Some More News - SMN: Hunter Biden: All The President's Son

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Hi. You may have heard about the president's son, Hunter Biden. He did some stuff! And various things! In today's episode, we're gonna go through all of it: the accusations, the potential legal trouble, and the right-wing media frenzy around it. Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CuMe7QT76zm44Y7iZbY9XhYf4UDAq9SRSRmZfVm8EW8/edit?usp=sharing  Try the sheets that will make fall the coziest season of the year. Get 15% off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use promo code MORENEWS at https://www.bollandbranch.com/?utm_so... Get to the root of stress with the Stress See Bee Dee Complex from NextEvo Naturals. For up to 25% off subscription orders of $40 or more, use promo code MORENEWS at NextEvo.com. Protect yourself with the VPN that we use and trust. Use our link https://EXPRESSVPN.com/MORENEWS today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. That's the theme song. Hey, news heads, inquisitive little news heads full of bushy news hair, ready to be tamed by news caps sold from the back of a news van that also sells oversized teddy bears every month of the year, even those that don't contain

any major gift-giving holidays. What was I talking about? Ah, right, okay. So we've got a heaping helping of news for you today. Oh, it's so heavy. So I'm not going to waste any more time starting now. No, sir, just gonna dive right into this here news like the cooling waters of Lake Minnetonka.

Wait, what's that? In the sky. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. The Hunter signal. It appears that federal prosecutors might actually go after Hunter Biden. Possibly, maybe. Who can say? Perhaps not.

All right, forget it. Pull all this other crap away from where it was and put it over there. Gondor has lit the Hunter signal. this other crap away from where it was and put it over there. Gondor has lit the hunter signal. So it's time for our special deep dive Hunter Biden expose episode. Decrypt all the flash drives, text Giuliani, seal the exits, arm Wormbo! We're doing this, throw up the graphic.

Exposed the Hunter Biden saga. Actually need these. By now, you've probably heard a lot about President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. And if you haven't, please tell me your secret. He is after all the subject of an upcoming major motion picture. Oh boy.

Featuring Gina Carano, former co-star of the hit show Where the Fuck is Baby Yoda and Why Isn't He Yoda? But don't let these extravagant Tampa Wood biopics fool you. President Biden's son, Hunter, is not actually a very notable or historically significant person. His only job seems to be sending emails, setting up meetings that may or may not

ever actually happen. But just like a lot of rich Americans with famous dads, that hasn't stopped all of us from talking about him every day, all of the time. And in fairness to us, he has done actual crimes and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware just might prosecute him for those crimes, which I'm sure has the GOP just absolutely creaming in their suit pants. Here's how Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert described him to the crowd at CPAC Texas back in August. One of the greatest national security threats America is facing today.

That's right. Hunter Biden, one of the greatest national security threats America is facing today. He's like the specter of sloppy man children. An octopus with 16 tentacles. That's one fucked up octopus. He's got to be stopped. But if you listen to what Hunter's chief critics are saying, it can be a challenge to determine the exact specific threat he poses to America, and by extension, the world. But I'm calling for a select committee to investigate the law-breaking,

crack-smoking, gun-ditching, hooker-loving son of a resident, Hunter Biden. See, if you're not on the truth socials keeping up with all the latest developments in the Hunterverse because you're normal, you might not even be able to follow that list of allegations. And I guess the question is, should we be following them? The irony of the MAGA GOP's misinformation tactic is that it makes it impossible for anything credible to get through. You either assume it's all hogwash, because it often is,

or you slop it all up with a big asshole spoon. But in the interest of our long time and exclusive fair and balancedness, we actually wanted to look at this story with objective, smoky, alluring eyes. After all, we're not exactly Biden fans here at the showdy, at least the non-puppet side of the showdy. So why not look into this?

Let's break it all down from the beginning. What global threat does Hunter Biden allegedly pose? Part one, hunting season. To unpack all of the charges, it behooves us to do a little mini Hunter biography, a Hunter by dog graphy, if you will. You won't? Too bad! Here's the bidography. Hunter is Joe Biden's second son. His mother, Nelia Biden, and his younger sister, Naomi, died in a car crash in 1972,

just after Joe was first elected to represent Delaware in the US Senate. Hunter and his brother, Beau Biden, were also in the car and were seriously injured in the accident, but survived. In 1996, Hunter graduated from Yale Law School and started working as a financial consultant. In the years that followed, Hunter worked in various capacities

as an investor and a lobbyist, and he served on the board of directors of many different hedge funds and companies. He's also done a lot of business with his uncle, James Biden, who is Joe Biden's brother. According to his own interviews and memoirs, Hunter was struggling with drug and alcohol addiction throughout his life.

He traces it all the way back to the trauma of losing his mother and sister as a child. But this first became a matter of public record in 2013, when he was kicked out of the US Navy Reserve for failing a drug test. At the time, Hunter tested positive for cocaine, which will absolutely help you write the theme song for Top Gun, but will not help you actually

pilot naval aircraft, probably. But it will make you pilot them cooler. You'll think you're piloting the hell out of it. And then you won't. In 2015, Hunter's brother Beau died of brain cancer at age 46, deepening his addiction struggles. By his own estimates, he was smoking crack every 15 minutes during this period.

I'm not a doctor or an addiction specialist, but to these untrained ears, that sounds like too much crack. In the run up to the 2020 election, Hunter became national news after Senate Republicans opened an investigation into allegations of corruption against him and his father, relating to Hunter's work on behalf of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings.

The investigation was led by Senator Ron Johnson of the Homeland Security Committee and Senator Chuck Grassley of the frustrating old racist committee and sought to determine whether or not Hunter's role as a board member for Burisma was an improper conflict of interest while his father was vice president

and was specifically lobbying for anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. That investigation concluded in September, 2020 and produced an 87-page final report, finding that Hunter's role with Burisma did represent a conflict of interest. You know, in the same way giving your profusely sweaty kids and their sweaty, skeletal husbands jobs at the White House is a conflict of interest. The report also found that Hunter had quote unquote, "'cashed in' on his father's name." You know, the same way Trump and all of his children

cashed in on his name and the presidency all four years he was in office. But the GOP couldn't produce any actual evidence that Joe Biden had done anything wrong as vice president, or that Hunter Biden had broken any laws. And they were really trying, okay? 87 pages, that's so much world building. The bleeahem, the legends of the, where they all came from.

