March 13, 2024 • 44 mins
Isn’t it Russian disinformation? Was Guiliani a “useful idiot”? (with Asha Rangappa and Denver Riggleman)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All of a sudden, there's a private flight and there's
three people in a hotel room across from the Pentagon.
One of Hunter Biden's attorneys trying to convince me that
they think there's things in the data that could really
help them out, and explaining what happened and who spread
that data, who stole it in his invasion or privacy,
and I finally got to the point they said, listen,
we think there's really three people involved with this. They
said it's Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and then they mentioned
(00:24):
Roger Stone. Maybe a couple days later, I'm on a
zoom with Hunter and his wife and they're like, will
you please help us.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in
the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
all around the world.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news Almost every day.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Welcome to Mission implausible. So welcome to Mission implausible, Jerry.
Today we're going to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop, which
means a lot of different things to different people, and
clearly is the number one story on Fox News and
in some parts of our political debate.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
All right, John, let's open up the Costco size can
and see whether it's empty or full of worms, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
As you know, living overseas, we always went to Costco
to get big items before we headed overseas. I bought
so much toilet paper from Costco before I went to
Russia that it lasted me through two years of Russia
and then two and a half years in Serbia before
I had my new toilet paper.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
The one good thing about working all the time you're
working either in the embassy or you're at hotels, going
to diplomatic tools, you don't you can steal it, but
you don't use a lot of your own toilet paper
because you're pooped there. Yeah, you work the restaurant, you
shower at all.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
In Moscow, Yeah, even a shower at home. They had
you on video. They probably had it at the embassy too,
and they certainly had at hotel, so there's no way
around it.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
All right, John, let's talk Biden laptop.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, we're going to get into sort of the background
of this issue with several episodes here, but what's happened
lately is a pretty big story. So the Justice Department
recently acknowledged that an FBI informant named Alexander Smirnoff was
quote spreading disinformation to sign the hurt President Joe Biden
after speaking with Russian intelligence officers. But what's new is
(02:34):
this indictment alleges that Smirnoff lied in twenty twenty to
create a false narrative about the Bidens after meeting with
Russian intelligence sufficient. So we're going to focus on the
laptop rather than the whole hunter Biden story. And as
we'll discuss in the podcast, Jerry and I play an
actual small role in this story, but we're going to
use two episodes to talk about it. And so what
(02:55):
we're going to do is have our producer, Adam Davidson
interview us for a change.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The Biden's story is like a black hole. It sucks
everything into it. Even John and I.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So I'm assuming most people have heard the phrase Hunter
Biden's laptop because.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I've seen it on bumper stickers.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Is a twenty twenty four Republican slogan.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yes, and a great band. By the way, they're fabulous.
I liked their early acoustic work best. But let's just
start with the very basics. Is there an actual laptop
that is Hunter Biden's laptop? It's now like her emails,
it's just this phrase you hear, but what is it
tied to?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So initially, as I understand it, several weeks before the
twenty twenty elections, Rudy Giuliani revealed that he had a
laptop that he claimed was Hunter butdens and he's claiming
that information from the laptop was stolen. So I think
now we can certainly affirm for certainly that there is
a laptop and it was the one that Rudy Juliani had.
(04:00):
Now what was in it and how we look at
that will be open to discussion today. So, yes, there
is a laptop.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
So this might be something I shouldn't admit in public,
but I myself have a laptop, and in fact, many
of the people I care about most in the world
have laptops. Owning a laptop is not necessarily It is
often associated with nefarious activity, but it's not always. So
I'm assuming when we hear Hunter Biden's laptop, it's referring
(04:30):
to what was on that laptop. And I know there's
some like nude photos, But why does anyone who isn't
Hunter Biden or whoever he was emailing care what was
on his laptop?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well, Adam, you're going right to the heart of the matter.
That is largely the question that the people who want
the world to believe that there's something horrible going on
here don't want to deal with. Right, So the question
is who cares? Like Hunter Biden is the son of
Joe Biden. He's a son who's had a series of
personal problems, drug issues and other things. But right prior
(05:04):
to the election, this notion that he had dropped off
a computer at a Delaware computer shop, which then made
its way into the hands of Rudy Giuliani and eventually
the New York Post and the FBI. It is automatically
supposed to suggest that there's something nefarious and that it
somehow has to do with Joe Biden. Right, so essentially
it has this suggest that Hunter Biden is somehow up
(05:25):
to something and that Joe Biden has been involved or
helped him, or there's something criminal going on. And the
problem is this laptop, as I understand, it's been in
the hands of the FBI for several years now, and
there's been nothing public that has suggested that there's anything
criminal in there. But there has been suggestions of salacious
you know, dick picks and nude picks and all kinds
(05:46):
of things, which, as ugly as that may be, it's
not really clear what that has to do with his father.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
So this is something I've wondered about with conspiracies. But
let's say I want to disparage say John Ceipher, and
I'm part of a team of smart people who know
how to spread bad information. It seems to me that
a really clear strategy that some people follow is have
a phrase, have a lot of like nefarious, sish seeming
(06:14):
stuff around it, but you actually don't want specifics, Like
if I say John Steifer robbed a bank on March
thirteenth in Bethesda, that isn't the way. It's more, Hey,
everyone knows what John Szeipher was doing in Bethesda, the
cipher Bethesda story. Is that a thing that people who do,
(06:35):
for example, you guys conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
No, I guess the show's over. You've done it. But no, No,
casting vague aspersions is always better because those are unfalsifiable.
You can't ever prove a negative. Right, So before we
go to the heart, let's go on a little journey
as to like how we got here. So hunter by
(07:00):
and supposedly, and I accept that this is a fake,
he shows up at this place in Delaware to get
his two laptops fixed, and he never picks him up again.
So odd fact number one. The guy he shows up to,
he hands his laptop over to I'm not making this
up to a guy who's legally blind. So this guy
(07:23):
apparently he can't identify who gave him the computer. He
doesn't know because he can't see his face. So okay,
the guy who's legally blind has nothing better to do
than open this computer, get it working, and then do
you know, sit around and read one hundred and twenty
thousand emails of somebody else's stuff, which I'm sure we
all have time to do. Right. He is so shocked
(07:47):
by this that he hands it over as most computer
repairmen do. He hands it over to Rudy Giuliani. Hey, Rudy,
here you go. Well now we're talking chain of custody issues,
right who the computer up? Can you prove it likely?
Hunter Biden? Yes, yes, yes. My understanding is that Giuliani
(08:07):
had this thing for months and said on it. My
understanding is before it ended up with the New York
Post it being the hard drive. Forensic work has shown
that it is clear that the computer was I'll use
the word tampered with, but people were in the computer
refiling things, messing with the computer. How's that for technical talk?
(08:32):
And so the question is is what is on the computer?
Is it the original? And has it been manipulated in
any way, shape or form? That I think is still
an open question. So let me put it there. So
blind guy gets it, blind guy reads it, blind guy
hands it to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani sits on it
(08:52):
for X amount of time. Rudy Giuliani, mind you, who
is also the same guy who was in Ukraine looking
for on Hunter Biden.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Hunter Biden, who did work in Ukraine, presumably went there
with a laptop at some point.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And I understand also that the FBI warned Rudy Giuliani,
who was traveling back and forth to Ukraine, that he
was engaged with known Russian intelligence officers. They warned him
about this at the time. So Rudy Juliani, who's at
some point comes across this laptop and he's looking for
dirt on Hunter Biden, presumably to get dirt on Joe Biden,
is engaged with Russian intelligence officers at the same time.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I just want to quick throw in that the FBI,
we know, had gone to Twitter and had talked and
said that to be careful that Rudy Giuliani specifically was
someone that Russian intelligence was trying to manipulate. So we
also know that from public accounts.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
So first off, we don't know if there's any evidence
of actual wrongdoing right by Hunter Biden. But if there is,
is it actual evidence or was that tamp.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
With that's for a jury to decide, right.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I mean, it's not even clear that there's anybody's charged
with anything here.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I've been a reporter for much of my life. My
spidy sense is telling me there's nothing here because highly
motivated people Rudy Giuliani and others who really, really really
wanted to find very clear, convincing evidence against Hunter Biden
and Joe Biden had access to this thing for months.
They've sort of done their best and they haven't come
(10:25):
up with anything. It is theoretically possible that Rudy Giuliani
is incompetent and is surrounded by incompetence, But to me,
that suggests there just isn't anything there.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I would disagree with you. So there is something that's illegal,
and then there's unethical. So if accounts are true, Hunter
Biden was receiving fifty thousand dollars a month from a
Ukrainian energy firm. Him and his uncle may or may
not have had business interests in China. So the question
(10:58):
is do only members of people involved in politics what
is okay for them? So me personally, I think that
family members should not be involved in this. So Clarence
Thomas's wife, Jimmy Thoms shouldn't be involved in politics if
her husband is ruling on these things. And I would
put out that Avonka Trump in twenty eighteen, while she
(11:19):
was in the White House was being granted copyrights. She
received eighteen of them, like it was a large percentage
of the copyrights China granted to the US. She received
eighteen copyrights from China. So I would say that there
is an unethical issue here is you know, was Hunter Biden?
