Your extended analogy likewise doesn’t fit either. It would be more like if John Bolton sent an email that said, “we should get the big guy to wear a Hunter Biden costume ha ha” and then everyone starts demanding, based on nothing but extrapolating from this email, that Trump in fact has to deny it all and some investigation should be launched.
I think you’re wrong in your last sentence because there is nothing for Biden to deny or refute. The emails are real, probably sourced in a scammy way by Giuliani, but still real. They just do not contain any content that suggests or corroborates any wrongdoing or questionable behavior in any sense other than Hunter Biden has a big mouth and is a bit immature, that’s it.
What aspect of it would you expect needs to be denied or investigated? No part proves or suggests Joe Biden had anything to do with it or had any meetings or any business dealings related to it. No part suggests or proves Hunter Biden leveraged any political promises or power of his father for any profit.
I cannot see what aspect of it you believe is open to investigation. One person ran their mouth about their political figure father and .... nothing. That's all.
We cannot pretend like that requires journalists to devote attention to it - in any other situation they utterly would not. That’s a nothing story 8 days a week. It’s only being inflamed this time because it is politicized to subvert an election.
> The emails are real, probably sourced in a scammy way by Giuliani, but still real.
Agreed - and to be clear, I count Giuliani as the scum of the damn earth (and I say this as a New Yorker).
But do you think that you can say, on one hand, that the emails are real, but that "The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked"?
> They just do not contain any content that suggests or corroborates any wrongdoing or questionable behavior in any sense other than Hunter Biden has a big mouth and is a bit immature, that’s it.
It shows that convincingly, yes. But, we also know that he received a $600k salary as a result. Isn't it worth investigating why? What did he do to be worth this salary?
> “Isn't it worth investigating why? What did he do to be worth this salary?”
No, it really, really isn’t. The FBI already did and found nothing worth prosecuting. There is no reason to even loosely speculate it has a connection to Joe Biden.
It is a 100% non-story, period. Unless some vast new source of information was obtained, there is nothing in it.
“This info contains no wrongdoing and no indication of Joe Biden being involved” is not at all valid pretext for “but shouldn’t it be investigated?”
If that were true, all possible facts that are ever gathered showing no wrongdoing would be justification for constant investigation. Every time someone with noteworthy parents spouted off some immature nonsense, it would be the pretext for never ending persecution by investigation.
This situation truly, truly is not noteworthy. Hunter Biden did some business deals and ran his mouth. In doing so, there is no evidence of anything questionable or illegal. Why would go around opening up big investigations into pieces of information that don’t prove, corroborate or even suggest wrongdoing?
I simply do not trust the FBI. I do not think that the FBI, throughout its history, has earned our trust, and it has done many awful things to betray it. I see no evidence that this entity is materially different than it was when it attempted to gaslight Dr. King into suicide.
I think that this does warrant an investigation. We have the son of a powerful career politician offering to sell access to his Dad's office. We have a foreign corporation cutting a generous check on that basis. We have emails outlining these details in an archive that has been verified in part by one of the people in the "To" field, who was indeed a business partner in an earlier venture. We have an official decision being made during this time, by Joe, which is favorable to the corporation in question.
None of these facts are in dispute.
It seems the only dispute is whether they warrant an investigation by someone with more integrity than the FBI (ideally, a lot more).
While I don’t agree with you, and I believe wide distrust of established justice offices like the FBI is conspiracy theory behavior inflamed by Trump, I at least grant you that if this is your position, I guess it makes sense to also believe all the disinformation around the Hunter Biden emails.
I just feel so sad for the US that it is such a deep epistemological divide.
Almost half the country appears to believe true knowledge no longer derives from fact or observation, but instead derives from speculative conspiracy theories that use lack of evidence to reinforce themselves to the point of being essentially unfalsifiable religious beliefs, like QAnon, Pizzagate, disbelief in basic institutions of justice, refusal to acknowledge or accept whole classes of humans, like trans people, through denial of rights and continued discrimination.
Anyone seeing this and not realizing it is a full on existential threat against basic human rights and decency just isn’t paying attention.
I certainly do not fit the picture you paint. I'm not a Trump supporter, nor do I adhere to any of the silly theories you suggest. I believe wholeheartedly in robust rights, recognition, and respect for marginalized groups. I believe no person is illegal. I have been out in the streets of Portland joining BIPOC leadership in calling for abolition of police and prisons many dozens of the past 150 nights.
Distrust of the FBI doesn't stem from Trump-support and is not related to "refusal to accept whole classes of humans"; it chiefly stems from the fact that it's a historically racist and xenophobic institution that threw itself headlong into trying to violently disrupt civil rights activism, and has never done any serious internal healing since.
The deep, lasting, institutional corruption of the two major political parties is based on fact and observation, including the fact pattern I have laid out in the comment to which you responded, which again, to my knowledge, is not in dispute. Whether or not it amounts to another in a long line of actual instances of self-enrichment at the public's expense is something that I do not trust (and I don't think any reasonable observer can trust) the FBI to investigate and conclude on its own.
I think you’re wrong in your last sentence because there is nothing for Biden to deny or refute. The emails are real, probably sourced in a scammy way by Giuliani, but still real. They just do not contain any content that suggests or corroborates any wrongdoing or questionable behavior in any sense other than Hunter Biden has a big mouth and is a bit immature, that’s it.
What aspect of it would you expect needs to be denied or investigated? No part proves or suggests Joe Biden had anything to do with it or had any meetings or any business dealings related to it. No part suggests or proves Hunter Biden leveraged any political promises or power of his father for any profit.
I cannot see what aspect of it you believe is open to investigation. One person ran their mouth about their political figure father and .... nothing. That's all.
We cannot pretend like that requires journalists to devote attention to it - in any other situation they utterly would not. That’s a nothing story 8 days a week. It’s only being inflamed this time because it is politicized to subvert an election.