The FBI, which took custody of the supposed “Hunter Biden laptop” and an external hard drive as early as last December, according to the New York Post.
They are, according to the congressional source, is looking into the provenance of the material. However, the FBI declined comment saying simply: “In keeping with our standard practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of our investigations,” said FBI spokesperson Kelsey Pietranton.
However, the FBI’s investigation into the laptop material has previously been reported by NBC, the AP, and USA Today.
Among the questions the FBI is seeking is whether the laptop dump is part of what the intelligence community’s counterintelligence chief has already described as “a Russian disinformation effort targeting the 2020 election.”
The ODNI also did not immediately respond to a
request for clarification.
One senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast that the community is still working to determine if the Hunter Biden materials — which were leaked to the press by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — stem from a specific Russian intelligence operation.
Giuliani also spent several months working with Andrii Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament – who recently was identified and sanctioned by the Trump Treasury Department and who has propagated disinformation about the Obama administration and the Biden family, and now perhaps including this latest Hunter Biden laptop method to damage Joe Biden’s campaign.
While Giuliani and his
confidantes have previously spoken publicly about Hunter Biden’s drug use,
intelligence officials are investigating whether this last-minute push to
release material through Trump-friendly media outlets stems from some
particular directive from Moscow or whether it is an extension of
Giuliani’s efforts while using Ukrainian intermediaries to dig up
dirt on the Bidens. Whatever all that means or not, this case, intelligence
officials say “the recent packaging of
the Hunter Biden material looks similar to something the Russians would do to
sow chaos in U.S. domestic politics.”
Further, those same officials
say, Moscow wouldn’t necessarily need to muddy the waters or get directly
involved in the any of the latest dissemination of materials because Giuliani
has already taken the lead.
Patrick Boland,
spokesman for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee said: “The Intelligence
Community has stated publicly that Russia is once again seeking to benefit
Donald Trump’s election campaign by denigrating Joe Biden. The new wave of
attacks we are seeing are consistent with the false and unsubstantiated
narratives that the President, his personal lawyer, and a sanctioned Russian
agent have been pushing for well over a year. They appear intended to distract
from recent reports that the White House, as early as December 2019, was made
aware that Rudy Giuliani was being leveraged by Russian proxies as part of
Kremlin efforts to interfere in our election.”
During his Fox Business interview on Monday, Ratcliffe took a shot at Schiff, saying “apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred
political candidate to be deemed as not real.”
Boland replied that Ratcliffe is “purposefully misrepresenting Chairman Schiff’s words in an effort to mislead
the public and validate the latest attacks by President Trump and his allies on
Vice President Biden.”
Ratcliffe, Trump loyalist before his appointment as DNI, has come under withering criticism from intelligence veterans for manipulating intelligence to aid Trump’s reelection.
For example, former CIA officer, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen told The Daily Beast: “Everyone knows the deal here. They know Ratcliffe is irresponsible.”
But with the FBI custody of the laptop comes increased pressure from the right against FBI Director Christopher Wray who has recently experienced the ire of Trump and his allies after contradicting Trump on white supremacist violence, the nature of Antifa, and the primary foreign interference election threat coming from Russia.
Trump has told associates he plans on pushing Wray out if
reelected.
Trump allies seized on one detail in the Post story:
— a subpoena that purported to show that the FBI had seized the laptop — to
claim that Wray was somehow covering up the laptop’s contents to hurt Trump.
And, right on cue, FOX News with Legal Analyst Gregg Jarret
chimes in on Trump’s side tweeting: “He (Wray) must be fired NOW!”
My 2 cents: When will we ever get back to any kind of decent, normal government, and personal lives? Short answer: probably never and it’s been this way for a better part of 20 years. Now it's growing worse with each election or so it seems.
All the while our “leaders”
preach love of country, brag about our proud democratic structure, world leadership, and such - and all
the while waving the flag on the 4th of July, eating Mom’s apple
pie, and hugging babies. But, what a bunch of disgusting hypocrites they are and shame on us for sending most of them back to office supposedly to “govern us” with what we all say we love and dear – what a crock,
isn’t it?
Sorry to rant, but that's how I feel and the B/L is simple: We no longer seem to have a single drop of decent
leadership from the White House – where we all expect it to come from – instead
we have a chaotic, erratic, disgusting con man in the Oval Office – not matter
how anyone tries to spin it otherwise.
This whole Hunter Biden laptop saga is aimed at bringing down Joe Biden and it's classic dirty tricks that show a total loss of
dignity, honesty, and true leadership on a critical area dealing with intelligence
and national defense for the safety of the country as a whole for each and
every one of us against foreign interference (again) in our election process.
Thanks for stopping by.
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