Reading over everything I don't buy the idea that it's play acting. A series of self-interested plays, miscalculations and then a resolution with a mutually beneficial compromise is more plausible.
Prigozhin:
Background: Prigozhin has been a loose cannon for a while but, presumably, miscalculated how loose he could be before he lost favor with Putin. Putin soured on Prigozhin’s shenanigans and began listening to the advice of Prigozhin’s enemies within the Ministry of Defense. Prigozhin’s allies within the government alterted Prigozhin that the apparatus of government had turned on him.
Stakes: Prigozhin’s enemies within the MoD, obviously with Putins acquiescence if not blessing, began moving to liquidate Warner. The Warner military would be absorbed into the Russian Army and Prigozhin faced losing his revenue streams, his influence and, likely, his life.
Gambit: Prigozhin, either through advance contingency planning or through being well connected to the military, had already or was quickly able to lay down a plan to seize Rostov-on-Don, then the southern military command and then head out towards Moscow blitzing past sympathetic or apathetic internal security forces. It was serious, the oligarch rats began deserting the ship and Putin himself allegedly fled Moscow or, at least, moved his family out.
The fail: Prigozhin’s plan clearly assumed that more sympathetic or neutral elements among the military and the oligarchy would support his move against Putin’s crew in the MoD. He also may have miscalculated how quickly Putin could rally support to his Moscow defenses via air-lifting troops in. Critical persons didn’t flip or remain neutral. Moscow, despite Prigozhin’s speed of advance, became too hard a target.
The Situation prior to the deal: Prigozhin had Rostov-on-Don firmly in hand with significant supplies and a significant well-trained force behind Russian lines. Putin could not simply erase him but Prigozhin didn’t believe he could take Moscow, or, he didn’t think he could prosecute a genuine coup even if he took Moscow. The air force was beginning to pummel Warner forces. The most plausible outcome for Prigozhin at this stage would be a bloody destructive fight inside Russia eventually concluding with Prigozhin and his allies being bloodily and painfully executed by an enraged and bloodied, but still in power, Putin.
Putin:
Background: Putin’s been in power a long time and has used Prigozhin as a useful cats paw and wild card within the Ministry of Defenses hierarchies of power. A powerful singular military figure has always presented the most likely vector of a challenge of Putin’s hold on power so he has always viewed the MoD with a high degree of suspicious and has always acted to keep it factionalized and infighting. The War on Ukraine, though, has strained everything and Putin (or his people in the MoD) used Prigozhin’s forced in Bakhmut that left Warner discredited, weakened and left Prigozhin enraged and isolated. Clearly lines of communication between Prigozhin and Putin broke down and Putins’ favor drifted away. As with all Ceasars, communication from ground level to leadership grows strained as toadies and courtiers interfere to shade information to their own benefit. Putin grew disenchanted with Prigozhin and convinced that he could be discarded and Warners assets seized.
Gambit: Putin allowed or blessed a plan to liquidate Warner and divert its manpower and assets to his favored toadies in the Ministry of Defense. Whether Putin planned for Prigozhin to be merely marginalized or liquidated is unknown and unknowable but for Prigozhin the former is simply the latter in slow motion.
The fail: As, again, with most Ceasars, the toadies and courtiers over estimated their abilities and underestimated the practical skills and connections of Prigozhin and his allies. Prigozhin became aware of their moves and acted to launch a mutiny aimed at forcing Putin to liquidate them instead. Prigozhin seized logistical control of the entire Ukrainian front via seizing Rostov-on-Don and launched a military column at Moscow. The best we can say for Putin and his toadies is they managed to weaken that force, airlift in enough manpower to Moscow and keep enough MoD and Oligarch assets in line to prevent the mutiny from blossoming into a coup or a situation where Putin was forced to yield to Prigozhin.
The Situation prior to the deal: Putin and his minions had prevented catastrophe, but only just barely. Prigozhin didn’t have the ability to consummate his mutiny to a successful conclusion. This was thin comfort for Putin as he didn’t have the ability to swiftly and decisively eliminate Warner and Prigozhin without massively diverting resourced and disrupting his resource chains to Ukraine in the teeth of a well-equipped Ukrainian offensive. Putin was looking at either yielding to Prigozhin’s demands or else bloodily defeating Prigozhin at the cost of incalculable losses in Ukraine as his lines there imploded.
