Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to tarnish Joe Biden’s presidential campaign continued in Delaware when he visited a New Castle County police station Monday to share files from what he said was Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“They’ve got a hard drive, or a laptop, or something to that effect. They try to turn it over to New Castle County PD. New Castle County PD calls us,” said Mat Marshall, a spokesman for Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings.
Jennings’ office subsequently gave the device to the FBI because the federal agency reportedly had opened an investigation into the veracity of claims about the origin of the laptop and how its alleged contents were shared with Giuliani’s team, Marshall said.
“As we’ve seen in multiple reports (the FBI) is looking into whether these claims are credible,” he said, “In light of their investigation, we’re referring it over to them now.”
A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Baltimore office, which oversees Delaware, declined to confirm or deny the existence of any such investigation.
Last Wednesday, Wilmington computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac claimed that in April 2019 a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden brought a liquid-damaged MacBook Pro to his small repair shop in a Trolley Square shopping center.
Mac Isaac said his poor vision prevented him from personally identifying the man as Hunter Biden.
In the subsequent year and a half, Mac Isaac said, a “whole lot of” players were involved in the story of how President Donald Trump’s circle took possession last month of a copy of the hard drive.
He declined to specific details.
HOW IT STARTED:Meet the computer repairman at the center of New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story
Earlier this month, Giuliani shared the hard drive’s contents with the New York Post.
Last Wednesday, the publication ran a story, the credibility of which has been widely criticized because of shaky sourcing. The story said the hard drive in question contained emails from 2015 indicating that then-Vice President Joe Biden held a meeting with a high-ranking official at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company company whose board employed his son Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden’s campaign denied the claim last Wednesday, stating “No meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
USA Today reported Friday that federal authorities were investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails. In January, a computer security company reported that Russia’s military intelligence attempted to hack Burisma’s servers.
On Sunday, The New York Times published an article claiming the New York Post staff reporter who wrote most of the article about Hunter Biden’s laptop “refused to put his name” on the story “because he had concerns over the article’s credibility.”
DELAWARE CONNECTION:How a Delaware company is linked to Giuliani associates accused of funneling Russian cash to U.S. politics
For nearly two years, Giuliani had been working on behalf of Trump to dig up information that could be damaging to Biden’s presidential campaign. Much of the effort has focused on finding a link between the former vice president’s work in Ukraine and Hunter Biden’s dealings with Burisma.
Giuliani, the former New York mayor and current political operative for Trump, has asserted repeatedly without evidence that Joe Biden had tried to protect Burisma when he pressured the Ukrainian president in 2015 into firing the country’s prosecutor general.
Last year, Trump himself sought out such information from Ukraine’s new president – an act that led to his impeachment.
U.S. Senate Republicans last month published a report based on an investigation that looked into the claims. While they found Hunter Biden’s business made State Department official’s work awkward, they found no evidence that Joe Biden acted inappropriately.
Rumors first began to circulate Monday that Giuliani had visited a local Delaware police station after Republican U.S. Senate candidate Lauren Witzke posted the claim on Twitter and Facebook.
On Tuesday, Giuliani appeared on former-Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s radio show and said he had information of criminal activity relating to Hunter Biden.
Asked whether the laptop files indicated any crime had occurred, Marshall said what Giuliani’s team “showed up with was evidence that they said was involved in a crime.”
He said Delaware authorities are not investigating, and have never in the past investigated, Hunter Biden.
Reporter Xerxes Wilson contributed to this story.
Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.
Source Article from https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2020/10/20/giuliani-gives-alleged-hunter-biden-laptop-new-castle-county-police/5999345002/
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