Did he really have value of fifty thousand dollars a
(11:40):
month for Barisma? But is that illegal or not? And
I think the answer is it's not illegal. It's just
I personally find unethical.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Before I ever heard about any laptop, I looked into
the Bresmath story and I was thinking of writing about
it for The New Yorker. I didn't do exhaustive reporting
on everything, but my basic inclusion was lots and lots
of Eastern Europeans, Central Asian kind of former Soviet Union
oligarchs pay a lot of money to people with impressive resumes.
(12:11):
There's a lot of Democrats, a lot of Republicans on
all these boards. General Wesley Clark.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Is very involved.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
And it's not illegal, and it's pretty colm, but.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It seems that the reason it was brought up right
before an election. Yeah, we'll eventually get to why Jerry
and I signed this letter that we're going to talk
about is for it to matter, it has to affect
Joe Biden's effort to run for president. Right, So Hunter
Biden is a citizen and maybe a scuzzy citizen, and
maybe he's done illegal things and maybe he gets arrested
(12:41):
and does abay care?
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You know?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Is that an October surprise? Is that something that's going
to affect the election of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump?
Because what this really comes down to is that oftentimes
the timing of when this came out, This stuff was
going on for quite a long time, and then a
week few weeks before the election, all of a sudden
it's storn into the public space that there's this horrible
scanned and somehow it has something to do with Joe Biden.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Right, And it's not even a scandal, it's casting aspersions.
And I think we need to go back to the
twenty sixteen election, and I think we can look at
two things. One now is of today. It was the
McDougall story and the Stormy Daniel's story were both basically
money was paid to prevent them from coming out to
(13:23):
influence the election, which clearly did. And also in twenty
sixteen with the grave and by the pussy tape, right
within a day, the stolen emails stolen by the Russians.
DNC heck, the DNC heck those through WikiLeaks. Those drop
nothing illegal in there, by the way, but probably some
(13:45):
unhappy stuff. And so it was clearly manipulation that the Russians.
I think the Mother Report is very clear about this,
as are almost not almost all intelligence agencies are the
only person who disputes this is Vladimir Putin and people
who leave him. Now we go into the twenty twenty
election again, three weeks the same playbook. Something pops out
(14:07):
exactly the same way, that is generalized and cast suspersions.
You got to look at this with some suspicion.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
And really similar dynamics to the Hillary email and the
DNC emails, where the exact same thing. It was reported
as this vague thing Hillary's emails without any specificity. It
was just a phrase like a marketing campaign, and like
you said, the timing and just it allowed for a
constant drumbeat of something.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
All right, thanks, Adam, Let's talk to someone new. We
have Asher Ingappa, who is very impressively a teacher at
the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, former dean of
the Law School at Yale, a former FBI special agent.
And one of the reasons we're talking with her today
is she did a really long and authoritative peace on
(14:59):
Hunter Biden and you can get that in her subsetect.
And really looking forward to chatting with her.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Thanks for having me just to start us off, like,
why the obsession? That's the question?
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Yeah, Well, and Jerry, I think you've hit the nail
on the head. Hunter Biden's laptop at this point can
mean anything you want it to mean. I think most
people who use the phrase actually don't know what they're alleging.
They just know that it's something really really bad and
it involves the government and the CIA, and it's like
(15:29):
Hillary's emails. You know, there's shorthand, and I think, quite frankly,
Republicans are really good at this. They're really good at
creating shortcuts that are ambiguous and undefinable and therefore can
just be used to claim or allege things that they
never have to actually articulate. So I did some research.
(15:54):
There's a great piece in New York Magazine by Olivia
Newzy where she really breaks down the history and really
this is a laptop that was left at a computer
repair shop in Delaware. The person who owns the laptop,
never picked it up, and so the computer repair shop
(16:16):
owner decided to copy files, and by the way, not
copy the entire hard drive or mirror the hard drive,
but just to selectively copy files, which he then passed
on to, among other people, various members of Congress, sort
of usual suspects. Steve Bannon eventually gets a hold of this.
(16:37):
I mean, it goes down some chain of command. There
is an allegation that the FBI came by and seized
the actual physical laptop, though I've never seen that confirmed officially,
though that may be true. And basically what happens is
that from these files that this blind computer repairman copies,
(17:00):
he claims to have found several smoking gun emails that
shows that Hunter Biden was engaged. I mean, I'm not
even really sure what the allegation is. He was using
his connections at Barisma to engage in political influence and
doing deals with China and all of this stuff. And
this was coming up right before the twenty twenty election. Now,
(17:24):
when this started surfacing, it was a New York Post
story that broke this. People were like, this sounds really sketchy,
and there were a lot of things that were happening.
At the same time, Rudy Giuliani was under a counterintelligence
investigation because of contacts that he had when Ukraine we
were approaching an election, etc. And the social media companies
(17:45):
had because of what happened in twenty sixteen, the hack
and dump by Russia, had established greater communication with the
FBI because they understood that they could be used as
vectors foreign influence operations. So when this started coming up,
the social media companies, based on kind of all these
tabletop exercises that they had done with the FBI, et cetera,
(18:08):
were like, let's just put the brakes on this, let's
add some friction to the story. And so they temporarily
I don't even know if they block the story. They
might have for a few hours or something, but they
definitely prevented its amplification.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, for twenty four hours. Twitter basically didn't know. You
could put it on there, but you couldn't like forward it, right.
So before we go, just a quick question though, So
apparently the agreement is if you don't pick up the computer,
the computer belongs to the company, belongs to this guy
Mac whatever his name was. But does the information belong
to him through to the poison tree. Right, So if
(18:43):
he takes the information out, your information, if you hand
it to a computer salesman and they fix it, you know,
pick it up, the computer may belong to them a
fantasy agreement if you don't pay. But does the information
does he have legally have the right to Is that hacking?
Because that was part of the Twitter thing is like
this is hicked information, we don't put it on there.
So that was the first.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
Question, right, I think that's exactly the right question to ask.
And in fact, Hunter Biden has filed lawsuit. So I'm
not sure if it's exactly against the computer repairman, but
there's a number of defendants, but it's for invasion of privacy, right,
So it's really about this. I mean, just because somebody
puts on the bottom of their receipt that you leave
something there and it belongs to you, doesn't mean you
(19:24):
lose all of your privacy interests in the content is.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
The hardware, it's not the information.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
I think that would be the argument, and I think
Hunter Biden might even be arguing, look, it doesn't belong
to you like you were. In legal terms, they call
them a bai lee like a Baylor Bailee relationship. I
think it might depend on the intricacies of state law.
But whether you can just like convert that into your
own personal property, like after a certain time, right you've
(19:51):
been entrusted with that, you can maybe charge fees or
something like that. But so there could be all these
legal things. But I think what you're getting at is
that the intrusion into the contents of that, even if
it were somehow, you know, became his property, I think
is a very valid legal question. And I suspect that
the reason that there was a delay in filing a
(20:14):
lawsuit about that, because I think invasion of privacy is
kind of the big scandal here, Like somebody just went
through a person's hard drive and released it all of
their personal information.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Let's take a breather back in a moment, glad to
have everybody back. Let's go back down the rabbit hole.
The real issue for most people is like, Okay, what
did Hunter Biden a Hunter Biden do wrote? But what
is the illegal thing it's alleged, and what is the
allegation somehow because I don't remember voting for Hunter Biden,
(20:48):
But what is the allegation against his father who was
running for president.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
I went down that rabbit hole and I used a
kind of a three step formula that people who are
looking to test the validity of conspiracy theories used to
determine whether it has any basis in fact or not.
I mean, look, there are theories about conspiracies that are
literally actual conspiracies, so we need a way to test them.
(21:15):
And the three step process is asking three questions. Well, first,
what is the claim? Okay, so you need to know
what the allegation is, That's what you're asking. Then what
is the evidence for your claim? What is the source
of your evidence for that claim, and what is the
reasoning that links your evidence back to that claim? So
for me, the big question, as you asked, is what
(21:35):
exactly is the claim? Before I can even go down
this road. So there's two scandals, and each scandal has
its own claims. Okay. The first scandal is about the
contents of the so called laptop. The allegation is that
Joe Biden's efforts while he was vice president to pressure
the Ukraine government to fire the prosecutor who is investigating
(21:57):
Barisma was influenced by Biden, who was on Beisma's board
from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen. In other words, they
believe that the firing of that prosecutor was because he
was being influenced by his son. The other claim is
that Joe Biden financially profited from Hunter Biden's deals in China.
(22:20):
Those are the two big claims. The problem is that
the evidence for these claims is very thin. They rest
on these so called smoking gun emails, which are very cryptic.
I can go into the details if you want, but
as I refers to.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
The big bad guy, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
Like these kinds of things. Scandal number two is about
Twitter's decision to add friction to the amplification of the story,
so that allegation is basically that Twitter and the FBI
were conspiring at the direction of Democrats or whoever and
Joe Biden to basically not allow this story to get
(23:05):
into the public domain, and that this constitutes election interference.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
This is Donald Trump's FBI to be correct, right, yes.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Correct, correct?
