USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

The Real Story Behind the FBI’s Censorship of Hunter Biden’s Laptop

We now know with certainty that the FBI actively worked to alter the
outcome of a U.S. presidential election.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-real-story-behind-the-fbis-censorship-of-hunter-bidens-laptop_4700227.html

https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/services/files/7CD44E16-BF0B-495E-8B87-900467F69E50
https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/isaac-schifff-laptop-complaint.pdf
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/whistleblowers-reports-reveal-double-standard-in-pursuit-of-politically-charged-investigations-by-senior-fbi-doj-officials
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/grassley_johnson_to_fbi_-_august_2020_briefing.pdf
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/fbi-responds-mark-zuckerberg-claims-joe-rogan-show-rcna45082
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/politics/rudy-giuliani-investigation-fara/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/28/feds-raid-rudy-giuliani-home-484928
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call/index.html
https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres755/BILLS-116hres755enr.pdf
https://twitter.com/KingMakerFT/status/1562542631934038018
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/biden-doctrine/496841/
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived
https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-01/F-2021-04113%20--%20FL-2021-00525%20December%202021%20Production.pdf
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1484328054126043138
https://www.theepochtimes.com/key-state-department-email-detailing-7-million-bribe-was-never-provided-to-trumps-impeachment-defense_4284637.html
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_Report_FINAL.pdf
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1336462093919399936
https://web.archive.org/web/20140513132005/http://burisma.com/hunter-biden-joins-the-team-of-burisma-holdings/
https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-02/KentBurismaEmailNov222016.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/diplomat-tells-investigators-he-raised-alarms-in-2015-about-hunter-bidens-ukraine-work-but-was-rebuffed/2019/10/18/81e35be9-4f5a-4048-8520-0baabb18ab63_story.html
https://nabu.gov.ua/en/history-nabu
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/20/kiev-versus-kiev-poroshenko-ukraine-corruption-nabu/
https://nabu.gov.ua/en/novyny/nabu-and-fbi-will-sign-memorandum-cooperation-artem-sytnyk
https://nabu.gov.ua/en/novyny/fbi-representative-will-work-together-nabu-detectives
https://nabu.gov.ua/en/novyny/court-supports-nabu-position-refusal-publish-memorandum-fbi
https://www.unian.info/politics/2283111-right-to-cooperation-can-nabu-and-fbi-conduct-joint-operations.html
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/hunter-biden-reveals-he-is-under-federal-investigation-tax-affairs/YOCBM3QF6VEYVFSCZTDBHUIHHY/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-truth-over-news

As the larger ramifications of their actions are being digested, some
additional questions come to mind. How did the FBI know the New York
Post was about to run a story on the laptop? Was the FBI’s coverup of
Hunter Biden’s laptop also related to President Donald Trump’s first
impeachment trial? And why is it that the FBI had a physical office
located within Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau since June
2016?

And finally the big question: Was the subsequent FBI investigation of
Hunter Biden designed to actually protect him and his father,
President Joe Biden—and, perhaps more importantly, protect the FBI?

In a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Sen. Ron Johnson
(R-Wis.) recently disclosed that whistleblowers alerted him that “FBI
officials intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter
Biden.”

Johnson noted that after the FBI obtained Hunter Biden’s laptop,
“local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that
Hunter Biden laptop.’”

The supposed reason given for this inaction? The FBI was “not going to
change the outcome of the election again,” which is certainly some
strange logic to use, because by choosing not to investigate the
Hunter Biden laptop, the FBI did, in fact, directly impact the outcome
of an election.

But as we now know, the truth is far worse than Johnson’s letter
indicates. During a now-infamous interview with Joe Rogan, co-founder
and CEO of Meta Platforms Mark Zuckerberg casually admitted that the
FBI approached FaceBook—just before the New York Post broke its story
on the Hunter laptop—warning of a pending dump of Russian
disinformation.

Bear in mind that the New York Post story broke in October 2020. The
FBI had physical possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop since at least
December 2019—almost a full eleven months—and they had likely seen the
laptop’s data several months earlier when they were contacted in July
2019 by the computer shop that first had the laptop. The FBI knew for
a fact the laptop was real.

These revelations come on the heels of a multitude of allegations
leveled by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), including that “FBI officials
sought to falsely portray as disinformation evidence … that provided
the FBI derogatory information related to Hunter Biden’s financial and
foreign business activities, even though some of that information had
already been or could be verified.”

