[acdha]

> The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high.

Really? Companies do this all of the time. For example, how many billions did Apple lose for resisting the FBI’s requests with the San Bernardino shooter?

> It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story.

Can you be specific about this? The “Twitter Files” and all extent accounts say the opposite – and that was the best the right-wing media could find – and if you’re thinking about Zuckerberg’s interview, he specifically said the FBI did not make a request in this case.

[elurg]

As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying? It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an electoral goal.

This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective.

I hate Trump's guts but it's important to acknowledge the enormous amount of effort that went into covering up the behavior of Biden's son.

[acdha]

Can you cite any of those claims? What’s been established in public and e.g. Zuckerberg’s interview was that they warned companies to be wary about another repeat of election interference, but nobody is saying that the FBI told them to kill this story.

> This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective

This is imaginary: I’m not even sure why you’re lying about something we all remember, especially since nothing in the laptop data was even substantial even if was all true.

[elurg]

The FBI seized the laptop in December 2021, nearly an year before it was revealed. They knew it was real but they strongly encouraged media companies to "expect a leak". As a consequence of this the story was strongly suppressed and the general public came to believe the opposite of the truth.

It's true that the FBI didn't force companies to kill the story but the story was still killed as a result of FBI actions. Are you OK with the FBI misleading the public? Or are you going to argue that they are incompetent and genuinely believed that it was a Russian operation?

There is no proof that Joe Biden himself acted improperly but Hunter Biden did receive large consulting fees for performing no work - he spent his time on cocaine and hookers instead. This strongly indicates that he was hired for political connections.

[acdha]

The story wasn’t killed, it was front page news. The reasons it dropped off were accurate: Giuliani’s sloppy handling tainted the evidence and there wasn’t much there relevant to Joe Biden. Everyone already knew Hunter Biden had a drug problem but he wasn’t the candidate and there was no reason to think his father was going to pull a Trump and install him in the government.

Two years later, that’s held up well - despite a lot of attention, there hasn’t been anything of interest to come out of the dump, which is why Republicans have shifted to claiming the problem was some kind of coverup despite it not being covered up.

> Are you OK with the FBI misleading the public? Or are you going to argue that they are incompetent and genuinely believed that it was a Russian operation?

This is key to your misunderstanding: the FBI was on watch for a repeat of the election interference we saw in 2016. They didn’t mislead the public, so it’s not a question of anyone being okay with it because that never happened.

> This strongly indicates that he was hired for political connections.

Yes, and lots of rich kids fail up. The question is whether his father actually did something improper to help him. For example, did Joe Biden actually pull strings for Hunter’s clients or did he refuse to violate the ethical rules? If you want this to be a scandal that’s the kind of thing you need to show.

[fragmede]

Can we ever really be sure there weren't emails from Hillary Clinton that were deleted.

[acdha]

This is really off-topic, but while we can’t prove that she never sent an email we can look at the lack of evidence of this happening and conclude it’s unlikely. For example, the Republicans had years to find evidence of someone receiving or mentioning an email which wasn’t turned over but found nothing. That tells us that anyone confidently claiming that it happened is lying because there’s a 0% chance that they’d have suppressed that evidence for the entire Trump administration.

[joshuamorton]

Just to clarify, what part of the hunter Biden story was "real"? The hunter Biden story can mean everything from "a laptop was found with hunters nudes, and it's discovery was probably influenced by Russian state assets" to "hunters laptop contains proof of misdealings my the president".

As far as I can tell, the first is more or less true and the second isn't.

[nkurz]

I agree that the way the laptop was claimed to be found sounds incredibly suspicious, but I don't know of any current evidence that the laptop's "discovery was probably influenced by Russian state assets". When you say "the first is more or less true", are you including this part? If so, can you point to evidence linking the find to Russia?

For the second part, I'd also agree that the laptop does not contain clear evidence of wrongdoing by the president. It contains a lot more than just nude photos of Hunter, though. It's real in the sense that everything on the laptop is believed to be authentic. It offers insight of Hunter's business dealings, and I think hints that contrary to the president's claims, he was at least aware of some of the details of those dealings. As such, I think it's reasonable for people to want to inspect the contents and reach their own conclusion as to what it implies, rather than being prevented from doing so.

[acdha]

> As such, I think it's reasonable for people to want to inspect the contents and reach their own conclusion as to what it implies, rather than being prevented from doing so.

I don’t disagree with the desire but that doesn’t make it legal, and in this case it really runs headlong into Giuliani’s incompetent effort to turn it into an October surprise. Much of the data can’t be authenticated and the signs of tampering mean it’s hard to trust. There are some things which have been verifiable (e.g. emails whose recipients confirmed them or with valid DKIM signatures) but the way they restricted access to Republican operatives for over a year suggests that they had no interest in letting people make up their own minds instead of the carefully constructed narrative being shopped around to loyalist websites.