The compromise: Putin gives Prigozhin his life, exile to Belarus and a blanket pardon to all Warner elements who participated in the mutiny. In exchange he avoids a devastating conflict and likely flat out loss of the War in Ukraine. He basically gained a return to the status quos plus the liquidation of Warner at a huge cost to his reputation. Prigozhin presumably keeps his fortune, escapes to Belarus and stops drinking tea and stays away from windows from now on. If this deal seems slanted in Putin’s favor it is. Prigozhin’s gambit failed to achieve its goals. Putin was critically weakened but not decisively so. Putin’s toadies remain in control though presumably massively discredited and Putin himself has suffered a massive blow to his reputation but not necessarily a massive blow to his war effort. If you go for the King you had best not miss. Prigozhin missed.
Perhaps but those are minor considerations. You assassinate the center figure and his support fractures and infighting commences. And killing a man surrounded by body guards is very much a KGB/FSB skill set.
Agreed, I'm struggling to wrench myself away as well. Daily kos #Ukraine is pretty good for someone who hates twitter. I am trying, trying, to temper my expectations and hopes but this feels... I don't know... extra historic.
I cannot IMAGINE how the Ukrainians are feeling right now. Probably, healthily, suspicious. But the Russians just have to crack somewhere along that line and the Ukrainians just have to find it. If they get all that mobile armor and infantry vehicles the west has given them behind the Russian defensive lines the whole RU offense will roll up like an unglued carpet.
Holy fish. Wagner has taken Rostov. If they fish things up there the whole Russian logistics chain into Ukraine could implode. Do we actually live in a timeline bright enough for this to fishin happen!?!?
There might, emphasis on MIGHT, be something huge happening in Russia. It's possibly this is nothing. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been full of it many many many times before but this isn't something you can posture at and walk back afterwards. If he's said the stuff he's said (and by all apparent accounts he has) the possible outcomes are he wins or he's dead.
I am struggling with this; likel; I fear to even consider giving it credence because a Russian civil conflict of significant size right in the midst of a Ukrainian offensive is just... I don't know... too good to be true? LIke do we live in a timeline where this is possible? Or is there some way this all goes to crap? I suppose is Prigozhin is too successful and somehow we end up with that nut controlling the nuclear button... or maybe a total chaotic scrum?
Even in those worst case scenarios I struggle to see how this isn't good news for Ukraine but I hope ol' Uncle Joe has all his experts working overtime this weekend.
It's in international waters so even if you try and make a regulation good luck applying it outside your borders. Of course the Americans could pull it off by saying "if you don't follow our regulations in international waters and something goes wrong we won't come rescue you" which might be sufficient to snap billionaire idiots heads around- but far from certain.
Obviously, one cannot prove a negative but if the original laptop actually contained the information the NYP alleged it did then Trumps FBI would have been howling to the skies about it. Even the data copies that Guiliani, and everyone else who felt like doing so, had meddled with only contained some very vague allusions to Biden which “coincidentally” were risqué enough for media folks to inveigle about while, simultaneously, not being concrete enough that the FBI would feel any pressure to come out and say “that stuff isn’t on the untampered laptop, it’s made up” or “That stuff is on the untampered laptop and we’re investigating it.” It’s now been four years since the laptop was found and a significant portion of one of those years took place under an administration that was desperate to find dirt on Joe Biden. That no charges, no whisper of charges, no substantiation of the allegations against Joe Biden have so far emerged suggests to me that the allegations in the New York Post again Joe Biden are falsified. If you say “Joe’s a crook” and I say “prove it” and then you go four years providing nothing you can’t say “Joe’s never been proven not to be a crook” well, you can, but everyone outside the circle of true believers will just roll their eyes at the obvious con.
The original New York Post story from October 14 2020, alleged two things; first that the laptop existed and, second, that it contained information that demonstrated that Joe Biden was corrupt. There’s this two step that constantly goes on with this laptop story wherein people keep pointing out that the first premise of the article is correct (the laptop does indeed exist) and then happily imply that means the second premise is also correct. When challenged on the second premise they just retreat back to pointing out the first premise is correct. The only reason anyone outside some tax and gun registration authorities care strongly about this laptop story, though, is the second premise which remains, utterly and completely, unproven.
