Hunter Biden allegations — INFLUENCE OP? — RUDY DUPED BY BORAT — DOJ: GOP HUNTER INFORMANT IS 🇷🇺 SPY

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They presented emails, where they got them from and who they belong to. That's proof Joe lied. lol

Why Trump said there would be no conflict of interest while he was president:

“What I’m going to be doing is my two sons, who are right here, Don and Eric, are going to be running the company,” Trump said during a January 2017 news conference. “They are not going to discuss it with me.”
These are just some of the many documents I have signed turning over complete and total control to my sons,” Trump said at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York, standing beside a stack of manila envelopes piled on a table.

Ethics experts had urged Trump to sell of his assets and place the proceeds into a blind trust, calling it the only way to remove any possible conflicts between his business empire and his presidency.

But Trump said he would not be selling the company, instead making a number of smaller changes designed to tightly limit his involvement in its operations.

“They are not going to discuss [the business] with me,” Trump said of sons Donald Jr. and Eric, “Again, I don't have to do this. They're not going to discuss it with me.”



His son Eric giving proof that he lied:

“There is kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain, and I am deadly serious about that exercise,” he says, echoing previous statements from his father. “I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That’s kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it’s something that we honor.”

But less than two minutes later, he concedes that he will continue to update his father on the business while he is in the presidency. “Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that, but you know, that’s about it.” How often will those reports be, every quarter? “Depending, yeah, depending.” Could be more, could be less? “Yeah, probably quarterly.” One thing is clear: “My father and I are very close,” Eric Trump says. “I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”


And then Trump himself openly propping up his own business in international negotiations:
The chief of staff recounted that Trump himself raised the idea during a brainstorming session on possible sites, saying, “What about Doral?” Said Mulvaney, “That’s not the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.

Trump boasted at this year’s G-7 summit in France that Doral would be a “natural” choice, touting its sprawling acreage, proximity to the airport, three golf courses, “incredible” restaurants and separate buildings for every delegation.
Critics noted that the Doral resort, the biggest source of revenue among Trump’s 17 golf properties, appears to have been struggling since even before he became president.

Financial disclosure reports filed by the president show revenue is barely growing, up just $1 million last year, to $76 million. And the Trump Organization itself has admitted it was struggling, arguing in a tax appeal to local authorities last year that it is “seriously underperforming,” according to a Washington Post review of tax appeal documents.

The Doral, which Trump purchased out of bankruptcy in 2012 for a reported $150 million, also faces a heavy debt load. At the end of last year, Trump had two mortgages on the resort, one for more than $50 million and another for as much as $25 million.

“The president is now officially using the power of his office to help prop up his struggling golf business,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Trump “no longer sees fit even to pretend that he is constrained by the law or the Constitution,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a liberal-leaning consumer advocacy group.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about Doral’s finances. Instead, it issued a statement saying that it is “excited to have been asked to host” the summit and “honored by this recognition.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, among the Democrats in Congress who have sued the president over the emoluments issue, saw it as far more troubling.

“It’s so brazen and craven,” he said. “It’s virtually saying, ‘To heck with the rule of law.'”

Added U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York: “The emolument clauses of the Constitution exist to prevent exactly this kind of corruption.”



And that wasn't even the first time....Trump has repeatedly steered official US business to his properties:
Ground transportation for Vice President Mike Pence's stay at President Donald Trump's Doonbeg, Ireland, resort cost taxpayers nearly $600,000, according to State Department receipts.

The documents, made available through a General Services Administration database, were first spotted by the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and later reviewed by NBC News.

The receipts totaled more than $599,000 in conjunction with the vice president's stay, which required him to travel back-and-forth between Doonbeg and Dublin, where his official meetings were set to take place. During then-President Barack Obama's three-day visit to Ireland in 2013, the State Department spent just $114,000 on ground transit, paying the same limousine company. The government paid the same company nearly $1 million for Trump's ground transportation during a June visit to the property.



Anyone who is making a big deal about whether Joe spoke to Hunter about something five years ago is trying to "both sides" the bullshyt. There's zero evidence that Joe ever benefitted financially from ANYTHING corrupt or that he ever influenced US policy towards ANYTHING his son was doing. It's more "let's muddy the waters so people at least sit out the election or ignore Trump's far worse faults on the same issues" bullshyt.
 

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businessinsider.com
UPS says it found the lost cache of documents that Tucker Carlson claimed would damage Joe Biden's campaign
Mia Jankowicz 3 hours ago
4-6 minutes
  • UPS said it found the set of documents that Tucker Carlson said had "vanished" in transit and would be damaging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his family.
  • Carlson told viewers the documents had disappeared but did not name the courier transporting them. UPS then confirmed to Business Insider that it was the carrier.
  • UPS has since told Business Insider that it found the documents "after an extensive search."
  • Carlson, a vocal advocate of President Donald Trump, has previously hyped up the importance of unconfirmed revelations about Biden.
  • Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
UPS said it found a cache of documents that the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said went missing under mysterious circumstances.

