How did we get there?
Since Wednesday, October 14, the New York Post has published a series of "revelations" supposed to tarnish the reputation of Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for the White House, based on alleged emails from his son, Hunter.
Twitter and Facebook have decided to limit the dissemination of these articles on their platform, fearing a repeat of the 2016 presidential campaign, when they were criticized for promoting the spread of Democratic Party emails hacked by Russian spies. .
The Republicans are now crying out for censorship and want to summon the CEO of Twitter to the Senate, accused of trying to muzzle the pro-Trump press.
All this three weeks before the presidential election.
To go back to the origin of this large-scale political-media frenzy, you have to look for Wilmington, a town of 70,000 inhabitants between Philadelphia and Baltimore - and home of Joe Biden.
This is where it all started, in a small computer repair shop.
John Paul Mac Isaac, boss of the sign, reportedly handed the compromising emails to the New York Post.
A MacBook Pro that had taken on water
His story is almost as incredible as the famous Conservative tabloid's allegations against Joe Biden.
John Paul Mac Isaac, whose identity was revealed by an indiscretion from the New York Post, claims that it was Hunter Biden himself who brought him the computer containing what to incriminate his father.
He would have presented himself in April 2019 at the Mac Shop in Wilmington with, under his arm, three MacBook Pro which would have taken water.
Ultimately, Hunter Biden would have left only one to mend.
The very one on which John Paul Mac Isaac discovered the “holy grail” of the pro-Trump camp.
While digging through that laptop's hard drive, he discovered emails that allegedly testified that Joe Biden used his political influence to help Burisma, a Ukrainian company that Hunter Biden had been working for since 2014. Blessed bread for Camp Trump, who has been trying, without success, for more than a year to link the Democratic opponent to his son's Ukrainian affairs.
This effort to destabilize Joe Biden was already at the heart of the now famous phone call that Donald Trump made to the Ukrainian president in August 2019 and which led to impeachment proceedings for the tenant of the White House.
Aware of having a political “bomb” in his hands, the Wilmington computer repairer claimed to have contacted the FBI in late 2019. But before handing the precious MacBook Pro to the federal agency, John Paul Mac Isaac made a copy from hard disk in case ...
A precaution that has paid off for this fierce sympathizer of the Trumpian cause.
Without news from the FBI, he decided, in September 2020, to give all the data to the lawyer of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who became Donald Trump's handyman.
It is this close friend of the American president who sent the information to the New York Post.
Confusion
This version of the facts advanced by John Paul Mac Isaac, and relayed by the New York Post, has not convinced some of the American media.
Several of them went to visit the Wilmington repairman on Wednesday to clarify certain points.
The interview, recorded and published by the Daily Beast, added a bit more confusion to an otherwise convoluted story.
The “source” of the “revelations” of the New York Post shows himself, at times, contradictory in his explanations, sometimes simply refuses to answer and does not hesitate to put forward conspiracy theories dear to the pro-Trump camp to justify himself .
John Paul Mac Isaac was thus unable to confirm the identity of the person who came to restore the computer to be repaired, arguing of a visual handicap which would have prevented him from recognizing for sure Hunter Biden.
His conviction rests, essentially, on a sticker of the Beau Biden Foundation (named after another son, deceased, of Joe Biden) on the MacBook Pro.
He also refused to explain why he had thoroughly explored the hard drive of a computer that he was simply responsible for repairing.
He also did not justify the fact of not having revived the illustrious client who was slow to come and look for his property, simply affirming that "these are things that often happen".
The owner of the Mac Shop has also given conflicting versions of his interactions with Rudy Giuliani.
At first, he said that it was Donald Trump's advisor who asked him to give him the hard drive, before correcting the situation by saying that it was, in fact, he who had taken the initiative to contact the lawyer for the former mayor of New York.
John Paul Mac Isaac also pointed out that he had become more and more paranoid over time, fearing that the “same thing as Seth Rich” would happen to him.
A reference to a famous and delusional conspiracy theory which maintains that Hillary Clinton's entourage ordered the assassination of a Democratic Party volunteer who knew too much about the hacked emails of Donald Trump's ex-adversary in 2016. It is this fear that would have pushed the Wilmington merchant to contact the FBI and then with Rudy Giuliani ...
These eccentric explanations did not dispel the doubts of part of the media on the authenticity of these e-mails.
Some aspects of this affair - last-minute revelations, obtained through hacked emails - are too reminiscent of the 2016 precedent not to evoke the specter of a new Russian disinformation operation.
The US intelligence services are further convinced that Rudy Giuliani has become the instrument of Russian spies, the Washington Post and NBC reported on Friday.
One more argument to take the story of the abandoned computer in a Wilmington store with a grain of salt.
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