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 gatekeepers return
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.
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.”
On the other side of the gate
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, "
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.
By Jackie Calmes
Los Angeles Times
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.
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
NYPost, 9/7/23, reports Hunter Biden was deposed, and quotes extensively from a Plaintiff Mac Issac's Motion it noted, of course without linking to it so readers could judge things for themselves - this without a link to the item:
Portions of Hunter’s deposition are revealed for the first time in the
opening brief of a motion filed by Mac Isaac, in Delaware Superior Court
late Thursday, to dismiss the countersuit with prejudice.
That item discusses circumstantial evidence apparently a part of the motion.
What comes of this, response and countermotion, reply and all, which lead to a ruling on the motion perhaps may be covered, or not, by NYPost or other, reliable media.
This appears to be the latest item online about the litigation. NYPost declined to give the filing date of the Motion it referenced. Good reporting would have.
NYPost revealed the deposition was taken June 29.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
After some web searching, justthenews.com posted of the dismissal motion and as a step of competent journalism, provided this link to Plaintiff's brief. Unlike NYPost's editorial decision to withhold linking to an item they'd accessed (or perhaps they received a copy from someone, apart from court files).
The brief speaks for itself. Worth noting this part:
Biden refuses to admit that he visited The Mac Shop (twice), despite Mac
Isaac presenting evidence that he dropped off his Mac computer “Mac” at Mac Isaac’s store. Biden also interprets passages from Mac Isaac’s book in ways that obfuscate the true meaning of the passages (discussed herein) with the hope that this Honorable Court will not read Mac Isaac’s book and glean the true meaning of the passages.
Recognition of Hunter Biden
Contrary to Biden’s counterclaim, Mac Isaac never claimed he was never able to identify who brought the laptop into his shop. He has consistently said that he was not sure who came into his shop that night. Despite Biden’s insistence that he is recognizable by everyone (he may be now), Mac Isaac did not know what he looked like and, therefore, did now know who he was when he walked into the shop.
When Biden told Mac Isaac his name, that identification coupled with the
Beau Biden Foundation sticker on the laptop seemed to confirm who was in the shop. Further, Mac Isaac looked up Biden to see what he looked like and confirmed that the person who dropped off the laptop was, in fact, Biden. The twisting of Mac Isaac’s words in a way that suits Biden does not change the facts.
[italics emphasis added] This assertion addresses earlier reporting that Mac Issac could not identify who dropped off the laptop.
If Mac Issac appended an affidavit about identification of Biden, and/or excerpts from a Biden deposition, only the body of the motion brief was posted by that website, (linked to and quoted as above).
Effort to access a docket of filings in the Delaware Superior Court where pdf copies could be downloaded failed, Crabgrass being unfamiliar with access procedures or the extent of lower court filings online. Presumably a motions package was filed, the brief along with validly presented evidence.
Interested readers have the cause number of the pending litigation in Superior Court, and are urged to try to try to locate docket item pdf access re that motion.
We await a Counterclaimant's response to the dismissal motion. Which possibly could include a cross motion.
FURTHER: What comes across as disingenuous is the claim that Mac Isaac is not responsible for Rudy's spreading around the data Mac Issac gave him. It was never Mac Issac's data. If he claimed default of hardware, his relief was to clean the data and resell the used device. The data and device are separate property. He took the item as a fiduciary of the customer, for a limited and well understood purpose. He exceeded his authority by providing the data to others. It was reasonably foreseeable to even a low IQ person, which Mac Isaac was not, that Rudy who was searching for dirt would do as he did, yet Mac Isaac consciously, after talking to relatives with whom he shared data that was not his, made a decision to hand it over to Rudy. There is that thread of "come on, man," to the motion. Mac Isaac was not born yesterday. He had to foresee things any reasonable person in his position would have foreseen. That is not "spin." It is common sense.