They gave it 110% is my point. Fast forward to late 2020, Hunter released a statement revealing that he was under federal investigation by the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office for tax issues and potential violations of money laundering laws. That's part of what the recent news about him is about as it appears that investigation is coming to a close.

This investigation had started while Hunter's father was vice president, but it widened in 2018. He's already started paying off some of his tax liability, but the Department of Justice's investigation is ongoing and the grand jury is currently reviewing evidence. Okay, here's why any of this still matters for us today, aside from Americans just being messy little bitches

who love drama. Guilty! In April of 2019, three water damaged laptops were dropped off for repair at The Mac Shop, a computer repair store in Wilmington, Delaware, owned by a guy named John Paul Mac Isaac, which is a new kids on the block ass name and a way cooler one than this guy deserves.

Mac Isaac, an outspoken and enthusiastic Republican, was working at the store that day, but can't be sure whether the person who dropped off the laptops was in fact Hunter Biden because he has a medical condition that affects his vision. Still, he assumed this was the real Hunter because one of the laptops had a Beau Biden Foundation sticker on it.

The receipt for the repairs was signed by a Hunter Biden and he smelled alcohol fumes. And as we all know, only one guy in America drinks alcohol. If you don't smell fumes, you can't assumes. Okay, just making sure this is the real report and not some encyclopedia brown mystery that got mixed in. So when no one ever returned to pick up the laptops or responded to his repeated phone calls,

Mac Isaac says he took it upon himself to investigate their contents, was disturbed by what he found and informed the FBI. He says that in late 2019, the FBI took possession of the laptops themselves, but that he made a copy of the hard drive and held onto it. At some point, he appears to have passed several copies

of this data along to a variety of right wing and Republican operatives, including a lawyer named Robert Costello, who frequently works with Donald Trump's lawyer. So this is the laptop from hell that Representative Boebert was referring to in her CPAC speech. Using a phrase Donald Trump himself takes credit for coining though others suggest that it was New York Post writer,

Miranda Devine, despite the fact that it's just an extremely basic spin on an old familiar phrase and is the opposite of clever. Also, it was probably Richard Lewis. The hard drive contains files, emails, and text messages, which provide a lot of insights into Hunter's life and business dealings between 2013 and when the laptops were dropped off in early 2019.

Furthermore, this trove of data provided access to some of Hunter's personal info and passwords, which have been subsequently used to hack into his iCloud storage and iPhone, leading to an ongoing synchronized cascade of leaks, a full Busby Berkeley musical sequence of leaks for all you greatest generation viewers. Leaks pissing in all directions,

like the piss on a certain pee tape, allegedly featuring a certain president who looks like human piss. Just piss sprung to life like Pinocchio, piss Nokia. In October of 2020, just weeks before the Trump versus Biden election, the New York Post and a few other far right international outlets started running with some of these Hunter stories, starting with this item on October 14th about Hunter's work on behalf of Burisma. Initially, Democrats, including members of Biden's own team

and administration, suggested that the emails and files could be entirely faked, one of those Russian disinformation campaigns we've all heard so much about. However, subsequent investigations by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Post suggest that at least some of the drive's contents are real. So much like a certain P tape before them,

yes, the laptops are probably real. And just about all of the laptop related allegations around Joe Biden specifically center on statements like this one from a 2019 interview. I don't know what he was doing. I know he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board. And that was it. Right wing operatives have scoured these files

like Twitter trying to figure out whether Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine. Remember that? Remember when that happened nine years ago? Looking for any concrete proof of Joe Biden being caught in a lie that would reveal he actually did have specific knowledge of Hunter's business dealings, especially during the time when he was still vice president, because that would be shady and unbefitting of the office of the president. Unless, you know, you're this guy.

Excuse me, piss guy. One email to Hunter from a business partner named James Gillier sent in May of 2017 suggests that 10% of a lucrative deal with a Chinese company would be held aside for the big guy, which many have assumed could mean Joe Biden. But we don't really have any more detailed information about that deal, including whether it ever came to pass or whether Joe Biden ever knew about it.

Also, Joe Biden stopped being the vice president in January of that year, turning the office over to Mike Pence, the living opposite of the big guy. Dude looks like an anthropomorphic rice cracker trying to hide his boner at Bible school. Though to be fair and balanced, Joe looks like an anthropomorphic uncle cracker

trying to hide his boner at bring your uncle to school day. Biden's ability to influence American foreign policy at that point was pretty much non-existent. It's not like Mike Pence, or for that matter, Donald Trump, were going to take pointers from Joe Biden. What it comes down to is that it's not Joe's laptop we're analyzing here. Heck, we don't even know if it was Hunter's,

so we don't have a lot of smoking gun interactions featuring the man himself. He's a bit like Hank Godzilla, the title character in the 2014 film, Godzilla. He's not around, but everyone's really focused on his present location, what he's been up to, and what kind of mood he's gonna be in whenever he finally shows up.

Laptop-related allegations against Hunter Biden, on the other hand, are a lot more colorful, providing endless ammunition for performative pearl clutching at conservative rallies in which every single speaker is visibly high on cocaine. We're gonna look into those, but first, we need to do our own little bump of cocaine in the form of these advertisements.

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Jazz. Hey now, we're back. We were talking about the Hunter Biden laptop and what the exact allegations are against him. And to sum it up, they can be separated out into a few distinct piles. First, there are things that are potentially embarrassing, but not actually related in any way

to politics or government or Joe Biden. Like for example, these leaked clips of Hunter nude in a hotel room with a naked woman using drugs and waving a handgun around like Kiefer Sutherland trying to hail an Uber. Illegal, sure, but like who hasn't done that before? We've all done that before, right?

I'm right that everyone has done that. But most of the more serious allegations center around peddling influence. The idea is that Hunter was accepting money from powerful foreign interests, a lot of billionaires who are likely aligned with the governments of places like Russia, Ukraine, and China,

in exchange for putting them in touch with his father. In some cases, even outright making deals happen, even if they weren't in the best interests of the United States. And here's the thing, many of the emails and messages taken from the laptop do in fact point to meetings and discussions about potential

deals between Hunter Biden, his business associates, and a whole spectrum of international businesses and billionaires, many of whom have deep connections to foreign governments. Most of these deals, especially the larger and more ambitious ones, never came to pass. But some of them did. Based on these emails, between 2013 and 2018, Hunter Biden and his companies took in about $11 million from his work, most of which was overseas. The potential for influence peddling is certainly there, and maybe this should lead to a serious

and level-headed examination about the incestuous relationship between business and politics that could result in meaningful legislation to separate the two. But it won't because neither conservatives or Democrats have any interest in seeing that come to an end. They just want to scream about Hunter Biden's dick

in public into a microphone. And hey, I get it. So do I. A lot of this resulted from his tenure as a board member for Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, which he joined as head of legal affairs in May, 2014. Hunter has never denied that he was an attractive hire for the company because of his father's job

as vice president. He famously told the BBC that his name was seen as gold by corporate leadership and led to his placement on the board. Kind of like how I got this job because my dad, Sir Codeth Johnston I, invented reading the news while frightened. Oh, and beards.