As far as I know the FBI hasn’t stated anything to Hunter Biden saying “You’re in the clear.” Frankly I don’t particularly care if he is in the clear; I’m not Joe Biden; I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if that idiot Hunter got locked up, heck I’d probably be glad since he obviously has done enough idiotic and unscrupulous things to deserve being locked up over.
That's not what the original allegations in the Post's story was. I'm all for raking politicians over the coals for nepotism and the like so climbing the original story down to this level strikes me as a salutary development. I just am unwilling to ignore that a climb down has happened.
And I'm baffled by the repeated return to the well of media disinformation. The article's allegations against Joe Biden have not been substantiated. That the media didn't give legs to an unsubstantiated baseless allegation is good news, not bad news.
But this is risible- we've now examined the laptop for years and found no proof of Joe Biden doing any of the things that the new york post's article claimed he did. The original article has been falsified but the narrative is now shifted to one that, weeks before the election, the media screened out a false story and didn't give it legs? Shouldn't that be cause for celebration, not approbation?
No argument from me, the n in networking is for nepotism. It's as common in politics as it is in business and it's utterly pervasive in business. And don't get me started on non-profits.
You, yourself, have raised the Clinton's and the Clinton foundation as an equivalent case to Trumps corruption in the past Dark. I merely remember it and referred to it.
And the fact remains that Hunter is not a foreign national so what he did isn't illegal. And, more pertinently, the overarching fact is that so far no one has been able to substantiate any connection between Hunter getting these nepo gigs and his employers actually gaining any form of access or policy benefit from employing Hunter. In the absence of that connection the saga of Hunter Biden becomes backpage gossip, not a national scandal.
That the laptop info reinforces the narrative that Hunter Biden, himself, is an incredible failson dealing on his old man's name and taking wealthy people for a ride while giving them bupkis in return doesn't strike me as at all revelatory. I think you’d need to hunt far, wide and deep into the internet to find anyone on the left who doesn’t view Hunter with anything except with the same contemptuous pity or contemptuous disgust they reserve for most nepo babies and failsons.
The primary narrative the right was pushing when the Hunter Biden laptop story was released immediately prior to the 2020 election was not that Hunter Biden was a failson or that he was taking wealthy people for a ride using his Dads’ name; the narrative pushed was that Joe Biden was directly, corruptly and illegally benefiting from Hunter Biden’s activity and that Hunter Biden was providing a back channel means for actors to buy access to and policy concessions from Joe Biden. When the media, viciously burned by Comey’s idiotic (and against policy) intervention in the 2016 election, refused to fall for an even more nakedly fabricated version of the same trick the rights narrative shifted to an aggrieved caterwauling about a “conspiracy” to cover up the laptop “story”.
I’m surprised that you yourself seem to be memory holing the entire Joe Biden angle and rewriting the story of Hunters laptop into a media conspiracy to protect and preserve the reputation of Hunter fishin Biden? Why on earth would the media have covered for this idiot? His being exposed for what he was would have had zero bearing on anything outside the life of one Hunter Biden. As trifling as the internet may be, there’s no way this much digital ink would have been spilled about Hunter Biden if it was simply a story about the relative of a politician trading on said politicians name fraudulently.
To expand on Jaybirds original question- itself artfully vague- the answer is:
-Was the laptop really Hunter Biden’s? Seems so.
-Did the laptop have information that hurts the reputation and possibly criminally implicated Hunter Biden as being in contravention of a number of laws? This seems to be the case.
-Did the laptop contain any information that reflected poorly on Joe Biden? Nope, no sign of anything but communications from an aggrieved and worried Father.
-Was it real? Yes. Was it a scandal? No.
On “Trouble in Russia: Developing Story, “Wagner Mutiny” and Discussion Thread”
Reading over everything I don't buy the idea that it's play acting. A series of self-interested plays, miscalculations and then a resolution with a mutually beneficial compromise is more plausible.
Prigozhin:
Background: Prigozhin has been a loose cannon for a while but, presumably, miscalculated how loose he could be before he lost favor with Putin. Putin soured on Prigozhin’s shenanigans and began listening to the advice of Prigozhin’s enemies within the Ministry of Defense. Prigozhin’s allies within the government alterted Prigozhin that the apparatus of government had turned on him.
Stakes: Prigozhin’s enemies within the MoD, obviously with Putins acquiescence if not blessing, began moving to liquidate Warner. The Warner military would be absorbed into the Russian Army and Prigozhin faced losing his revenue streams, his influence and, likely, his life.
