To return to the thread subject briefly, it is not obvious to me that Hunter Biden has more resources to repair the damage to his reputation given the power and money imbalance between Fox/OANN/CFSG/MTG/etc and Hunter Biden.
That’s not really the consideration. Will Hunter Biden starve to death if he loses his job and his standing in the community due to the defamation? Unlikely. But if the person being defamed is just Joe Schmoe, then serious hardship might result.
Another thing that is not obvious to me.
What does this even mean?
Nobody has ever doubted Hunter Biden owned a laptop and that it was entirely plausible or even likely that he just forgot about it at a repair shop (cite: this friggin’ thread ).
What is still very much in doubt is that this laptop contains or has ever contained evidence of any sort of illegal activity. What is not in doubt is that whoever checked it did a terrible job on the chain of custody. When Fox News sees smoke, don’t assume fire - first check for the dozen smoke machines they’ve got going.
Or if the contents of the laptop were doctored after it left Hunter’s possession.
IANAL, but here is my understanding.
It’s easy to become a public figure. If an anonymous private citizen foils a bank robbery by grabbing the gun from the robber, he would become ( at least ) a limited public figure, because he took an action - foiling the bank robbery, that was likely to put him into the public eye. The fact that he never wanted to be famous, that the action wasn’t done for the purpose of making him famous, has no bearing on the situation.
If he had been standing on the corner outside the bank, minding his own business, and the bank robber ran into him and broke his leg, thus foiling the robbery……the situation might be different because the guy standing on the corner did not take any action that was likely to put him in the public eye.
I think a court would probably decide that by engaging in business deals with Burisma and others, he was making himself a public figure. Now, the fact that he is related to a highly place public figure would probably figure into this calculation, because there is a legitimate reason for public interest in the business dealings of the relatives of elected officials.
If you were to publish the details of the legitimate and ordinary business transactions of the regular Joe next door, he’d probably have the higher level of protection that comes with “not a public figure.” If those transactions proved not to be legitimate, he would probably lose those protections - because he took an action ( cheating in his business) that was likely to put him in the public eye, and there is a legitimate public interest in white collar crime.
Now, sometimes someone can be what’s known as a limited public figure, because the reasons for legitimate public interest may not extend to all facets of that persons life. So, if you are the guy that foiled the bank robbery, you may still get to apply the higher “not a public figure” standard if a reporter starts poking into your sexual proclivities……unless they can be tied into the bank robbery story.
In short, it’s complicated. I’m not even sure if Hunter Biden could claim to not be a public figure with regards to his personal issues.
The public figure standard may seem unfair at times, especially with regards to the families of public figures. People deserve their privacy, but the public deserves good reporting on behavior and business dealings of elected and government officials……and sometimes that spills over onto their families. Reporters need to be able to report this type of story without the fear of being destroyed over an honest mistake. It’s a good thing.
New York Times newsroom article from the previous week they were discussing.
As far as I can tell he had some sort of tax trouble, but then he paid the tax. Now there’s an investigation into whether he took foreign money to cover his tax liability, possibly in violation of foreign lobbying/money laundering/tax law.
Also the old fashioned kind of scandal, he settled a child support / paternity case in 2019.
~Max
I wonder why there is a need to insist on the fabricated laptop scandal when there are other old fashion issues with Hunter as @Max_S noted, IMHO it is because the innuendo or misquotes from a cache of e-mails is far easier to create. And easier then to fool many of the consumers of right wing news.
It also seems that a lesson has not been learned by many mainstream media outlets regarding how to avoid being manipulated when covering that bullshit.
Fabricated? It’s stated by the New York Times newsroom, not the opinion section,
But there has been debate within the Justice Department over whether the available evidence proves that Mr. Biden intended to violate FARA, which the government must prove in order to secure a criminal conviction. […]
[…]
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
~Max
Interesting.
Here’s a segment from an email from Hunter regarding Burisma that isn’t going to make headlines on Fox News.
*[Burisma officials] need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot intervene directly with domestic policymakers and that we need to abide by FARA and any other US laws in the strictest sense across the board.”
That is like saying that Superman is real because comic books exist.
You grossly misunderstand, neither the climate gate or Hillary emails were fabricated, it was the criminalization of cherry picked quotes and misinterpretations and created narratives coming from those emails the items that were bullshit and remain so.
This is more evidence BTW that one really has to clean their links or unfriend some “friends” that one relies for “information” that is coming from the right.
Indeed, I thought you were implying the emails themselves were fabricated in all three cases, and were berating DeSmog and Vox.
~Max
But listening to people that tell me what I what to hear is soothing, and so much easier.
Oh, Hunter had a Dell
Oh, Hunter had a Dell
Though nothing wrong was found on it
Yes, Hunter had a Dell
[H/T to this golden oldie]
I haven’t heard of that one. For me it’s always been A-hunting we will go.
~Max
Seems to me that there is a lot to miss regarding how the right wing sources of info frame the narrative, even that is bullshit (like with Critical Race Theory). One should not forget that like in pseudoscience, the bullshitter also does rely on real data, but as previous discussions showed, cherry picking and other chicanery is what the right wing and pseudoscience sources (items that overlap too many times nowadays) produce with gusto.