He invented the beard. Billion dollar idea, pops! By his own admission, starting in 2015, Hunter's drug use became a very significant problem and he was spending money very quickly, up to an estimated $200,000 per month from October 2017 to February 2018. According to what is probably,

maybe sort of Hunter's laptop, purchases during this period include luxury hotel rooms, Porsche payments, expansive dental work, and massive cash withdrawals for, you know. In their 2017 divorce filings, his ex-wife Kathleen added sex workers, strip clubs, and gifts for various women to his list of expenditures. Hunter has described Burisma as an enabler

of his worst impulses. Okay, so this Burisma situation is, it's kind of bad. The son of the vice president, his thinking compromised by a devastating drug addiction, takes money from a foreign energy company because they're hoping he will help curry favor with his old man. It's not great.

It's not even good. Probably shouldn't be allowed. But that's really just the beginning. Burisma was already plagued by scandal and under investigation by the Ukrainian government for corruption before Hunter Biden joined the beginning. Burisma was already plagued by scandal and under investigation by the Ukrainian government for corruption before Hunter Biden joined the board. We know from laptop emails and messages that representatives from the company, including a Burisma executive named Vadim Pazarsky, pressured Hunter to speak with his father about contacting the Ukrainian government

and asking them to shut down their investigation into the company. Specifically, Burisma hoped to get rid of a powerful prosecutor named Victor Shokin and replace him with someone more amenable to their interests. Zangief, perhaps, or General Arumov from GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64. I haven't met any other Russian or Ukrainian guys, and I haven't met them either

because they're in video games, but whatever. The laptop files contain an email from April, 2015 in which Pozersky appears to thank Hunter for setting up a meeting with his dad. And sure enough, just eight months after that email was sent, Vice President Biden did in fact speak to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about Shokin, who was then dismissed from his role

as the nation's top prosecutor. Hmm, seems suspect. These specific allegations were the subject of that initial New York Post item in October of 2020, the one that started the entire epic laptop from hell cinematic franchise. But it's not really as open and shut as the post would maybe make it sound.

First of all, there's no evidence that any official meeting ever actually happened between Pazarski and Vice President Biden. Nothing is mentioned in any of Biden's formal notes or schedules, and he's always denied that any such meeting took place. It's possible that the two men attended the same event and may have spoken.

It just doesn't appear on their schedules. But the only concrete evidence we have for this connection is the email from Pozerski to Hunter. And depending on how you read it, he could be thanking him for trying to set up a meeting, not thanking him for a meeting that already took place or was definitely going to. And although Biden did pressure the government of Ukraine

to fire Viktor Shokin as the country's top prosecutor, so did a lot of other world leaders and governments, including some forces within Ukraine. Shokin was publicly accused of corruption, not only by Joe Biden, but by Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Dariya Kaliniuk, the co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev.

Also, Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Shokin because of very clear acts of corruption. Yuri Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor who took over the top job after Shokin, has said there's no reason to investigate the Bidens over those allegations, which I guess is, you know, what he'd say, right? Still, Hunter's actions here are kind of hard to defend. Even Joe Biden seems to think so. He was asked about his son working for a Ukrainian gas company at a town hall in December 2019, long before the laptop had

ever leaked to the public, and responded by calling the questioner fat and challenging him to a pushup contest. The reason I'm running is because I've been around him all the time and I know more than most people now, and I can get things done, that's why I'm running. And you wanna check my shape on it, let's do pushups together, man.

Let's do, let's run, let's do whatever you wanna do. And no one has ever said it. Not one- I didn't say you were doing anything wrong. You said I set up my son to work in an oil company. Isn't that what you said? Get your words straight, Jack. That's what I hear on MSNBC.

You don't hear that on MSNBC. You did not hear that at all. But you heard. Look, okay, I'm not going to get in an argument with you, man. Well, yeah, you do.. Look, okay, I'm not gonna get in an argument with you, man. Well, I don't want to. Well, yeah, you do, but look, look, here's the deal. It may seem like he's off book here, but this was actually how they planned to engage

with this subject during strategy sessions. Americans want a president they can watch get a horse stop doing pushups. The point is, apparent conflicts of interest aside, there's no smoking gun that Hunter took money in exchange for Joe Biden's influence pressuring Ukraine to halt its investigations into Burisma. Although there's plenty of smoke, so once again,

maybe business and politics should be kept separate. Seems like a reasonable thing to ask for. Several of the mini scandals that emerged from the laptop are like this. There's some underlying merit to the charge, but no real proof that's likely to stick. There's some there there,

as a 90s Oliver Stone character might say, but many of the stories that emerged from the laptop and the surrounding gossip were built on even shakier premises. For example, did Hunter Biden accept a $3.5 million payment from Russian billionaire Elena Baturina, the widow of Moscow's former mayor? Everyone's least favorite jelly flavor, Sean Hannity said so on Fox News in March, and he seems very quaffed and confident.

Hunter received a whopping $3.5 million wire transfer from a Russian oligarch, the former first lady of Moscow. Donald Trump also desperately wanted to know. He posed the question 42 times in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign. To answer that question, this one is a bit complicated and weird. To quote the GOP's report, on February 14th, 2014, Baccarina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, Rosemont Seneca Thornton Bank Account for a consultancy agreement DD12.02.2014.

Rosemont Seneca Thornton is an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden that was incorporated on May 28th, 2013 in Wilmington, Delaware. That's the actual accusation. Not that Hunter Biden personally accepted the money, but a company that Hunter Biden co-founded accepted the money,

which then presumably Hunter Biden took. The company in question, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, was founded in 2009 by Hunter, as well as John Kerry's stepson, Christopher Hines, and some rich guy named Devin Archer, whose dad is, I don't know, Walmart Archer. Now, this whole thing is like a shell game of generic corporate names,

along with Rosemont Seneca Thornton. There's also Rosemont Realty, a company once known as BGK Group that Heinz and Archer worked on, but Biden was on the advisory board of until 2014. Biden also started a sister company called Rosemont Seneca Partners. Then there's Rosemont Seneca Thornton,

which was incorporated in May, 2013, by two people who go unnamed in the incorporating documents. It's likely the two were Hunter Biden and a business partner from this period, Walmart's son, Devin Archer. Hunter's lawyers deny this, but it super seems like this is a lie.

