[tootie]

They're also declaring a "smoking gun" of Hunter peddling influence when the only data point is an email from a Ukrainian to Hunter saying that he was looking forward to meeting the Vice President. There doesn't seem to be any message from Hunter, and Joe has already said his official schedule is public record and no meeting ever happened.

[aksss]

I think what’s considered the smoking gun here is the direct contradiction of what Biden has publicly attested to. This, in the context of Hunter’s questionable nexus of high compensation, dearth of professional qualification, and familial connections. All of this in context of Biden’s last failed presidential run.

[tootie]

It is definitely not a direct contradiction. It's very indirect. We have an email thanking Hunter for a potential meeting. We have no confirmation from Hunter. We have no confirmation the meeting happened. We have no confirmation any quid pro quo was offered. We have no confirmation Hunter said anything to his father.

The laptop was supposedly dropped off a few years ago. Giuliani, Bannon and the FBI have seen the data at least months ago. The NY Post has had it in their possession. None of these details are confirmed. Which means they either failed to verify any of it or they may even know it's a scam.

[remarkEon]

What's amusing about this whole thing to me is that Facebook and Twitter dropping the ban hammer on this piece will Streisand the hell out of it. If they'd left it alone, it would've been lost in the news cycle with everything else going on and no one would remember it in a week. Now the story is, once again, "Big Tech censors conservatives".

[mullingitover]

It's already lost in the news cycle. Not trending on twitter. Impotently reverberating on Parler.

[remarkEon]

Sure is for me, multiple variations of it. I'm not signed in (don't have an account), and am in a private window on firefox w/ cookies cleared.

[mullingitover]

Twitter is dominated by SC hearings and baseball, Google News is SC hearings and Barron Trump having covid, and other random stuff like rabid enthusiasm for early voting below the fold. I'm not seeing a single reference to this story on either of those sites headlines, and I'm also in an incognito window.

This thing didn't even survive the first half of the day.

[aksss]

This post has some 700 comments at the time I’m reading it, and has blown up compared to the coverage it had this morning. No doubt it will get lost eventually, but I think the ham-handed, nakedly political actions of twitter’s censors have become a story in their own right now.

[jcadam]

And, if the NYP really does have an entire hard drive o' shame on its hands, this story is only the appetizer.

[sparkling]

> and Joe has already said his official schedule is public record and no meeting ever happened.

Must be true if Joe says so huh

[tootie]

His meeting schedule as VP was public record. He was constantly in the media spotlight. Someone would have seen it if not photographed it.