[nebolo]

Can you be a bit more specific on what you believe to be so important/surprising/relevant about this story that would make an entire journalistic career? What is the story that is not being told, and actively being suppressed? I have been following this quite closely and can't see it.

[TearsInTheRain]

Did you watch the Tony Babulinksi interview with Tucker Carlson? It shows that Joe Biden had an ownership stake in and was directly involved with his son's company that received a 5-10 million forgivable loan from a top member of the Chinese Communist party. This directly contradicts claims Joe Biden has made throughout his campaign and at the last debate.

[AaronFriel]

Fox News argued before Mary Kay Vyskocil, United States District Judge, well, to use the court's words: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."

My question to you is: are you arriving with an appropriate amount of skepticism?

Tucker Carlson is not a credible source, and nothing aired on that program "showed" anything definitive except accusations that were made. The Wall Street Journal ran their own story on these allegations and found no link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partn...

[Natsu]

> the statement he makes.

You're not parsing the legalese finely enough. It says the statement in that quote. Not every statement, but just one in paritcular. They defended one particular statement Tucker made on air in that lawsuit as "rhetorical hyberbole" which is a defense against defamation that has been used in, e.g. the Larry Flint case.

You can read more about what rhetorical hyperbole if you wish:

https://www.virginiadefamationlawyer.com/rhetorical-hyperbol...

https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1796/rhetorical-hyp...

This is not the sort of argument you should make if you want people to take your opinions on legal matters seriously.

[TearsInTheRain]

Tucker Carlson isnt the source, Tony Babulinski is the source. Im not a regular Fox viewer but I think you should watch the interview, Tony comes off as very credible. An interesting feature of this story is that Tony Babulinski's claims are corroborated by Hunter Biden's own words. That seems pretty definitive to me.

I cant read passed the first paragraph of that article because of the paywall, Im curious how they can possibly say that there is no link when we have so much first hand evidence of a link. Can you please let me know? Imho the only room for judgement is whether or not you find the link unethical or significant but to deny it exists seems disingenuous to me.

[AaronFriel]

You haven't given me any reason to believe these allegations, and I have seen the interview and I am not persuaded that Tony is a credible source.

Now what.

[TearsInTheRain]

Now nothing, youre entitled to your opinion. Cheers!

But from your comment above, can you please let me know why the WSJ says there is no connection between Hunter's company and Joe Biden despite Hunter's texts discussing Joe's involvement?

[nl]

Here's a quote from the WSJ:

“Text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture,”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/is-wsj-editorial-boa...

[AaronFriel]

The Wall Street Journal investigated corporate filings and paperwork that indicated the opposite of the alleged connection. So at least in terms of above-board money flowing around, they investigated and saw nothing untoward.

So, is it a he-said, she-said? No. The texts can't be verified as they came from a laptop that no one can prove actually belonged to Hunter Biden.

From an outside infosec perspective, without the whole picture, it looks like the laptops are a mix of what happened with Podesta's emails (hacked by a foreign intelligence agency in a disinformation campaign and laundered through WikiLeaks to make the lot seem credible) placed on a physical device and dropped off in a place with a tip-off to a susceptible target (Rudy Giuliani).

There's no evidence Hunter Biden (a Delaware resident) traveled traveled to a no-name retailer in a city he doesn't live in (!) to get laptops that were in-warranty (!) repaired there instead of the Apple Store (!), where they offered to do many, many hours of labor backing up those laptops for only $85 (in New York City?!), and then Hunter forgot the laptops and left them there (!) even though they contained allegedly damning images, allegedly child pornography, and allegedly damning business records detailing financial ties between his father and a foreign power, and that it just so happened that the retailer was active on social media as a Trump supporter (!) and somehow knew how to get in touch with Rudy Giuliani (!) to convey these laptops to Rudy, where they then sat for nearly 10 months unpublished (!). Even by the loosest standards for an evidentiary chain of custody, that's pretty bad.

Rudy Giuliani also tweeted out alleged "text messages" from this laptop that were pictures taken of a blackberry showing a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation, and in the top left corner of the screenshot showed a Russian telecom network.

Example: https://twitter.com/mikeemanuelfox/status/131928209151992218...