[This is rooted in a large dose of sarcasm, but – following in the footsteps of the worst aspects of the Trump party …]
We all know how close Trump wanted/tried to be to Putin.
We also all know just how Trump must have seethed when he was caught using US taxpayer funds – desperately needed to keep a rapacious Russia at bay – to extort political favors for his personal gain – from Ukraine and Volodomyr Zelensky.
It makes one wonder just how evil and scorned Trump might be – whether he could have left office, and – thinking about the above – essentially egged Putin on to invade Ukraine.
No score ever gets left unsettled with this Mafia Don. No perceived grievance ever goes unavenged. Not with this idiot and his Morte Alla Francia Italia Anelia fuckhead buddies.
Several things I said in the runup to the impeachment process(es):
- “I’m worried that the Ukraine is corrupt, so I’m asking them to investigate themselves.” (–DJT, in effect)
- If actual evidence was the goal, the Republicans controlled the Senate and Trump OWNS the DoJ. You wouldn’t need to exhume Count Chocula (Giuliani), retain him, and send him to a foreign government – one that YOU believe is corrupt – to “dig up dirt” on a political opponent
So … like your “election was rigged” brethren, take immense pride in what rubes you’ve been to follow these evil fucks down every fabricated corridor to which they invite you.
There’s never been any there there. It’s just the grift.
“The older I get, the more I realize how much we’re all being manipulated.”
Amen, Mom. Amen.
It seems to me that, since half the damn media is saying it’s his laptop, he should be able to get it back. Of course, that would be admitting it’s his, which may or may not be the case. All we know is that we’ve been told that there are some verified emails on it- but whether those were put on it after the fact is still up in the air… and the rightwing media certainly doesn’t seem to be interested in investigating that.
It’s amazing how much this whole thing has been investigated when there hasn’t really been a criminal accusation. But then, the conservative spin machine gets far more hay from investigations than from actual crimes.
One of the early right-wing narratives around this story was, while technically true, so completely and utterly misleading that it makes it blindingly obvious that the people involved in spreading it weren’t remotely interested in rooting out corruption or holding public officials to account.
That is the “Joe Biden helped get a prosecutor that was investigating the owner of Burisma fired while his son was working for Burisma. That is technically true.
Bit the real story is that the owner of Burisma embezzled a ton of money from the Ukrainian people, which had been seized in the UK and was being held pending investigation. The Ukrainian prosecutor handling the case was colluding with the owner of Burisma, and he let critical deadlines pass, and the owner of Burisma got to keep his stolen money. The outrage was strong and government official in several Western countries, including US VP Joe Biden, pushed to have the prosecutor removed.
So the reality is that Joe Biden pushed to have a corrupt government official removed IN SPITE OF the fact that his son’s employer was a beneficiary of the corruption. The twisting of this narrative means that I look at the other narratives coming out of laptop scandal very carefully, and so far it’s “so what?” all the way down.
It’s pretty clear that Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing investment opportunities in other countries. So what? That’s what investment bankers do.
Hunter was raking in large consulting fees from these companies. So what? It may seem sleazy, and it sort of is, but it’s also standard business practice for private equity companies.
Now, there’s no evidence that Joe Biden had any involvement in these deals, even though he may have stopped by during a couple of meetings and shook hands and wished them luck…….you know, supportive father stuff.
But even if he had, so what? It was 2017, he wasn’t holding public office at the time, and, at the time, there was no indication that he was planning to return to public office. He would’ve been perfectly free to engage in investment banking and pursue private business deals.
Now, if he had engaged in overseas business deals, he would’ve had to disclose them when he ran for public office again, but I don’t think even his biggest detractors are alleging that he completed any business deals, or received any money that required disclosing.
Now I don’t think that Joe Biden is “the big guy” referred to in the emails, but even if he was, that’s the biggest “so what?” of all.
I was in business. I worked on lots of business deals, some that happened, some that didn’t. Sometimes, if we thought it would help us secure or complete the contract, we discussed bringing in a third party and giving them a percentage.
Some of these discussions, which often took place over email, were rather candid and I might have been slightly embarrassed if the details were released. But that’s because sometimes you don’t want your customers seeing how the sausage is made. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the sausage.
And furthermore, sometimes the deal didn’t get far enough for us to contact the third party, or we changed our minds and decided we didn’t need help. In those cases, the third party never knew about the prospect.
So, if Joe was the “big guy”, so what? There’s no evidence that he knew he was the big guy.
Now, the other key element of the false narrative is painting Hunter Biden as a low skill low intelligence wastrel who would be greeting customers at Walmart if not for his father. The narrative claims he is incapable of honestly making serious money, therefore any serious money he makes is inherently dishonest. I’m very surprised at how well this one has taken hold, even among liberals.
Yes, he had drug problems, which are actually very common among investment bankers, because of the outrageous amounts of money that passes through their hands. But I firmly believe that you don’t get to be a Harvard Law graduate as well as an associate at Boise Schiller Flexner- one of the most prestigious law firms in the US, without having considerable talent and intelligence of your own.
Unlike the children of another former President, who have absolutely ZERO business experience that doesn’t involve working for their father.