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Monday, September 11, 2023

This is an easy post. ALL I KNOW IS WHAT I READ ON THE WEB. [UPDATED]

 The Hunter Biden show being said to touch Joe, where looking for actual evidence is thin comfort toward finding any, example link.

The Rudy trying his best to find (or manufacture) dirt on Joe Biden story, complicated but with names named, testimony noted, link. A parallel second link.

Rudy - laptop tie-in? Two laptop sources? Ukrainians delivering a hard drive? How come I don't see more of this kind of juxtaposition via MSM? Oh, never mind. They have day-to-day duties, advertisers wanting product volume to justify advertising billing, stuff.

Keep it stretched to a breaking point as long as feasible, and when whatever is truth breaks, consider - make the editorial decision - to report things straight or bent, as part of running an MSM outlet?

Who is to say? When? What?

Where's the beef?

Fine. It is a complaint. And as always there is a counterargument; NYTimes,Ben Smith, Oct. 25, 2020, (October Surprise time, last Pres. election) -- mid-item, in part:

The McLean group's failed attempt to sway the election is partly just another story revealing the chaotic, threadbare quality of the Trump operation — a far cry from the coordinated “disinformation” machinery feared by liberals.

But it’s also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.

It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn’t. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.

By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn’t control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read — and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn’t mean much.

But the last two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn’t reach that conclusion.

[...Image]

 Perhaps the most influential media document of the last four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged — and that the mainstream news “revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set.”

Mr. Bannon had known this, too. He described his strategy as “anchor left, pivot right,” and even as he ran Breitbart News, he worked to place attacks on Hillary Clinton in mainstream outlets. The validating power of those outlets was clear when The New York Times and Washington Post were given early access in the spring of 2015 to the book “Clinton Cash,” an investigation of the Clinton family’s blurring of business, philanthropic and political interests by the writer Peter Schweizer.

Mr. Schweizer is still around this cycle. But you won’t find his work in mainstream outlets. He’s over on Breitbart, with a couple of Hunter Biden stories this month.

And the fact that Mr. Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Mr. Bannon’s nightmare, and Mr. Benkler’s fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden’s doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Mr. Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent.

“SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK,” the conservative writer Glenn Reynolds complained Oct. 20, posting the article instead to his blog. President Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News.

“This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Mr. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Mr. Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.

The media’s control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can’t actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business. But what Mr. Benkler’s research showed was that the elite outlets’ ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.

[...] This week, you can hear howls of betrayal from people who have for years said the legacy media was both utterly biased and totally irrelevant.

“For years, we’ve respected and even revered the sanctified position of the free press,” wrote Dana Loesch, a right-wing commentator not particularly known for her reverence of legacy media, expressing frustration that the Biden story was not getting attention. “Now that free press points its digital pen at your throat when you question their preferences.”

There’s something amusing — even a bit flattering — in such earnest protestations from a right-wing movement rooted in efforts to discredit the independent media. And this reassertion of control over information is what you’ve seen many journalists call for in recent years. At its best, it can also close the political landscape to a trendy new form of dirty tricks, as in France in 2017, where the media largely ignored a last-minute dump of hacked emails from President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign just before a legally mandated blackout period.

But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. “The media’s new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see — not to ignore it,” my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.

[...] Ben Smith is the media columnist. He joined The Times in 2020 after eight years as founding editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. Before that, he covered politics for Politico, The New York Daily News, The New York Observer and The New York Sun. Email: ben.smith@nytimes.com More about Ben Smith

The suggestion from that fairly extensive excerpt is that MSM still controls the narrative, if not actual withholding or disclosing evidence, which may itself already be public record; but control over presentation of reasonable or unreasonable inferences from the evidence, and probing one way or another, the arguable reliability of such public evidence as there is.

The Crabgrass attitude toward the Hunter laptop stuff has been "show me the money trail" if you contend Joe was a part of Hunter being paid for perceived influential power, whether real or not. Money was offered Hunter, he accepted, details exist; but show the money reaching Joe, or be left with only a perhaps, perhaps not, which is not "news."

