Will Hunter Sink Joe's Presidency?


Show Notes

With Hunter Biden’s increasingly aggressive defense team hinting it may try to cast doubt on stories relating to Hunter’s infamous “laptop from Hell,” the Government Accountability Institute’s top expert on the subject says that not only is the laptop material provably authentic, but GAI had nailed Biden family corruption even before the laptop appeared.

No one has been more a part of the journalistic investigation of Hunter Biden than the Government Accountability Institute’s research director Seamus Bruner, who joins co-host Eric Eggers on the latest episode of The Drill Down to tell the story of how GAI nailed this story back in 2018.

Author and GAI Research Director Seamus Bruner (right).

Seamus and Eric were among the main researchers for Peter Schweizer’s 2018 book, Secret Empires, which first exposed Hunter Biden’s business deals with the Chinese, Ukrainian oligarchs, and other shady characters, using his father’s political position as his only selling point. GAI put that story together using public and corporate records, but later gained access to the email accounts and text message archives of two of Hunter’s business partners, all of which helped substantiate the story further when it was updated in Schweizer’s 2020 book, Profiles in Corruption.

Then came the Hunter Biden laptop, which he abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware, and which was recovered quietly by the FBI in late 2019. The now well-known contents of that laptop leaked to various investigative journalists, including Seamus Bruner, in late 2020. In time, even such reluctant mainstream news organizations as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CBS News confirmed the authenticity of the laptop.

The laptop has been a wellspring of damaging information about the Bidens’ overseas dealings with sketchy business partners, including several with ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. Over the July 4 holiday weekend, CBS News reported that the Biden legal team met at the White House to plot how to counter those stories, and the ongoing investigations into the Bidens being conducted by Congressional committees.

A key member of that defense team – former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman, a devout Never-Trumper who also worked with House Jan. 6 committee. CBS reported that among Riggleman’s purposes is to cast doubt on the authenticity of material emanating from the laptop.

A doomed errand, says GAI’s Bruner.

“We were able to put [the laptop] into a context most people didn’t have…we already had 50% of the puzzle done!”

“The thing that really struck me as I went through Biden laptop is it reminded me a lot of the Clinton WikiLeaks emails,” Seamus tells Eric. “You’d expect to see conversations about how they will do extra work, or ‘let’s do some business,’ and various things. But no. All the emails are about, ‘Where’s my money? You better give me the money right now!’” he recalls.

“There is also the ‘I’ll introduce you to so-and-so who’s in Joe’s inner circle,’ or ‘I’ll introduce you to Joe.’ Or ‘I brought you to the White House!’ in there,” Seamus added.

“It’s very clear there was a pay-to-play operation, nothing more,” he said.

Further details from the investigation of Hunter Biden by the IRS continue to spill out to the public. Most recently, an IRS whistleblower testified to seeing a message Hunter sent on WhatsApp that began “I’m sitting here with my father…” and went on to threaten, “… And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Seamus sees that as matching the pattern he noticed when he uncovered an email from Hunter to a Mexican businessman for whom he had done introductions to his father, but had yet to receive payment for doing.

Then there is the secret phone that Hunter was paying for his father to have. How did Seamus find it?

It was in correspondence on the laptop from when Hunter was divorcing his first wife, Kathleen. Hunter’s assistant sent a list of Hunter’s many expenses, including one marked, “ATT (JRB).” Those initials were commonly used in Biden family conversations to refer to Joseph Robinette Biden.

GAI dug in on the AT&T charges and asked why Joe Biden wouldn’t be paying for his own phone bill? And Seamus and the researchers there found a message from Hunter to his assistant Katie Dodge saying, “I’ve been paying my dad’s AT&T phone bill for 11 years,” Seamus said.

Eric Eggers believes the Biden family learned from watching what Bill and Hillary Clinton had done before them. “I continue to think that Hunter Biden and the Biden family saw what Hillary did as Secretary of State during the first term of the Obama presidency. And they said, if the Clintons are doing this, why can’t we do this? Eric added.