> Who has copies of their text messages on their laptop?
Anyone with the My Phone app in Windows and a linked phone.
> Who has PDF copies of emails?
Those look like they were created, e.g. with a PDF printer, from the originals. They've now released Hunter's signature on the repair form, as well, and claim to have phone calls from him calling about it.
So far the "Russian disinfo" campaign is without evidence of that, given that the ODNI says there's no intelligence pointing to that and nothing but anonymous rumors thereof. Doesn't mean anything in these files is true, but some of the details match what we already know.
That said, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think Steele's primary Russian subsource is behind this one, though, but it could be like the original Dossier--a mix of salacious but unverifiable statements with true but innocuous statements.
Though I think Hunter with the meth pipe is already pretty damaging. That aside, for the best for the public to know all about the future president & his son's Bursima dealings so that it cannot be used as blackmail in the future, no?
Which one of the (allegedly) three Macs was running Windows?
> the ODNI says there's no intelligence
Ratcliffe says this, not the ODNI. He has zero intelligence background. He lied about his work in the DoJ. Because of those lies, the Senate refused to consider him for the ODNI position for over a year.
Ratcliffe has also been surfacing unsubstantiated crap through Johnson's Senate HSGA Committee. He was installed expressly for this purpose
I was responding to the idea that it's somehow patently absurd for someone to have their text messages be present on their laptop, when it's obviously not.
> Ratcliffe says this, not the ODNI.
Ratcliffe is the head of the ODNI, speaking on behalf of the ODNI.
The FBI and DoJ have also said as much now. So you're in the position of maintaining a conspiracy theory without evidence vs. all of the US intelligence agencies. Moreover, they're not making a positive claim, they're making a negative one: that there is no evidence of Russian involvement.
It's one thing to say "don't trust this until all the facts come out"--that I would agree with--but the Russian conspiracy is a positive claim and those require evidence.
I have yet to see anyone present anything other than bare speculation for that, which only proves them correct in their statements. This is rebuttable: all you have to do is give some actual, verifiable evidence of Russian involvement.
You know, like Hunter's signature on the paperwork, or the EXIF data on the photos. Why do no problems show up under ELA or similar things? Why does this match what we know from public sources about Bursima paying him a ton of money? Why can we find his picture on their website in archives?
Where is there anything like that for the Russia conspiracy? The "best" I saw was a bunch of former agents speculating in a Politico story where they admitted therein that they had no evidence whatsoever...
And yet, your citation of Windows software suggests either that your grasp on the facts of the case are shaky, or that you're more interested in trying to convince others that this is true, than you are in whether or not it is actually true.
> Ratcliffe is the head of the ODNI, speaking on behalf of the ODNI
You completely ignored the credibility issues I raised - issues that even the Republican majority in the Senate found troubling.
Further, your insistence on inscribing the authority of the ODNI (as an office) on Ratcliffe suggests that you, yourself, think he lacks sufficient credibility on his own. The fact is that there is no ODNI analysis or documentation on this. There is only the assertion of Ratcliffe, himself, who has already blown his credibility defending disinfo from Derkach (who the DoC outed as a high level Russian agent).
I'm not going to respond further on this. But I'll leave you with a quote I found insightful:
> these fake scandals Republicans concoct to smear Democrats work by being too complicated for anyone to follow. Instead, there's a drip-drip-drip of confusing stories filled with buzzwords and noise, all working together to build the illusion of scandal where none exists. The goal is to keep the words "Biden," "Burisma" and "Ukraine" in the headlines so people start to assume there must be something shady going on, even if there's nothing there
So you admit that it's not ridiculous to have text messages on one's laptop, good to know.
> The fact is that there is no ODNI analysis or documentation on this.
Of course not, because there's no intelligence pointing to Russia as the source of this, which kinda undermines your whole conspiracy theory. You do nothing whatsoever to support that with evidence, which is itself an admission that it's bogus.
That last quote is basically how the original Russia conspiracy started, BTW. You know that we've untangled the citogenesis a long time ago, right? They bootstrapped the conspiracy with the original FISA warrant against Carter Page (one of our own spies against Russia, who provably worked on an opp against them not too long prior), leaking some things to the media, then using the leaks themselves to bolster their claims for the FISA warrant.
But unlike that, which relied on anonymous leaks (since de-anonymized by Strzok & co's text messages), the drip drip drip here is of stuff like Hunter's signature matching the form of the one from the legal papers, having recordings of him calling the repair shop for his laptop, having pictures of him with a meth pipe, etc.
But sure, go on and tell us how that compares to the Russian conspiracy's anonymous leaks of unverifiable information.
Anyone with the My Phone app in Windows and a linked phone.
> Who has PDF copies of emails?
Those look like they were created, e.g. with a PDF printer, from the originals. They've now released Hunter's signature on the repair form, as well, and claim to have phone calls from him calling about it.
So far the "Russian disinfo" campaign is without evidence of that, given that the ODNI says there's no intelligence pointing to that and nothing but anonymous rumors thereof. Doesn't mean anything in these files is true, but some of the details match what we already know.
That said, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think Steele's primary Russian subsource is behind this one, though, but it could be like the original Dossier--a mix of salacious but unverifiable statements with true but innocuous statements.
Though I think Hunter with the meth pipe is already pretty damaging. That aside, for the best for the public to know all about the future president & his son's Bursima dealings so that it cannot be used as blackmail in the future, no?