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[question everything]

34. What We Know and Don't About Hunter Biden and a Laptop - NYT

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How did the laptop surface?

A computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Del., named John Paul Mac Isaac has said Hunter Biden left a damaged Apple computer at his shop in April 2019 and asked to recover any data. Mr. Isaac said in an interview with The New York Times last week outside the shop that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was Hunter Biden but asked his name to fill out a work order, and the man identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mr. Isaac said the man came to his shop twice but never returned to retrieve the computer or an external hard drive on which its contents had been stored.

At some point, he decided to examine the material, calling it “alarming” and “embarrassing” but declining to discuss specifics. Mr. Isaac also said he made a copy of the computer’s contents.

How did the F.B.I. learn about the laptop?

Mr. Isaac said he told the bureau. He said he eventually decided to contact the F.B.I. after he began fearing for his safety because he knew what was on the laptop, which The New York Post said included a graphic video. “If I was somebody important, I would want to keep some of this stuff private,” he said. “Nobody wants their dirty laundry aired.”

Mr. Isaac said he met with F.B.I. agents in late 2019 and provided them with a timeline of events. The agents returned about two weeks later in mid-December with a grand jury subpoena allowing them to seize the laptop and the external hard drive. The subpoena was signed by a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Wilmington who handles criminal investigations such as fraud, and Mr. Isaac acknowledged receiving it.

The agents also gave him a receipt for what they took, according to a photograph of it published by Fox News. The receipt included an F.B.I. code, 272D, the bureau’s internal classification for money laundering investigations, and “BA” for its Baltimore field office. Officials separately confirmed that the F.B.I. seized the laptop and an external hard drive as part of an investigation, though they did not detail the inquiry or whether it involved money laundering or Hunter Biden. They also confirmed that the agent who signed the receipt works in Wilmington and is overseen by the Baltimore office.

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What don’t we know?

A lot. Mr. Isaac, who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, declined to answer many questions about the laptop and his contacts with the F.B.I. He also would not talk about his communications with the Trump loyalists who orchestrated the plan to make the computer’s contents public just before the election.

It is also not clear what the F.B.I. did with the laptop or what Justice Department officials knew about the sensitive F.B.I. investigation at the time. F.B.I. officials have declined to discuss the inquiry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-laptop.html