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Now, Remember that this is really key. They have to
create this nexus between the government like the FBI and
Twitter in order for there to be something, for example,
for Jim Jordan's committee to investigate. Right like, in other words,
if Twitter was doing this just on their own I mean,
too bad, so.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Sad private company. Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
Basically the allegations.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
It's not much. Frankly, is it possible we're just taking
it way too seriously because essentially, to me, it looks
like it was a stunt, the smear Joe Biden right
before an election, and the Republicans just mad that didn't work.
So therefore they're spinning and throwing stuff in the air,
hoping that there'll be enough stuff that would just confuse people,
and it'll just add to the other stuff they're trying
(23:58):
to confuse people and whatever. Part of the problem is
that if we go down and like, okay, let's let's
investigate this, let's look, let's it's sort of we're playing
the game to a certain extent rather than just saying
it's bull and moving on.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
So, you know, I do think it's important to engage
with it. But I think you're one hundred percent right
that the expectation was that the media would react and
respond the same way they did with the Hillary Clinton
email thing, and that this would be you know, hijack
the news, et cetera. Shockingly, the media kind of learned
and they were They understood that it's important to question
(24:35):
the provenance of this type of information. So the coverage
became not about the substance of the emails. It became
about who was behind it, where it was coming from,
and for what reason, which is exactly the questions that
you want to ask. I mean, if you go back
to twenty sixteen, imagine if they had been asking those
questions about Hillary Clinton's emails.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Right, there's an irony here that apparently Juliani and Bannon
they had versions of the hard drive, and they had
it months before, and yet they waited until three weeks
or so two weeks before the election and released it
so that no fact checking could be done. And what
(25:16):
we did is simply say, caveat emptor right, you know,
buyer beware, Let's see what this really is before we
all jump on the bandwagon and make accusations.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
You changed the frame of the story, That's what That's
all this comes down to. You changed the frame of
the story, which neutralized the impact of that information.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
I wonder, if these people had this information from this
laptop and there's something potentially horrible in there, why didn't
they publish that? Why haven't they been talking about a
lot of this stuff comes down to people want the
smear to be out there rather than the details.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
But four of the five things that the Biden family,
who were private citizens at the time, asked Twitter to
take down were dick pics set out by Hunter Biden,
and which is against Twitter rules that you know to
be to be put on there. Yet this has been
spun into Biden as though he was still the vice president.
Of course he wasn't basically asking them to take them down.
(26:11):
And I don't know why right wing media would want
to see that sort of you know, Hunter Biden, or
yes you do to say, whereas the same stuff you
know one.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Thing about conspiracy theory, So conspiracy theories that have no
basis in reality are defined as a belief that people
or groups are secretly coordinating behind the scenes to generate
very specific outcomes. There is research that suggests that people
(26:42):
who believe in conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories really generate
a sense of powerlessness, become more politically disengaged, so in
other words, they can be less likely to vote. It's like, well,
what does it matter, right, the deep state is gonna
make sure Briden wins again, or whatever. If that's what
you're actually promoting, you're actually encouraging people to just opt
(27:07):
out of the system. Now, Also, conspiracy theories can be
linked with willingness to use violent means, because that is
an avenue. If you don't believe that you can actually
get your desired outcome using legitimate channels, then you feel justified.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It's a good point. I'm not sure they want to
win elections if winning elections means getting the most votes, right.
I mean, you get in Wisconsin, it's a fifty to
fifty state and you've got seventy five percent of the
seats are in one particular political party. Those people aren't
wanting to win elections. They're looking to manipulate the system
so they can maintain is a minority.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
That's right. They want to entrench minority rule using and
you know, whether it's gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinformation, whatever. And
they have to do that because not only do conspiracy
theories and leading to less turnout, so do the increasingly
extreme positions.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Thank you very much, Josha, great to talk to you. Now,
let's talk to Denver Riggleman, really interesting guy, former Air
Force intelligence officer and a Republican congressman from Virginia. He
worked on the House Select Committee looking at the January
sixth attack, and he's now working with the legal team
advising Hunter Biden. And he's got a great distillery in
(28:27):
southern Virginia.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Thanks for having me, really, it's an honor.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Mistake.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You obviously don't know us. And just to give you
a little background, Jerry and I are both signers of
the famous dirty fifty one letter that was published about.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I think that's going to come full circle where the
fifty one center is a letter will probably be smiling
a little bit about validation. And I think when people attack,
I don't think they understand what Russian amplification or influence
looks like, but you guys do. So I got in
a little bit of trouble because I wrote the book
The Breach, and the far left and the far right
both hated me, which was a great place to be,
but I did really well. It was a New York
(29:06):
Times bestseller. Then I had this sixty minutes thing, and
what I did know is people were watching.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So I.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Get this cryptophone call from a friend of a friend
of a friend from people who had gone to Berkeley
together about this other guy in LA. They're like, hey,
this dude is looking for you, has been sending emails.
Do you know dr right, I'm like okay. And they
mentioned the name and they're like, he would like you
to come to LA to help on a problem set
that might deal with the son of a present. And
(29:35):
I told him to pound sand. I said, I just
got out of some hell. I said, I'm finally home.
You know, I'm old City Moore, but you know, I
did feel some duty. But I said, I'm not going
to LA. If you want to talk to me, I'm
here in Virginia. I didn't really think it would happen.
All of a sudden, there's a private flight and there's
three people in a hotel room across from the Pentagon
(29:57):
you probably know the Double Tree at three hundred Army
Navy Drive, And there's three people. One of Hunter Biden's
attorneys trying to convince me that they think there's things
in the data that could really help them out in
explaining what happened and who spread that data, who stole
it in his invasion or privacy. And I was very skeptical.
So I listened to for two or three hours. Then
I asked questions for two hours and I finally got
(30:18):
to the point they said, listen, we think there's really
three people involved with this, and I've sort of proven
it by this point, but they said it's Rudy Giuliani,
Steve Bannon, and then they mentioned Roger Stone. Maybe. I'm like, Okay,
you guys probably know I have a dark spot in
my heart for some of those cats. So a couple
days later, I'm on a zoom with Hunter and his
wife and they're like, will you please help us? You
(30:40):
guys know that's not easy. But when I met him,
he's been clean since May of twenty nineteen, his new kid,
His wife was awesome, and they got very emotional, and
at the end I said I will help, and the
wife was just so amazing, like, I cannot believe you
would do, Like you're going to put everything on the line.
I said, Well, I said, I'm not pro Hunter, anti Hunter.
(31:01):
I'm pro data and pro fact and Hunter goes, that's
what I want. He goes, Denver, I think I want
the truth, I said, but the truth is discoverable. So
if you go to court, know that I could find
things that actually could hurt you, not help you, He goes,
I don't care. I want to know the truth. So
I signed on. And now you are talking to the
guy that has three of Hunter Biden's laptops and a
(31:23):
cell phone. And have looked at all the data from
Marco Polo, from four Chan, all the data that the
Congress is using, they say is from a laptop. All
of that is forensically unsound. We have proven so much
on the curation of fabricated data or manipulated data, out
of context data. But I guess what I'm telling you, guys,
is that when you look at the Rudy Giuliani's on
(31:44):
the Russia team meeting with Teleazenko and Fertash and Dirkash right,
and guys, we have video of him from January of
twenty nineteen, four years four months before the laptop talking
to Ukrainian agents. That's January twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Pro Russian Ukrainian agents Russians.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But I've been doing it since December sixteenth, and the
Russian Ukrainian team was read by Giuliani, and the Chinese
team with Guo in the National Free State of China
was all run by Bannon and Loude. So you got
Bannon working with Chinese nationals. You got Giuliani working with
Ukrainian and Russian connected agents proven so you have this
(32:21):
going on simultaneously, and it's just really interesting to see
the data lines and how the laptop data went from
John Paul mac Isaac at the Apple repair shop in Delaware,
and how it's a copy of copies of copies of
copies of copies. Have a Tasta side on the Bannon side,
through Jack Maxi and through his underlings, and through the
(32:42):
Juliani side, through Costello and his underlings, and it's so
much from the Garrett zieglers on a Marco Polo site
all the way over to the yak of Apple bombs.
On the other side, you have Hunter's Kiwi bro who
actually released the data. On the four Chan side, who's
in anothereage of data. So it's it's probably i would
(33:03):
say it's been copies of copies, non forensically sound with
different data sets incorporated, have probably been spent twenty to
thirty times. And it's just amazing to me again that
after four years of this, first of all, that the
Bidens weren't more aggressive, but they thought the same thing
that they thought about Tara Reid.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Right right, who's not in Russia, by the way, applying
for Russians.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Now in Russian right, Tar Reid is just a pathological liar.
And it took four years to clear really for people
to finally say, ah, she was full of shit. I
still think Joe and Hunter thought that would actually happen.