Trump, arguably, was upset with the Rudy dug up story not growing media legs; and blamed it not on the weakness of the sources and of Trump's clear sending Rudy to dig up or manufacture dirt; and when that dirt landed, a collective blind eye was shown by established media. Trump likely bases part of "the steal" upon media silence when he'd have liked them to sensationalize tabloid style, with him still feeling vengeful to where nominated and winning in 2024 might show him trying to settle scores.

All that is speculative. It is not news. It is guesswork, with some sense of likilihoods at best, at play. Back to "All I know ..." and the Crabgrass inference is that if there were any hard evidence uncovered reaching Joe Biden, the eager House Republican frenzy would have disclosed it already. The inference, circumstantially, there is no tie-in. Again, there is no real "news" unless Republicans show a clear (nonspeculative) money trail touching Joe Biden. 

Otherwise, a story about Hunter and his human foibles and of the willingness of some in Ukraine to give Hunter money on speculation we operate as they appear to operate is a story; but not THE story. 

This "actual story" seems to touch upon the billions being spent by our nation in war there when domestic needs exist and a troubling number of Americans are living in tents in urban core areas. Historically a "cute" way to say things is there is a difference between a tempest in a teapot, and "Teapot Dome."

Back to the opening links, is the news story the Hunter money, or the crass attempts to tie it via naked speculation to Joe Biden? 

Put another parallel way, Jarad Kushner getting two billion Saudi dollars put into his private equity management effort has currently happened, so, how does that touch Donald Trump, Kushner's father-in-law? 

The Saudi golf tourney held earlier at Trump's Bedminster golf course; that is a more direct reach to The Donald, but still it is not being a major MSM focus in reporting President/money affairs. Yet that golf tournament has the direct ties missing in all the Hunter/laptop junk being thrown onto the wall with a vain hope some sticks to Joe in a way touching his electability. Direct ties matter.

___________UPDATE__________

As if on cue, LATimes published Sept. 11, 2023, "

Hunter Biden's problems are legitimately his dad's problems, too

Though evidence of corruption by Joe Biden the elected official is absent, Joe Biden the politician should've known before any of this started that perception is everything. 

It is a vexing op-ed, as if Hunter Biden is somehow constrained or managed by his father, this far into Hunter's adulthood. One doubts Gini Thomas has a control position upon Clarence's ethical shenanigans, either. 

Blame the perp, not the relative. Other than the questionable execution of Ethel Rosenberg along with her spouse, Julius, our legal system tries to separate the crime of a family member from casting shame and hurt onto another close relative, absent actual proof of culpability. If the Republicans held any such proof against Joe Biden, we'd have seen it already. All they have is innuendo, which they've worked to the bone. Ineffectively, in general, although some keep saying, "It's there."

If it's there, prove it or move on to doing the business of governing the nation from a House majority position, and abandon touting a claim of guilt of the father for the son's conduct. 

Politics says try to discredit Joe Biden based upon Hunter's deeds. Justice says otherwise. The suggestion is the Republicans try justice. They will keep beating the drum, and if they find something real, it will surprise at this late stage.

People of the nation deserve better conduct from Congressional reps.

_________FURTHER UPDATE__________

A related "good read" story exists within the pleadings of a law suit originally filed by computer repair shop operator, JOHN PAUL MAC ISAAC, [dated January 20, 2023, online here, claiming defamation). The litigation bounced into federal court, and back (item dated Mar 24, 2023; all parties laywered up; remand order being the final page). Prior to remand to state court, Def. Hunter Biden on 3/17/23 filed an answer and counterclaim). These online items suffice to define the issues; the Hunter Biden Counterclaim being the good read Crabgrass has in mind (starting at p. 22 of the 42 page pdf document). That summary is sufficient to turn readers loose to pursue the story of THE LAPTOP data, as Hunter Biden's lawyers tell it. Noting that story is within an adversarial item also gives sufficient notice of possible shading of facts.

