UPDATE:
NBC has done a takedown of the report linked below.
It’s astonishingly bad.
Keep in mind that I’m not entirely convinced of the content of the piece. It is sketchy. But I’m convinced enough to stand by it.
Here’s why.
- The second sentence of NBC’s takedown calls the document a fake. The remainder of the article contains nothing to support that. It’s for skimmers.
- In the same sentence, it calls this an “elaborate conspiracy theory”. Umm … sixty pages, with photos, links, data is an elaborate conspiracy theory??? Maybe so, but why bother when you can just repeat Biden has dementia over and over again?
- NBC asserts that the author, “his” picture, and the firm they work for are fictitious. Yeah. I checked that too, long before NBC did. Balding more or less stated this in his post.
- NBC asserts that it’s a scoop that Balding wrote part of the document. He wrote that he made edits. Big deal.
- NBC does have a scoop that the report was commissioned by Apple Daily. And yes, Apple Daily is a tabloid opposed to the PRC. That’s suspicious, but it doesn’t make the report incorrect.
- NBC asserts that “Balding’s blog was the primary driver of virality …”. Ummm … no. Just, no. The only person who would believe that is someone who’s never read Balding’s World. It’s about the last place you’d go for virality.
- NBC notes that the fake author, Martin Aspen, claimed to have worked for Swiss Security Solutions, and that this company denies every employing anyone with this name. Which is not surprising if Martin Aspen is a pseudonym, which was pretty clear in the first place. That would be like me writing something under the name “Pete Moss”, saying I had worked for the University of New Orleans in the past (true), and then asking UNO if Pete Moss had ever worked there. The analogous endeavor by NBC is stunningly pointless.
- NBC wrote that for dissemination “Hyperpartisan and conspiracy sites like ZeroHedge … led the pack.” I read ZeroHedge quite a bit. Yes, it reposts stuff that’s conspiracy oriented. But the article about the report Balding introduced isn’t one of those; it’s an original ZeroHedge post. ZeroHedge is edgy. Take it with a grain of salt. But honestly, I get a lot of news earlier there. It’s a good place to look for things hours, days, or weeks before they hit CNN or NBC. It’s the sort of stuff that financial types feed off of.
The bottom line is that the NBC takedown piece hits absolutely nowhere around the important mark: that the report brought to light by Balding cites primary public sources. NBC doesn’t take that stuff down because it can’t. It’s there. That’s what primary and public mean.
And I’ll repeat that I’m not entirely convinced by the report. It’s astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’d like to see some discussion of its contents. NBC? NBC? Beuler?
P.S. And I’ll reiterate. I didn’t vote for Trump this time. I didn’t vote for Trump last time. I’ve voted against Trump twice in my state’s caucus (2016) and primary (2020). And my dislike for Trump goes back further than yours … to the early 1980’s. Having said all that, I can recognize straw man and ad hominem attacks when I see them. And the content of the report still stands. In fact, the most serious criticism I’ve seen of the contents … were by a commenter on this post, and not in the legacy media.
*******************************
It’s time for the Democrats to remove Joe Biden from the race.
Full Disclosure: I already voted, and not for either geriatric nincompoop.
The report posted at Balding’s World this morning makes the laptop from hell seem unimportant.
If you are hearing about this here, on my puny blog, you are one of the sheep.
*******************************
Balding is a well-respected, occasional blogger, and frequent Bloomberg contributor, mostly on subjects Chinese. He is a non-Chinese business school professor who has worked and lived in China for about a decade. He rarely posts, but when he does, he gets links from econbloggers. I last cited him back in February about the flimsiness of the Chinese healthcare system. I have learned a ton from his posts over the last several years.
He was handed a well-documented report 2 months ago.
He has shopped it to American news organizations and has found zero takers. So he publicly released it.
It’s called “Project Time”, it is attributed to Typhoon Investigations. The report was researched for a client that was concerned about financial risk to their investments originating with overall political risks.
It is mostly from publicly available sources within China. Unlike the stuff you typically here in the legacy media, it cites only 3 human sources. Not much “off the record” innuendo here. In short, it names names.
it is not exclusively about Hunter Biden. It is substantially about how the government of China connected to Joe Biden first, who then involved his son and brother.
And newly, it also implicates former Secretary of State John Kerry, and his son as well.
*******************************
Here’s the thing.
None of this is illegal. “Lock him up” is not the appropriate response.
Instead, what is a presented in this report is an above board development of an asset by foreign service and intelligence agencies in China.
The difficulty in eluding these concerns is their documentability by anyone who cares to look. There is no potential for hacking because it is all public record in China. Any journalist who wishes to look can go review IPO prospectuses, news reports, or corporate records. There is no secret method for discovering this data other than actually looking. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that Hunter Biden was granted a 10% stake worth far in excess of what he paid for a firm that is literally operated and owned by the Chinese state.†
The facts here are quite a bit worse than any of the stuff that’s ever been floated about Trump’s kids.
This coincides with evolution of Joe Biden’s public positions towards China from negative to positive. In fact, it seems to start with Joe Biden’s cultivation while in the Senate by the former Chinese Ambassador, and current Vice President and member of Xi’s inner circle.
In short, Joe Biden’s not a crook, he’s a willing shill. WTF.
Oh heck, let’s just call him an employee of the CPC.
*******************************
Nixon was ended when his own allies from the Senate went to the White House. They had defended him for years, but it was information revealed in late July that led to that meeting in early August. And Nixon was toast.
The same thing needs to happen now. OMFG get him out for your own good.
† I’m still sort of stunned by one detail. Hunter Biden “bought” a stake in a project in 2013-4 that is now valued at roughly $50,000K. Except he didn’t actually pay for it at that time. He paid $400K for it in 2017. This is legal; but who the heck gets opportunities to watch their investment grow before paying the original list price?