And I keep telling them the far right ecosystem, media
ecosystem will roll you over. They're tougher than Democrats, they're
(33:45):
meaner than democrats, they're better coordinated than democrats. I said,
They're just better than you guys at pushing this stuff out,
and they don't care about the truth. The hardest thing
about Hunter is how do you make a guy who
did very bad things into a per send where you like,
he's a good person who feels bad about those very
bad things, who admitted to it in his book Beautiful Things,
(34:06):
which was really interesting to me that he'd admitted to
all of it. A guy who people think is awful
because of crack and prostitutes and leveraging his dad's name
for money, how do you say, well, he understands that,
but this guy was not an international criminal that was
putting the United States at risk purposefully.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, to be to be clear, and for the record,
we're not Democrats or Republicans like like you, I understand
it's about it's about the data and what you can
show and what makes sense. Also on Hunter Biden, we
don't actually care about Hunter Biden. We care about the
truth of the accusations. But it's really for us and
it should be for everybody else. Is was there illegal corruption?
(34:47):
Involved in illegal corruption? Because the Trump kids were also
involved in selling their dad's name and a lot of
other people in politics. So but that's not illegal unfortunately perhaps,
So you know, what is the truth of these of
these of these accusations. And in the letter that we signed,
basically we say caveat emptor this came out just before
(35:11):
the election. This has all the hallmarks of what the
Russians would do. We he ever said that it was
you know, manipulated information and amplify.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I would humbly submit, don't defend your positions. I would
be offensive.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I would be offensive. I am now who gives a shit?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And I think you know you guys want to play
the same game. Prove it wasn't motherfucker's You know, you
had to have multiple I think attack modalities. Stop to
steal Hunter biden laptop? Maybe Tara Reid? How do you
how do you really put some stink on this candidate?
And listen, you're right about Hunter, right, he did bad things.
He did some bad things, but it isn't just about
(35:51):
it is about not only did he do corruption, the
part that the American people should be afraid of if
they could do this to Hunter digitally, invasion of privacy,
steal your data and then spread that with no repercussions
or accountability. Now in a very dangerous situation that anything
could be faked, right, and you can have a veneer truth.
You guys know, the best way to do conspiracy theories
and lies is to have some true shit. And that's
(36:13):
the thing you have. You have real facts and data
that belonged to Hunter that might have been taken out
of context, manipulated, fabricated, or curated in such a way
to make it look worse than it is.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
But in that sense, you can argue they haven't done
a good job because this information has been out there
for a long time. They're claiming that it shows Joe
Biden is corrupted. But if the information's out there, and
people can see it, Well, where's that piece, where's that
piece of data that says that.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just for
a minute or two. Welcome back. We're saying over and
over the Hunter Biden laptop, and it's become sort of
like a shibboleth. Right, it's just like her emails. I
hear it all the time, but most people couldn't tell
you what it is. It's just bad, right, And then
(36:58):
they want to talk about his dick pics. So what
is the laptop thing?
Speaker 1 (37:03):
That Hunter Biden laptop team thing? Is this one device
delivered in April twenty nineteen to a Max shop in
Delaware by a supposedly high Hunter Biden right, that had
all the secrets of the universe about all the corruption
of the Bidens on one actual device. That's the Hunter
Biden laptop. It causes COVID, right, it can redirect satellites.
(37:23):
The Hunter Biden laptop proves financial crimes all the way
up to Joe Biden himself. It proves that they were
getting illegal payments from Russia, Ukraine and China, and it
proves that they were trying to style out America through
some deep state plot in order to manipulate these individuals
so Joe could get back in office at some point.
So it's all of that in a box of doughnuts.
It's a conspiracy, sticky.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Bobm and it's been surprised.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
But yeah, yeah, well, and it's obviously been suppressed. The
issue is is that that day he actually turned in
three laptops to that shop, So that's number one. Number
two is that that laptop has never been forensically validated.
Where is it? The FBI has it.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
That's great, but.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
All the data, any forensic scientists would go on the
stand and say that this is all a soup sandwich.
You can't link it to anything. So the Hunter Biden
laptop has actually become the symbol for all data associated
with Hunter and Joe that's been pushed into the ecosystem
to prove some nefarious activities. This isn't going away. There's
no magic bullet. This is the people who just really
(38:25):
want to state of the factory's data. Side, like you
guys are doing right now, is making it sexy through
narrative and trying to put it out there in a
way that like, listen, the people that are usually projecting
and accusing people of these awful things, sometimes with the
people actually doing it. That is really important for the
American public to know. And if they're accusing people like you, guys,
who have served our country with valor and honor, these
(38:47):
people don't even know what they're talking about, and if
they did, it doesn't matter to them because it is.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
War, war and profit. I mean, let's be clear that
Steve Bannon said it was war, but he was also
shaking down his own support orders to build a wall
that he never built, and he stole their money. Let's
be clear on that.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Of course he did.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Thank you, Denver, fantastic speaking with you. Now let's turn
to our producer John Stern.
Speaker 6 (39:13):
All Right, guys, I didn't really do any research per se,
but I did go onto YouTube and found some clips
for you. All right, what do I have for you?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
First?
Speaker 6 (39:21):
This is a Giuliani news clip from June twenty ninth,
twenty twenty three, on America's news source Newsmax.
Speaker 7 (39:30):
I have an intimate knowledge of most of it from
the having gotten the hard drive from John. But sure,
I mean he's that hard drive contains probably fifty to
sixty let's call them potential crimes for him.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
And his father.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
Almost everyone that he's involved in except the pure drug crimes,
involves Joe as the principal. I mean, Joe is the
main die. And Hunter explains it when he says that,
you know, he got all of his income for thirty years.
I have of all of Hunter's income for thirty years,
(40:11):
which means Hunter's income was really directed to his father.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
It's frustrating because in the political sphere, people like Rudy Giuliani,
who's made it clear that he'll say anything to support
his client or his political client in this case, Donald Trump.
In our world, if there's a crime, or there's even
a suggestion of a crime, you go to professional investigators,
you go to the police, you go to the FBI.
You know, having Rudy Giuliani say it is sort of
irrelevant to me. It's obviously done just for political purpose.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
So he says he's got the evidence, but he doesn't
actually give us the evidence. He just says, I've got
stuff that proves this, and then he makes these accusations.
You know, in the world that most of us live in,
if you make an accusation and you say you got proof,
you provide the proof rather than just make an accusation.
So Giuliani, apparently, if I understand this correctly, had all
(41:02):
this information much earlier, and he had been operating with
associating with Russian intelligence officers, which the letter that we
signed said. But he waits until a week or two
before the election to throw all this out there, and
that clearly, regardless of whether the stuff is true, they
waited just before the election for an October surprise in
(41:24):
order to manipulate the election. Making accusations was one of
the oldest dirty trucks in the book. All right, here's
the other half of my research. Guys, do you remember
when Pergozen had that coup attempt against Putin? Do you
still recall that that was all the way back home?
Very much so?
Speaker 6 (41:42):
All right, So June twenty fifth, twenty twenty three, seeing
an opportunity, no coup attempt should go unutilized by Fox News.
So Mario Bartuomo had a theory that the coup attempt
was actually an attempt to distract the American public from
Hunter Biden.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And here's that clip.
Speaker 8 (42:00):
Look, I know that the State Department in the White
House would like everybody to move the Hunter Biden story
off of the front page and start talking about all
the drama in Russia over the weekend.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
We're not going to do that.
Speaker 8 (42:10):
On Sunday Morning, Futures, the biggest story of the week
was that what's at message from Hunter Biden? And he
is basically doing a shakedown that you would expect in
a Francis Ford Coppola Godfather movie. Pay up or you're
going to face retaliation. The White House wanted to give
the media something else to cover, and this is the
mo this is exactly the way they do things. In fact,
(42:32):
on Friday, I said, Wow, what a blockbuster, what's that message?
I'm sure there will be an enormous story over the
weekend that the White House is going to be pushing
to take this story off of the front page. And
sure enough, we've got the State Department drumming up all
the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia.
So I don't know if it's going to break through.
The mainstream media has an excuse again not to cover it.
(42:53):
They're covering everything about Russia and the Wagna Group. Yeah,
it's true, as if it really matters to the US
right now.
Speaker 6 (42:59):
I love the particular theory because it didn't age well.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's almost like people on Fox News and the other
people are so frustrated that the American public is not
jumping all over this that they have to throw it
in at all points and try to hope that some
spaghetti sticks to the wall. So they took the progosion
uprising in Russia and tried to say that I had
something to do with distracting from the Hunter Biden laptop.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I think it speaks more to her mindset. I mean,
she's right insofar as the coup in Russia, which is
a huge story, detracted from the Hunter Biden story, but
she goes it, takes it a step further and says
that it was a conspiracy by I don't know, the
Russians the Biden administration to distract from the story.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think they get talking points and they say, listen,
just try to put the Hunter Biden laptop thing out
there as much as you possibly can in any story
you can, and we're just hoping that somehow it sticks.
Speaker 6 (43:55):
So, guys, there's a lot more to the story than
one episode can hold. In fact, you were too of
the signers of a now infamous letter.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
New York Post calls us the dirty fifty one.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
We are two of the least important, in most insignificant
signers of that letter.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I'll tell you that, So please come back for part
two on Hunter Biden's laptop on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 6 (44:21):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Ceipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producers are Rachel Harner and
David Sollinger. This has been a production of honorable, mention
and abominable pictures for iHeartMedia.