Gambit: Prigozhin, either through advance contingency planning or through being well connected to the military, had already or was quickly able to lay down a plan to seize Rostov-on-Don, then the southern military command and then head out towards Moscow blitzing past sympathetic or apathetic internal security forces. It was serious, the oligarch rats began deserting the ship and Putin himself allegedly fled Moscow or, at least, moved his family out.
The fail: Prigozhin’s plan clearly assumed that more sympathetic or neutral elements among the military and the oligarchy would support his move against Putin’s crew in the MoD. He also may have miscalculated how quickly Putin could rally support to his Moscow defenses via air-lifting troops in. Critical persons didn’t flip or remain neutral. Moscow, despite Prigozhin’s speed of advance, became too hard a target.
The Situation prior to the deal: Prigozhin had Rostov-on-Don firmly in hand with significant supplies and a significant well-trained force behind Russian lines. Putin could not simply erase him but Prigozhin didn’t believe he could take Moscow, or, he didn’t think he could prosecute a genuine coup even if he took Moscow. The air force was beginning to pummel Warner forces. The most plausible outcome for Prigozhin at this stage would be a bloody destructive fight inside Russia eventually concluding with Prigozhin and his allies being bloodily and painfully executed by an enraged and bloodied, but still in power, Putin.
Putin:
Background: Putin’s been in power a long time and has used Prigozhin as a useful cats paw and wild card within the Ministry of Defenses hierarchies of power. A powerful singular military figure has always presented the most likely vector of a challenge of Putin’s hold on power so he has always viewed the MoD with a high degree of suspicious and has always acted to keep it factionalized and infighting. The War on Ukraine, though, has strained everything and Putin (or his people in the MoD) used Prigozhin’s forced in Bakhmut that left Warner discredited, weakened and left Prigozhin enraged and isolated. Clearly lines of communication between Prigozhin and Putin broke down and Putins’ favor drifted away. As with all Ceasars, communication from ground level to leadership grows strained as toadies and courtiers interfere to shade information to their own benefit. Putin grew disenchanted with Prigozhin and convinced that he could be discarded and Warners assets seized.
Gambit: Putin allowed or blessed a plan to liquidate Warner and divert its manpower and assets to his favored toadies in the Ministry of Defense. Whether Putin planned for Prigozhin to be merely marginalized or liquidated is unknown and unknowable but for Prigozhin the former is simply the latter in slow motion.
The fail: As, again, with most Ceasars, the toadies and courtiers over estimated their abilities and underestimated the practical skills and connections of Prigozhin and his allies. Prigozhin became aware of their moves and acted to launch a mutiny aimed at forcing Putin to liquidate them instead. Prigozhin seized logistical control of the entire Ukrainian front via seizing Rostov-on-Don and launched a military column at Moscow. The best we can say for Putin and his toadies is they managed to weaken that force, airlift in enough manpower to Moscow and keep enough MoD and Oligarch assets in line to prevent the mutiny from blossoming into a coup or a situation where Putin was forced to yield to Prigozhin.
The Situation prior to the deal: Putin and his minions had prevented catastrophe, but only just barely. Prigozhin didn’t have the ability to consummate his mutiny to a successful conclusion. This was thin comfort for Putin as he didn’t have the ability to swiftly and decisively eliminate Warner and Prigozhin without massively diverting resourced and disrupting his resource chains to Ukraine in the teeth of a well-equipped Ukrainian offensive. Putin was looking at either yielding to Prigozhin’s demands or else bloodily defeating Prigozhin at the cost of incalculable losses in Ukraine as his lines there imploded.
The compromise: Putin gives Prigozhin his life, exile to Belarus and a blanket pardon to all Warner elements who participated in the mutiny. In exchange he avoids a devastating conflict and likely flat out loss of the War in Ukraine. He basically gained a return to the status quos plus the liquidation of Warner at a huge cost to his reputation. Prigozhin presumably keeps his fortune, escapes to Belarus and stops drinking tea and stays away from windows from now on. If this deal seems slanted in Putin’s favor it is. Prigozhin’s gambit failed to achieve its goals. Putin was critically weakened but not decisively so. Putin’s toadies remain in control though presumably massively discredited and Putin himself has suffered a massive blow to his reputation but not necessarily a massive blow to his war effort. If you go for the King you had best not miss. Prigozhin missed.