Grassley also disclosed “tampering by senior FBI and Justice
Department officials in politically sensitive investigations
[including] election and campaign finance probes across multiple
election cycles.” To make matters even worse, in August 2020, the FBI
endeavored to label an investigation by Grassley and Johnson as
“advancing Russian disinformation.”
Epoch Times Photo Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Paley Center
For Media in New York on Oct. 25, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In response to Zuckerberg’s admission, the FBI later issued what was
essentially a non-denial denial statement, saying they “can only alert
a private entity of a potential threat, not require it to take
action.” The FBI’s choice of Facebook is perhaps not that surprising
given that Zuckerberg had given more than $400 million to impact the
2020 election in favor of Biden.

Note that the FBI uses the word “threat” to describe Hunter Biden’s
laptop—which the FBI had held for 11 months—and knew with certainty
that it was real. The only “threat” posed by the laptop was to Joe
Biden’s candidacy for president as it held emails confirming that he
shut down the investigation into Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had been leading the charge on
investigating the laptop. Notably, Giuliani has also been the subject
of a federal investigation that may have begun as early as 2018.

Additionally, a number of people with whom Giuliani was working have
been targeted by the Treasury Department. We know that Giuliani had
been looking into Ukrainian corruption and interference in our
elections. We also know that Giuliani had physical possession of the
data from the laptop since at least August 2020—the same time in which
the FBI tried to discredit Grassley’s investigation—and Giuliani was
providing information on it to the New York Post.

Giuliani’s knowledge of the laptop actually went back more than a year
earlier, to July 2019, and he likely saw much of the contents before
he got a full copy.
Rudy Giuliani President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani
arrives for a press conference at the Republican National Committee
headquarters in Washington on Nov. 19, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via
Getty Images)

July 2019 is the same exact time that the FBI was made aware of the
laptop. Notably, July 25, 2019, marked the date of Trump’s phone call
with Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky. It was during this
call that Trump told Zelensky that he would like him to speak with
Giuliani and attorney general Bill Barr, saying “I will ask him to
call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s
happening and he is a very capable guy.”

It was this phone call that paved the way for the 2019 impeachment of
Trump—and it now appears that the FBI’s coverup of Hunter Biden’s
laptop also directly impacted the impeachment hearings of Trump.

Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House on Dec. 18, 2019.
The Senate later found Trump to be innocent of the charges and refused
to convict him. One of the primary charges leveled by the left was
that Trump “corruptly solicited the Government of Ukraine to publicly
announce investigations into” Joe Biden in order to create false and
damaging narratives.

An examination of the actual phone transcript shows a somewhat different story.
The Ukraine Connection

Trump told Zelensky that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,
that Biden stopped the prosecution” of Burisma owner Nikolay
Zlochevsky “and a lot of people want to find out about that so
whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”

Trump’s claims were factually correct. As vice-president, Biden
demanded the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin by Petro
Poroshenko, who at the time was the president of Ukraine. And the
details behind Biden’s demand resided on the younger Biden’s laptop.
Joe Biden famously bragged about this incident at a conference he
attended in 2019, telling conference participants that he told
Poroshenko “Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars. It’s OK,
you can keep the prosecutor general. Just understand—we’re not paying
if you do.”
Joe biden is welcomed by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko Then
Vice President Joe Biden arrives for a meeting with Then Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv on Jan. 16, 2017. (Genya
Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

Biden left a few facts out of the story he related in 2019. Shokin had
been investigating Burisma, where Hunter Biden was a board member.
Shokin had been brought back from retirement to clean up corruption in
Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office and he appeared to excel in this new
role.

Victoria Nuland, President Barack Obama’s then-Assistant Secretary of
State, personally wrote Shokin in June 2015, telling him, “We have
been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of
your government.” Nuland, who is now Biden’s undersecretary of state,
also said that the ongoing reform from Shokin enabled him to
“investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an
effective, fair, and transparent manner.”

Nuland’s letter was never shown at Trump’s 2020 impeachment, nor was
it released to Trump’s defense team. Nor was the damning Nov. 2, 2015,
email on Hunter Biden’s laptop from the head of Burisma’s board, Vadym
Pozharskyi. That email, which also wasn’t shown during Trump’s
impeachment, tasked Hunter Biden with producing “deliverables,”
stating that the “ultimate purpose” was to “close down any cases or
pursuits” against Burisma owner Zlochevsky in Ukraine.