All of a sudden, there's a private flight and there's
three people in a hotel room across from the Pentagon.
One of Hunter Biden's attorneys trying to convince me that
they think there's things in the data that could really
help them out, and explaining what happened and who spread
that data, who stole it in his invasion or privacy,
and I finally got to the point they said, listen,
we think there's really three people involved with this. They
said it's Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and then they mentioned
(00:24):
Roger Stone. Maybe a couple days later, I'm on a
zoom with Hunter and his wife and they're like, will
you please help us.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in
the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
all around the world.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news Almost every day.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Welcome to Mission implausible. So welcome to Mission implausible, Jerry.
Today we're going to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop, which
means a lot of different things to different people, and
clearly is the number one story on Fox News and
in some parts of our political debate.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
All right, John, let's open up the Costco size can
and see whether it's empty or full of worms, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
As you know, living overseas, we always went to Costco
to get big items before we headed overseas. I bought
so much toilet paper from Costco before I went to
Russia that it lasted me through two years of Russia
and then two and a half years in Serbia before
I had my new toilet paper.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
The one good thing about working all the time you're
working either in the embassy or you're at hotels, going
to diplomatic tools, you don't you can steal it, but
you don't use a lot of your own toilet paper
because you're pooped there. Yeah, you work the restaurant, you
shower at all.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
In Moscow, Yeah, even a shower at home. They had
you on video. They probably had it at the embassy too,
and they certainly had at hotel, so there's no way
around it.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
All right, John, let's talk Biden laptop.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, we're going to get into sort of the background
of this issue with several episodes here, but what's happened
lately is a pretty big story. So the Justice Department
recently acknowledged that an FBI informant named Alexander Smirnoff was
quote spreading disinformation to sign the hurt President Joe Biden
after speaking with Russian intelligence officers. But what's new is
(02:34):
this indictment alleges that Smirnoff lied in twenty twenty to
create a false narrative about the Bidens after meeting with
Russian intelligence sufficient. So we're going to focus on the
laptop rather than the whole hunter Biden story. And as
we'll discuss in the podcast, Jerry and I play an
actual small role in this story, but we're going to
use two episodes to talk about it. And so what
(02:55):
we're going to do is have our producer, Adam Davidson
interview us for a change.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The Biden's story is like a black hole. It sucks
everything into it. Even John and I.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So I'm assuming most people have heard the phrase Hunter
Biden's laptop because.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I've seen it on bumper stickers.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Is a twenty twenty four Republican slogan.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yes, and a great band. By the way, they're fabulous.
I liked their early acoustic work best. But let's just
start with the very basics. Is there an actual laptop
that is Hunter Biden's laptop? It's now like her emails,
it's just this phrase you hear, but what is it
tied to?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So initially, as I understand it, several weeks before the
twenty twenty elections, Rudy Giuliani revealed that he had a
laptop that he claimed was Hunter butdens and he's claiming
that information from the laptop was stolen. So I think
now we can certainly affirm for certainly that there is
a laptop and it was the one that Rudy Juliani had.
(04:00):
Now what was in it and how we look at
that will be open to discussion today. So, yes, there
is a laptop.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
So this might be something I shouldn't admit in public,
but I myself have a laptop, and in fact, many
of the people I care about most in the world
have laptops. Owning a laptop is not necessarily It is
often associated with nefarious activity, but it's not always. So
I'm assuming when we hear Hunter Biden's laptop, it's referring
(04:30):
to what was on that laptop. And I know there's
some like nude photos, But why does anyone who isn't
Hunter Biden or whoever he was emailing care what was
on his laptop?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well, Adam, you're going right to the heart of the matter.
That is largely the question that the people who want
the world to believe that there's something horrible going on
here don't want to deal with. Right, So the question
is who cares? Like Hunter Biden is the son of
Joe Biden. He's a son who's had a series of
personal problems, drug issues and other things. But right prior
(05:04):
to the election, this notion that he had dropped off
a computer at a Delaware computer shop, which then made
its way into the hands of Rudy Giuliani and eventually
the New York Post and the FBI. It is automatically
supposed to suggest that there's something nefarious and that it
somehow has to do with Joe Biden. Right, so essentially
it has this suggest that Hunter Biden is somehow up
(05:25):
to something and that Joe Biden has been involved or
helped him, or there's something criminal going on. And the
problem is this laptop, as I understand, it's been in
the hands of the FBI for several years now, and
there's been nothing public that has suggested that there's anything
criminal in there. But there has been suggestions of salacious
you know, dick picks and nude picks and all kinds
(05:46):
of things, which, as ugly as that may be, it's
not really clear what that has to do with his father.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
So this is something I've wondered about with conspiracies. But
let's say I want to disparage say John Ceipher, and
I'm part of a team of smart people who know
how to spread bad information. It seems to me that
a really clear strategy that some people follow is have
a phrase, have a lot of like nefarious, sish seeming
(06:14):
stuff around it, but you actually don't want specifics, Like
if I say John Steifer robbed a bank on March
thirteenth in Bethesda, that isn't the way. It's more, Hey,
everyone knows what John Szeipher was doing in Bethesda, the
cipher Bethesda story. Is that a thing that people who do,
(06:35):
for example, you guys conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
No, I guess the show's over. You've done it. But no, No,
casting vague aspersions is always better because those are unfalsifiable.
You can't ever prove a negative. Right, So before we
go to the heart, let's go on a little journey
as to like how we got here. So hunter by
(07:00):
and supposedly, and I accept that this is a fake,
he shows up at this place in Delaware to get
his two laptops fixed, and he never picks him up again.
So odd fact number one. The guy he shows up to,
he hands his laptop over to I'm not making this
up to a guy who's legally blind. So this guy
(07:23):
apparently he can't identify who gave him the computer. He
doesn't know because he can't see his face. So okay,
the guy who's legally blind has nothing better to do
than open this computer, get it working, and then do
you know, sit around and read one hundred and twenty
thousand emails of somebody else's stuff, which I'm sure we
all have time to do. Right. He is so shocked
(07:47):
by this that he hands it over as most computer
repairmen do. He hands it over to Rudy Giuliani. Hey, Rudy,
here you go. Well now we're talking chain of custody issues,
right who the computer up? Can you prove it likely?
Hunter Biden? Yes, yes, yes. My understanding is that Giuliani
(08:07):
had this thing for months and said on it. My
understanding is before it ended up with the New York
Post it being the hard drive. Forensic work has shown
that it is clear that the computer was I'll use
the word tampered with, but people were in the computer
refiling things, messing with the computer. How's that for technical talk?
(08:32):
And so the question is is what is on the computer?
Is it the original? And has it been manipulated in
any way, shape or form? That I think is still
an open question. So let me put it there. So
blind guy gets it, blind guy reads it, blind guy
hands it to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani sits on it
(08:52):
for X amount of time. Rudy Giuliani, mind you, who
is also the same guy who was in Ukraine looking
for on Hunter Biden.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Hunter Biden, who did work in Ukraine, presumably went there
with a laptop at some point.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And I understand also that the FBI warned Rudy Giuliani,
who was traveling back and forth to Ukraine, that he
was engaged with known Russian intelligence officers. They warned him
about this at the time. So Rudy Juliani, who's at
some point comes across this laptop and he's looking for
dirt on Hunter Biden, presumably to get dirt on Joe Biden,
is engaged with Russian intelligence officers at the same time.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I just want to quick throw in that the FBI,
we know, had gone to Twitter and had talked and
said that to be careful that Rudy Giuliani specifically was
someone that Russian intelligence was trying to manipulate. So we
also know that from public accounts.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
So first off, we don't know if there's any evidence
of actual wrongdoing right by Hunter Biden. But if there is,
is it actual evidence or was that tamp.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
With that's for a jury to decide, right.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I mean, it's not even clear that there's anybody's charged
with anything here.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I've been a reporter for much of my life. My
spidy sense is telling me there's nothing here because highly
motivated people Rudy Giuliani and others who really, really really
wanted to find very clear, convincing evidence against Hunter Biden
and Joe Biden had access to this thing for months.
They've sort of done their best and they haven't come
(10:25):
up with anything. It is theoretically possible that Rudy Giuliani
is incompetent and is surrounded by incompetence, But to me,
that suggests there just isn't anything there.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I would disagree with you. So there is something that's illegal,
and then there's unethical. So if accounts are true, Hunter
Biden was receiving fifty thousand dollars a month from a
Ukrainian energy firm. Him and his uncle may or may
not have had business interests in China. So the question
(10:58):
is do only members of people involved in politics what
is okay for them? So me personally, I think that
family members should not be involved in this. So Clarence
Thomas's wife, Jimmy Thoms shouldn't be involved in politics if
her husband is ruling on these things. And I would
put out that Avonka Trump in twenty eighteen, while she
(11:19):
was in the White House was being granted copyrights. She
received eighteen of them, like it was a large percentage
of the copyrights China granted to the US. She received
eighteen copyrights from China. So I would say that there
is an unethical issue here is you know, was Hunter Biden?
