The DKIM signatures on the emails were verified. Whatever the laptop's sketchy provenance, the actual content being published from it wasn't a forgery.
Not only that, two people from the emails, Bevan Cooney and Tony Bobulinski, were tracked down and both confirmed the information in the emails were true.
AFAIK, only a single email was verified this way, and it is innocuous, only suggesting that a Burisma executive met Joe Biden sometime through Hunter. https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim
Graham notes upfront:
"Remember that while the email is validated, the context isn't. It's possible this reflects a secret meeting to conspire with Vice President Biden. Or, it's possible the guy attended one of the many Washington D.C. social functions whereby people shake hands with politicians and exchange pleasantries. As Richelieu is claimed to have said 'Give me six words by the most honest of men and I'll find something to hang him by'. Give me an email dump from the most honest of persons, and I'll pull one out of context to hang them in the court of social media."
Yeah that's what happened with the "Climategate" e-mails as well. A bunch of scientists were being attacked for political reasons and their hacked, leaked e-mails showed a certain amount of us-vs-them bunker mentality. Go figure. That was spun into a narrative about how they were conspiring to manipulate public opinion using statements pulled out of context.
I read the full emails. The statements weren't out of context. I don't think it quite rose to the level of 'conspiring to manipulate public opinion' but they were absolutely conspiring to manipulate the data and the conclusions of the "science".
They also lied repeatedly about it, including to Parliament, and generally engaged in all kinds of BS behaviour that would be fatal to people in the private sector - regulators and lawsuits would take down any company that tried those things - but because it's academia and climatology they just ignored the entire scandal and told the world to go fuck itself. And because the media have a massive blind spot for academics, everyone just sort of forgot about it and pretending it never happened.
In other words they were attacked for entirely justifiable reasons, by people who aren't even in politics to begin with.
There's a long retrospective on the Climategate emails here that goes into a lot of background and context, as well as the subsequent fallout. Suffice it to say, when even the Guardian admits the behaviour of these people was bad, it must be really, really bad.
I read them and they definitely proved an attitude very far from that of the dispassionate scientific enquiry. Had the scientists been involved in any other less politically charged research (say, Alzheimer's research) nobody would have questioned the existence of a certain amount of scientific malpractice. So you're right, that's exactly as Hunter Biden's laptop case.
It's not even clear to me that the tense of the message isn't distorted due to a language barrier.
It could just as easily be interpreted as a thank you for a promise to meet Biden at some point in the future. Something that it seems likely Hunter was promising to a lot of people.
It was pretty apparent Hunter Biden was engaging in foreign lobbying work.
You can pay a lobbyist to influence politicians but paying a politician directly is bribery. The question is if giving money to a politician's son is bribery since they indirectly benefit.
Then there is also the allegation that Joe Biden was taking a percentage of Hunter Biden's lobbying fees ("10% to the big guy"). Which if true is Ron Blagojevich level of corruption.
The question is if giving money to a politician's son is bribery since they indirectly benefit.
If that were true, every politician's close relatives would have to stay in some kind of economic suspended animation while they serve in office. But other sensible measures, like prohibiting a President or his children from maintaining control of a global business empire while he is in office, are probably warranted in light of recent events.
There is no evidence that the "big guy" quote is genuine.
>If that were true, every politician's close relatives would have to stay in some kind of economic suspended animation while they serve in office.
The key is money in exchange for political favors.
While I'm not going to comment if Joe Biden's situation fits the definition of criminal bribery, it is very similar to the situation with South Korean President Park Geun-hye who went to prison for 20 years for bribery related to policy decisions that were made in exchange gifts given to a close friend.
One of Hunter Biden's business partners -- the one the "big guy" email was sent to -- has come out that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter's business and taking money from it. He even shared emails and text messages that the Bidens told him the keep Joe's involvement a secret for obvious reasons.
I agree: the email reads to me as entirely innocuous.
The rest of the world doesn't seem to agree, though. Right-leaning media proclaimed it was a smoking gun that would destroy Biden's candidacy. But Left-leaning media wasn't any better: to the extent it covered it at all, it was that the email was part of a sophisticated forgery and disinformation campaign by Russian state security services intended to cement Putin's dominance over the USA, with Twitter and most mainstream sources going so far as to ban sharing it.