Fox News doesn't seem to think much of the Hunter Biden story.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-tony-bobulinski-joe-biden-unanswered-questions
This makes sense. As biased and gross as Fox News is, they do not often, to my knowledge, report straight up falsehoods, which they apparently believe it is.
Taking everything reported to be on the laptop at face value, and the claims of Bubulinski, I'm not sure what exactly Joe Biden is being accused of.
Buboliski's claim is that in 2015 he met with Joe Biden for about 10 minutes in a hotel bar and did not discuss business, and that the meeting was arranged by Hunter Biden. At some other point, Hunter was engaging in a deal that allocated 10% to "the big man". Bubolinski also says that other texts mentioning "chairman" refers to Biden, but Fox News has determined from other emails that "chairman" refers to the Chinese government.
With all that, it's a bit hard to figure what Joe Biden is being accused of. He clearly didn't install Hunter at the job, or they wouldn't need Hunter to set a meeting with Joe. The "10% for the big man" if it was indeed referring to Joe was after he left office. At best you could argue that this was in consideration for some future benefit if Joe Biden became president, but that's a fairly large investment considering that it isn't even clear now that Biden will be president, much less in the early days of the Trump administration. It seems likely that the company hired Biden for his family name and possibly intended to influence Joe, but it's not clear that Joe Biden in any way influenced government policy towards China in a significant way. Also, let's keep in mind, Biden is the vice President. His only official power is to break ties in the Senate. His powers were limited to persuasion.
As for the Burisma stuff, nothing new seems to have come out regarding that. Again, it's not clear what Joe Biden actually did there. He pushed for a prosecutor to be ousted, but there was no active investigation of Burisma. This move was also supported by the EU... So, either there was some legitimate reason for his ouster besides Hunter Biden, or Joe Biden is really fucking persuasive and/or has leverage over the entire EU. In which case... idk. It's morally dubious, but getting everyone in the US and EU to agree to support his private agenda? That's the art of the fucking deal right there. If he's that damn good, maybe he should be president.
The last thing is that Joe is maybe forcing his son to give money to other members of the family? Hunter texted his daughter (again we're just assuming all texts are legitimate) saying he was made to give "half his money" to Joe and he "paid for everything for the family". Even taking this literally, I doubt he's paying for everything, it's unclear what crime is being alleged, beyond maybe being a shitty dad. The best argument is that Joe was securing Hunter jobs for these companies who then pay him large salaries which Joe gets a kickback from... but that doesn't make a ton of sense. If Joe Biden is the one getting Hunter these jobs, then Joe Biden already owes them. Why would they need Hunter Biden to set up meetings if Joe already was so ingrained that he could demand they hire his son?
Again, even ignoring the sketchy details of the story (just going to leave my laptop with this shop, filled with pictures of underage girls and incriminating information, and make sure I put a Biden sticker on it, and I'll never ask for it back... Whoops! The legally blind guy working at the shop knew it was Hunter Biden because we all know what he looks like so well that we can identify him without the benefit of fully functioning eyes. At least I got lucky and the store's security cameras were broken that day so the guy can't prove it was me) I'm still not sure what exactly is being alleged against Joe Biden.
Kind of seems like what they have is that Hunter Biden was doing business with foreign countries, and Joe Biden was Vice President. And they're trying to argue 1+1=100. But, unless nobody in a political figure's family can have international business dealings (Trump's companies which are not in a blind trust do business internationally), I'm not sure what exactly happened here.
That's probably why Fox News is focusing less on the claims themselves and more on the news coverage, or lack thereof.
Last edited by JWeinCom - on 29 October 2020