Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, has revealed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, emailed a shop owner who had his hard drive in an effort to get it back.
The revelations come as the New York Post this week released an expose detailing links between Joe Biden and his son who was paid at least $50,000 a month to sit on the board of a Ukrainian energy company who allegedly set up a meeting with the then-Vice President.
Information regarding Hunter Biden’s relationship with the Ukranian energy company was sourced from a collection of emails recovered from a laptop that was allegedly dropped off at a repair shop in 2019 and later given to the FBI.
It was a water-damaged MacBook Pro and the person who dropped it off never paid for the service and didn’t retrieve it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored – according to the shop owner who said he repeatedly tried to contact the customer.
Sky News host Sharri Markson said the owner of the repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware says when he did not hear back from the FBI, he made a copy of the hard drive and gave it to Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Emails on the laptop revealed that Hunter Biden had planned to introduce his father – the then-Vice President – to an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma, a company where Hunter served on the board of directors.
Publicly, Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings. These emails seem to indicate otherwise.
In one message sent by Vadym Pozharsky in April 2015, he wrote: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together. It’s realty (sic) an honour and pleasure.”
In response to this news, Facebook and Twitter both censored the article from the New York Post, advising they were “limiting the distribution” of the story on their platforms until a third-party contractor can “fact check” the article.
Mr Bannon told Ms Markson, “Hunter Biden’s lawyer has come to us both with phone calls and with emails saying, ‘hey, I’ve got to get the hard drive back’.”
“This is not some Russian intelligence operation; they admit it’s their hard drive,” Mr Bannon said.
“We have the emails from the Lawyer, if we need to release them, we’ll release them.”
‘Disgrace’: Twitter, Facebook censor Hunter Biden story
Sky News host Andrew Bolt has condemned Twitter and Facebook for running a “protection racket” for Joe Biden after they censored a report on explosive emails revealing an alleged meeting between the former vice president and a Ukrainian businessman.
“Twitter and Facebook – they’re running a protection racket for Joe Biden and keeping news from you using their incredible market power,” Mr Bolt said.
“It is a disgrace and a threat to democracy.”
The New York Post said it received a copy of a hard drive from a laptop, left at a repair shop, via the Trump campaign which included emails and candid images of Mr Biden’s son, Hunter.
A document obtained from the hard drive showed an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma Holdings, which expressed thanks to Hunter for arranging a meeting with his father, who was then the vice president.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an (sic) opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together. It’s realty (sic) an honor and pleasure,” the email said.
The meeting, in April 2015 in Washington, DC, took place less than a year before Mr Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.
Mr Bolt pointed out the contrast between how the social media giants manage content about Mr Biden and President Donald Trump.
“When did Twitter and Facebook ever apply those same standards to protecting Donald Trump?” he said.
“Trump’s tax records the other day were stolen and leaked, Twitter and Facebook didn’t mind, no warning there, no bans.
“And for years the media published, promoted, talked up a faked dossier that Democrats had paid for.”
Mr Bolt said the social media giants had gone to “astonishing” and “frightening” lengths to stop the public reading about the story.
“The excuses Twitter and Facebook gave for this political censorship, let’s be honest about it, that’s all it is, changed during the day,” he said.
“Oh, look the link was unsafe, no the material was stolen, these emails, no, no actually it was private information, it was false, whatever.
