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Comment by rch | Hacker News Reader

Not following the details of the story, but has anyone suggested that Hunter dropped off the laptop himself?

Stealing a laptop and causing a bit of damage to initiate a costly repair, then leaving it with a shop under an assumed name seems like a solid Mitnick-level hack to me.

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They have Hunder's signature on the receipt

I think the most likely scenario is that he went on a bender (he has well known substance abuse problems) and locked himself out, dropped it off to get it fixed, and forgot about it. This seems much more plausible than some of the other extremely complex theories which assume that, ahem, Rudy Gulianni (of all people) was able to plan a years long scam to procure this particular computer.

Is there any evidence the computer is legit? The only indisputable thing is the photos right? And those could have been hacked from anywhere. Or am I missing something? (I haven’t studied it much)

There's lots of stuff on there that only Hunter would know. It's legit.

Or, none of the leaked data came from the "computer" in question. Hunter's iCloud backup was hacked, Burisma's internal emails were breached by the GRU last year. Combine those two sources, mix real correspondences with some forgeries, and blame it all on a single laptop a MAGA supporter happened upon in rural Delaware.

Makes perfect sense, if you want it to.

Yeah, sure, certainly plausible. But that's a lot more complicated than a guy who has a substance abuse problem doing things with his computer that a guy with a substance abuse problem would probably do (btw Hunter is sober now, I think).

> certainly plausible

You missed my sarcasm. If you believe son of the Vice President abandoned his laptop in rural Deleware to a Trump supporter to eventually give it to the Trump campaign, I have several bridges in NY to sell you.

Ha, well hat tip to you my friend. Poe's Law strikes again.

As if this needed clarification (it very much did not):

https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/

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