[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.