So, no, I don't think these claims are in any way credible. I think it's very unlikely that Hunter Biden would do those things, and I think the entire story beggars belief. That's why the story was shopped around to multiple outlets, that's why the New York Post was the only to go forward with it, and it's why the Wall Street Journal's coverage of it was incredulous because the only records they could verify contradicted these wild accusations.

[seppin]

> youre entitled to your opinion

you are entitled to say you believe something with no evidence, and he's entitled to say that's a ridiculous thing to do.

> can you please let me know why the WSJ says there is no connection between Hunter's company and Joe Biden despite Hunter's texts discussing Joe's involvement?

Are you serious? Read the article. Your text conspiracy involves believing that certain codewords are referring to Joe Biden. It's Pizzagate all over again. "It all makes perfect sense as long as some words mean something other than what they mean!"

I am so sick of this lunacy.

[buntenm]

The face to face meetings Babulinski and Joe Biden had along with the recordings, hard drives, emails original phones and text messages. All were just authenticated by the FBI and Senate.

[DubiousPusher]

Because the bumbling relatives of powerful people exaggerate their connection and involvement all the time. Without further evidence of Joe Biden's involvement, this amounts to hearsay.

That indicates the media should probably ask Biden about this and almost nothing more.

[buntenm]

That’s ok. The Senate and the FBI have said the evidence is real.

[nl]

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/29/tony-bobulins... includes what the WSJ found:

The Wall Street Journal reviewed his documents and found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden — or that he was active in his family’s foreign business endeavors, as Bobulinski claimed.

Bobulinski’s overarching claim is that Joe Biden was involved in, and may have profited from, his son and brother’s business dealings in China. He called Joe Biden’s claim that he never played a role in Hunter Biden’s foreign business endeavors "a blatant lie."

But the Journal reported that the text messages and emails Bobulinski shared from 2017 "don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture."

The venture in China "never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals, according to people familiar with the matter," the outlet reported. "Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden."

The Journal also quoted Gilliar, the British national involved in SinoHawk, as saying he was "unaware of any involvement at any time of the former vice president." Gilliar added that "the activity in question never delivered any project revenue."

[nebolo]

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the role and requirements of serious journalism. One is attempting to corroborate information, and weighing that information by the likelihood that it is, in fact, fact. Tony may have seemed very credible to you, but I think that there are many people who are good at seeming credible while lying. So unless the specific information you find damning is corroborated by some source independent of Bobulinski, serious journalists will not and should not present it as fact.

Tucker Carlson is not serious journalism - he's opinion at best and propaganda at worst. None of the above applies to him (as persuasively argued by Fox News itself).

Let me quote the WSJ linked above: >The venture—set up in 2017 after Mr. Biden left the vice presidency and before his presidential campaign—never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals, according to people familiar with the matter. Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.

Here's a detailed Q&A by NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/us/politics/bidens-china....

[TearsInTheRain]

CEFC was supposed to send $5mill to Tony and Hunter's company and 5mil to Hunter Biden as a loan. They did indeed never send the money to the company but we know from the senate report that CEFC did indeed send 5 million directly to Hunter. And official documents showing no role for joe biden is expected as this looks really bad for him. We know from Hunter Biden's email that his share was being held by his family members. Again Hunter Biden wrote that not Tony.

[AaronFriel]

We don't know that at all, you've begged the question by assuming the veracity of the disinformation and then used that to justify the authenticity of further disinformation.

This NBC News story should help you understand the origin of this conspiracy: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1245387

[temp8964]

Why did NYT run the "senior administration official" story then?

[nebolo]

It was an op-ed, not a story by the NYT.

[rodgerd]

Tucker Carlson is a professional entertainer. Why are you mentioning him in a discussion of journalism?

[thewileyone]

Tucker Carlson ... the man who lost the important document in the world ... who claimed in his defense that no one should take his TV show seriously ... that Tucker Carlson?

[pelliphant]

Why the fuck would you use that as a source?

[ehsankia]

I'm curious about this too. It definitely doesn't help that every single person involved in the story has zero credibility left, starting with a "lawyer" who has time and time again been caught peddling the president's lies, has exposed himself to a "15yo" reporter, and who the intelligence community say is being used by foreign nations to meddle in our elections.

[evan_]

Oof, took me a couple tries to figure out specifically which trump lawyer you were describing because your description roughly fits a few of them