Twice-Impeached Former Guy Asks Putin For Dirt on Hunter Biden

In an interview with discredited far-right journalist John Solomon on a far-right network called Real America’s Voice, the former guy asks Russia’s president Putin to release information regarding “dealings” with Eastern European oligarchs and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

A 2020 GOP Senate report falsely alleged that Hunter Biden had a financial relationship with Russian businesswoman Yelena Baturina and that he received $3.5 million from Baturina.

The GOP report does not support the allegation that Hunter Biden personally accepted money from Baturina, however—only that Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement’ in 2014. Mesires denied that Biden had any “interest in” or that he was a “co-founder” of Rosemont Seneca Thornton, “so the claim that he was paid $3.5 million is false.”

Politico

Meanwhile…

The Kremlin has been embracing propaganda of pro-Russia love in the United States from two major sources: 1) Trump, who calls Putin a savvy genius, and 2) Tucker Carlson who regurgitates Kremlin accusations of secret U.S. biolabs in Ukraine, bankrolled by Hunter Biden, George Soros and the Democratic Party.

CNN, Politico

What’s up with Hunter’s laptop?

The New York Times opened up an old can of worms about a DOJ inquiry into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings and tax issues, citing alleged e-mails from the laptop out of a Delaware repair shop.

Technically, the Times only vouched for certain emails they’d “authenticated” with the help of “people familiar with them and with the investigation.” But the Times reporters also said the cache of files “appears” to have come from a laptop Hunter abandoned at a computer shop — leaning toward, without quite endorsing, a long-questioned account of how the material got out.

The authenticity of the laptop and the e-mails aside, Trump allies have insisted the leaked material proves that Joe Biden was corrupt.

But…weak sauce.

• There were two supposed “smoking guns” about Joe Biden that conservatives touted in the materials. The first was an email the Post called a “blockbuster,” in which an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter for the “opportunity to meet your father” in 2015. If you’re steeped in Trumpworld lore, this was damning because of the theory that Biden had the corrupt prosecutor general of Ukraine fired to benefit Burisma, and Biden had said he knew nothing about Hunter’s Ukrainian work, but look, a meeting! (Apparently, it was a dinner at Cafe Milano that Hunter had organized, with about a dozen people.) This appears to amount to Vice President Biden seemingly going to one dinner.

• The second involved a business venture that Hunter tried to set up with a Chinese energy tycoon in 2017 (after Joe Biden was no longer vice president). One email mentions that the equity split would include “10 held by H for the big guy ?” A former business partner of Hunter’s named Tony Bobulinski came forward to claim “the big guy” was Joe Biden. But a subsequent email from Hunter says his “Chairman” gave him “an emphatic no,” and a further email clarifies that the chairman is his dad. So this amounts to Joe Biden apparently refusing some deal Hunter tried to enmesh him in.

Vox does a great job unloading the Times piece. The entire article can be found here.