Carlson went on the air Wednesday night to announce the loss of the documents, which he said would be "damning" to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign.

He told viewers his team received the documents from a source recently and that they were related to the Biden family. He did not give other details.

Carlson did not name the courier in his on-air monologue about the disappearance, but UPS later confirmed to Business Insider that it was the company used.

5f9af2ab69331a0011bc613a


Carlson said on air that "damning" documents about the Biden family had been lost in the mail.
Tucker Carlson/Twitter
About midday Thursday, Matthew O'Connor, UPS's senior public-relations manager, told Business Insider that the documents had been found and were on their way back to Carlson.

It remains unclear what happened to them.

He said: "After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return.

"UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right. We work hard to ensure every package is delivered, including essential goods, precious family belongings and critical healthcare."

O'Connor declined to provide further details when asked.

On Wednesday, Carlson said the documents "are authentic, they're real, and they're damning" to Biden's campaign, without providing any evidence or specifics.

Carlson's segment was mocked online as having a conspiratorial tone and for not producing any evidence of the existence of the documents.

Carlson, who vocally supports President Donald Trump, has previously hyped poorly sourced allegations about documents relating to Biden's family.

He amplified a New York Post article that claimed to have accessed emails that were damaging to the former vice president's son Hunter Biden. However, as Business Insider's Sonam Sheth has pointed out, the story has many holes and red flags.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

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More: News UK Fox news Tucker Carlson UPS
 

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Y'all see Glenn Greenwald left The Intercept because he couldn't run his "story" on this bullshyt?
:mjlol:

Glenn Greenwald resigned from The Intercept because and that is his claim, that they won't publish an article he wrote about the Rudy Giuliani BS story on Hunter Biden.

Him and other high ranking Intercept bosses were paying themselves hundreds of thousands dollars a year while actual journalists working there have to big people to donate so they could keep their jobs.
:mjlol: this was just his excuse...he's been waiting to leave for ages :dead:

Dude ain't even a journalist. He's a sieve for leaked documents :francis:
 

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Anyone who is making a big deal about whether Joe spoke to Hunter about something five years ago is trying to "both sides" the bullshyt. There's zero evidence that Joe ever benefitted financially from ANYTHING corrupt or that he ever influenced US policy towards ANYTHING his son was doing. It's more "let's muddy the waters so people at least sit out the election or ignore Trump's far worse faults on the same issues" bullshyt.
again, i never said the story was important, but that its ultimately important to study what activates the right wing

in fact, the reality of them flubbing the roll out of this says more about them than what Hunter ever did.
 

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How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge
A 64-page document that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm."
Ben Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.

Brandy Zadrozny is an investigative reporter for NBC News.

Oct. 29, 2020, 5:30 PM EDT
One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China.

The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm" called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.

The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen's profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.

One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.

Despite the document's questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing, its claims that Hunter Biden has a problematic connection to the Communist Party of China have been used by people who oppose the Chinese government, as well as by far-right influencers, to baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.


The document and its spread have become part of a wider effort to smear Hunter Biden and weaken Joe Biden's presidential campaign, which moved from the fringes of the internet to more mainstream conservative news outlets.

An unverified leak of documents — including salacious pictures from what President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a Delaware Apple repair store owner claimed to be Hunter Biden's hard drive — were published in the New York Post on Oct. 14. Associates close to Trump, including Giuliani and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, have promised more blockbuster leaks and secrets, which have yet to materialize.

The fake intelligence document, however, preceded the leak by months, and it helped lay the groundwork among right-wing media for what would become a failed October surprise: a viral pile-on of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.

Behind Typhoon
The Typhoon Investigations document was first posted in September to Intelligence Quarterly, an anonymous blog "dedicated to collecting important daily news," according to its "about" section. Historical domain records show the blog was registered to Albert Marko, a self-described political and economic adviser, who also lists the blog on his Twitter bio. When asked about the provenance of the document, Marko said he received it from Balding.

Balding, previously an associate professor at Fulbright University Vietnam who studied the Chinese economy and financial markets, posted the document on his blog on Oct. 22, seven weeks after it was initially published.

"I had really not wanted to do this but roughly 2 months ago I was handed a report about Biden activities in China the press has simply refused to cover. I want to strongly emphasize I did not write the report but I know who did," Balding said in an email.

Balding later claimed to NBC News that he wrote some of the document.

"I authored small parts of the report and was involved in report preparation and review. As a researcher, and due to the understandable worry about foreign disinformation, it was paramount that the report document activity from acknowledged and public sources," Balding said. "Great care was taken to document, cite, and retain information so that acknowledged facts could be placed in the public domain."

