Twitter thread on the Hunter Biden "story"

[Takket]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1316844679783223297.html

Pretty much destroys the whole thing lol

Thread:
So just so I follow this story:

Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to fly 3000 miles across country, to drop off 3 MacBook Pros at a repair shop run by a blind guy who charges the insanely low price of $85.

He gets off the plane and drunk drives to the repair shop
(because there aren't repair shops in LA). He drops them off, signs a contract for repair and then disappears. The repair shop owner recovers and reads Hunter's *private* emails, a few of which mention a possible meeting with his dad and is so alarmed, he contacts the FBI.
The FBI arranges to pick up the hard drives, but the computer repair shop owner takes a totally normal step of copying them. Once he realizes the FBI isn't doing anything with them, he calls up the most credible ex-Mayor on Earth and hands them the contents of these drives.
That totally credible ex-Mayor sits on them for months, then chooses to release them 3 weeks before the election. The mainstream media asks to independently verify their validity but said ex-Mayor does what all people trying to prove facts do and ignores these requests.
Is this how stupid we are now?
No one who does data recovery would read through thousands of personal emails, even if the computer is abandoned. You'd just wipe the drives clean and sell the computers used.

If these emails were as alarming as it's being pushed, Giuliani wouldn't have sat on them for months.
And if Giuliani wanted to prove their validity, he'd turn them over to forensic experts.

[Homoudont]

1. FBI has the hard drive

If there is any validity to the story then I am sure the FBI will say so. If they say nothing then it is a nothing burger. Move on to the next "Bombshell".

[GeorgeGist]

2. They don't.

[GemDigger]

4. There is a missing part to the story and it is that the repair guy made a COPY of the hard drive and

that is what he gave the mayor. He gave the laptop to the feds.

"The FBI arranges to pick up the hard drives, but the computer repair shop owner takes a totally normal step of copying them."

The blind guy must have put his glasses on to read the emails. /sarcasm

[Demsrule86]

3. No they don't.

[karynnj]

5. We do not know that. The store owner SAYS they gave it to the FBI, but most of the other things they

Say are questionable. I would give them credence on nothing without confirmation.

[greenjar_01]

6. There is no hard drive

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[lagomorph777]

8. The entire story is straight from Putin's troll farms. Welcome to DU.

There is no hard drive; the FBI is not involved, and Hunter Biden didn't fly across the country to drop off his computers at a shady strip-mall repair shop.

[patricia92243]

7. Is it standard procedure to read ANYBODIES email when they

have their computers repaired???

[PoliWrangler]

9. Having been in the field for years, no

Actually, absolutely not. To techs, it's all just data. A blob of data. Unless the supposed repair tech was an outlier, this whole story is concocted by someone from the perspective of an end-user, not a technician.

[forkol]

10. Not that I am aware of...

I do a lot of family and friends computer repair, but sometimes for small businesses as well.

Most people are using Webmail of some kind (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo) for personal account, and many business have gone this way as well. This means little if any e-mail gets stored on the computer.

If they are using a local e-mail client, and they reported issues with e-mail, then I might work with them remotely and see where they are having an issue. They know I am there, and they control what I see.

As for copying folks data, I only do this if we are upgrading their drive. I get them a new drive, and copy the old data onto it, and give them back the old one. I have a automatic disk copy machine that does this, I don't even use a computer to do it. If they want to do a general backup, I get them the hardware and teach them how to do it. This way the responsibility of backing up is on them.

Also, as somebody mentioned, it takes time to really go through somebody else's data. I don't have the time, and I'm usually pissed because they were not using a virus program or let their kids put so much malware on their machine that I just want to get the job done and outta there.

[cayugafalls]

11. The only reason this repair shop owner feels threatened is because he is dealing with Russians.

He knows what happens if his story starts to unravel and he is caught.

He will die of poison.

The Russians are trying everything they can to throw disinformation into the media sphere. It is a cheap way to overthrow a democracy and they are too vested now to stop.

If any American thinks that the Russians are innocent, I have a bridge to sell them.

[neohippie]

12. another tweet about the external hard drive said to have been turned in

Its been reported that these devices including an external hard drive were turned in at this computer shop on April 12, 2019

yet this tweet says according to the alleged serial number of the external hard drive it wasn't even manufactured until April 18, 2019

Link to tweet

[Takket]

16. Hey let's just add time travel to the story. It's already crazy!!! Lol

[FBaggins]

17. The doc indicate that it was an attempted data recovery job

That would normally involve the purchase of a new external hard drive to store the recovered data on.

[catbyte]

13. Stonekettle said it all for me over on Facebook:

[PatSeg]

14. Oh my god

These people really aren't very good at this stuff are they? That is absolutely pathetic.

[patphil]

15. I find it impossible to believe that a computer repair guy had time to read e-mails.

He's too busy trying to make a living, and charging $85. to do these repairs isn't going to pay the rent. That sounds like a per hour labor rate to me.

In any event, this guy would be hustling just to keep his business afloat, and wouldn't have a lot of snoop time to poke into people's private stuff, except possibly porn.
This whole thing is such a crock of crap. It just doesn't pass the smell test.
That stench is magnified 1000 fold by Rudy's presence in the whole mess.
Totally unbelievable!

[FBaggins]

18. The first part seems to be grasping

As presented... it seems pretty unlikely that HB would fly across the country to get his laptop repaired

But the author leaves out the fact that the store isn't just randomly 3,000 miles away. It's in Wilmington, DE... where he was born, grew up, and where his parents still live. It isn't unreasonable to believe that he spends time there with his laptop. In fact, the distance from home could explain why he never picked it up (probably bought a new one in the interim).

The rest of the story (particularly Giuliani's participation) raises all sorts of red flags.

Moreover - it doesn't make other claims true. My understanding of the concern for russian meddling would be that they would plant fraudulent evidence inside otherwise-true stolen data. If you have a bunch of legitimate photos and messages that prove that you have his laptop... you can slide other things in there of your own design.