Bringing this here because offtopic in the polling thread and the email thread is an unreadable mess right now.
Nope. Because no one except hardcore GOP partisans care about it.
What exactly is the "scandal"? That Joe Biden's kid has drug problems? The majority of Americans feel sorry for Biden because of that, and it makes him even more relatable. The GOP making the election about personal attacks on Biden's family makes them seem disgusting and pathetic... like the party of Trump.
I think there are three parts, and I'm going to ignore chain of custody issues/provenance of texts+videos for now.
- Drug use
- Business dealings
- Some amorphous child-sex/porn thing that changes every few hours.
The drug thing everyone knows about.
The business dealing accusation is that Hunter and Biden were allegedly selling the office of VP for money.
This is sometimes defined in different ways - anywhere from payments for access to payments for favors from the Obama administration. The first is close to what Hunter was letting people think he could provide. There is a text in which a guy who was an external advisor to a Burisma colleague thanks Hunter for the chance to meet Biden, although it's not clear that the meeting occurred - Biden was at public events that day - or what the scandal actually is. The second is basically a rehash of the accusations against Clinton, but less organized and even less sensical.
The
actual texts+emails release so far are consistent with what is already known and the ultimate findings of the Burisma investigation: Hunter was using his last name to score lucrative deals, but Joe Biden was not involved in any impropriety (nor was Hunter actually violating the law). The only text exchange I've seen that allegedly shows more is hunter messaging a third party about a % for "Pop", which the usual rabid mouth breathers have taken to mean a mafiosa style cut for Joe Biden.
Some are pointing to the fact that two of hunter's coworkers are imprisoned - one of whom had provided emails exchanged with Hunter - but they were convicted for a domestic fraudulent investment scheme, not access selling. Others are pointing to Biden's $10M increase in wealth after leaving office, but the reasons for that are well documented by the same disclosures from which they learned about the increase in wealth. (a big book deal). Others are pointing to the fact that Hunter was a drug addict and not an energy expert, but he was an international business attorney, and it's pretty clear he was hired at least in part for his name. 500K isn't a lot for an idiot, but it's about what the firm would bill me at for a year, and if I had a handy family connection it'd be worth the gamble. It's possible I missed some other "evidence," but unlikely.
Finally, the
CP/sex abuse allegations. These are all over the map, and allegations have ranged from CP to videos of human trafficked minors to videos of molesting or creepshots of underage relatives. They're completely inconsistent. Some of the RW posters are cautioning the others that these seem like bullshit, but many are gleefully repeating them or hopefully speculating. I saw three sources of "evidence."
The first is "sources are telling us that there is (fill in version of story here". This is mostly coming from places like gatewaypundit, infowars, and 4chan, none of whom have seen it themselves. There is also a several week old video in chinese that allegedly says something about it, but I don't speak chinese and that seems particularly ridiculous. I think
@Ruprecht has mentioned the origins of that.
The second I saw is a text or email in which hunter complains that someone told his(?) therapist that she doesn't take kids to his house or FaceTime him because he wanders around naked. This has been summarized in the smear by some right wing pundits as "complained about inappropriate behavior with children." This deliberately ambiguous phrasing has been gleefully interpreted by some as meaning rape. And, since Biden received the email, that he was complicit in the rape (I think people are misapplying mandatory reporter laws here).
The third is Giuliani stating that he gave the laptop to the delaware police to review for "pictures of underage children". This is also deliberately ambiguous for the same reasons as above. Still, some posters who are stupid or should know better are claiming that this means it is something "real" because otherwise it would be libel, but Giuliani's words are carefully chosen to imply sexual abuse or child pornography without actually saying it, which is usually enough to avoid liability in the states. It's Glenn Beck's famous and now transparant "I didn't say he was a (thing), just asking questions. Why are you so defensive? Shouldn't we know?"
@Sketch I'm tagging you so you can figure out who I'm insulting at various points and let them know to defend themselves. I didn't keep track of names in that thread, but I'm sure you can be of assistance in that regard.