A viral dossier about Hunter Biden was written by "Martin Aspen," a fake identity whose profile picture was created by artificial intelligence.TyphoonInvesti1 / via Twitter

Balding said Aspen is "an entirely fictional individual created solely for the purpose of releasing this report." Balding did not name the document's main author, saying "the primary author of the report, due to personal and professional risks, requires anonymity."

Balding claimed that the document was commissioned by Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based tabloid that is frequently critical of the Chinese government. Apple Daily did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to posting the document to his blog, Balding also promoted it in far-right media, appearing on Bannon's podcast and on "China Unscripted," a podcast produced by The Epoch Times, a pro-Trump media outlet opposed to the Chinese government.

Balding, an American who taught economics at China's Peking University HSBC Business School until 2018, is often critical of the Chinese government. He made news this year as a source uncovering a global bulk data collection operation by the Chinese company Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology.

Blog posts highlighting the most salacious parts of the document, including articles from the Intelligence Quarterly Blog, Revolver News and Balding's blog, received 70,000 public interactions — which includes reactions, comments and shares — across Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, according to the social media analysis tool BuzzSumo.

Balding's blog was the primary driver of virality in conservative and conspiracy communities. The report itself was shared across Facebook and Twitter around 5,000 times, according to BuzzSumo, and more than 80 sites linked back to the blog, which was shared more than 25,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. Hyperpartisan and conspiracy sites like ZeroHedge and WorldNetDaily led the pack.

After the promise of a big reveal one day earlier, the document was also posted on the extremist forum 8kun by Q, the anonymous account behind the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.

On Twitter, the document was pushed by influencers in the QAnon community, as well as by Dinggang Wang, an anti-Chinese government YouTube personality who works for Guo Wengui, a billionaire who fled China amid accusations of bribery and other crimes. Republican Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, tweeted the document to his 2.3 million followers.

'Immediately suspicious'
The document gained attention from disinformation researchers in part because of the image of the document's author.

Elise Thomas, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, first spotted telltale signs of a fake photo when she went searching for Typhoon Investigations' Aspen on the web. Thomas found a Twitter account for Aspen named @TyphoonInvesti1, which had posted a link to Typhoon's WordPress page that contained the document on Aug. 15.

The profile picture for Aspen immediately showed signs of being a computer-generated image that can be created by computers and even some websites. Aspen's ears were asymmetrical, for one, but his left eye is what gave away that he did not really exist. Aspen's left iris juts out and appears to form a second pupil, a somewhat frequent error with computer-generated faces.

"The most obvious tell was the irregular shape of the irises," Thomas said. "The profile picture looks pretty convincing in the Twitter thumbnail, but when I popped it up into full view I was immediately suspicious."

Thomas then consulted with Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at the analytics company Graphika, who noted the other telltale sign of a computer-generated face.

"One of the things he and his team have figured out is that if you layer a lot of these images over the top of one another, the eyes align," Thomas said. "He did that with this image, and the eyes matched up."

Other parts of Aspen's identity were clearly stolen from disparate parts of the web. Aspen's Facebook page was created in August, and it featured only two pictures, both from his "new house," which were tracked back to reviews on the travel website Tripadvisor. The logo for Typhoon Investigations was lifted from the Taiwan Fact-Checking Center, a digital literacy nonprofit.

Aspen claimed on his LinkedIn profile to have worked for a company called Swiss Security Solutions from 2016 to 2020. Swiss Security Solutions denied having ever employed anyone named Aspen, and it said it had found fake accounts for two other people pretending to have worked for the company.

"Martin Aspen was never a freelancer or worker of the Swiss Security Solutions. We do not know this person. According to our Due Diligence Software, this person does not exist in Switzerland," Swiss Security Solutions Chairman Bojan Ilic said, adding that the company has reported the profile to LinkedIn.

Fake faces
Computer-generated faces have become a staple of large-scale disinformation operations in the run-up to the election. In December, Facebook took down a network of fake accounts using computer-created faces tied to The Epoch Times. Facebook removed over 600 accounts tied to the operation, which pushed pro-Trump messages and even served as moderators of some Facebook groups.

Last month, Facebook removed another batch of computer-generated profilesoriginating in China and the Philippines, some of which made anti-Trump posts.

Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said computer-created identities are becoming common for disinformation campaigns, in part because they are easy to create.

DiResta, who helped examine a ring of AI-generated faces tied to the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA last month, said computer-generated profile pictures can be used to "build an army of fake people" to artificially support a cause or to make "disinformation operations harder to discover."

"One of the things that investigators look at to understand the narrative that is spreading is whether the accounts are authentic, whether they're real," DiResta said. "If they were to use a stock photo, it confirms something dishonest is likely happening. By using an AI-generated face, you're guaranteeing you won't find that person elsewhere on the internet."
 
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