From
Hunter Biden Laptop Whistleblower Sues Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast , Politico
The Delaware computer repairman who alerted authorities to the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop sued on Tuesday Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico, claiming that he suffered financial and reputational damage after they alleged that the leak was Russian disinformation.
Business owner John Paul Mac Isaac filed for the suit, he told the New York Post, because his livelihood was significantly disrupted by tech platforms, mainstream media, and Delaware locals after he turned in the laptop, which would eventually become the subject of a federal investigation.
“After fighting to reveal the truth, all I want now is for the rest of the country to know that there was a collective and orchestrated effort by social and mainstream media to block a real story with real consequences for the nation,” Mac Isaac told the Post...
Mac Isaac said he came into possession of the laptop when President Biden’s son Hunter dropped it off at his shop for repairs in April 2019 and never came back to claim it. Authorities have since unearthed questionable content on the device relating to Hunter’s foreign business dealings and the president’s knowledge of them. The store owner first gave the laptop hard drive to the FBI in December 2019 and then to former head of the Trump campaign legal team Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.
After the story surfaced in October 2020 right before the presidential election, Twitter and Facebook made a concerted effort to bury it and censored the Post’s article, arguing it was unsubstantiated and illegitimate reporting. Biden and over 50 former intelligence officials smeared the laptop revelation as part of a Russian disinformation operation. Over a year later, the New York Times and the Washington Post finally confirmed the story after dismissing it as unsubstantiated for months. Hunter Biden had previously admitted that the laptop did in fact belong to him.
Some Republicans have argued that the early tech and liberal media suppression of the story misled the public and may have effected the results of the 2020 election. Mac Isaac said he suffered great harm as a result of the conduct of the social media companies after the story went live.
“Twitter initially labeled my action hacking, so for the first day after my information was leaked, I was bombarded with hate mail and death threats revolving around the idea that I was a hacker, a thief and a criminal,” he told The Post. Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, “has some explaining” to do after he rejected the new information outright back in October 2020 in what looks like an act of political favoritism, Mac Isaac noted.
“Without any intel, the head of the intel committee decided to share with CNN and its viewers a complete and utter lie,” Mac Isaac said. “A lie issued in the protection of a preferred presidential candidate.”
Mac Isaac alleges that Schiff and those around him unfairly labeled him a prop of the Russian regime for submitting the laptop to the FBI. The lawsuit includes a defamation allegation stemming from Schiff’s interview with CNN two days after The Post broke the story, during which he claimed Moscow was involved.
“Well we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. That’s been clear for well over a year now that they’ve been pushing this false narrative about the Vice President and his son,” Schiff told CNN host Wolf Blitzer, according to the suit...
As a result of the false accusations, Mac Isaac says he faced intimidation and hostility at his business. He shut down the shop after people started throwing vegetables, eggs and dog excrement at his store, he told the Post. Mac Isaac is seeking “at least $1 million in compensatory damages [and] punitive damages which will be the much bigger number and will be determined at trial,” his lawyer Brian Della Rocca confirmed to the publication.
4 comments:
Maya, I used to be very right wing. I had to change my mind. I don't expect to change yours - we get our information from different sources - but I'll pass some food for thought, and with time, you may notice some patterns, too.
To evaluate this case, there are several things that are worth paying attention to.
1) The American right-wing has become pro-Russia in the last decade and this is especially obvious right now. You can notice this in Fox News's Tucker Carlson, even in people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali who are aligned with the right. I notice it in most right-wing articles and media I consume - with the exception of the neo-cons, of course. This should ring a bell.
2) It has been alleged that Trump is a Russian agent and there are some things you can check for yourself directly. In the 80s he did a series of interviews and publications in which he spoke against NATO (basically saying that America pays too much to protect Europe). You can find these 80s TV interviews recorded on YouTube. He suggested back then (in the 80s! - at the time Reagan was working to dismantle the USSR!) that he, Trump, will run for a president with this goal about NATO in mind. That's the only thing that remains UNCHANGED in his speeches to this very day!
Then, the USSR falls. Trump becomes dormant.
In the 2000s, Trump has been laundering Russian oligarch's money and that's what saved him from bankruptcy.
10 years later, his mission to become a president and work against America's involvement in NATO is reactivated.
3) Think about the rest of the Western right wing politicians. France's Le Pen is obviously pro-Russia. Farage comes to Bulgaria to shoot a documentary about the threat we pose to UK. Johnson and Farage help UK to leave the EU, thus making it difficult for... us Eastern Europeans to go to UK. Most right-wing parties are about isolation (why should we care about threats to other countries?) and closing borders. This is explained with "avoiding war" and "taking measures against Muslim immigration" but in reality think about who will be hurt the most from this? It's us. Eastern Europeans.
