by Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Turley:
“The defendant’s laptop is real.” With those words and pictures like this one of Biden using crack, the Justice Department introduced the Hunter Biden laptop as evidence in his upcoming trial over federal gun violations. The federal prosecutors went on to denounce suggestions of Russian disinformation, long peddled by the Bidens, the media and former intelligence officials, as nothing more than a “conspiracy theory.”
The media eagerly spread the claim of Russian disinformation before the presidential election. Twitter and others suppressed the story. This was done through one of the most skillful disinformation campaigns in history.
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It later came out that associates of the Biden campaign (including now Secretary of State Antony Blinken) pushed a long effort to get former intelligence officials to sign a letter making the claim, knowing that an ever-accommodating media would accept the claim without question or further inquiry.
At the time, some of us wrote that the laptop was “self-authenticating” since many of the emails were confirmed by third parties and other evidence. The Justice Department last week made the same claim of “self-authentication” as well as independent confirmation by federal investigators.
In the now-debunked letter of former intelligence officials just before the election, figures such as Leon Panetta, former CIA Director in the Obama Administration, claimed that the letter had all of the markings of a Russian disinformation effort by intelligence services. (Panetta continued to make the assertion late last year in pushing what the federal government is now calling a “conspiracy theory.”).
The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump and others also continued to push the conspiracy theory. Indeed, in 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”
What is equally astonishing is that in 2023 the Post expressly stood by Bump’s reporting on the laptop and other debunked claims. Even after the government has declared this reporting as part of a “conspiracy theory,” the Post continues to support the reporting by Bump and others.
The laptop includes not just pictures of Hunter using drugs but brandishing a handgun. The court clearly agrees with the government on the authenticity of the laptop. It has ruled against the defense and will allow it to be introduced into evidence.
Despite the conclusions of American intelligence and others, the Biden team continued to push the disinformation. That led the Justice Department to tell the court that “The defendant’s theory about the laptop is a conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence.” It added that Hunter’s “laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt.”
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