How has this been proven true -- and I'll get to the signature in a moment? No, it has not been proven true, rather some have read into certain things and presumed it but there is no evidence. As pointed out, Hunter Biden lives in California and, from the information I've seen, it hasn't been shown that he was even in Maryland on that date.
No, the signature has not been proven true. Instead, the signature has been posted on line and it is really a bunch of squiggles. I've not seen, and I did a quick search now to be sure, anywhere it has been verified it was Hunter Biden's signature.
As for confirmation, if I was advising Hunter Biden, I'd likely tell him not to comment, as well. Not commenting does not imply guilt, it implies that the person does not want to put fuel on the fire, by giving various news and gossip sources reasons to create new stories.
This is at least partially true. The laptop was taken by the FBI, using a subpeona issued by a Grand Jury. Now, Grand Jury proceedings are secret -- from what I've seen, no one has leaked what the Grand Jury is investigating. I'd be curious who claimed it was investigating "money laundering" and how they would know, particularly if they have ties to the Grand Jury.
Of course, on the other side, we know it was taken by a Grand Jury, which does imply whatever they were investigating, they thought the laptop would provide evidence. Yet, 10 months later there have been no indictments, that we are aware of, handed down by that Grand Jury. We do know that no indictments have been handed down by the Grand Jury to either Biden or any of Hunter's business partners. In fact, none of them (from what we have seen) have been asked to even testify to the Grand Jury.
No, the emails do not show the headers.
This website gives a bit of a tutorial on email headers -- how to view them and the information they hold. The information contained in the email header is why people have made a big deal about the headers not being part of the copies of the emails. It is easy to create a To: and From: on the top of a document to make it look like an email. It is much tougher to put together things that are in the email header (it is designed to be extremely tough) -- including the web address the email actually came from and the address it was delivered to, the email "Message-ID," and the DKIM signatures.
This data in an email is specifically there to help prevent faking emails, and it is why Giuliani -- who alleges to have copies of the hard drive which would have this information -- is so criticized for only supplying screen shots of the email without the headers. It is also why so many news organizations are skeptical of these emails -- particularly that Rudy, who again should have the actual emails -- has constantly refused to provide the headers, or any other information.
Yes, he did. He also supplied other documents to the WSJ, including the various corporate documents, and they could find nothing to support his claim that Joe Biden was involved. Additionally, Bobulinsky claims that he came forward because of Adam Schiff claiming the emails in the NY Post story were Russian propoganda; Bobulinsky said he felt he had to come forward when Schiff refused to admit he was wrong. What has actually been reported, per
news articles, he was already working with the Trump Campaign and the Wall Street Journal to get his story published there, before the NY Post article. Trump's campaign specifically chose the Wall Street Journal because of their reputation and, as they are owned by News Corp (which also owns of Fox News), they'd be friendly to Trump.
Instead, the WSJ couldn't verify Bobulinsky's story, the documents he provided did not support the story he was telling. While they hadn't decided not to publish, they were delaying until they could find evidence. Eventually, Guiliani (perhaps pushed by others in the campaign) ended up looking for someone to publish the story of the emails, and the NY Post was who he found that was willing to print the story (apparently other news organizations had refused as, again, they could not verify the story -- again, likely at least in part based on the missing email headers).
So, Bobulinsky already appears, no matter how sincere and honest he appeared, to be caught in a lie. He did not come forward because Schiff refused to admit he was wrong, he had planned to be the one who "broke" the story to the WSJ -- and from what I've seen of articles in the WSJ, they do appear to claim that they were working on a story with Bobulinsky prior to the NY Post story.
One last point, the
person who Bobulinsky mentioned as being a good guy who was involved, and allegedly (from what I have seen) is the person who brought Bobulinsky in on this deal, James Gilliar, has stated, "unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former Vice President."
Nothing, an investigation, or even multiple investigations (we don't know since the FBI isn't talking), are moving forward. We know it was subpeonaed by a Grand Jury. If it was true that they were investigating money laundering, they must not have found anything illegal that could be proven with the laptop -- again, if they had I presume at least Hunter would have been indicted and arrested.
According to the computer shop owner, he gave Giuliani's lawyer the laptop after the impeachment hearings, because he was so upset at Trump being impeached. That would mean Giuliani should have had the laptops (or at least known the details, even if he didn't take possession "until a few weeks ago") for 8 months.
Additionally, if Giuliani new about the emails and that the FBI had them, then Trump knew. If Trump knew, you know he was hammering Barr to find out what the FBI was doing and hurry the process up, to arrest the Bidens (as he openly called for last week). In fact,
he is allegedly going to fire FBI Director Wray and Barr after the election, because he hasn't been able to arrest the Bidens -- and that makes a lot more sense if Barr had been working this case, and pushing the FBI in this investigation, since last spring and not just for a week or two.
