WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed Thursday to “get to the bottom” of problems with Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — after the first son effectively confirmed it was a computer repairman and its contents. By requesting a criminal investigation of others distributing it is his.
At a Capitol press conference, McCarthy (R-Calif.) was asked how Hunter’s new call for federal and state criminal investigations would affect the House Republican investigation into President Biden’s role in Hunter and first brother James Biden’s international business dealings. will
“I don’t think either way, I think it’s delaying his strategy. I think it’s an attorney tactic to try to stop something,” McCarthy said.
“I’ll tell him one thing, he’s admitting now that it’s his laptop. So he was a little slower than the rest of the papers and Twitter and others, but now we know it’s true,” House said. said the speaker.
“And I think the investigation here, the uniqueness, is that you’re going to have Republicans and Democrats and we’re going to get to the bottom of all of them.”
White House press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre declined to comment directly Thursday on Hunter Biden’s request that his father’s subordinates at the Justice Department open a criminal investigation — but said the elder Biden was “independent” of the agency’s actions. believe
“This is a president, and I’ve said this before, who believes in the independence of the Justice Department, or any, enforcement investigation, and he’s been very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre said at his regular briefing. ” “He believes this should not be politicized, as he has said over the last few years campaigning, and he believes any investigation should be independent.”
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abe Lovell, tried to put the genie back in the bottle Thursday afternoon by claiming that Hunter wasn’t attesting to the laptop’s authenticity when he called computer repairman John Paul McIsaac and others. had called for criminal investigations against — including former President Donald Trump. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, who provided the laptop files to The Post in October 2020.
“These letters do not confirm McIsaac or other versions of the so-called laptop,” Lovell shot back. “They address their conduct of seeking, manipulating and disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal data, wherever they claim to have obtained it.”
However, Lovell did not dispute that the laptop was left by Hunter at McIsaac’s former Delaware store in a letter to the Delaware attorney general on Wednesday. Kathy Jennings and the US Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsenthough it suggested that some files had been manipulated.
In fact, Lovell wrote to Jennings that “McIsaac chose to work with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer to weaponize Mr. Biden’s personal computer data against his father, Joseph R. Biden.” The New York Post. “
“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” Lovell wrote. “McIsaac’s willful, reckless and unlawful conduct allowed hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data to circulate on the Internet, without discretion.”
Lowell also wrote that “
In his letter to Olson, Lovell wrote, again without contesting that the laptop belonged to Hunter, that “by Mr. McIsaac’s own admission, he had at least two files containing Mr. Biden’s computer data. Moved external hard drives in interstate commerce.”
Lowell claimed McIsaac and others violated Delaware laws against theft, possession of stolen property, misuse of computer system information, unauthorized access to computer systems, destruction of computer equipment and theft of computer services. May be.
The first son’s new lawyer also claimed that McIsaac and others violated federal laws against “intentional access.”[ing] Computers without authorization” transporting stolen property and releasing legally protected information.
In October 2020, the Post’s first laptop bombshell revealed that Vadim Pozharsky, an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Barsma, had emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for “the opportunity to meet his father” — Joe Biden. is in direct conflict with 2019 claim that he “never talked” with his son about “overseas business matters”.
Hunter earned up to $1 million a year for serving on the Brisma board from 2014 to 2019, when her father was put in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Visitor logs show that Joe Biden met his son’s partner, Devon Archer, in 2014 when both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Barzma board.
Social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, initially censored the Post’s reporting as prominent Democrats claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation. The Biden campaign vaguely denied that the Joe Biden-Pozarsky meeting took place.
Joe Biden Even claimed On October 22, 2020, in the second and final presidential debate that The Post’s reporting on Hunter’s laptop was a “Russian plan” and that Giuliani was “being fed Russian information.”
Hunter later said in 2021 – after his father became president – that the laptop could “definitely” be his, but it could also be from “Russian intelligence”.
McIsaac says Hunter Biden failed to retrieve the laptop from his shop and shared paperwork showing he provided the original hard drive to the FBI in December 2019. After hearing no update from the feds, he provided a copy of the device to Bob, Giuliani’s attorney. Costello contacted the office of then-Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) before the 2020 election.
McIsaac has produced a copy of the sales agreement that shows a waiver clause that he says gave him legal ownership of the laptop when it wasn’t repossessed.
Further reporting by The Post confirmed key details in the laptop documents. For example, additional records show that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner the day before the Burisma exec’s email was sent. A group of her son’s colleagues, including Pozharsky and a Kazakh trio who posed for photos with the Bidens, attended.
Hunter also invited Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, to dinner. A 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees alleged that Baturina paid $3.5 million in 2014 to a firm affiliated with Hunter Biden. Baturina is one of a dwindling number of Russian oligarchs still facing sanctions from the Biden administration over Russia’s more than 11-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post described Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s discussions about a business plan with CEFC China Energy. On May 13, 2017, an email recovered from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10 percent of the deal.
Hunter and James Biden Earned $4.8 million From CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to a subsequent Washington Post review of Hunter Biden laptop documents.
Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobolinski alleged that he directly discussed the CEFC deal with Joe Biden in May 2017. Bobolinski and another former partner of Hunter Biden, James Gallier, identified the president as the big man.
one October 2017 email A call about CEFC’s effort to buy US natural gas identifies Joe Biden as a participant.
Republicans have accused Biden of being too soft on China on issues such as determining the origin of COVID-19, which has killed more than one million Americans, and curbing exports of fentanyl, which only allowed 2018-2021. About 196,000 Americans died.
In a separate Chinese venture, online business records show the first son still owns a 10% stake in Chinese state-backed BHR Partners, which it says manages $2.1 billion in assets. Despite his father’s insistence, there will be no conflicts related to the family business. interest during his presidency.
Hunter co-founded BHR Partners within weeks of joining Air Force Two on an official visit to Beijing by then-Vice President Biden in 2013. According to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter introduced his father to BHR CEO Jonathan Lee in the hotel lobby, and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Lee’s children.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is investigating the Biden family’s international business ties, as well as Hunter Biden’s mysterious new art career.
Hunter Biden is reportedly under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware for possible tax fraud, money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and lying on gun purchase forms. An associate, Hollywood lawyer and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, paid Hunter’s $2 million tax bill last year to avoid criminal charges. The terms of this gift or loan are unclear.
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