Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California on Sunday accused Democrats and the mainstream media of engaging in a 'conspiracy' ...
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California on Sunday accused Democrats and the mainstream media of engaging in a 'conspiracy' over Hunter Biden's laptop in a bid to help President Joe Biden win the 2020 election.
GOP lawmakers have been demanding answers after the New York Times claimed to have authenticated a hard drive purportedly belonging to the president's only living son -- more than a year after the New York Post was widely criticized for reporting on the contents of that same computer.
Issa's bombshell accusation comes one day after New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the no. 3 House Republican, vowed that her party 'will subpoena Hunter Biden' if they win back control of Congress in November.
'The American people absolutely deserve answers,' Stefanik told the Post on Saturday. 'There is no greater ethical concern or frankly conspiracy … whether this president is compromised because of his illegal ties to his family members.'
Earlier this week Issa sent preservation notices to White House aides, several tech companies and ex-intelligence officials in a bid to keep them from getting rid of documents and records tied to the Post's original Hunter Biden story from October 2020.
'Well one of the reasons I said the preservation letters is that those notices, if you then destroy evidence, are in fact evading Congress and suppressing evidence,' Issa said on Fox News Sunday. 'We've had that in the past. Obviously, we had that with Hillary Clinton at her attempt to destroy all the evidence of her illegal activities.'
California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa (right) slammed Hunter Biden as a 'petty criminal' and alleged the media was involved in a cover-up to sway the 2020 election during an interview on Fox News
'But the other part of it is, that because this involves so many companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and so on, they took down the New York Post, there was clearly a conspiracy to, if you will, cover up the wrongdoing of the president and his family just before an election that he had to win and did win.'
The hard drive was given to the outlet by ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who obtained it from a Delaware computer repair shop where Hunter Biden reportedly dropped it off.
In addition to lewd images depicting sex acts and drug use, the laptop's hard drive also contained a trove of emails that detailed Hunter Biden's efforts to leverage his father's connections as then-vice president to bolster his foreign business dealings.
Issa's comments come one day after Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third most powerful Republican in the House, vowed to subpoena the president's only living son if her party takes back control of Congress in November
Of particular interest to Republicans is the identity of a so-called 'big guy' who was meant to receive 10 percent of profits from a Chinese business deal. The monicker is found in an email on the hard drive to Hunter Biden from his business partner James Gilliar.
It's not confirmed who the 'big guy' is, but some Republican lawmakers have speculated it to mean the president.
Tony Bobulinski, another former business partner of Hunter Biden's, also previously pointed the finger at Joe Biden.
'That’s one of the critical questions — perhaps the most critical question,' Stefanik said on Saturday.
Amid backlash from Biden supporters and Democrats who called the story an effort by Russia to meddle in the presidential election, Twitter blocked users from sharing the story for more than two weeks.
Facebook said at the time that it had reduced the story's distribution.
On Sunday Issa blasted Hunter Biden as a 'petty criminal' and charged tech platforms and other media outlets with 'suppressing' the New York Post.
'The investigation is clearly warranted -- not just because Hunter Biden seems to be a petty criminal, taking advantage of his father's money and perhaps sharing you know, money with his father,' Issa said.
'It's because if we have this kind of coordinated effort just before an election, what we have is American collusion to over -- to affect the output of an election.
'That can't happen. We've got to make sure that our press is free and fair and right now, when it comes to new media, free and fair doesn't exist. And when it comes to one of the oldest newspapers in America -- the New York Post was founded in 1801 -- they were suppressed.'
The laptop, which the New York Times recently authenticated long after right-wing media outlets were blasted for reporting about it, contains compromising and embarrassing images of Hunter Biden
In some of the pictures, Hunter Biden is seen with a crack pipe hanging out of his mouth. His past struggles with drug addiction have been well documented
The breakdown of the stake in the business, including the 10% to the 'Big Guy', were revealed in an email last year. Stefanik said finding out who that is could be 'the most critical question' that Republicans have for Hunter Biden
Extracts from one email published show how Hunter Biden was to be paid $850,000 in part of his arrangement with the Chinese firm
At the center of Republicans' outrage is a recent New York Times article, which reveals that an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden's tax affairs has since widened into the recovering drug addict's overseas business dealings -- including his time on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
One paragraph in the article appears to be the first time the outlet acknowledged the veracity of Hunter's hard drive: 'Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.'
GOP Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley previously teamed up to release an 'interim report' weeks before the 2020 presidential election titled 'Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.'
The report accused Hunter Biden of 'cashing in' on his father's role as vice president in the Obama administration but found no wrongdoing on the part of then-candidate Biden himself.
In an interview with The Hill last week, Johnson signaled interest in restarting the investigation if Republicans were to take back the majority in the Senate in November's midterm elections.
'I’d kind of like that to wrap that up. We’ve been trying to get his travel records for a couple of years now,' Johnson said of his Congressional inquiry.
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