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0 pointsKrishnaShripad3y ago0 comments

> There’s really no story there

That's your opinion and you are entitled to it. But it doesn't turn away from the fact that the story was suppressed. Real or not.

> This was similar to the non-story of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Russian-hacked DNC emails, etc. of 2016 which turned out to be completely anodyne and routine

At least it got proper coverage. There was no suppression of either the email gate or the Russia gate. Whether it was fake, true, hoax doesn't matter. It got the coverage it was due.

> were rightly skeptical of a tabloid fluff story with no details, corroboration, or expert analysis about a mysterious harddrive

Joe Biden said it was based on a "bunch of garbage". That it was "Russian disinformation". All news media outlets, including Washington Post, carried that forward in all their news headlines and editorial posts (except right wing news media outlets of course). What were the details, corroboration or expert analysis that they went through before labelling the Laptop as "Russian disinformation"?

> Their skepticism turned out to be well founded

I missed the part of their skepticism where they called it "Russian disinformation" and it turned out to be true. Can you highlight to me where it was proved that the Laptop was part of a smear campaign against Joe Biden initiated through "Russian disinformation"?

What Washington Post has finally done is admitted that the Laptop and its contents are real. Now when it comes to the meat of the matter, the actual contents of the Laptop, it hasn't gone through sufficient scrutiny yet. It also hasn't taken into account the whistleblower's account of what dealings the Biden family had with the Chinese and Ukrainians. On who the "Big Guy" was who received the payments; which is mentioned in a March 2017 email conversation between James Gilliar (Hunter's associate) and a Chinese energy firm where he says: "10 held by H for the big guy?". Who is the "Big Guy" here? Who is "H" here? I am assuming H is Hunter and "Big Guy" is Joe Biden. It is still an assumption and can only be proved in some Court of law in USA. But if you aren't even going to give this evidence a chance to see the light of the day you'll never be able to get to the bottom of the Truth.

Now I am not saying any of it is 100% true as it is still under scrutiny by a Grand Jury (though a lot of it is coming out to be true now). I am just saying that the media actively suppressed this information from the general public out of "fears" of it being "Russian disinformation" which still hasn't been proved. Or maybe, just maybe, they did not want their favorite candidate to lose.

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jacobolus3y ago

The claim that it was Russian disinformation (Russian-hacked emails placed on a random hard drive along with gigabytes of other tampered-with content, then passed along to friendly partisans who had literally distributed Russian-intelligence produced disinfo multiple times in the recent past) is entirely plausible, indeed more plausible than the story about the abandoned laptop.

There is unfortunately not enough verifiable information about the sources and chain of custody of the hard drive to distinguish between these two alternatives.

Various media sources (and the American public in general) were burned multiple times by credulously repeating Bannon- and Giuliani-pitched (completely made up) bullshit, some of which actually was later demonstrated to be Russian government produced disinformation. Even if the hard drive turned out to be what they said (again, this is still dubious), it would be a good example of a “boy who cried wolf” situation.

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