Trump asks for 3.5 million: Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” is back

Trump asks for 3.5 million
Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” is back

By Roland Peters
04/05/2022, 8:28 p.m

The laptop from hell actually exists, Hunter Biden’s emails are real, and Donald Trump asks: What did the US President’s son actually get $3.5 million from Moscow for? One can speculate about what he wants to achieve with the warmed-up allegations.

Former President Donald Trump sat in an interview last week and made a public request to Vladimir Putin. The Russian head of state should get him information about Hunter Biden. Hunter is son of President Joe Biden. Trump repeated a well-known allegation in the conversation: Elena Baturina, entrepreneur and wife of Moscow’s former mayor, paid Hunter $ 3.5 million. And Putin could possibly reveal what the money was for.

Congress is also discussing this old story again, which had become unimportant at the latest after Joe Biden’s election victory in November 2020: possible business relationships of the US President’s family with Ukraine, Russia and China.

An ex-US president is asking Putin, who is now considered persona non grata by the US and its allies because of the invasion of Ukraine, for help in his campaign against the Democratic president. Because to this day Trump does not admit to having lost the election to Joe Biden. During Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter worked for Ukrainian gas company Burisma. However, he denies having received any payment from Baturina.

The $3.5 million figure is mentioned in a report by Republicans in the US Senate released just before the 2020 election. The money was said to have been paid by Baturina to a company called Rosement Seneca Thornton in 2014 with reference to a “consulting agreement”. Hunter’s attorney said in 2020 Biden’s son had nothing to do with the company, nor did he receive any money. Hunter is co-founder and ex-boss of Rosement Seneca Advisors. It’s unclear if there is a connection, and if so what, between the two companies.

The public prosecutor’s office has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 because of his business relationships, including during his father’s vice presidency from 2008 to 2016. According to US media, the allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, violation of lobbying laws and gun ownership are involved. Hunter denies all allegations and – so far – has not been charged. According to CNN, the president is not part of the investigation.

search for dirt

Trump wants to harm the Bidens and the Democrats somehow, that’s clear. Does he also want to alleviate the hurt caused by his electoral defeat? Prepare a possible renewed candidacy for 2024? Preparing for the time after the congressional elections?

The worse a president’s work is rated, the meager the results of his party colleagues in congressional elections, that’s statistically proven. Attacks on the White House are always attacks on its party. In polls, the Democrats are not doing well at all. It is considered very likely that Biden will have to govern without majorities in Congress after the election. Then the Republicans would also have presidencies and majorities in investigative congressional committees.

Trump’s current questioning is also piquant for the Democrats because he had already tried to harm his challenger with the allegations during the presidential election campaign. The whispering about it: Father Joe could possibly be blackmailed as president because of family interests. At the time, the Democrats and Biden themselves dismissed it as crazy.

It was the end of the election campaign, Biden promised a return to political normality and was well ahead of the incumbent in polls. Trump fought back with everything he had and could lavish. Around three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a series of articles detailing Hunter’s business ties to China and Ukraine. The New York Post is a tabloid that circulated around the city for decades thanks to Trump’s notoriety.

A year earlier, he had put pressure on the local president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelenskyy should provide Trump with “dirt” about the Bidens in exchange for US military aid against Russia. The corresponding phone call then expanded into a scandal for the US President himself.

Because of all these circumstances, the source on which the allegations against the Bidens were based sounded very bizarre and was therefore considered to be possibly fictitious. However, they are now considered genuine: Hunter’s business emails, which Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani received from a computer shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware and passed on to the newspaper. Hunter gave the “Laptop from Hell” to the store for repairs because of water damage and never picked it up again, it said. The e-mails are now considered genuine and the laptop is said to exist as well. According to US media, it was seized by the FBI in 2019, but the shopkeeper made a copy of the data.

Because of disinformation

A few days after the publication, scores of ex-intelligence officials jointly declared that while they had absolutely no evidence for or against the authenticity of the news, because of their “experience” they suspected “an important role for the Russian government” in the whole story. At the same time, Joe Biden denied everything and called the allegations “garbage”. Democrats and other Trump critics were reminded of 2016, when the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private emails became known shortly before the later lost election.

Many US media outlets have been extremely wary of the Hunter Biden story, or have spread the unsubstantiated claim that the Hunter Biden story is targeted Russian disinformation to help Trump win the election. Twitter blocked the New York Post’s account because the newspaper did not want to delete its tweets on the subject and blocked any linking of the alleged fake news, including in the platform’s private messages. At the same time, Facebook announced that it wanted to use an algorithm to suppress the spread. Both companies did not want to be accused again, as they were after 2016, of standing idly by while fake news spread via their platforms influenced the election.

Trump, his supporters and the media associated with them see all of this as further evidence that the “mainstream media”, the “fake news media” and “big tech” are restricting free speech. In their opinion, conservative positions are disadvantaged, hushed up or, as in the case of the “laptop from hell”, blocked.

With his questions, Trump could influence fickle and independent voters before the congressional elections. Moreover, if something did come out about a $3.5 million payment, he would have been right; like Hunter Biden’s emails. Whether his business was illegal is secondary. Did Hunter directly benefit financially from his father’s political office? Even the appearance of it would cast a bad light on the President himself.