Overall, it's impossible to tell what was going on with all of this. And we get a lot of conflicting information from news sources and partisan reports. The GOP report cites a confidential document as their source. Meanwhile, the Washington Post cites unnamed sources close to the company who claim that Rosemont Seneca Thornton

was dissolved as a company almost right after it was formed. You know, like all legit companies. But the source also says that apparently Devin Archer then secretly undissolved it and used it to accept this money after Hunter Biden was no longer associated with it. But I don't know, man. They don't give us their sources, no one does.

Plus, the Washington Post article also says that Hunter couldn't have taken the money because he didn't claim it on his taxes, which is just an adorable thing to say. Overall, it's really hard to get to the bottom of this or even wrap your head around a timeline. And I think that's the point of making a bunch of entities with similar sounding names.

At the end of the day, it's equally possible that Biden took at least some of this money as it is that Archer went rogue and Biden wasn't involved. But either way, it doesn't look good for Hunter Biden. It's scummy and weird. Not to mention that Hunter was also trying to get deals going in China, because I don't know if you've heard about this,

but cocaine, it's pretty expensive. You have to work a lot of hours to maintain a coke habit. Luckily, you're on cocaine, so those hours fly by. In 2013, Hunter flew on Air Force Two with his dad, Vice President Joe the Bee, on a state trip to China. Once there, he met with an investment banker named Jonathan Lee. And just 12 days later, the Chinese government approved

a new private equity firm called BHR Partners, with Lee as CEO and Hunter as a board member with a 10% stake in the company. BHR, it's worth noting, is backed by some pretty heavy hitters in China, including large banks and local government offices. As a major investment firm, BHR also dabbles in a number of vital

and globally significant industries, like energy and technology. Hunter's lawyer has explained that the BHR gig was an unpaid position and that Hunter was consulting the company about ways to bring Chinese capital into international markets. Hunter also claims he never saw any profits from his BHR holdings until his father left office in 2017. Convenient. Hunter formally resigned from BHR, which he also wasn't officially working for or whatever, in 2020.

Though as recently as 2021, the White House confirmed that he's still working to unwind his investment in the company. It's a really relatable problem. Man, I wish I could get these guys to stop paying me, but they just keep paying me. Stop giving me all this damn money. There's only so much cocaine that one man can buy.

Still, several big BHR deals have raised red flags, giant expensive red flags. In 2016, the company facilitated the sale of a cobalt and copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo from an American company, Freeport McMoran, to a Chinese firm. Cobalt, you see, is an important resource for manufacturing electric car batteries. And the Biden administration has warned that China could be planning to corner the market on the mineral and use it to undermine the growth of America's auto industry. Executives from Freeport McMoran have said

they were unaware of Hunter's personal connection to the Chinese company that was facilitating the buyout. Hmm, a little fish, a little suspish. Furthermore, in July of this year, the Biden administration released more than 5 million barrels of oil from US emergency reserves in the hopes of lowering fuel prices,

which included shipments of crude to the Netherlands, India, and China. Now, one of the recipients of this crude oil was a conglomerate named Sinopec, which is owned by the Chinese government. And in 2015, BHR Partners invested in a subsidiary of that company known as Sinopec Marketing. In other words, Joe Biden sold off

a bunch of America's emergency oil to a Chinese conglomerate that just so happened to be a subsidiary of a company that regularly sends Hunter Biden money, even though he keeps begging them not to. Now, it's entirely possible, even probable, that Hunter Biden had nothing to do with orchestrating this oil sale.

And Joe Biden really did intend for the sale to lower American fuel prices and not to benefit his son's finances in an elaborate and roundabout way. But that's still what ended up happening. As with most of the allegations against Hunter, we can only confirm the appearance of a conflict of interest and not that any laws were broken.

But it doesn't feel awesome. Kind of feels like maybe the president's son shouldn't be allowed to be in any kind of position that allows him to even potentially profit from a White House decision. Kind of feels like the laws governing business and politics in this country should be a little more concrete than a big old shrug.

If the laws governing conflicts of interest between business and politics in America were the insane clown posse, every single elected official would be a shrug-a-lo. Yes, nailed it. Okay, I gotta wind down from that shrug-a-lo joke for a bit. So, you know, we should cut to some ads, you know, have a Faygo, then more rants about how the day goes for Hunter Biden.

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I didn't mean to make it weird. I didn't make it weird. Stop making it weird. You're looking at me weird. And we're back, back on the hunt, which is absolutely something Hunter Biden has said to at least one sexual partner in the past, or maybe in the future.

Thanks for watching Hunter, back to China and the Bidens. A lot of the other China allegations revolve around a different Chinese energy company, CEFC China Energy and Hunter's relationship with its young founder, billionaire Yi Jianming. Jianming and CEFC, which has close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, contacted the Biden family in 2015.

And that just rules. So fucking cool that, according to the New York Times, Yi and Hunter Biden met in person at a Miami hotel in May, 2017, and discussed a number of potential US infrastructure and energy deals, including a $40 million proposal to produce liquefied natural gas in Louisiana. This was during Hunter's tenure

as manager of Rosemont Seneca Partners, not Thornton, dammit, Partners, along with John Kerry's stepson, Chris Hines, right? Another politician's son, what are the odds? It's almost as though that thing I keep saying about this being against the law needs to be true. Still, it's unclear whether or not anything productive ever happened as a result of these discussions.

And it doesn't appear that any specific agreements were made. Nonetheless, according to a report in the New Yorker, Yee sent Hunter a 2.8 carat diamond as a thank you gift following the meeting, which during Hunter's divorce was appraised at a value between $10,000 and $80,000. I'm sorry, I must've read that wrong.

It sounded like I said a communist billionaire thanked the former vice president and future president's son for setting up a business meeting to discuss lucrative American infrastructure deals by sending him an $80,000 diamond. Because that is what I said. Because that's what he did. Lavish and comically over the top gifts aside,

Hunter's relationship with CEFC progressed in August of 2017 when he met with an executive named Gongwen Dong. Following this meeting, Dong and Hunter set up a joint account at Cathay Bank, which is when some serious buccolas started changing hands. Over 14 months, CEFC and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities connected with Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden.

