April 2019 and asked to recover any data. Isaac said in an interview with The New York Times this month outside the shop that he is legally blind and could not
be sure whether the man wasHunterBidenbut asked his name to fill out a work order, and the man identified himself as Hunter Biden. Isaac said the man came to his shop twice but never returned to retrieve the computer or an external hard drive on which its contents had been stored.
At some point, he decided to examine the material, calling it “alarming” and “embarrassing” but declining to discuss specifics. Isaac also said he made a copy of the computer’s contents.
How did the FBI learn about the laptop?
Isaac said he told the bureau. He said he eventually decided to contact the FBI after he began fearing for his safety because he knew what was on the laptop, which The New York Post said included a graphic video. “If I was somebody important, I wouldwant to keep some of this stuff private,” he said. “Nobody wants their dirty
laundry aired.”
Isaac said he met with FBI agents in late 2019 and provided them with a timeline of events. The agents returned about two weeks later in mid-December with a grand jury subpoena allowing them to seize the laptop and the external hard drive. The subpoena was signed by a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Wilmington who handles criminal investigations such as fraud, and Isaac acknowledged receiving it.
The agents also gave him a receipt for what they took, according to a photographof it published by Fox News. The receipt included an FBI code, 272D, the bureau’s internal classification for moneylaundering investigations, and “BA” for its Baltimore field office. Officials separately confirmed that the FBI seized the laptop andanexternal harddrive as part of an investigation, though they did not detail the inquiry or whether it
involved money laundering or Hunter Biden. They also confirmed that the agent who signed the receipt works inWilmington and is overseen by the Baltimore office.
What happened after the FBI took the equipment?
Isaac said he did not hear back from investigators. He said that he wondered why the laptop’s existence had not been disclosed during the impeachment proceedings againstTrump, and that he began to fear that agents might be trying to bury the information he found on the laptop.
Isaac declined to discuss his next steps, but the New York Post reported that in September, he gave the copy of theharddrive toGiuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello. Giuliani later provided it to the tabloid, a handoff in which Stephen Bannon, a former adviser to Trump who was indicted in an unrelated fraud case, also played an unspecified role. Since the
Post article was published, Giuliani has pushed the allegations and said they prove the Bidens are corrupt. Giuliani also said inaninterview that he alerted Trump that the tabloid would be publishing an article about the laptop in case he was asked about it.
What about concerns over Russian disinformation?
No concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation.
With pressure mounting on the FBI to respond to questions from Congress about the laptop, the bureau wrote to one of the president’s staunchest allies in Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, suggesting that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, also told Fox Business Network that the “laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.” But Ratcliffe, whohas been criticized for embracing the president’s political agenda in a traditionally apolitical job, did not make clear whether the intelligence agencies or the FBI authenticated the laptop’s contents or whether he was simply saying that they had not gathered evidence that Russia altered any of the material.
What don’twe know?
A lot. Isaac, who said he voted for Trump in 2016, declined to answer many questions about the laptop and his contacts with the FBI. He also would not talk about his communications with the Trump loyalists whoorchestrated theplan to make the computer’s contents public just before the election.
It is also not clear what the FBI did with the laptop orwhat Justice Department officials knew about the sensitiveFBIinvestigation at the time. FBI officials have declined to discuss the inquiry.