No excerpting here. Interested readers have links to original court papers. Crabgrass found the computer repair store operator's handling of data among intermediaries to be of interest, along with Biden counsel's sequential marshaling of counterclaim fact averments into an interesting coherent story of a feeding frenzy.

Readers can form their own opinions, but as to chain of custody of the data at issue, things appear confused more so than orderly as best evidence expectations might require for admissibility; which as always would be a matter of judicial discretion.

As to merits of assertions in that litigation, we don't know until a trier of facts tells us. But we can guess. As part of the good read.

Here is a websearch = Mac Issac vs Hunter biden litigation news

It shows how varying media outlets handle the story set out above via court papers.

Supplemental information absent in the court filings may be found via that search link. Particularly as to discovery. Who took whose deposition, when,  etc. Things that happened after pleadings were closed. If there were material amendments to pleadings beyond those found online and linked to above, Crabgrass is not aware of any. If motions were filed and heard, Crabgrass is not aware of any. Expect there were. Readers are urged to ferret out later information about events and contentions. What has been set out is what Crabgrass read on the web.

_________FURTHER UPDATE________

Other things Crabgrass read on the web relevant to the above:

Axios

Axios, again

lawandcrime.com - with a photo of Mac Issac.

emptywheel.net

___________FURTHER UPDATE__________

The first Axios link above indicates Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden's lawyer, took Mac Issac's deposition. That calls to mind Oct. 14, 2020  Daily Beast reporting:

 On Wednesday afternoon, a group of reporters, among them a journalist for The Daily Beast, spoke with the owner of the shop, a man named John Paul Mac Isaac who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. The audio of that nearly hour-long question and answer session is below.

 [https://soundcloud.com/rptrbnd/mac-shop-10-14-cm]

[...] Social media postings indicate that Mac Isaac is an avid Trump supporter and voted for him in the 2016 election.

Mac Isaac said he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it. He said that Hunter Biden actually dropped off three laptops for repair, an abundance of hardware that he chalked up to the Biden son being “rich.”

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.”

Mac Isaac referenced the infamous Seth Rich conspiracy theory—which holds that a DNC staffer who police say was murdered in a botched robbery was actually killed off by Clinton allies because he leaked committee emails—as reason for his paranoia. He said he made a copy of the hard drive for the purposes of personal protection.

“They probably knew I had a copy because I was pretty vocal about not wanting to get murdered,” he said, “so I’m going to have a copy.”

Mac Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post article’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”

Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah, shit.”

So Rudy was your lifeguard? the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.

Mac Issac being unable to say who gave him the laptop, and "cute" about his dealings with Rudy suggest Lowell's deposition of Mac Issac might have been productive of insights about that device, and its contents. 

The Hunter Biden counterclaim did distinguish between the physical device, and the data it held, as two separate kinds of property. Saying some of the data clearly was Hunter Biden's, but not validating anything beyond that limited statement. Rudy at the time was tight with Trump, it was 2020 October surprise time, Mac Issac was a Trump loyalist, and the integrity of the whole of the data the device held IS at issue. 

Hunter Biden admits some of his data was released, invasion of privacy being his claim, but nobody can say who actually gave Mac Issac the device he and Rudy handled before any press coverage. Nor can anyone say how the data on the device was assembled in aggregate, by whom. Nor can anyone say how many hands the device passed through before someone left it with Mac Issac.

That is background to what the House Republicans are doing, including their consideration of an impeachment of Joe Biden. If done, it would be for show, with nobody contending an expectation exists of a Senate trial turning out against the President. Crabgrass opinion: The ice is really thin where they are skating, absent their uncovering something real, finding an Easter egg, during investigative effort.

The entire chain of custody of the device is blurred beyond belief, unless, apparently, you are a gullible House Republican, or posing as gullible.

With all that, wouldn't it have been a hoot to be able to sit in on Lowell's deposition of Mac Issac? Probably there was extended bantering between the lawyers.