XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.politics.democrats.d, sac.general   
   XPost: alt.rush-limbaugh   
   From: kamala-whore-harris@sacbee.com   
      
   WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are examining whether emails   
   allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter   
   and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a   
   foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the   
   matter told NBC News.   
      
   The FBI seized the laptop and a hard drive through a grand jury   
   subpoena. The subpoena was later published by the New York Post.   
   The bureau has declined to comment.   
      
   The Post has published a series of stories based on emails the   
   conservative tabloid said it obtained from President Donald   
   Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The first story highlighted   
   what it called a “smoking gun email” that suggested a meeting   
   between Biden and a representative of a Ukrainian company that   
   once paid Hunter Biden. The Biden campaign says there is no   
   evidence the meeting happened, and the story was greeted with   
   widespread skepticism.   
      
   George Mesires, attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement,   
   “We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot   
   credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the New York   
   Post, but what I do know for certain is that this purported   
   meeting never happened.”   
      
   “The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the   
   critical elements of this story,” Biden campaign spokesman   
   Andrew Bates said. “They certainly never raised that Rudy   
   Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance   
   with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely   
   reported — claimed to have such materials.”   
      
   Bates added, “We have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules   
   from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post,   
   ever took place."   
      
   Questions have swirled around the Post’s account of how it   
   obtained the emails and other materials. The newspaper said they   
   were found on a laptop left in a Delaware repair shop in April   
   2019 and never claimed. The repair shop owner then took it upon   
   himself to access the private material, the Post said.   
      
   The Post said the shop owner, who has been identified as Mac   
   Isaac, called the FBI, and also called a Giuliani associate. The   
   shop owner said he believed the laptop was among equipment left   
   by Hunter Biden, because a sticker on the laptop bore the name   
   of the Beau Biden Foundation, a charity named after his late   
   brother.   
      
   “Before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a   
   copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy   
   Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello,” the Post said. “Steve   
   Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about   
   the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani   
   provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday.”   
      
   It remains unclear whether the emails cited by the Post are   
   authentic or have been doctored.   
      
   Giuliani, who acknowledged helping bring the material to light,   
   has in the past sought to unearth information damaging to Biden   
   with the help of a man identified by the U.S. government as a   
   Russian intelligence officer.   
      
   Questions about the provenance of the emails have led Facebook   
   and Twitter to limit sharing of the story, prompting fierce   
   criticism from Republicans.   
      
   In an interview published by the Daily Beast, Issac, the repair   
   shop owner, did not answer key questions.   
      
   “Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth   
   from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the   
   files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the FBI that   
   contacted him,” the Beast wrote. NBC News has reached out to   
   Isaac but has not heard back.   
      
   The Post published a grand jury subpoena for the laptop and hard   
   drive. The subpoena had been issued by a federal prosecutor who   
   already had the serial numbers of the devices when they were   
   ordered to be handed over in early December 2019, indicating   
   federal law enforcement was aware of the specific devices they   
   want to examine.   
      
   “Other material extracted from the computer,” the Post said,   
   “includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show   
   Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems,   
   smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified   
   woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.”   
      
   Many commentators have said it is hard to believe that Hunter   
   Biden would abandon a Mac laptop full of incriminating   
   information at a repair shop.   
      
   Some have speculated that the material could have been hacked   
   from Hunter Biden’s accounts and put on the laptop as a cover   
   story to offer a plausible explanation of how the material   
      
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