It also begs the question, why didn't Giuliani either turn over the copy of the hard drive (or at least let Republican Senators know the FBI had the laptop) when they were investigating the Bidens? It was late enough it could have been a major boost for the President in September, and as a former prosecutor you would think he'd want these investigated by more individuals. While I don't know, about all I can think of is that Guiliani knows the hard drive will not stand up to that type of scrutiny.
To be clear, I agree they should be investigated. If it is true about the Bidens then they should go to jail. At the same time, if it isn't true, the perpetrators of this "hoax" would deserve to go to jail and the public deserves to know that it is a hoax. The issue is, at this point there just isn't any evidence to support the charges, at least beyond the single testimony of a person who admitted he is upset at the Bidens.
In this case, yes. Ratcliffe stated, "The FBI has had possession of this, their investigation is not centered around Russian disinformation and the intelligence community is not playing any role with respect to that." So how did he say he knew that? He said he "knew" because the FBI had not reached out to the NSA or CIA for help with the laptop, to him, and they would have if they had evidence that it was Russian propoganda. I can accept that, if the FBI had evidence to the point they felt they needed to involve the intelligence services, then Ratcliffe should have been made aware.
But Ratcliffe didn't stop there -- he went on to claim the FBI wasn't investigating election interference at all, but instead it was about "money laundering." The issue is, since the FBI hadn't reached out to him -- particularly with how secretive the FBI tends to be about ongoing investigations -- why would Ratcliffe know.
In fact, the FBI statement tended to somewhat contradict Ratcliffe. Yes, the FBI said they couldn't add anything but what they stated -- in a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- was, "If actionable intelligence is developed, the FBI in consultation with the Intelligence Community will evaluate the need to provide defensive briefings to you and the Committee pursuant to the established notification framework.”
In essence, the FBI seems to be stating, without using the words, that they hadn't ruled out it being foreign interference -- they just didn't have "actionable intelligence," solid proof that it was foreign interference. If they had ruled it out foreign interference I trust they would have said that in the letter, they wouldn't have added the line about "if actionable intelligence is developed." The was the FBI worded it was very interesting, and very careful -- both to not contradict what Ratcliffe had stated but also to, without saying it, state that they weren't sure if foreign actors were involved.
On top of this, reports have come out that
Hunter's "emails" and photos were offered to Giuliani while he was in Ukraine, that they were asking $5 million for the emails.
It also appears that the oligarch that owns Burisma,
Mykola Zlochevsky, reached out to Giuliani and offered the emails and photos in exchange for help with his legal issues back in May, 2019. Some of the photos have been claimed to show Hunter with a crack pipe in his mouth and engaging in sexual acts. In fact, the Ukrainian oligarch claims they had "comprimised" Hunter Biden's laptop as early as 2014 -- apparently putting some type of virus that allowed them to access into the computer. Since this information comes from Lev Parnas, the Guiliani associate indicted for illegally funneling foreign money into the Trump campaign, this is likely a story that the FBI is investigating.
As such, I think Ratcliffe's denial was something he couldn't actually do, and why the FBI letter to the Intelligence Committee was so carefully worded -- they do have evidence that the laptop is from foreign sources (and likely tampered with) but they need to verify what Parnas told them, as well as find out if the Giuliani hard drive is the one Parnas talked about and what, if any, part of the data might be foreign disinformation.
Again, Hunter being quite is likely the smartest thing he can do, particularly if some (but not necessarily all) of the informating may be genuine. If his laptop was compromised and a "fake" planted at the computer shop, most of the information might be real, with only small (but the juicy) parts faked. So, denial by Hunter that none of it is real would end up hurting him, as later he would be forced to acknowledge some is true (and would make him appear to be lying when he claimed that some was still fabricated). It could even be he "lost" a laptop, which may have been stolen -- if that is the case, it may have been a laptop he owned at one point, with the new information copied onto it.
But as I point out above, there are a lot of questions about the accuracy of what has been made public so far. Instead, none of the information has been verified. You have one witness, with no corroberating evidence, making claims that his own documentation does not support and no other partner in the deal corroborating his story. Instead, there are stories that this "laptop" was for sale in Ukraine in 2019. Instead, Bobulinsky appears to be caught in a lie (why he came forward) and it seems to weaken his credibility that he was trying to get a newspaper story published, rather than taking his story directly to the FBI/DoJ.
Yes, at this point nothing is proven and it does need to be investigated. It is far too early to make claims either about guilt or innocence.
