HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP! 💻

Matt Taibbi Declares John Podesta's Risotto Recipe Was "True"https://t.co/6h5BScSX7m

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 10, 2023

This is interesting:

Never mind that Shellenberger seems to have no fucking clue that the laptop CBS analyzed is not the same hard drive that Rudy gave to the Post, and therefore is not the “laptop” on which the story that Twitter throttled was based. Never mind that CBS’ analysis is inconsistent with John Paul Mac Isaac’s claims that the process by which he made his own copy of the laptop was repeatedly interrupted, a problem that would make it difficult to distinguish from an iCloud hack and a real laptop (who puts voice mail messages on a laptop hard drive, for example?), a detail consistent with what I know of the Washington Post analysis (which was conducted by two different people). 

But the cutest was little #MattyDickPics chiming in to claim that Politico had authenticated “the laptop.” 

They claim no such thing! They authenticated some files (and not forensically, but instead by a witness who couldn’t even confirm the emails hadn’t been altered). 

Shreckinger’s source remembered viewing both emails but was not able to compare the text leaked to the Post with the original emails. Other emails from the leaked files matched a cache of emails released by a Swedish government agency, two people who communicated with Hunter Biden said.

This kind of “authentication,” when the claims of someone with a bias like Tony Bobulinski can supplant forensic authentication, is precisely the problem with hack-and-leak reporting, regardless of whether Russian hackers or Matt Taibbi’s buddies do the hacking. 

And neither Michael Shellenberger nor Matt Taibbi understand that.

In legal analysis, which is to say in any logical analysis, chain of custody is an important concept. We have to be sure the evidence gathered at the “scene of the crime” so meticulously by CSI, is the evidence presented in the courtroom years later as proof of guilt. This is especially important with DNA evidence, which can be polluted and contaminated and become unreliable rather than absolute proof. Computer data is analogous, and even more easily understood as corruptible.

I’m still dubious that “Hunter Biden’s laptop!” is, indeed, Hunter Biden’s laptop. Never mind that what Twitter “suppressed” for 24 hours (while the Republic reeled under ‘CENSORSHIP!’) was some dick pics (hence Taibbi’s nom de guerre), we still can’t confirm the hard drive Giuliani was shopping is an authentic copy of the laptop hard drive owned by Hunter Biden.

And given the evidence of so many squirrelly people having hands in this thing, (Bannon the con man, Giuliani the alcoholic dupe, indications of a Russian hack and leak, the frantic efforts by so many Trump people to make this into a scandal), the only reasonable position to take is to consider it all bullshit until ironclad evidence comes along to prove otherwise.

You know, like Hunter Biden publicly announcing everything said about the hard drive is true, and it’s all his. Which hasn’t happened, and doesn’t seem likely to.

“Change the facts, change the outcome.” And facts about the authenticity of this laptop are thin on the ground, which makes it very hard to know what’s true about it.  So better to assume nothing is true, rather than something must be true.  Unless you want to be in the group that includes Shellengerger and Taibbi.

Personally, I don't want to be in any club that would have me as a member.  Groucho was a genius, IMHO.