FBI Buried Hunter Biden Laptop  Lee Smith  November 24, 2020  

Commenary

News reports last month claimed that in late 2019 the FBI had opened an investigation of matters related to information found on a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden. Would the bureau continue its probe under a Biden administration? Doubtful. In fact, it’s unlikely there was ever any investigation at all.

In July 2019, after Hunter Biden failed to reclaim his laptop from a computer repair shop in Delaware, the shop owner and his father grew concerned about information they found on the device and reached out to the FBI’s Albuquerque field office. They were turned away. In mid-October the bureau contacted the shop owner and two months later, an Assistant U.S. Attorney from Delaware issued a grand jury subpoena to retrieve it.

Last month, word circulated through Washington that FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich told Trump administration officials about its Hunter Biden investigation. Anonymous Department of Justice officials confirmed its existence to reporters. As further evidence of a serious probe, conservative media pointed to the fact that former Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski was interviewed in late October by six FBI agents.

So doesn’t all that mean it’s a real investigation? It’s worth remembering that in June, 15 FBI agents were sent to Alabama to investigate whether a knot tied like a noose in NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage was evidence of a race crime. It wasn’t. One agent with a smartphone would have quickly discerned the truth—that the knot had been there for more than a year—but because race is a third rail in American politics and culture, the FBI was determined to prove they were on the job. The investigation was performative, designed to show that the FBI was taking the matter seriously, even though it wasn’t.

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The evidence shows that the FBI is one of many institutions that no longer belong to the American public. Rather, its job is to protect and advance the privileges and interests of an increasingly powerful class of elites who draw their wealth and prestige from their relationships with corrupt foreign entities. And that’s why it appears the FBI didn’t investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop, but buried it.