"
Perhaps but those are minor considerations. You assassinate the center figure and his support fractures and infighting commences. And killing a man surrounded by body guards is very much a KGB/FSB skill set.
"
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/24/2177435/-OMG-Lukashenko-might-actually-have-saved-all-the-evil-butts
This analysis strikes me as highly plausible.
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Yeah looks like the dream of this being huge is dead. It's bad for Putin, but it's not earth shattering.
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Problem with this is Putin has an old and reliable answer to a problem minion who has a lot of manpower personally loyal to him: assassination.
On “Open Mic for the week of 6/19/2023”
Agreed, I'm struggling to wrench myself away as well. Daily kos #Ukraine is pretty good for someone who hates twitter. I am trying, trying, to temper my expectations and hopes but this feels... I don't know... extra historic.
I cannot IMAGINE how the Ukrainians are feeling right now. Probably, healthily, suspicious. But the Russians just have to crack somewhere along that line and the Ukrainians just have to find it. If they get all that mobile armor and infantry vehicles the west has given them behind the Russian defensive lines the whole RU offense will roll up like an unglued carpet.
"
Professor Freedman has excellent long thoughts on the matter. I agree with him that this isn't a coup- it's a mutiny.
https://samf.substack.com/p/prigozhins-mutiny?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=631422&post_id=130568843&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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Thanks InMD.
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Holy fish. Wagner has taken Rostov. If they fish things up there the whole Russian logistics chain into Ukraine could implode. Do we actually live in a timeline bright enough for this to fishin happen!?!?
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You owe me a beer. But, heck, if this turns out to be substantive we can both drink several in delight.
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https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-in-crisis-as-wagner-chief-prigozhin-declares-war-on-russian-military-leadership/
There might, emphasis on MIGHT, be something huge happening in Russia. It's possibly this is nothing. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been full of it many many many times before but this isn't something you can posture at and walk back afterwards. If he's said the stuff he's said (and by all apparent accounts he has) the possible outcomes are he wins or he's dead.
I am struggling with this; likel; I fear to even consider giving it credence because a Russian civil conflict of significant size right in the midst of a Ukrainian offensive is just... I don't know... too good to be true? LIke do we live in a timeline where this is possible? Or is there some way this all goes to crap? I suppose is Prigozhin is too successful and somehow we end up with that nut controlling the nuclear button... or maybe a total chaotic scrum?
Even in those worst case scenarios I struggle to see how this isn't good news for Ukraine but I hope ol' Uncle Joe has all his experts working overtime this weekend.
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From stomping extra hard on capitalism no less.
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Oh, well they'll get bupkiss then since they'll be in line with all the other creditors for a soon to be hollowed out shell of a company.
I read somewhere one of the lost rich folks families sais "Spare no expense, we'll pay for it all!" And had hope for a moment.
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That sounds cynically plausible to me. I still hope they bill'm tho.
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It's in international waters so even if you try and make a regulation good luck applying it outside your borders. Of course the Americans could pull it off by saying "if you don't follow our regulations in international waters and something goes wrong we won't come rescue you" which might be sufficient to snap billionaire idiots heads around- but far from certain.
"
Ironically, that is pretty good news.
"
Paging professor Darwin.
On “Hunter Biden Takes Plea Deal On Tax, Gun Charges”
Agreed.
"
Obviously, one cannot prove a negative but if the original laptop actually contained the information the NYP alleged it did then Trumps FBI would have been howling to the skies about it. Even the data copies that Guiliani, and everyone else who felt like doing so, had meddled with only contained some very vague allusions to Biden which “coincidentally” were risqué enough for media folks to inveigle about while, simultaneously, not being concrete enough that the FBI would feel any pressure to come out and say “that stuff isn’t on the untampered laptop, it’s made up” or “That stuff is on the untampered laptop and we’re investigating it.” It’s now been four years since the laptop was found and a significant portion of one of those years took place under an administration that was desperate to find dirt on Joe Biden. That no charges, no whisper of charges, no substantiation of the allegations against Joe Biden have so far emerged suggests to me that the allegations in the New York Post again Joe Biden are falsified. If you say “Joe’s a crook” and I say “prove it” and then you go four years providing nothing you can’t say “Joe’s never been proven not to be a crook” well, you can, but everyone outside the circle of true believers will just roll their eyes at the obvious con.
