Last week Rep. Adam Schiff claimed the Hunter Biden story reported by the NY Post was part of a Russian disinformation operation. “We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” Schiff claimed on CNN. But DNI John Ratcliffe responded to that allegation saying it wasn’t true. He told Fox Business, “Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.” And so, at the start of this week, it seemed we were right back to the days of the Nunes memo and the Schiff memo (and we all know how that worked out).
Tuesday afternoon, Fox News producer Sean Langille reported on Twitter that a “senior federal law enforcement official” told another Fox producer that both the FBI and DOJ agree with DNI Ratcliffe, i.e. the Hunter Biden laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign:
#BREAKING: A senior federal law enforcement official tells @JakeBGibson
1) FBI & DOJ concur w/ Ratcliffe that Hunter Biden's laptop & the emails in question weren't part of a Russian disinformation campaign.2) The FBI DOES have possession of the Hunter Biden laptop in question.
— Sean Langille (@SeanLangille) October 20, 2020
Yesterday, Politico got hold of a letter signed by 50 former intel officials claiming the laptop was disinformation but the letter itself didn’t contain any new information. In fact it stated, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” Despite this, the former officials said they were suspicious.
Now it seems that current officials don’t believe this is the case. The Washington Examiner has since confirmed that with “a federal law enforcement official.” I suspect Democrats will quickly try to muddy the waters again, perhaps claiming the announcement above is due to some influence by AG Barr, but it looks like the Russia excuse is not going to work this time any better than it did last time. Minutes after the tweet above, Langille also tweeted this:
MORE: @marthamaccallum is told by a Federal Law Enforcement Official that the emails are “authentic.”
And that the laptop may have not been looked at right away when it was received.— Sean Langille (@SeanLangille) October 20, 2020
Last week Fox News reported that at least two of the emails found on the hard drive were confirmed as authentic by a third party included in the email chain. And earlier today a Biden spokesperson admitted in an interview that no one from the Biden camp has claimed the emails are not authentic.
Today Fox News also published a story showing documents from the Delaware computer shop where the laptops were dropped off. One documents lists the customer as “Hunter Biden” and has a signature on it. That document was tweeted out yesterday by Sean Langille:
NEW: @MikeEmanuelFox obtains photo showing an alleged Hunter Biden signature on paperwork for the computer repair shop pic.twitter.com/LMBkiXmCer
— Sean Langille (@SeanLangille) October 19, 2020
Democrats are going to try to keep running out the clock on this story while simultaneously claiming it doesn’t matter even if the documents are legitimate. And really, this could be the kind of thing people continue to argue about for years to come so it’s unlikely everyone will come to an agreement in the next two weeks. But as of this afternoon it’s looking less likely that this is part of a Russian disinformation campaign and more likely that Rep. Schiff has once again got it wrong.
