NBC has reported that U.S. officials suspect that a Russian disinformation campaign may have targeted President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spread allegations of corruption involving Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
The New York Post wrote this week that Giuliani provided it with a hard drive containing alleged emails from 2014, 2015 and 2017. The emails between Hunter Biden and Chinese and Ukrainian associates show the associates seeking to improve their business prospects by using Hunter’s relationship to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
However, the Post‘s story is suspicious because the emails were allegedly found on a laptop left in 2019 at a New Jersey computer repair store owned by legally blind and Trump-supporting owner, John MacIsaac. MacIsaac said he couldn’t identify whether Hunter Biden himself left the laptop. The Post‘s email PDFs contained no metadata to help prove the emails’ authenticity, including when and where they were sent.
MacIsaac also refused to elaborate to CBS News about why he was looking through the hard drive’s emails and how he came to be connected to Giuliani. Although MacIsaac said he gave the hard drive to Giuliani in January, Giuliani waited until October to give the hard drive to The New York Post, and now the Trump Administration is sharing the Post‘s story like crazy during the last month of election to push the narrative that the Bidens are corrupt.
The timing is suspect, especially considering that Trump currently trails Biden by double digits in numerous U.S. polls.
“Giuliani, who acknowledged helping bring the material to light, has in the past sought to unearth information damaging to Biden with the help of a man identified by the U.S. government as a Russian intelligence officer,” NBC News reported.
Furthermore, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer said on MSNBC that he considered Giuliani especially susceptible to possible foreign manipulation because he is “drunk all the time.” Similarly, The Daily Beast revealed that 11 sources connected to former National Security Adviser John Bolton said that Bolton advised his staff to avoid dealing with Giuliani, believing the former New York mayor to have been compromised by Russian agents.