Hunter Biden emails: ‘Smoking gun’ discovery or Republican disinformation?

R&I – FS

On Wednesday, the New York Post  published an article based on emails purportedly obtained from a laptop that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, had supposedly left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019. Here’s a brief explainer to help readers evaluate its significance.

What’s new?

The key thrust of the article is that an April 2015 email suggests Hunter Biden arranged for a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm to meet with his father, the then-vice president, when he was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honour and pleasure,” the email reads, supposedly by Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma.

Why would that be important?

Hunter Biden in 2014 became a board member of Burisma, which news reports at the time suggested was a conflict of interest given his father’s position. The former vice president has said he did not discuss Burisma with his son. The email is not specific about the nature of the meeting and is written in a way that it could be talking about a possible future meeting. Nevertheless, Republicans have long sought to tie the vice president to his son’s business interests, even launching a Senate investigation, so any indication that the vice president helped his son could be politically damaging. The New York Post claimed it was a “smoking-gun email”.

How do we know the email is authentic?

We do not. The New York Post posted PDF printouts of several emails allegedly from the laptop, but for the “smoking gun” email, it shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted, according to Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures, a book on disinformation. “There is no header information, no metadata.” The Washington Post has been unable to independently verify or authenticate these emails, as requests to make the laptop hard drive available for inspection have not been granted. The New York Post said it obtained the material from former New York mayor Rudy GiulianiDonald Trump‘s lawyer.

There also is no indication that Hunter Biden replied to the email.

What does the Biden campaign say?

Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, said a review of Mr Biden’s schedules from 2015 finds no record of any such meeting. Officials who worked for Mr Biden at the time told The Fact Checker that no such meeting took place.

“I was with the vice president in all of his meetings on Ukraine,” said Michael Carpenter, Mr Biden’s foreign policy adviser in 2015. “He never met with this guy. In fact I had never heard of this guy until the New York Post story broke.

Martin Sole

Article URL : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/hunter-biden-emails-ukraine-fake-news-new-york-post-trump-rudy-giuliani-b1041498.html