Did he really have value of fifty thousand dollars a
(11:40):
month for Barisma? But is that illegal or not? And
I think the answer is it's not illegal. It's just
I personally find unethical.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Before I ever heard about any laptop, I looked into
the Bresmath story and I was thinking of writing about
it for The New Yorker. I didn't do exhaustive reporting
on everything, but my basic inclusion was lots and lots
of Eastern Europeans, Central Asian kind of former Soviet Union
oligarchs pay a lot of money to people with impressive resumes.
(12:11):
There's a lot of Democrats, a lot of Republicans on
all these boards. General Wesley Clark.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Is very involved.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
And it's not illegal, and it's pretty colm, but.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It seems that the reason it was brought up right
before an election. Yeah, we'll eventually get to why Jerry
and I signed this letter that we're going to talk
about is for it to matter, it has to affect
Joe Biden's effort to run for president. Right, So Hunter
Biden is a citizen and maybe a scuzzy citizen, and
maybe he's done illegal things and maybe he gets arrested
(12:41):
and does abay care?
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You know?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Is that an October surprise? Is that something that's going
to affect the election of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump?
Because what this really comes down to is that oftentimes
the timing of when this came out, This stuff was
going on for quite a long time, and then a
week few weeks before the election, all of a sudden
it's storn into the public space that there's this horrible
scanned and somehow it has something to do with Joe Biden.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Right, And it's not even a scandal, it's casting aspersions.
And I think we need to go back to the
twenty sixteen election, and I think we can look at
two things. One now is of today. It was the
McDougall story and the Stormy Daniel's story were both basically
money was paid to prevent them from coming out to
(13:23):
influence the election, which clearly did. And also in twenty
sixteen with the grave and by the pussy tape, right
within a day, the stolen emails stolen by the Russians.
DNC heck, the DNC heck those through WikiLeaks. Those drop
nothing illegal in there, by the way, but probably some
(13:45):
unhappy stuff. And so it was clearly manipulation that the Russians.
I think the Mother Report is very clear about this,
as are almost not almost all intelligence agencies are the
only person who disputes this is Vladimir Putin and people
who leave him. Now we go into the twenty twenty
election again, three weeks the same playbook. Something pops out
(14:07):
exactly the same way, that is generalized and cast suspersions.
You got to look at this with some suspicion.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
And really similar dynamics to the Hillary email and the
DNC emails, where the exact same thing. It was reported
as this vague thing Hillary's emails without any specificity. It
was just a phrase like a marketing campaign, and like
you said, the timing and just it allowed for a
constant drumbeat of something.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
All right, thanks, Adam, Let's talk to someone new. We
have Asher Ingappa, who is very impressively a teacher at
the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, former dean of
the Law School at Yale, a former FBI special agent.
And one of the reasons we're talking with her today
is she did a really long and authoritative peace on
(14:59):
Hunter Biden and you can get that in her subsetect.
And really looking forward to chatting with her.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Thanks for having me just to start us off, like,
why the obsession? That's the question?
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Yeah, Well, and Jerry, I think you've hit the nail
on the head. Hunter Biden's laptop at this point can
mean anything you want it to mean. I think most
people who use the phrase actually don't know what they're alleging.
They just know that it's something really really bad and
it involves the government and the CIA, and it's like
(15:29):
Hillary's emails. You know, there's shorthand, and I think, quite frankly,
Republicans are really good at this. They're really good at
creating shortcuts that are ambiguous and undefinable and therefore can
just be used to claim or allege things that they
never have to actually articulate. So I did some research.
(15:54):
There's a great piece in New York Magazine by Olivia
Newzy where she really breaks down the history and really
this is a laptop that was left at a computer
repair shop in Delaware. The person who owns the laptop,
never picked it up, and so the computer repair shop
(16:16):
owner decided to copy files, and by the way, not
copy the entire hard drive or mirror the hard drive,
but just to selectively copy files, which he then passed
on to, among other people, various members of Congress, sort
of usual suspects. Steve Bannon eventually gets a hold of this.
(16:37):
I mean, it goes down some chain of command. There
is an allegation that the FBI came by and seized
the actual physical laptop, though I've never seen that confirmed officially,
though that may be true. And basically what happens is
that from these files that this blind computer repairman copies,
(17:00):
he claims to have found several smoking gun emails that
shows that Hunter Biden was engaged. I mean, I'm not
even really sure what the allegation is. He was using
his connections at Barisma to engage in political influence and
doing deals with China and all of this stuff. And
this was coming up right before the twenty twenty election. Now,
(17:24):
when this started surfacing, it was a New York Post
story that broke this. People were like, this sounds really sketchy,
and there were a lot of things that were happening.
At the same time, Rudy Giuliani was under a counterintelligence
investigation because of contacts that he had when Ukraine we
were approaching an election, etc. And the social media companies
(17:45):
had because of what happened in twenty sixteen, the hack
and dump by Russia, had established greater communication with the
FBI because they understood that they could be used as
vectors foreign influence operations. So when this started coming up,
the social media companies, based on kind of all these
tabletop exercises that they had done with the FBI, et cetera,
(18:08):
were like, let's just put the brakes on this, let's
add some friction to the story. And so they temporarily
I don't even know if they block the story. They
might have for a few hours or something, but they
definitely prevented its amplification.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, for twenty four hours. Twitter basically didn't know. You
could put it on there, but you couldn't like forward it, right.
So before we go, just a quick question though, So
apparently the agreement is if you don't pick up the computer,
the computer belongs to the company, belongs to this guy
Mac whatever his name was. But does the information belong
to him through to the poison tree. Right, So if
(18:43):
he takes the information out, your information, if you hand
it to a computer salesman and they fix it, you know,
pick it up, the computer may belong to them a
fantasy agreement if you don't pay. But does the information
does he have legally have the right to Is that hacking?
Because that was part of the Twitter thing is like
this is hicked information, we don't put it on there.
So that was the first.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
Question, right, I think that's exactly the right question to ask.
And in fact, Hunter Biden has filed lawsuit. So I'm
not sure if it's exactly against the computer repairman, but
there's a number of defendants, but it's for invasion of privacy, right,
So it's really about this. I mean, just because somebody
puts on the bottom of their receipt that you leave
something there and it belongs to you, doesn't mean you
(19:24):
lose all of your privacy interests in the content is.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
The hardware, it's not the information.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
I think that would be the argument, and I think
Hunter Biden might even be arguing, look, it doesn't belong
to you like you were. In legal terms, they call
them a bai lee like a Baylor Bailee relationship. I
think it might depend on the intricacies of state law.
But whether you can just like convert that into your
own personal property, like after a certain time, right you've
(19:51):
been entrusted with that, you can maybe charge fees or
something like that. But so there could be all these
legal things. But I think what you're getting at is
that the intrusion into the contents of that, even if
it were somehow, you know, became his property, I think
is a very valid legal question. And I suspect that
the reason that there was a delay in filing a
(20:14):
lawsuit about that, because I think invasion of privacy is
kind of the big scandal here, Like somebody just went
through a person's hard drive and released it all of
their personal information.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Let's take a breather back in a moment, glad to
have everybody back. Let's go back down the rabbit hole.
The real issue for most people is like, Okay, what
did Hunter Biden a Hunter Biden do wrote? But what
is the illegal thing it's alleged, and what is the
allegation somehow because I don't remember voting for Hunter Biden,
(20:48):
But what is the allegation against his father who was
running for president.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
I went down that rabbit hole and I used a
kind of a three step formula that people who are
looking to test the validity of conspiracy theories used to
determine whether it has any basis in fact or not.
I mean, look, there are theories about conspiracies that are
literally actual conspiracies, so we need a way to test them.
(21:15):
And the three step process is asking three questions. Well, first,
what is the claim? Okay, so you need to know
what the allegation is, That's what you're asking. Then what
is the evidence for your claim? What is the source
of your evidence for that claim, and what is the
reasoning that links your evidence back to that claim? So
for me, the big question, as you asked, is what
(21:35):
exactly is the claim? Before I can even go down
this road. So there's two scandals, and each scandal has
its own claims. Okay. The first scandal is about the
contents of the so called laptop. The allegation is that
Joe Biden's efforts while he was vice president to pressure
the Ukraine government to fire the prosecutor who is investigating
(21:57):
Barisma was influenced by Biden, who was on Beisma's board
from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen. In other words, they
believe that the firing of that prosecutor was because he
was being influenced by his son. The other claim is
that Joe Biden financially profited from Hunter Biden's deals in China.
(22:20):
Those are the two big claims. The problem is that
the evidence for these claims is very thin. They rest
on these so called smoking gun emails, which are very cryptic.
I can go into the details if you want, but
as I refers to.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
The big bad guy, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
Like these kinds of things. Scandal number two is about
Twitter's decision to add friction to the amplification of the story,
so that allegation is basically that Twitter and the FBI
were conspiring at the direction of Democrats or whoever and
Joe Biden to basically not allow this story to get
(23:05):
into the public domain, and that this constitutes election interference.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
This is Donald Trump's FBI to be correct, right, yes.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Correct, correct?