Pozharskyi’s target was Shokin, who had reopened an investigation into
Zlochevsky that had been shut down by his predecessor in late 2014
after Burisma’s owner had allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to the
Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.

The same day that Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden about closing the
investigation into Zlochevsky, the younger Biden reached out to Amos
Hochstein, Obama’s Special Envoy and Coordinator of International
Energy Affairs.

Hunter Biden then met Hochstein in person four days later, on Nov. 6,
2015. The timing of Hunter Biden’s outreach, occurring within hours of
receiving Pozharskyi’s instructions, is notable. Hochstein later told
congressional investigators that Hunter Biden “wanted to know my views
on Burisma and Zlochevsky.” Nuland later told congressional
investigators that Hochstein personally conveyed his concerns about
Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma to then-Vice President Joe Biden during
a flight to Ukraine on Dec. 7, 2015.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Holds Hearing On Russia's Invasion
Of Ukraine Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria
Nuland testifies before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on
Ukraine, in Washington, on March 8, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Earlier that year, Pozharskyi had “spent some time” with Joe Biden in
Washington in a meeting that had been brokered by Hunter Biden. Now,
Pozharskyi appeared to be leveraging not only Hunter Biden, but his
meeting with Joe Biden. Less than three weeks after Hunter Biden
received Pozharskyi’s email, Joe Biden issued his first demand that
Shokin be removed.

After Poroshenko failed to comply with the demands, Biden leveraged
that $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer loan guarantees to force Shokin’s
removal. Shokin was finally removed in March 2016. By the time Joe
Biden left office in Jan. 2017, all investigations into Burisma had
been closed.

At the time the alleged bribe was paid in 2014 to Shokin’s
predecessor, Vitaly Yarema, Hunter Biden was not only a Burisma board
member, but was the head of Burisma’s legal unit. A recently released
2016 email from State Department official George Kent states that
Burisma had paid the $7 million bribe to end the initial 2014
corruption investigation.

That investigation had reached all the way to London, where UK courts
had frozen $23 million in Burisma assets. After the bribe was paid,
the Ukrainian prosecutor suddenly wrote to the London court to say
that the matter was closed. The frozen $23 million in assets was then
released to Burisma’s owner, Nikolay Zlochevsky. Kent would later
testify at Trump’s impeachment hearings. But curiously, Kent never
mentioned the explosive information from his email during Trump’s
impeachment.
Epoch Times Photo President Donald Trump arrives to deliver the State
of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020. Trump
delivered his third State of the Union address on the night before the
U.S. Senate is set to vote in his impeachment trial. (Leah
Millis/Pool/Getty Images)

There’s another element to this story as well. In October 2014,
Ukraine established the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) in
response to pressure from the International Monetary Fund and
assistance from then-Vice-President Joe Biden.

On Jan. 22, 2016, NABU director Artem Sytnyk announced that his bureau
was very close to signing a Memorandum of cooperation with the FBI—and
by February 2016 the FBI had a permanent representative onsite at NABU
offices.

A few months later, on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI entered into a
Memorandum of Understanding that allowed for an FBI office onsite at
NABU offices. NABU has repeatedly refused to make the Memorandum of
Understanding with the FBI public and went to court in 2018 to prevent
its release.

In December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who
would later work with Giuliani, accused Sytnyk of allowing the FBI to
conduct illegal operations in Ukraine, claiming that the FBI was
“invited without the permission required and in breach of the
necessary procedures.”

Taras Chornovil, a Ukrainian political analyst, also questioned the
FBI’s activities, writing that “some kind of undercover operations are
being conducted in Ukraine with direct participation (or even under
control) of the FBI. This means the FBI operatives could have access
to classified data or confidential information.” This arrangement
makes the FBI’s decision in late 2019 to halt any investigative
activity into Hunter Biden’s laptop all the more notable, as they were
almost certainly already aware of much of the information contained on
the laptop.

With all of these details in mind, it’s hardly surprising that the FBI
quietly began an investigation of Hunter Biden—one that was disclosed
by Hunter Biden himself shortly after the 2020 election had ended—and
after the FBI had directed Facebook to censor stories on the laptop as
Russia disinformation. What better way to protect not only Joe and
Hunter Biden, but also the bureau itself?

Watch the full episode of Truth Over News on this topic on Thursday Sept. 2.