Moreover, the claim that if Hunter had posted to Pornhub he forfeited a general expectation of privacy of his person and business affairs rings false. Posting to Pornhub gave notice and access to a part of a man's data, to a limited group of users of that website. Rudy spread stuff far wider, with Mac Isaac his enabler. But for Mac Issac; Rudy would have had nothing to spread, (unless obtained independently from Ukranian persons, or others who may have stolen data).
Readers, you as reasonable people - would you expect bringing a computer to a merchant in the business held to normal practices in the trade, to have your data end up as Hunter's did? Look at it that way.
Another consideration, if, hypothetically, you were Hunter with a laptop full of stuff you'd like to see go away, but not wanting to be in a position to either lie or admit you'd scrubbed evidence, might you think to abandon a device, "inadvertently," with a merchant who'd at some point claim possession, reformat the drive, and sell the device for what he could get to lessen his losses? To partly cover a loss in the course of business, that normal way?
It's a can of worms. The responsive filing will hopefully be reported by some online outlet, since that's what we rely upon for our information.
As to Joe Biden being impeached without any provable wrongdoing, a House majority can do it. Passing a d.o.a. thing to a Senate majority of the other party.
The Democrats did pass a d.o.a impeachment twice, but at least they had something factual beyond mere speculation each time.
It is best we remember that we pay Congress people to run the nation wisely, and some of this political stuff is outside of the job title. When we vote we should weigh that accordingly. We arguably are too hesitant to vote the rascals out, when it might be best for the nation if we did more frequently. With only two parties and rascals on both sides, we face a dilemma.
_________FURTHER UPDATE________
Had Mac Isaac honored his customer's privacy, as is the expectation in the normal course of the business he was in, then, independent of anything Hunter may have himself posted to Pornhub, the red scarf image Rupert Murdoch's people posted into the public domain - to the entire world - would not have been so used. Mac Isaac instigated an unbroken causal chain of his taking in a device while holding himself out as a merchant constrained by norms of his profession, who then willfully compromised his customer's privacy. It seems here to be that all the responding papers need to do, at a minimum, is present an expert witness opinion about norms of the trade, saying Mac Isaac clearly breached those norms, in order to defeat this dismissal motion. Clearly more will be argued, but Abbe Lowell is no amateur, and the guess here is he will post some showing about standards of care and conduct in the trade. And this is not negligence, it is a deliberated intentional breach of privacy. The Mac Isaac motion admits as much.
NEXT: Rupert Murdoch's people had no newsworthy purpose in posting that image, other than to embarrass Hunter Biden and to sensationalized and promote their tabloid standards of gutter journalism.
My belief is that Rudy and the NYPost should be pleaded into that pending action on a third party claim, mix it all up, regarding the explosion of the powder keg for which Mac Isaac intentionally lit the fuse. Opinions can differ.
Moreover, statutes are made to be followed, where the one year bailment default Delaware statute provisions the Counterclaim cited are clear. The UCC is clear about boilerplate fine print language not being a true contract to waive protective statutory terms of law. There is a lack of true notice to that kind of obscure boilerplate. The signed estimate was for price and services, and who'd read all that crap at the bottom? Surely the opposite will be argued to the court by Mac Isaac's lawyers, and Crabgrass only has its opinions of how the judge should decide, with no crystal ball saying it actually will resolve one way or the other.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
In the course of touching many bases, there was earlier a gatekeeper quote. Of interest, who should be a gatekeeper, and how should a gatekeeping operation operate? In that context, Gary Gross has this interesting post. His bottom line, the FBI and the intelligence community should not be policing a private website's terms of service and then leaning on that private party's personnel to delete posts the FBI and/or the intelligence community don't like. There is merit to the post. Even while the headlining is less than best.
FURTHER: The Fifth Circuit court opinion Gary cites tailors injunction terms and language to fit the reviewing Court's view of judicial propriety, not overreaching, in enjoining something. The reviewing court at p.70 of 74p worded the injunction:
Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no
actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or
significantly encourage social-media companies to remove,
delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their
algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected
free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the
platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of
punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or
supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling
the social-media companies’ decision-making processes.