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Now, Remember that this is really key. They have to
create this nexus between the government like the FBI and
Twitter in order for there to be something, for example,
for Jim Jordan's committee to investigate. Right like, in other words,
if Twitter was doing this just on their own I mean,
too bad, so.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Sad private company. Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
Basically the allegations.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
It's not much. Frankly, is it possible we're just taking
it way too seriously because essentially, to me, it looks
like it was a stunt, the smear Joe Biden right
before an election, and the Republicans just mad that didn't work.
So therefore they're spinning and throwing stuff in the air,
hoping that there'll be enough stuff that would just confuse people,
and it'll just add to the other stuff they're trying
(23:58):
to confuse people and whatever. Part of the problem is
that if we go down and like, okay, let's let's
investigate this, let's look, let's it's sort of we're playing
the game to a certain extent rather than just saying
it's bull and moving on.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
So, you know, I do think it's important to engage
with it. But I think you're one hundred percent right
that the expectation was that the media would react and
respond the same way they did with the Hillary Clinton
email thing, and that this would be you know, hijack
the news, et cetera. Shockingly, the media kind of learned
and they were They understood that it's important to question
(24:35):
the provenance of this type of information. So the coverage
became not about the substance of the emails. It became
about who was behind it, where it was coming from,
and for what reason, which is exactly the questions that
you want to ask. I mean, if you go back
to twenty sixteen, imagine if they had been asking those
questions about Hillary Clinton's emails.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Right, there's an irony here that apparently Juliani and Bannon
they had versions of the hard drive, and they had
it months before, and yet they waited until three weeks
or so two weeks before the election and released it
so that no fact checking could be done. And what
(25:16):
we did is simply say, caveat emptor right, you know,
buyer beware, Let's see what this really is before we
all jump on the bandwagon and make accusations.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
You changed the frame of the story, That's what That's
all this comes down to. You changed the frame of
the story, which neutralized the impact of that information.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
I wonder, if these people had this information from this
laptop and there's something potentially horrible in there, why didn't
they publish that? Why haven't they been talking about a
lot of this stuff comes down to people want the
smear to be out there rather than the details.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
But four of the five things that the Biden family,
who were private citizens at the time, asked Twitter to
take down were dick pics set out by Hunter Biden,
and which is against Twitter rules that you know to
be to be put on there. Yet this has been
spun into Biden as though he was still the vice president.
Of course he wasn't basically asking them to take them down.
(26:11):
And I don't know why right wing media would want
to see that sort of you know, Hunter Biden, or
yes you do to say, whereas the same stuff you
know one.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Thing about conspiracy theory, So conspiracy theories that have no
basis in reality are defined as a belief that people
or groups are secretly coordinating behind the scenes to generate
very specific outcomes. There is research that suggests that people
(26:42):
who believe in conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories really generate
a sense of powerlessness, become more politically disengaged, so in
other words, they can be less likely to vote. It's like, well,
what does it matter, right, the deep state is gonna
make sure Briden wins again, or whatever. If that's what
you're actually promoting, you're actually encouraging people to just opt
(27:07):
out of the system. Now, Also, conspiracy theories can be
linked with willingness to use violent means, because that is
an avenue. If you don't believe that you can actually
get your desired outcome using legitimate channels, then you feel justified.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It's a good point. I'm not sure they want to
win elections if winning elections means getting the most votes, right.
I mean, you get in Wisconsin, it's a fifty to
fifty state and you've got seventy five percent of the
seats are in one particular political party. Those people aren't
wanting to win elections. They're looking to manipulate the system
so they can maintain is a minority.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
That's right. They want to entrench minority rule using and
you know, whether it's gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinformation, whatever. And
they have to do that because not only do conspiracy
theories and leading to less turnout, so do the increasingly
extreme positions.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Thank you very much, Josha, great to talk to you. Now,
let's talk to Denver Riggleman, really interesting guy, former Air
Force intelligence officer and a Republican congressman from Virginia. He
worked on the House Select Committee looking at the January
sixth attack, and he's now working with the legal team
advising Hunter Biden. And he's got a great distillery in
(28:27):
southern Virginia.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Thanks for having me, really, it's an honor.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Mistake.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You obviously don't know us. And just to give you
a little background, Jerry and I are both signers of
the famous dirty fifty one letter that was published about.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I think that's going to come full circle where the
fifty one center is a letter will probably be smiling
a little bit about validation. And I think when people attack,
I don't think they understand what Russian amplification or influence
looks like, but you guys do. So I got in
a little bit of trouble because I wrote the book
The Breach, and the far left and the far right
both hated me, which was a great place to be,
but I did really well. It was a New York
(29:06):
Times bestseller. Then I had this sixty minutes thing, and
what I did know is people were watching.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So I.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Get this cryptophone call from a friend of a friend
of a friend from people who had gone to Berkeley
together about this other guy in LA. They're like, hey,
this dude is looking for you, has been sending emails.
Do you know dr right, I'm like okay. And they
mentioned the name and they're like, he would like you
to come to LA to help on a problem set
that might deal with the son of a present. And
(29:35):
I told him to pound sand. I said, I just
got out of some hell. I said, I'm finally home.
You know, I'm old City Moore, but you know, I
did feel some duty. But I said, I'm not going
to LA. If you want to talk to me, I'm
here in Virginia. I didn't really think it would happen.
All of a sudden, there's a private flight and there's
three people in a hotel room across from the Pentagon
(29:57):
you probably know the Double Tree at three hundred Army
Navy Drive, And there's three people. One of Hunter Biden's
attorneys trying to convince me that they think there's things
in the data that could really help them out in
explaining what happened and who spread that data, who stole
it in his invasion or privacy. And I was very skeptical.
So I listened to for two or three hours. Then
I asked questions for two hours and I finally got
(30:18):
to the point they said, listen, we think there's really
three people involved with this, and I've sort of proven
it by this point, but they said it's Rudy Giuliani,
Steve Bannon, and then they mentioned Roger Stone. Maybe. I'm like, Okay,
you guys probably know I have a dark spot in
my heart for some of those cats. So a couple
days later, I'm on a zoom with Hunter and his
wife and they're like, will you please help us? You
(30:40):
guys know that's not easy. But when I met him,
he's been clean since May of twenty nineteen, his new kid,
His wife was awesome, and they got very emotional, and
at the end I said I will help, and the
wife was just so amazing, like, I cannot believe you
would do, Like you're going to put everything on the line.
I said, Well, I said, I'm not pro Hunter, anti Hunter.
(31:01):
I'm pro data and pro fact and Hunter goes, that's
what I want. He goes, Denver, I think I want
the truth, I said, but the truth is discoverable. So
if you go to court, know that I could find
things that actually could hurt you, not help you, He goes,
I don't care. I want to know the truth. So
I signed on. And now you are talking to the
guy that has three of Hunter Biden's laptops and a
(31:23):
cell phone. And have looked at all the data from
Marco Polo, from four Chan, all the data that the
Congress is using, they say is from a laptop. All
of that is forensically unsound. We have proven so much
on the curation of fabricated data or manipulated data, out
of context data. But I guess what I'm telling you, guys,
is that when you look at the Rudy Giuliani's on
(31:44):
the Russia team meeting with Teleazenko and Fertash and Dirkash right,
and guys, we have video of him from January of
twenty nineteen, four years four months before the laptop talking
to Ukrainian agents. That's January twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Pro Russian Ukrainian agents Russians.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But I've been doing it since December sixteenth, and the
Russian Ukrainian team was read by Giuliani, and the Chinese
team with Guo in the National Free State of China
was all run by Bannon and Loude. So you got
Bannon working with Chinese nationals. You got Giuliani working with
Ukrainian and Russian connected agents proven so you have this
(32:21):
going on simultaneously, and it's just really interesting to see
the data lines and how the laptop data went from
John Paul mac Isaac at the Apple repair shop in Delaware,
and how it's a copy of copies of copies of
copies of copies. Have a Tasta side on the Bannon side,
through Jack Maxi and through his underlings, and through the
(32:42):
Juliani side, through Costello and his underlings, and it's so
much from the Garrett zieglers on a Marco Polo site
all the way over to the yak of Apple bombs.
On the other side, you have Hunter's Kiwi bro who
actually released the data. On the four Chan side, who's
in anothereage of data. So it's it's probably i would
(33:03):
say it's been copies of copies, non forensically sound with
different data sets incorporated, have probably been spent twenty to
thirty times. And it's just amazing to me again that
after four years of this, first of all, that the
Bidens weren't more aggressive, but they thought the same thing
that they thought about Tara Reid.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Right right, who's not in Russia, by the way, applying
for Russians.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Now in Russian right, Tar Reid is just a pathological liar.
And it took four years to clear really for people
to finally say, ah, she was full of shit. I
still think Joe and Hunter thought that would actually happen.
