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Comment by iaw | Hacker News Reader

There is one source of information, Rudy Giuliani. Someone with known ties to Russian intelligence claiming that his lawyer received a surprise hard drive from a computer repairman who has an utterly implausible explanation for his acquisition of said drive. Someone who has been known to spread false allegations and conspiracy theories including the claim that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia.

The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place.

So far, without further corroboration, it's an allegation with no basis. Especially given justice department investigations into the purported impropriety that the supposed emails revolve around did not reveal any evidence of involvement of Joe Biden in his son's dealings.

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>The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place.

This isn't true. They made the specific denial that according to his official schedules from the time, the meeting never happened. And then later quietly also said they "would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule". [0]

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...

In my defense, that article was published around the time I was writing the comment.

If I see the DKIM I'll start buying that there's smoke but until then I don't trust the messengers.

Most news articles based on leaks are uncorroborated allegations.

Even if the source was Putin himself, shouldn't the question be "are the emails authentic" rather than "who leaked the emails"?

Wikileaks has had questionable sources in the past, but they've generally been authentic leaks (for example the DNC email leaks had authentic and signed email headers).

I'm not saying the emails are authentic, I'm saying the question of whether they are authentic is unanswered and that should be your primary concern over who the source is.

Theoretically, if Russia had proof of corruption would you not want to see it on the basis that it's Russia and it's close to an election?

My primary concern is about whether the information I'm looking at is factual or not.

If Russia had proof of corruption on the candidate they did not excessively favor then I would be interested. When historic propagandists have "proof" I need corroboration otherwise I'm being controlled by the propaganda as it was intended.

Remember Benghazi? How confident everyone was, for years? Nothing came from it because nothing was there. The people that were talking about Benghazi were only people that benefited from it politically. Remember Al Franken? Remember when people that didn't benefit from it politically agreed he should step down after his behavior?

"Nothing came from it"

Uh, what? A U.S. embassy was actively under attack and our "leaders" said "No thanks!" to sending help.

How is that not a scandal?

There were ten investigations and your version of events are not accurate according to all of them. Including the ones led by Republicans. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack#Investiga...

Not finding anyone they can indict is not the same as “no scandal”. You and I knew when they were trying to blame the fiasco on a YouTube video and trotted the poor director out in a hooded perp walk on tv that it was complete. utter. BS., and then we watched Rice run around talking about it on talk shows trying to shamelessly prop up this narrative. That itself is a scandal. When you start asking more critical questions about why a government does crap like that you’ll find it’s scandals all the way down. The best you can say from the Benghazi debacle is that we had/have a bunch of nincompoops running the show. _That’s_ a scandal. It only gets worse when you attempt to defend their qualifications. Don’t get me started on Libya as a whole - it’s executors only years earlier still criticizing the lack of an exit plan for Iraq.

For christ's sake yes.

Russia, a known bad actor, who has been openly trying to destabilize America for years does not get the benefit of the doubt on literally anything. Everything that Russia "has" should be outright considered purposeful disinformation until it is clearly and widely proven otherwise. They have lost all credibility to provide proof of anything. Particularly in an election year.

I am completely ignorant of why Russia is a known bad actor (aside from, you know, the whole run-by-a-dictator thing). Could you help me out?

Google the following terms:

- Litvinenko

- Novichok

- Crimean Annexation

- Russia Wikileaks (the Atlantic article is a good intro)

- Sergei Magnitsky, the Magnitsky Act, Russian Meeting at Trump Tower (in that order tells the story)

- Russian Disinformation Campaign (there are stories dating to shortly after the 2016 election)

There's probably more but this is all the top of my mind. Litvinenko was my wake-up to the realities of global politics and the potential dangers Russia poses.

We can be clear eyed about this. "Are the emails authentic" is exactly the question they (NYPost) should have asked and were best positioned to answer, but they did not even try.

They presented screenshots (!) uncritically, with no suggestion of doubt regarding the emails' provenance. They did not even bother asking the Biden campaign about the story prior to publication.

It's a transparent attempt to get to "just asking questions" which is where we are today.

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