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The conservative New York Post claimed in a series of articles this week that it got “steamy” emails about Hunter Biden and his dealings in Ukraine. CNN has not determined the authenticity of the emails.
The investigation is part of a larger investigation into Russian disinformation that dates back to before the impeachment inquiry last fall. The alleged disinformation campaign aims to link the former vice president to his son’s dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, according to US officials familiar with the matter.
The New York Post says it obtained the emails through two Trump confidants: his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Giuliani said Trump never mentioned the warning to him and that US intelligence officials have not told him that he is selling Russian disinformation.
Facebook and Twitter took unprecedented steps Wednesday to curb the spread of the articles, sparking a wave of outrage from Trump and Republicans.
Discredited claims about Ukraine
One of the New York Post articles claims that there is a “test email” about an alleged meeting in 2015 between Joe Biden and an executive from Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board. In response to the articles, Biden’s campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said: “We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official hours since then and no meeting was ever held, as the New York Post alleges.”
The New York Post did not respond to a request for comment.
In reality, the Burisma investigation was idle when Biden urged Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Biden’s actions were in support of American and European policy, which wanted Shokin to be overthrown because he was corrupt. Firing him would have increased, not decreased, investigative scrutiny of Burisma.
The article also quotes the Ukrainian energy executive, in another alleged email, saying that he was going to share information with Amos Hochstein, who worked closely with Biden when he was vice president as special envoy and coordinator of international energy affairs. Hochstein said he never saw any of that information and had never been in contact with the Ukrainian energy executive.
“The Republican Senate investigation cited all of my records, including emails and calendars, and found no mention of this man. I led America’s energy efforts in Ukraine and never heard from him before yesterday. Our anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine undermined Burisma’s interests, “Hochstein said.
Hunter Biden’s attorney, George Mesires, did not respond to a request for comment.
Contradictions and inconsistencies
According to the Post, the emails were allegedly found on the hard drive of a laptop that was taken to a computer repair shop in Delaware in the spring of 2019.The newspaper wrote that the person who handled the computer repairs ” was unable to positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, “but claimed that the customer did not get the laptop back for several months after it was repaired.
The Post cites a tip from Bannon in late September about the existence of this hard drive and claims that Giuliani provided the hard drive to the newspaper on October 11. In text messages with CNN, Giuliani declined to say how he found out about the hard drive.
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about critical elements in this story,” Bates, the Biden campaign spokesman, said in a statement to CNN. “They certainly never mentioned that Rudy Giuliani, whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures related to Russian intelligence have been widely publicized, claimed to have such materials.”
Attempts to talk to Bannon about his involvement in the story were unsuccessful. Bannon told Dutch broadcaster Nieuwsuur / NOS in an interview on September 28 that he had the “Hunter Biden hard drive” and that people should “wait” for its release.
Giuliani’s own attorney, Robert Costello, told CNN Wednesday that he received a notice from the person at the Delaware computer store via email to one of Giuliani’s company addresses in late August. Costello said this person gave him a copy of the hard drive in late August or early September, which Costello then began reviewing.
That store clerk has been identified as John Paul Mac Isaac. He spoke to CNN on Thursday in Wilmington. Mac Isaac said that in April 2019, someone claiming to be Hunter Biden brought in a damaged laptop to retrieve the data it contained. This required him to manually transfer data from the computer to a separate hard drive, Mac Isaac said, and that’s how he came to see what some of the files contained.
“Something that has the potential to be harmful,” Mac Isaac said of the files he saw. “That’s what I feel like someone would come looking for. I needed a level of protection.”
Contradicting what he told reporters the day before, Mac Isaac told CNN that he did not contact anyone at the FBI about what he saw, but that he made “other plans” to communicate because “he did not feel comfortable.” Finally, he said, the FBI arrived and seized the laptop with a subpoena on Dec. 9, 2019. He said he has a receipt for the seized property, but declined to share a copy of the FBI documentation with CNN.
Both the US attorney’s office in Delaware and the FBI declined to confirm or deny the FBI’s involvement or the existence of any investigation when asked by CNN.
Unprecedented steps by tech companies
White House spokesman Judd Deere told CNN that Trump’s image was authentic. Telizhenko did not answer questions about how he obtained the photo, which was taken in the Oval Office.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.
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