And I keep telling them the far right ecosystem, media
ecosystem will roll you over. They're tougher than Democrats, they're
(33:45):
meaner than democrats, they're better coordinated than democrats. I said,
They're just better than you guys at pushing this stuff out,
and they don't care about the truth. The hardest thing
about Hunter is how do you make a guy who
did very bad things into a per send where you like,
he's a good person who feels bad about those very
bad things, who admitted to it in his book Beautiful Things,
(34:06):
which was really interesting to me that he'd admitted to
all of it. A guy who people think is awful
because of crack and prostitutes and leveraging his dad's name
for money, how do you say, well, he understands that,
but this guy was not an international criminal that was
putting the United States at risk purposefully.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, to be to be clear, and for the record,
we're not Democrats or Republicans like like you, I understand
it's about it's about the data and what you can
show and what makes sense. Also on Hunter Biden, we
don't actually care about Hunter Biden. We care about the
truth of the accusations. But it's really for us and
it should be for everybody else. Is was there illegal corruption?
(34:47):
Involved in illegal corruption? Because the Trump kids were also
involved in selling their dad's name and a lot of
other people in politics. So but that's not illegal unfortunately perhaps,
So you know, what is the truth of these of
these of these accusations. And in the letter that we signed,
basically we say caveat emptor this came out just before
(35:11):
the election. This has all the hallmarks of what the
Russians would do. We he ever said that it was
you know, manipulated information and amplify.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I would humbly submit, don't defend your positions. I would
be offensive.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I would be offensive. I am now who gives a shit?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And I think you know you guys want to play
the same game. Prove it wasn't motherfucker's You know, you
had to have multiple I think attack modalities. Stop to
steal Hunter biden laptop? Maybe Tara Reid? How do you
how do you really put some stink on this candidate?
And listen, you're right about Hunter, right, he did bad things.
He did some bad things, but it isn't just about
(35:51):
it is about not only did he do corruption, the
part that the American people should be afraid of if
they could do this to Hunter digitally, invasion of privacy,
steal your data and then spread that with no repercussions
or accountability. Now in a very dangerous situation that anything
could be faked, right, and you can have a veneer truth.
You guys know, the best way to do conspiracy theories
and lies is to have some true shit. And that's
(36:13):
the thing you have. You have real facts and data
that belonged to Hunter that might have been taken out
of context, manipulated, fabricated, or curated in such a way
to make it look worse than it is.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
But in that sense, you can argue they haven't done
a good job because this information has been out there
for a long time. They're claiming that it shows Joe
Biden is corrupted. But if the information's out there, and
people can see it, Well, where's that piece, where's that
piece of data that says that.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just for
a minute or two. Welcome back. We're saying over and
over the Hunter Biden laptop, and it's become sort of
like a shibboleth. Right, it's just like her emails. I
hear it all the time, but most people couldn't tell
you what it is. It's just bad, right, And then
(36:58):
they want to talk about his dick pics. So what
is the laptop thing?
Speaker 1 (37:03):
That Hunter Biden laptop team thing? Is this one device
delivered in April twenty nineteen to a Max shop in
Delaware by a supposedly high Hunter Biden right, that had
all the secrets of the universe about all the corruption
of the Bidens on one actual device. That's the Hunter
Biden laptop. It causes COVID, right, it can redirect satellites.
(37:23):
The Hunter Biden laptop proves financial crimes all the way
up to Joe Biden himself. It proves that they were
getting illegal payments from Russia, Ukraine and China, and it
proves that they were trying to style out America through
some deep state plot in order to manipulate these individuals
so Joe could get back in office at some point.
So it's all of that in a box of doughnuts.
It's a conspiracy, sticky.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Bobm and it's been surprised.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
But yeah, yeah, well, and it's obviously been suppressed. The
issue is is that that day he actually turned in
three laptops to that shop, So that's number one. Number
two is that that laptop has never been forensically validated.
Where is it? The FBI has it.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
That's great, but.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
All the data, any forensic scientists would go on the
stand and say that this is all a soup sandwich.
You can't link it to anything. So the Hunter Biden
laptop has actually become the symbol for all data associated
with Hunter and Joe that's been pushed into the ecosystem
to prove some nefarious activities. This isn't going away. There's
no magic bullet. This is the people who just really
(38:25):
want to state of the factory's data. Side, like you
guys are doing right now, is making it sexy through
narrative and trying to put it out there in a
way that like, listen, the people that are usually projecting
and accusing people of these awful things, sometimes with the
people actually doing it. That is really important for the
American public to know. And if they're accusing people like you, guys,
who have served our country with valor and honor, these
(38:47):
people don't even know what they're talking about, and if
they did, it doesn't matter to them because it is.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
War, war and profit. I mean, let's be clear that
Steve Bannon said it was war, but he was also
shaking down his own support orders to build a wall
that he never built, and he stole their money. Let's
be clear on that.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Of course he did.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Thank you, Denver, fantastic speaking with you. Now let's turn
to our producer John Stern.
Speaker 6 (39:13):
All Right, guys, I didn't really do any research per se,
but I did go onto YouTube and found some clips
for you. All right, what do I have for you?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
First?
Speaker 6 (39:21):
This is a Giuliani news clip from June twenty ninth,
twenty twenty three, on America's news source Newsmax.
Speaker 7 (39:30):
I have an intimate knowledge of most of it from
the having gotten the hard drive from John. But sure,
I mean he's that hard drive contains probably fifty to
sixty let's call them potential crimes for him.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
And his father.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
Almost everyone that he's involved in except the pure drug crimes,
involves Joe as the principal. I mean, Joe is the
main die. And Hunter explains it when he says that,
you know, he got all of his income for thirty years.
I have of all of Hunter's income for thirty years,
(40:11):
which means Hunter's income was really directed to his father.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
It's frustrating because in the political sphere, people like Rudy Giuliani,
who's made it clear that he'll say anything to support
his client or his political client in this case, Donald Trump.
In our world, if there's a crime, or there's even
a suggestion of a crime, you go to professional investigators,
you go to the police, you go to the FBI.
You know, having Rudy Giuliani say it is sort of
irrelevant to me. It's obviously done just for political purpose.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
So he says he's got the evidence, but he doesn't
actually give us the evidence. He just says, I've got
stuff that proves this, and then he makes these accusations.
You know, in the world that most of us live in,
if you make an accusation and you say you got proof,
you provide the proof rather than just make an accusation.
So Giuliani, apparently, if I understand this correctly, had all
(41:02):
this information much earlier, and he had been operating with
associating with Russian intelligence officers, which the letter that we
signed said. But he waits until a week or two
before the election to throw all this out there, and
that clearly, regardless of whether the stuff is true, they
waited just before the election for an October surprise in
(41:24):
order to manipulate the election. Making accusations was one of
the oldest dirty trucks in the book. All right, here's
the other half of my research. Guys, do you remember
when Pergozen had that coup attempt against Putin? Do you
still recall that that was all the way back home?
Very much so?
Speaker 6 (41:42):
All right, So June twenty fifth, twenty twenty three, seeing
an opportunity, no coup attempt should go unutilized by Fox News.
So Mario Bartuomo had a theory that the coup attempt
was actually an attempt to distract the American public from
Hunter Biden.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And here's that clip.
Speaker 8 (42:00):
Look, I know that the State Department in the White
House would like everybody to move the Hunter Biden story
off of the front page and start talking about all
the drama in Russia over the weekend.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
We're not going to do that.
Speaker 8 (42:10):
On Sunday Morning, Futures, the biggest story of the week
was that what's at message from Hunter Biden? And he
is basically doing a shakedown that you would expect in
a Francis Ford Coppola Godfather movie. Pay up or you're
going to face retaliation. The White House wanted to give
the media something else to cover, and this is the
mo this is exactly the way they do things. In fact,
(42:32):
on Friday, I said, Wow, what a blockbuster, what's that message?
I'm sure there will be an enormous story over the
weekend that the White House is going to be pushing
to take this story off of the front page. And
sure enough, we've got the State Department drumming up all
the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia.
So I don't know if it's going to break through.
The mainstream media has an excuse again not to cover it.
(42:53):
They're covering everything about Russia and the Wagna Group. Yeah,
it's true, as if it really matters to the US
right now.
Speaker 6 (42:59):
I love the particular theory because it didn't age well.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's almost like people on Fox News and the other
people are so frustrated that the American public is not
jumping all over this that they have to throw it
in at all points and try to hope that some
spaghetti sticks to the wall. So they took the progosion
uprising in Russia and tried to say that I had
something to do with distracting from the Hunter Biden laptop.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I think it speaks more to her mindset. I mean,
she's right insofar as the coup in Russia, which is
a huge story, detracted from the Hunter Biden story, but
she goes it, takes it a step further and says
that it was a conspiracy by I don't know, the
Russians the Biden administration to distract from the story.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think they get talking points and they say, listen,
just try to put the Hunter Biden laptop thing out
there as much as you possibly can in any story
you can, and we're just hoping that somehow it sticks.
Speaker 6 (43:55):
So, guys, there's a lot more to the story than
one episode can hold. In fact, you were too of
the signers of a now infamous letter.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
New York Post calls us the dirty fifty one.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
We are two of the least important, in most insignificant
signers of that letter.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I'll tell you that, So please come back for part
two on Hunter Biden's laptop on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 6 (44:21):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Ceipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producers are Rachel Harner and
David Sollinger. This has been a production of honorable, mention
and abominable pictures for iHeartMedia.
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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