This included a monthly stipend of $100,000 for Hunter, $65,000 a month for James, $500,000 one-time retainer for Hunter and then an additional $1 million retainer shortly after. These retainers were apparently intended to compensate Hunter, a graduate from Yale Law School, to serve as a legal representative

for CEFC executive named Patrick Ho. He has been frequently identified in the press as something of an international fixer for CEFC. And in some leaked 2018 audio, Hunter Biden can be heard describing him as, and I quote, the fucking spy chief of China. Cool.

This is all totally normal business stuff. Ho was arrested by the FBI in the fall of 2017 in New York for allegedly bribing African leaders to sign energy contracts with companies affiliated with the Chinese government, which kind of sounds like exactly what he was trying to do with Hunter Biden. Ho was ultimately convicted and sentenced to three years in prison on bribery and money laundering charges, but despite paying Hunter that $1.5 million retainers, he wasn't ever represented in court by Hunter Biden. Ho's acting attorney in the case

was a lawyer named Edward Kim. So there's zero evidence that any of the projects involving James or Hunter Biden during their entire tenure with CEFC ever came to fruition, but that didn't stop them from paying Biden salaries and legal fees. Laptop emails from 2018 show Hunter arguing with CEFC executives about when he'd get his money.

In March of that year, an email from one of his contacts at CEFC warned Hunter that the company was dissolving and advised him to take whatever he could get before the doors finally closed. He reportedly received $1.4 million in additional payments from CEFC over just the next six months. As it turns out, Hunter Biden's contact inside CEFC was correct.

By the end of 2018, the company's finances were widely seen as a house of cards in China, in which fresh loans were covering for old expiring loans and it's functionally collapsed. But wait, it's bad to pay for old loans with new loans. Okay, all right, wait a second. But okay, but what if I use the old loans to buy only payments of dollars?

I should have listened to my mom and just bought cocaine with it. Okay, so two fundamental questions remain. Why was this Chinese energy company, which was largely funded by the Chinese government, paying Hunter and James Biden huge sums of money? And if the money was intended to influence Joe Biden, were they successful?

And the answer is, we don't know. Well, we don't know. Other than some Washington office space that Hunter considered renting on behalf of an organization he called the Biden Foundation and Hudson West CEFC US in 2017, there's very little paperwork or data

connecting Joe Biden and CEFC in any significant way, even if you include nicknames like the big guy or sleepy Joe or old Kano. So we're still in an extremely murky gray area of things that aren't technically illegal, but probably should be. Other than cocaine possession, which is only illegal if it's against the law to be cool,

that is very illegal, very illegal, very addicting to be cool. Possess of a controlled substance notwithstanding, there's one bonafide case where Republicans seem to have established a clear cut example of Hunter Biden actually breaking a law. It relates back to Boebert's gun ditching charge. Remember that one? Back in 2018, while Hunter was going through

a particularly rough patch, he purchased a handgun at a shop in Delaware. Fearing that he might try to hurt himself, Hallie Biden, Boe's widow, took the gun and threw it in the trash behind Jansen's Market, a grocery store frequented by members of the Biden family. After the gun went missing,

Hunter demanded Hallie go retrieve it, but she returned to the market to find that it was missing. Because the market is close to a high school and they feared some kid might've found it, the Bidens contacted the police. Eventually, the gun was found and returned by a guy who regularly collects the recyclables out of Jansen's garbage.

It was pretty irresponsible, but no one was arrested or charged because it's very, very difficult to do anything illegal with a gun in this country. You can almost do whatever you want with them. Hunter purchased the gun at a store owned by a guy named Ron Palmieri, who claims that after the incident at the market,

Secret Service agents showed up at his store and demanded that he turn over the forms Hunter had filled out when purchasing the firearm. Palmieri refused and turned the forms over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms instead. Both the Secret Service and President Biden have denied this visit ever took place, but Palmieri did send the form to the ATF.

When Hunter was asked, are you an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? He answered, no. Even though he later admitted to using drugs during this time and had been previously discharged from the Naval Reserve for cocaine use.

Although it's rarely prosecuted, lying on that form is technically a felony. So you know what that means. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. No, really out of everything we just said, it appears this gun thing, along with tax crimes, is what might bring down old Hunter, the apparently most dangerous man in America,

if they decide to actually prosecute him. We got-ish him. Yay-bee. Part two, bad faith. Looking back on all of these revelations now with 2022 eyes, it's easy to read them as an indictment, not of the Biden family specifically, but the corrupt system that ties our government and corporations together.

Hunter Biden's last name provided him access to a world of wealth and privilege that simply wouldn't be available to someone whose dad wasn't involved in running the country. And that's an open invitation for grift and corruption, no matter who's president, regardless of whether or not he actually tried to peddle his father's influence on behalf of Burisma

or CEFC or anyone else, and whether or not he succeeded, the opportunity to do so was only ever one phone call to his old man away, which is a big problem if we genuinely want our leaders to act in the country's best interests, which we do. I think that's the idea, right? What's equally frustrating about Hunt Hunt 2020

is that the elected Republicans beating their drums over the potential conflict of interest is that they don't actually have a problem with it at all. Not a one of them said anything about Trump flagrantly using the office of the president to enrich his businesses or give his kids free jobs. No, for the right, the laptop from hell was intended very specifically as an October surprise

to swing the election in Trump's favor. A sequel to the but her emails tactic from 2016. Ron Johnson, one of the Republican senators who led the investigation into Hunter's Burisma deals, admitted as much on a Minneapolis radio show in 2020. Hunter's Burisma board seat provided the right with a way to deflect corruption accusations against the Trumps. If you recall, President Trump was impeached and ultimately acquitted in 2020 for allegedly holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid to Ukraine because he was pressuring them to investigate

his political rivals, including Joe Biden. And this is a big smoking gun. I've been saying this for a long time with that family. How about the Russia hoax? It turned out that they were the ones that did the Russia hoax. It's also an ideal distraction from allegations of corruption against Trump's shitty kids,

who have similarly been accused of making a lot of high-level deals thanks to access granted by their powerful pops. Eric Trump continued running his family's international businesses operating in over 30 countries with more than $130 million in foreign assets while his dad was president, which seemingly poses its own various conflicts of interest.