The distinction is between communicating beliefs about web content, or potential content, and coercing by threat or other action to intimidate the website owner to alter content. Requests, alone, seem permitted. Requests which go unheeded are not cause to impose or threaten to impose some harm. Giving notice is allowed, but the ultimate content decision should be the site owner's, free of threat.
One can consider how such an injunction might fit web communication of a Jan. 6, type of event, but to Crabgrass the actions government agents could take there is unclear under the Fifth Circuit's language. Get a constraining court order on exigent circumstances procedure would seem to be the proper course, where a judge and not an executive official makes the decision. Caution that way is similar to obtaining a search warrant on probable cause to justify movement against citizens.
In the Jan. 6 actual context it seems executive and/or legislative personnel had some prior notice, but instead of moving to contain and constrain, they paid out rope so a number of malcontents would hang themselves. Judge that however you like.
[UPDATE: To this specific segment of the post. Reading a DWT post about chat bots, I could imagine that less ambiguous and less offensive injunctive language the Fifth Circuit panel fashioned as having come from a chat bot. Can you envision under the "get a judicial order approach," serving a no-knock tweet delete? What would happen, the enjoined officials learn which judges rubber stamp ex parte stuff, but still they would have to do more work than intimidation via a mere email. The last insight, appoint a chat bot the next time a Supreme Court vacancy happens. It could use a large language model of prior Opinions, including dissents and concurrences, and it would lack political bias and unethical junketing. It could come with clerk bots to do the actual writing. Keep Justice Bot, but do clerk rollover, just as now.]
__________FURTHER UPDATE____________
This goes beyond what I read on the web. But it starts from there. Food for thought.
The already linked NYPost item states:
 |
click the image to enlarge and read
|
This is telling you something about you. And your privacy. I use the Speccy utility, it tells me I have a Win-11 serial number. On this very device on which I now am typing. I cannot from a new device (or one reformatted) now open and use it without linking to a Microsoft One Drive account. It had been optional to use only a local account, but not any more.
And that bit about the FBI confirming it was Hunter's laptop from his iCloud account?
Unless I am a deficient reader, that tells me something about MS One Drive being mandated, and my OS having a serial number.
Then there is VoidTools utility, Everything. Once installed, it lists every file on a Win-11 device. These are just online public tools, nothing like forensic specialty level software.
And what do those two double lines on the above image denote? Deleted text? Nothing at all?
I don't do selfies the way Hunter did, and most readers likely are the same. What I post to the blog is under my name. What my search history, on this device is would be connectable to my MS OS serial number and One Drive account.
Where does that leave me should I become a target of an investigation?
And, you?
Well, we're just like Hunter. We've nothing to hide.
It seems curious to me that one's data reservoir is tracked more tightly than a handgun, where an original owner can sell at a gun show with no reregistration, yes/no? But a reformatted used Win-11 computer, the new user has to link onto a One Drive cloud account, or the item cannot be used.
This is curious. This is notice. Readers might find it of interest.
___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Howie Klein has an interesting post up at DownWithTyranny: Opposition Research On 2 Minor Candidates: Tim Scott (Closeted Gay) And Vivek Ramaswamy (Crooked) -- Nikki Haley's SuperPAC Is Quietly Feeding The Media The Dirt
This item fits the "what I read on the web" theme. Klein intersperses his own commentary with extended quotes from other online sources he uncovers.
You can bypass his posts and largely get his message from the linked and quoted items. He is particularly harsh toward Ramaswamy.
His posts and his linked items fit "read on the web." No quoting on this update, readers can follow links, and in noting the items Crabgrass offers no endorsement of specifics Klein posts. But he can create a hell of an interesting read. And so far it appears nobody has sued him for defamation. Or if so sued, I have not seen it reported on the web.
He dislikes Trump, and uses the term, "meatball Ron DeSantis." He makes his feelings clear. [See, e.g., this July post, using this image.]
He also dislikes Joe Biden and claims to have never voted for him.
He has kind feelings toward Bernie.
