According to the impetuous WSJ nabob Holman Jenkins Jr. ('The U.S. Has An Intelligence Problem', WSJ, p. A13, Oct. 24-25), "More than anything what's on Hunter Biden's laptop is the issue that should concern you now." Going on to babble: ""Given much documentary and testimonial evidence as well as Occam's Razor, the laptop is exactly what the New York Post says it is." I.e. the rag paper's header:
"The Hunter Biden "scandal" has all the hallmarks of one of those patented GOP mudslinging operations. It's not as wild as a pedophile ring in a pizza parlor, but it's got lots of hurtful personal slander and ugly calumny to keep the folks entertained. That it has a Russia-Ukraine element makes it especially fun for those who want payback for Donald Trump being exposed as the most useful of idiots in the past four years.
The "scandal" itself is actually nothing more than an example of the very common (and admittedly skeevy) business practice of hiring the family members of important people for the purpose of obtaining favors, gaining access or simply being viewed in a favorable light. Hunter Biden clearly made a mistake in joining the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was vice president. The apparent conflict of interest was obvious to literally everyone. But Republican charges that Joe Biden granted a favor to Burisma by having the Ukrainian government fire a prosecutor that was investigating the company are flat-out provably false. It's true that Biden (along with virtually the entire Western alliance) pressured the Kyiv government to fire Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor in question. But one of the reasons was because Shokin wasn't investigating Burisma. There was no favor done on Hunter Biden's behalf. If anything, it was the opposite.
Republicans know this. Everyone knows this. This "scandal" has been dismissed by the new Ukrainian government, the U.S. intelligence services, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is 100% phony. And yet it's likely to continue for years if Joe Biden becomes the next president, because the Republican Party and the entire right-wing media sphere will make sure of it....
Does the laptop really belong to Hunter Biden? Are the emails real? Did he arrange for his boss at Burisma to meet his father? Who knows? But it doesn't matter because nothing will change the fact that Joe Biden's actions were the opposite of what Republicans are pretending to investigate him for, and they know it. They are once again knowingly misleading the public.
If the Democrats manage to gain a majority in the Senate and hold on to the House, the GOP will be deprived of its ability to run this new crusade through Congress with multiple investigations, as they did with Benghazi."
That, in other words, is all you need to know about why Holman Jenkins Jr. and some of the other WSJ op-ed hacks are in high dudgeon over the Hunter Biden laptop emails. They want to resurrect a parallel "scandal" to the Hillary email controversy of 2016, hopefully with DOJ's Barr and other voices passing judgment at the last moment. (Funny thing, they haven't -though Rudy Giuliani's been trying to gin this up for months.) They want this mock scandal to either: a) toss the election to their favorite mutt, Dotard, or (b) Use it as a basis to pursue a Benghazi-style witch hunt and endless investigation if Biden does get elected. A neat strategy to hurl his best laid plans into the gutter - by engendering an aura of scandal - thereby preventing the people's needs (like a new Covid relief package) from being addressed. But as Ms. Digby Parton points out, this nefarious plan can be scotched if the Dems take the Senate and keep the House. They simply need to kill the filibuster for the Senate.
Holman is also still miffed because the Intel agencies picked on his beloved bombastic traitor with their unmasking of the likes of Carter Page (who'd been meeting with GRU agents) and then allowing the release of the Steele dossier and finally triggering the Mueller investigation. (After Trump fired James Comey) According to Holman, the dossier was the "brainstorm of a junior league fabulist, Igor Dachenko". But in fact Dachenko was a long time Russia analyst at the Brookings Institution (a quasi liberal think tank) and rightfully takes issue this slander which has been spread by GOP imps like Lindsey Graham..
Why believe otherwise given Holman also keeps calling it "Hillary's dossier"? Despite the fact it originated during the 2016 Republican primaries when a research firm called Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, to unearth potentially damaging information about Mr. Trump. Why? Well, because the old school conservo stalwarts didn't trust a lowlife maggot like Trump to lead the nation. Now, after 4 years and nearly 230,000 Americans dead from an out of control pandemic, we know why.
Holman meanwhile is obsessed with the CIA, FBI etc. and what he believes the 'spooks' are doing to prevent his orange maggot master from winning re-election. E.g. "America's retired spies want to be in charge of picking our presidents" referring to John Brennan and James Clapper.
Picking our presidents? Hardly! Typical Holman hyperventilation and histrionics. More like warning Americans of Russkie disinformation when they suss it out, and believe me the Hunter Biden laptop emails reek of it. One can think of the Intel chiefs' outing of this crap as a duty to warn, analogous to the duty to unmask and wiretap Trump's hirelings during the 2016 campaign. Especially after foreign intercepts - from the UK, Germany etc. - picked up those contacts with Russian GRU agents. As my Swiss friend and former Spezialdienst agent Rolf noted, this is done all the time. Real allies let their peers know when citizen contacts with foreign agents don't pass the basic smell test.
But mayhap Holman has no sense of smell in these matters. What else to conclude when he whines (ibid.): "The full truth, were it known, likely would be so embarrassing, so discrediting to the CIA and FBI that neither would survive without a major keelhauling."
Hmmm...just what I was thinking if the full extent of the WSJ's Op-ed page propaganda was known, especially its stable of hacks' mission to spread Russian disinfo. Holman then does his usual stuffed shirt bellyaching:
"The saddest part: So bamboozled and neurotic is our press, because of its anti-Trump virtue signaling, that it now angrily demands that the public be kept in the dark about matters that are the definition of news."
Neatly omitting that the NY Post writer himself wouldn't even attach his byline to the sorry piece, clearly unwilling to be associated with unproven innuendo, B.S. and offal. What pisses little Holman off the most is that the Intel chiefs acted on exposing this Reeptard-Russkie agitprop just in time before the election so anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows what it is. (Though lovers of lies and the liars that tell them, e.g. like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity et al, could still go to FOX News to get their B.S. fix if they so desired.)
So now, boo hoo and hoo, there won't be any Hillary -style email redux to try to hang on Joe Biden's neck. Holman should also ask Glen Greenwald how his efforts to push the Hunter Biden balderdash have worked out. See e.g.
Glenn Greenwald resigns from the Intercept following dispute over Biden story
Holman needs to reckon with the possibility that his incompetent, dyspeptic, traitorous, virus-seeding master may well be history by Tuesday night. Especially if the blowout blue tsunami occurs as many believe - and despite nonstop Reepo voter mitigation tactics.
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