He has been accused of racking up massively excessive Secret Service expenditures on behalf of his extended family, while also fraudulently misrepresenting the value of his own properties for financial gain during Trump's administration. He also admitted on TV in August that his dad inappropriately supervised decision-making

at the Department of Justice. Whoops, what a poopsie goof. Donald Trump Jr. toured around the world selling condos while his dad was in the White House, while Ivanka pursued valuable Chinese trademarks for her various fashion ventures. Along with her husband, Jared Kushner, Ivanka brought in an estimated $ 172 to $640 million

while her father was running the country. Several orders of magnitude more than even the most outrageous Hunter Biden allegation. And that's before you even get into the $2 billion investment Kushner received from the Saudi government in 2021, currently under investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

So sure, when you're balls deep in scandal after scandal, it's helpful to have another story about the other side doing something kind of similar, even if you have to squint your eyes a bunch to get there. What if Hunter's name was Trump? Trump's initial attempts to link Joe Biden to corruption in Ukraine ultimately failed, but the Hunter Biden story provides

a valuable second attempt, a Luigi, if you will. If they can go back and argue that we were right all along with the Hunter Biden allegations, perhaps that could be extended into an argument that the Donald, a man previously famous for firing meatloaf from a fake job on television, had been right all along about those pesky Democrats and their plans for Ukraine.

Incidentally, those claims go all the way back to 2017, when Trump's accusations were centered on Hillary Clinton rather than Joe Biden. It's interesting that both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were both apparently responsible for the exact same misdeed. It's almost as if, and stick with me here, that rather than stemming from any substantive evidence of wrongdoing, Trump just lobs accusations

at his perceived enemies, and that sometimes he lobs the same accusations at different people, because he is a profoundly uncreative man. But he did come up with laptop from hell, so I guess somewhere within that oversized suit beats the heart of a poet. The Hunter Biden sort of scandal is doubly valuable

to Republicans because it can be neatly wielded by a number of ongoing right-wing narratives, if you're sly enough. That Joe Biden is a casual liar who's also oblivious to what's happening around him. The Democrats are perverts who also happen to be soft on China. That the media only provides one sided fake news

and that big tech is blocking the real truth from sites like Facebook and Twitter as part of a conspiracy to help Democrats, just to name a few. During a full 30 minute report on Hunter Biden's connections to China on his Fox News show in July, adult teen sidekick Tucker Carlson

basically gave the whole game away, functionally admitting that Huntergate is an attempt by the right to counter the Russiagate allegations. Bottom line, this is gonna live online forever. It's not going away. Now, is it real? We have no reason to believe any of these data are fabricated.

We've not independently verified them. We're not putting some of this stuff on the air. It's salacious. Is it real? It's not. Not? Not real? Well, I'm convinced. But come on, Tucker, what's the real story? Give it to us straight. Why does this matter? But again, the real story is not that Hunter Biden is a crackhead who like prostitutes and underage girls, although that appears to be very true and law enforcement should look into it. Okay, so it's not the real story, but it is a story and it's not, not, not, not, not, not real. Also, everyone Google crack.

And if you don't believe it, try it yourself. Type in Hunter Biden weighing crack on a scale, which is out there. Type that into Google and see what happens. In this same segment, Tucker also hints at Republicans potentially using Hunter Biden and investigations into the laptop files to get revenge on Democrats for investigating Donald Trump, you know, for all of his crimes. In their details, these stories bear a striking resemblance to the

Russiagate insanity that we were dragged through for years. Remember, they go on TV and bore you for an hour with how all these things fit together and then this money went that way. But in the end, there was nothing there. These threats have become a steady drumbeat in the wake of the FBI's raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida. You keep investigating our guy and we'll go after your guy. Well, the son of your guy who we already investigated, but we'll do it again. We never learn. The point is the Hunter Biden allegations aren't some newly discovered connection

that Joe Biden now needs to explain. It's the same story it was in 2020. Even if you find all of these Hunter revelations largely believable, and most of them are, we have every reason to believe that these files only came to light as part of a misdirection campaign orchestrated by right-wing operatives. Because it was, they've told us it was.

And not to excuse any of the extremely gross piles of money Hunter Biden was seemingly able to collect because of his dad and how foreign governments were slinging those extremely gross piles of money his direction specifically to try and get access to his dad. But the fact that this stuff only came out because Republicans thought it would win them an election is hugely frustrating.

It's as if, and stick with me here again, they don't actually care about corruption because they have absolutely no interest in investigating infinitely more egregious and credible allegations of corruption when they're leveled against this oblong chud. Remember John Paul Mac Isaac, the guy who owned the laptop store

where an alcohol-soaked rag calling himself Hunter Biden dropped off three computers and then mysteriously never picked them up? A series of journalists spoke with him in the weeks after the first laptop stories ran, and he couldn't really do a great job of explaining how the backup files he made found their way to associates of Rudy Giuliani,

who then passed them along to the New York Post. I really don't want to acknowledge what you said, but I don't want to say no comment anymore because it's getting exhausting. I don't know what to say. I can't talk about it. I don't want to talk about the timeline. I don't want to talk about who reached out to who first. I mean, it's... It's fun to dunk on Rudy Giuliani because he's short and old, so it's easy. Also, he's a deeply embarrassing man

who stumbled ass backwards into fame because he happened to be the mayor of New York City on the day of the biggest terrorist attack in American history. Now, he's America's mayor, the unofficial mascot of the worst day of New York's life. Anyway, there's an argument that could be made that a lot of this information,

at least as it pertains to Ukraine, seems to have originated from a Russian associate of Giuliani's named Andrei Derkach, a man considered to be a Russian spy by national security offices in both the Trump and Biden administrations. For reference, he's the guy in that famous photo taken in Kiev in the fall of 2019

in which he's handing documents to Giuliani. Documents that he claimed at the time proved the Biden family was involved in Ukrainian corruption. And yes, the US imposed sanctions on him in 2020 and the treasury department accused him of being an active Russian agent for over a decade who was using manipulation and deceit to influence US elections.

