The son of the US president, Hunter Biden, snapped at a New York Post journalist after they wondered if he had recovered the notorious laptop that he purportedly forgot in a Delaware repair shop. The device's contents made headlines in some media outlets after they were revealed in October 2020 by the New York Post.
"There’s always a smart-a** in the bunch", Biden said after flashing a "tight grin" the New York Post reported.
Hunter Biden's wife, Melissa Cohen, who accompanied him on the way out of a party celebrating the first son's art exhibition in Manhattan, stepped in, claiming that the device in question "doesn't exist".
That claim, however, partly contradicts Hunter Biden's own earlier statements, in which he said he could not completely rule out that the laptop, abandoned in the Delaware repair shop, was not his. He even went as far as to allege it had not been abandoned, but might have been stolen from him by no less than "Russian intelligence".
"Certainly, there could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked, it could be that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me", Biden said in an interview with CBS.
According to the owner of the repair shop, Hunter Biden dropped off his laptop in April 2019 to recover the data from the device damaged by a liquid. However, he never showed up to retrieve the recovered data or the device. The owner then sent the recovered data to the FBI and simultaneously to Rudy Giuliani – Donald Trump's attorney. The latter handed over the data to the New York Post, which released some of its bombshell contents, that, however, were mostly ignored by the mainstream media.
Apart from numerous emails suggesting that Hunter Biden engaged in shady business schemes in China, one message cast a serious shadow on the claims of his father, Joe Biden, just ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
16 October 2021, 14:30 GMT
The email, allegedly sent in 2015 by Hunter's colleague on the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, Vadym Pozharskyi, suggested that he organised a meeting with his father, Joe Biden, when the latter still was US vice president. Joe Biden's office said that the alleged meeting with Pozharskyi was not on his schedule, but could not 100% guarantee it did not take place.
Biden himself repeatedly claimed that he keeps his son's business dealings separated from politics. However, the then-vice president played an important role in ending criminal proceedings in Ukraine against Burisma by pressing Kiev to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who initiated the probe.