The original New York Post story from October 14 2020, alleged two things; first that the laptop existed and, second, that it contained information that demonstrated that Joe Biden was corrupt. There’s this two step that constantly goes on with this laptop story wherein people keep pointing out that the first premise of the article is correct (the laptop does indeed exist) and then happily imply that means the second premise is also correct. When challenged on the second premise they just retreat back to pointing out the first premise is correct. The only reason anyone outside some tax and gun registration authorities care strongly about this laptop story, though, is the second premise which remains, utterly and completely, unproven.
As far as I know the FBI hasn’t stated anything to Hunter Biden saying “You’re in the clear.” Frankly I don’t particularly care if he is in the clear; I’m not Joe Biden; I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if that idiot Hunter got locked up, heck I’d probably be glad since he obviously has done enough idiotic and unscrupulous things to deserve being locked up over.
"
That's not what the original allegations in the Post's story was. I'm all for raking politicians over the coals for nepotism and the like so climbing the original story down to this level strikes me as a salutary development. I just am unwilling to ignore that a climb down has happened.
And I'm baffled by the repeated return to the well of media disinformation. The article's allegations against Joe Biden have not been substantiated. That the media didn't give legs to an unsubstantiated baseless allegation is good news, not bad news.
"
But this is risible- we've now examined the laptop for years and found no proof of Joe Biden doing any of the things that the new york post's article claimed he did. The original article has been falsified but the narrative is now shifted to one that, weeks before the election, the media screened out a false story and didn't give it legs? Shouldn't that be cause for celebration, not approbation?
"
No argument from me, the n in networking is for nepotism. It's as common in politics as it is in business and it's utterly pervasive in business. And don't get me started on non-profits.
"
You, yourself, have raised the Clinton's and the Clinton foundation as an equivalent case to Trumps corruption in the past Dark. I merely remember it and referred to it.
And the fact remains that Hunter is not a foreign national so what he did isn't illegal. And, more pertinently, the overarching fact is that so far no one has been able to substantiate any connection between Hunter getting these nepo gigs and his employers actually gaining any form of access or policy benefit from employing Hunter. In the absence of that connection the saga of Hunter Biden becomes backpage gossip, not a national scandal.
"
As they should be, but by all indications there's no sign of any scandal implicating the administration or Joe Biden himself.
"
That the laptop info reinforces the narrative that Hunter Biden, himself, is an incredible failson dealing on his old man's name and taking wealthy people for a ride while giving them bupkis in return doesn't strike me as at all revelatory. I think you’d need to hunt far, wide and deep into the internet to find anyone on the left who doesn’t view Hunter with anything except with the same contemptuous pity or contemptuous disgust they reserve for most nepo babies and failsons.
The primary narrative the right was pushing when the Hunter Biden laptop story was released immediately prior to the 2020 election was not that Hunter Biden was a failson or that he was taking wealthy people for a ride using his Dads’ name; the narrative pushed was that Joe Biden was directly, corruptly and illegally benefiting from Hunter Biden’s activity and that Hunter Biden was providing a back channel means for actors to buy access to and policy concessions from Joe Biden. When the media, viciously burned by Comey’s idiotic (and against policy) intervention in the 2016 election, refused to fall for an even more nakedly fabricated version of the same trick the rights narrative shifted to an aggrieved caterwauling about a “conspiracy” to cover up the laptop “story”.
I’m surprised that you yourself seem to be memory holing the entire Joe Biden angle and rewriting the story of Hunters laptop into a media conspiracy to protect and preserve the reputation of Hunter fishin Biden? Why on earth would the media have covered for this idiot? His being exposed for what he was would have had zero bearing on anything outside the life of one Hunter Biden. As trifling as the internet may be, there’s no way this much digital ink would have been spilled about Hunter Biden if it was simply a story about the relative of a politician trading on said politicians name fraudulently.
To expand on Jaybirds original question- itself artfully vague- the answer is:
-Was the laptop really Hunter Biden’s? Seems so.
-Did the laptop have information that hurts the reputation and possibly criminally implicated Hunter Biden as being in contravention of a number of laws? This seems to be the case.
-Did the laptop contain any information that reflected poorly on Joe Biden? Nope, no sign of anything but communications from an aggrieved and worried Father.
-Was it real? Yes. Was it a scandal? No.