And sure, shortly after the initial New York Post stories ran Dukach advertised that he had a second laptop that was soon going to come to light, but never materialized. Wonder what happened to that top. And okay, during the 2020 campaign, Trump repeatedly promoted leaked audio recordings of Vice President Biden speaking with Ukrainian President Poroshenko in 2016,

which were originally obtained by Derkac, although we still don't know how. So sure, if you add up all of that, it makes it seem like Derkac maybe isn't a trustworthy guy and that maybe Giuliani and Trump were engaged in a smidge, just a smidge of treason that produced the files that were allegedly stored on the laptop from hell that Hunter Biden never picked up. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there never was a laptop, but that would mean Trump, Giuliani, Tucker Carlson, and several other

bulging white Republican men were just lying about it to avoid revealing that they actually got the files from a Russian spy. And that can't be the case. Speaking of bulging white men, I know all you band nerds are out there wondering, where my man Steven Bannon is at? And you were right, band nerds. You were right to wonder. See, weeks before anything related to the Hunter laptop

appeared in the American press, including that New York Post item, a YouTube channel operated by a Chinese dissident streamer teased that hard drives full of compromising information about the Biden family and their connections to the Chinese Communist Party were on the verge of being made public. That streamer has been linked in the past

with a Chinese billionaire named Guo Wangui, were on the verge of being made public. That streamer has been linked in the past with a Chinese billionaire named Guo Wang Gui who has direct ties to Steve Three Shirts Bannon. Here's a photo of Bannon and Guo together where he's definitely wearing at least two shirts. You remember Tuckstruck saying something about how the laptop included videos of Hunter having sex with underage girls?

It turns out that was a thing that this Wang Wei guy suggested they claim about the laptop with zero actual evidence to back it up. Fun, fucked up stuff. There's also leaked audio of Bannon recorded in late October, 2020, speaking with exiled Chinese supporters of Guo and basically taking credit

for making the Biden laptop story happen. The plot, like Steve Bannon's abused bloodstream, is thickening. Part three, plead the fifth of Jameson. All of this additional context sure makes it seem like there's probably more to the Hunter Biden scandal than just some laptops full of politically damaging information

and also naked pics that got dropped off at a store and then never picked up. Again, super weird that Hunter just abandoned three laptops loaded with personally and professionally sensitive material at a random repair shop. It almost seems like he wouldn't do that. So let's just say for the sake of argument, that Republicans and right wing operatives

are behind the whole Hunter Biden laptop story and had underhanded motives in pursuing the story and releasing it when they did. That still doesn't mean it's not true or that these files don't contain proof of illegal activity that may implicate the current president. In the rush to defend their candidate in the heat of an election season

and label any negative story Russian disinformation, it certainly seems like liberals were a bit overzealous in trying to block the story entirely rather than just addressing it head on. Even though it sort of seems like it might genuinely have had something to do with Russian disinformation, at least on some level. Hunter Biden undeniably broke the law,

at least in some mundane ways, like banging seven-gram rocks and lying on a form. You know, the little mild-mannered law-breaking that most of us do every day. That said, the federal tax investigation against him is wrapping up and may have discovered more inconsistencies in terms of how he was keeping track of his complex and multifaceted web of earnings for not doing actual work.

There's also a compelling list of evidence that Hunter entered into a long string of business deals and arrangements in at least two foreign countries that posed obvious conflicts of interest, considering his dad's, you know, big and important job. Hunter Biden will admit to this freely if you ask him about it, albeit in a wordy and roundabout fashion, like an NFL player trying

to explain his character's motivation in a Scorpion King sequel. But you're right, I created a perception, and a perception that was wielded against us in an incredibly wild and conspiratorial way. Taken together, the laptop evidence paints a picture of an increasingly desperate addict trading on his father's name as often as he could to score consulting fees from anyone who would pony up some cash, possibly by suggesting that he could convince his dad to make government policy

changes. That's pretty fucked. But over and over again, we're getting a picture of a guy who couldn't or wouldn't deliver on those promises. Whatever you choose to believe, there's no real credible evidence that Joe Biden ever acted on any of Hunter's business interests specifically. There's very little to suggest he even knew

about all of the deals and promises his kid was making during the Obama years. The best Tucker Carlson could do was dredge up this answer from the first 2020 presidential debate. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had,

the only guy who made money from China is this guy. If you read this as Joe Biden denying that his son Hunter ever made any money in China, then that's almost certainly not true. The links between Hunter Biden and multiple Chinese firms, including BHR and CEFC, are fairly clear at this point. But if you read this as a denial that Joe himself ever made any money from these China deals,

then it may very well be true. Biden repeated a similar answer earlier in the debate. And in fact, it's talking about me taking money. I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever. It seems like this is a canned line meant to shift the focus from Hunter's China deals over to Trump's rather than outright denying

that Hunter was doing any business in China, which would be a silly thing to deny because it was publicly available information. But it's the closest to an outright lie that the Fox Newsmax Brigade has yet trotted out. Part four, a media Halloween. In some ways, Huntergate is the ideal scandal for this moment in politics,

despite the presence of initially tantalizing Hulu limited series-esque elements like drugs, gunplay, and sex workers. In reality, it's a convoluted financial racket with a lot of boring details to run down and unfamiliar names to memorize. There's enough of a hook for people to recall the existence of a Hunter Biden conspiracy,

but not enough of a hook for them to know anything about it. But Democrats are partly to blame for the longevity and appeal of this scandal because of how hard they tried to completely stonewall it. Now it's widely seen as too hot for TV, a dangerous news story that Democrats don't want you to know about. Like an episode of Silk Stockings.

Remember Silk Stockings? So I fucking don of Silk Stockings. Remember Silk Stockings? I fucking don't. What the fuck is Silk Stockings? Roll a clip. And as we learn these stunning new developments about the investigation, remember when the media insisted the story was just no big deal, it was all,

you got it, Russian disinformation. This is a huge selling point for the story in right-wing media. Learning more about Hunter Biden may be incredibly dull, but hey, it'll trigger those libs. Plus it must be true because otherwise, why would Democrats have spent so much time arguing that it was obviously Russian disinformation?

And why would the New York Times refuse to investigate? And why would Twitter ban discussion about it on their platform? And why would we only hear about it on their platform? And why would we only hear that some of the laptop emails had been verified after the presidential election? And now both the Washington Post, the New York Times, all of a sudden verified this information. Of course, there's no mystery here. This is a major, massive CYA. According to the Wall Street Journal, the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden is

heating up and he could soon face serious criminal charges. So they say, uh-oh, we might be caught covering up for the Bidens again. We better act like we reported on this story. It won't work. And as much as it pains me to say this. me to say this, Sean, had a heat as a point. The Washington Post didn't have any evidence at the time that the laptop story was disinformation.

