A Hunter Biden spokesperson said claims about the president’s son’s foreign business deals and degenerate lifestyle exposed by the infamous “Hard Drive From Hell” were “misinformation” and “disinformation,” in a statement to CBS News.
The shocking â€" and outright false â€" claims were included as part of a broader CBS News package that verified the authenticity of the first son’s hard drive. Occurring over two years after the story initially broke, the report failed to dive into any of the criminal activity exposed on the device, including foreign business deals, improper financial transactions, and sex trafficking by Hunter Biden.
The cyber investigation firm consulted by CBS News â€" Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Servicesâ€" has been around since 1998, though the mainstream media outlet conveniently waited until just weeks after the midterm elections to consult the company for its expertise.
The thousand-word article, “Copy of What’s Believed to be Hunter Biden’s Laptop Data Turned Over by Repair Shop to FBI Showed no Tampering, Analysis Says,” mentions the word “China” just once and makes zero mentions of “human trafficking” or “sex trafficking.”
In what appears to be an attempt to whitewash the Biden’s family corrupt business dealings ahead of Republican-led congressional investigations into Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s financial affairs, the article includes a statement from Hunter Biden’s attorney Christopher Clark downplaying the authenticity of the hard drive. He also suggests that stories deriving from the hard drive represent “misinformation” and “disinformation”:
“In a statement, an attorney for Hunter Biden said “there have been multiple attempts to hack, infect, distort, and peddle misinformation regarding Mr. Biden’s devices and data.” The attorney, Christopher Clark, said Hunter Biden’s team believes, “there are ongoing efforts to utilize the infected and distorted data to spread disinformation. At no time did any individual…have Mr. Biden’s consent to access his computer data or share it with others.”
Clark’s statement did not address questions related to the specific data, documents and personal identification analyzed for CBS News’ independent review, or Computer Forensics Services’ findings. Clark also referred CBS to Hunter Biden’s recent memoir.”
The piece also goes out of its way to discredit the claims of Hunter Biden’s business associates who insisted that Joe Biden was intimately involved in his son’s business endeavors:
“Two of Hunter’s former business partners, including Tony Bobulinski, who received the email, have told CBS News that “10 held by H for the big guy?” is shorthand for 10% held by Hunter for his father.
But when the email became public in 2020, the author, James Gilliar, told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved. Gilliar has not responded to CBS News’ questions.
Bobulinski had a falling out with Hunter Biden, and has been a critic of the president and his son. His appearance and interview on Fox News came on the heels of the initial reports in the New York Post about the laptop.”
In another apparent effort to hamstring looming congressional investigations into the Biden family, CBS News tries to make the case that falsified versions of the hard drive exist, though they fail to debunk any specific stories about Hunter Biden’s business deals with countries including China and Ukraine.
“Some other versions of the laptop data circulated later appeared to have had data added after April 2019, a sign they could have been tampered with, according to reports in other media outlets, including The Washington Post.”