Russia basically corrupted every single country it could, but the atrocities Russia did now are too difficult to cover, and that's why politicians like Johnson or Sholz are doing their best to distance themselves from Russia, even though in another circumstances they would be working in its favour.
4) The allegations against Trump being a Russian agent come mostly from evidence of Russia's interference in BOTH elections he participated in. Hillary's leaked e-mails involved Russian hackers. The accusations against Biden also have a Russian link. There was also a leaked conversation between Trump and Zelensky (Zelensky ultimately refused to cooperate), the ultimate goal being to prove that the whole democratic party stole millions from Ukraine! What? How does this story even make sense? You see, Biden defends Ukraine because... his son stole from it with the help of Ukraine's corrupt politicians? Who has interest in such a story? The laptop story isn't "confirmed" in any way, the only thing that was confirmed lately is that the laptop is real, not the information that's on it.
Part of the irony is that because of Trump being suspected as a Russian agent, he couldn't do too much and even had to take an anti-Russian stance every once in a while.
I don't think any of this will impress you but I suggest you observe how Repiblicans and Democrats are doing the most incredible thing right now - they switch sides. The American right-wing used to be anti-USSR and the American left-wing used to flirt with USSR... Now just pay attention how the opposite becomes a reality. It's very unpleasant to look at, but it's true. The Russians are playing a lot of games, they have their fingers in many pies, they cause chaos in many different ways. We have to be really careful with our conclusions.
Thank you!
I actually agree with most of what you wrote. My opinion is not that the right is good but that the left is bad. Actually, I think here we also have much in common, remembering your post about why you abandoned feminism.
I have never been a fan of Trump. Long before he became president, I classified him as a celebrity idiot because of his antivaxer views. I didn't like his fawning of Putin, the Ukrainian debacle, separating illegal immigrant parents from their children, his mishandling of COVID, and his refusal to acknowledge his election defeat (though I am far from sure that the elections were honest). I credit him, however, with the acceptance of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, and the fact that Putin grabbed no land under Trump, though he did before and after him.
"Part of the irony is that because of Trump being suspected as a Russian agent, he couldn't do too much and even had to take an anti-Russian stance every once in a while." Absolutely. I didn't like Trump talking against NATO, but in fact, immediately after him, we see NATO stronger than it has been for decades. Even his praise of Putin turned out to be for the best, because it alone made the cool kids realize that Putin's Russia is evil. If Trump had been strongly pro-Ukrainian and anti-Putin, I suspect we'd now have the Western leftist flirting with Russia as in the old days, opposing any help for Ukraine, and the only thing of interest for them in the current war would be how racist Ukrainians are to non-white international students trying to leave the country.
On the other hand, the Democrats, and their infiltration and use of security agencies, are chilling for me. For all the blame on Trump about Ukraine, I don't think Hunter Biden (a US analog of Vladko Zhivkov) should have been there in the first place. Apparently it is not OK for Trump to use and abuse Ukraine but perfectly OK for the Bidens. Also, the talk about Trump's Russian "collusion" (I didn't know that there was such a word) turned out to be empty talk, based on the allegations of a single spy (or double agent). Members of Trump's team were arrested one after another and slapped with unrelated charges until they agreed to talk against him. The interference of Russia in US elections turned out to be mere propaganda (I mean that the Russians were doing propaganda, which I find pretty normal - I also try to do propaganda). And I was stunned by the hunting of Jan. 6 rioters across the country to imprison them, and by the readiness of their relations to rat on them (e.g. Helena Duke who is proud that she betrayed her mother). To me, this reminds the worst excesses of our totalitarian past. I don't want even to start on critical race theory and transgenderism.
About the laptop - do you really think that the information on it isn't real? I recommend this post:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/10/21/matt-taibbi-on-the-nefarious-acquisitive-bidens/
Well. These are still allegations. Nothing conclusive. But okay: let's assume the worst.
US politics is a disaster. Christians against vaccines and evolution vs Socialists that are pushing for a new type of conflict of bourgeoisie vs proletariat across sexual and racial lines. Oh, and as a bonus, their "green wing" worked against using nuclear energy. Both sides are tribal and religious in their own way which makes you lose hope for humanity. Corruption is there on both sides, too, even though it's still fundamentally different from what we have here.
However, the real war makes all this noise irrelevant, unimportant, especially the stupid culture wars of the West that remind me of the temporary insanity of the 60s (hippies were a product of too much comfort that the human animal cannot process).
What is relevant is who's going to work in our favour and who's going to work against us. I cannot express the disgust and betrayal I felt when most right wing commentators that I trusted started actively praising Russia and slandering Ukraine. I suspected it, I somewhat expected it and it still felt terrible. The Biden administration helps our SURVIVAL. So even assuming "the worst" about these allegations, the worst becomes irrelevant.
I agree.
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