And Hunter Biden absolutely got paid boatloads of cash by a Chinese investment firm to do fuck all as best anyone can tell. Categorically denying all of that out of pocket wasn't the best move for Democrats because it forces humble newsboys like me to say things like, Sean,

Tony, has a point. But Sean is also being disingenuous because he simply cannot help himself. No mainstream outlets have completely verified everything on the Biden laptop. And the entire story about the Mac store guy

getting three entire Hunter Biden laptops and handing the files over to Rudy Giuliani might be extremely fake. So the article that Hannity and the New York Post are pointing to as an admission that the laptop is real, doesn't actually say that. Plus when mainstream news outlets make the case that the emails and text messages

contained in the laptop files weren't newsworthy, they're not entirely wrong. Remember that first New York Post item was about Hunter's work on behalf of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, a relationship that had already been public knowledge. Joe Biden challenged someone to a pushup contest for bringing it up in 2019.

Despite all of the self-righteous bluster, the emails weren't actually a smoking gun, and they don't prove that Joe Biden met with anyone in particular or did anything on their behalf. Their newsworthiness on the eve of a national election is, at best, debatable. After the shit blizzard of the 2016 election, which had famously been tainted by disinformation and alleged attempts by foreign governments to influence the outcome, it's understandable that media outlets would be extra cautious about this info dump of conveniently timed opposition research arriving just weeks before ballots were cast in 2020.

They would be bad journalists if they weren't at least a little suspicious. Bear in mind, too, most of these outlets didn't run with the Christopher Steele dossier and its infamous P-Tape allegations in the days before the 2016 election either. The only media organization that published the entire dossier was Buzzfeed two months after the election, and they explicitly noted that it was unverified.

Plus they ran it next to a quiz designed to determine which Disney character would be most likely to appear in your piss tape. I got Mrs. Potts. Rest in peace. So, you know, not exactly all the president's men. Even so, there wasn't a total media blackout on any discussion of the charges

against Hunter Biden pre-election. In fact, some mainstream outlets, including NBC News, claim their staff tried to obtain laptop files to report on them prior to the election, but were denied access to the documents they wanted. Some aspects of the social media blackout have also been overblown in the subsequent two years since the laptop story broke. Facebook initially limited distribution of the story on its platform while fact-checkers reviewed the claims. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Joe Rogan

that this strategy was partially influenced by the FBI, which warned the company about misinformation ahead of the 2020 election. The usual voices came out to insist this was new and horrifying evidence of high-level corruption, censorship, and coordination between Democrats in the government and the press and big tech, but that's a little overblown.

It was just a general warning and a pretty reasonable one for all the reasons we've already discussed. And considering how media disinformation led to a full blown riot and coup attempt two months later, it seems even more reasonable. And it's important to clarify that Facebook just limited distribution of the story. The story wasn't blocked.

The number of Facebook users that would see Hunter Biden links were limited, which delayed the story from making it into the social network's algorithm, and thus trending nationwide and worldwide. But Hunter Biden articles were still shared, linked, or commented on 600,000 times in their first day on Facebook,

according to the research tool CrowdTangle. Twitter went a good deal further. On October 14th, the day the New York Post published the first laptop story, CEO Jack Dorsey blocked the article entirely from the platform without any specific explanation. Twitter claimed at the time that it violated the company's terms of service

regarding hacked material that includes personal and private information. Just two days later on the 16th, the company backtracked and allowed the article to be shared freely. Dorsey later referred to the decision to ban the article for those two days as a total mistake. And Twitter has since changed its policy on hacked materials

to only remove content entirely if it's being distributed directly by the hackers themselves, which that seems weird, right? Seems like sharing private personal information that was obtained illegally should be blocked no matter where it comes from. I guess you were right the first time. Jack Dorsey, man, this episode is really testing my blood vessels and heart rate. Despite claims that big tech colluded with the Biden administration and violated campaign

finance laws, in 2021, the FEC ruled unanimously that Twitter had done nothing wrong by temporarily limiting the spread of the post as it did so for valid commercial reasons. I'm really uncomfortable with the government deciding something was legal and good just because it was done for valid commercial reasons, but that's a bearded rant for another time. But having said all of that, there does seem to have been an overabundance of caution here

in talking about the Hunter situation, and it clearly triggered a Streisand effect, giving the story more appeal because it was seen as dangerous or banned. Jumping to declare something an obvious case of Russian disinformation before all the facts are available makes that a toothless accusation. And that's bad of Russian disinformation before all the facts are available makes that a toothless accusation. And that's bad because Russian disinformation

is a credible threat. Your mileage may vary regarding how much of a threat you view it to be, but it's a real thing. The next time Democrats encounter real Russian disinformation, because let's face it, Republicans gorge themselves on Russian disinformation like sloppy hogs in the hot Carolina sun. We might not be able to convince anyone now

because Democrats are the boy who cried compromise. Whether you think it was high treason for Jack Dorsey to stop Republicans from making Hunter Biden sound extra cool and dangerous for two days, or you don't care at all, the coverup is worse than the crime is an old cliche for a reason. Okay, let's wrap it up.

Part five, conclusion. Where does this all leave us? Well, in terms of actual go to jail offenses, there may not be a ton of heat to these allegations. Unpacking it piece by piece meticulously, which we just did, it sounds more like fairly standard nepotism, an upwards failing rich kid

lucking into six figure E jobs rather than a Tom Clancy novel of international intrigue. That isn't to downplay it or say it shouldn't be investigated, which it is and was, but it's super hard not to look at this in comparison to the Trump family and the many crimes that happened during that presidency

and know that those crimes were objectively worse. It's hard to care about Hunter Biden when you've been numbed to seeing Trump scandal after Trump scandal go unpunished. In some ways, it's not even about partisan politics as much as being desensitized to a lack of accountability. But if we're not allowed to talk about this, that makes it seem more real, not less.

That's why we're talking about this. So rather than stamping out these stories when they come up, Democrats might do better to just address them honestly. And perhaps that way we can address all politicians and their families having jobs that create these conflicts of interest. Because boy, they, both sides do this a lot. So I'm all for holding politicians responsible,

including Joe Biden and Trump, obviously. Jail every president, even the dead ones. Dig them up. Dig them up! Dig them up! Chant over the credits. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up.

Are you doing it yet? Dig them up. Did you find the president's graves? Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up.

Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up.

Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up. Dig them up! Are you doing it yet? Dig them up! Did you find the president's graves? Dig them up! Are you digging into them now? Dig them up! Do you smell the corpses? Dig them up!

Are you dragging the corpses into court? Dig them up! Are the corpses in prison? Yes, we did it! news, this can be a podcast in your ears. It's called Some More News. It's a podcast instead of the visual version. We've got merch with stuff on it. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We got everything that I just said.