The FBI determined that the infamous "laptop from hell" belonged to Hunter Biden as early as November 6, 2019, and by spring 2020 the bureau had concluded that there was "no reason to believe there is anything fabricated nefariously on the computer and/or hard drive," according to a contemporaneous investigative memo by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.
In late May, Shapley delivered testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee which was made public earlier this week. The IRS agent also presented a memo, penned by him in October 2020, and shared by independent media outlet Just the News on June 25. The memo provides a detailed chronology of the FBI's activities concerning the laptop in question, which was abandoned by the first son in a Delaware repair shop.
As per the document, the bureau received information about the device containing "evidence of white collar crimes" in October 2019 and quickly attributed the laptop to Hunter Biden – codenamed "Sportsman" in the document – via Apple ID account/iCloud account and supporting evidence.
"Financial records show Sportsman was around Wilmington DE shop at a cigar shop on the same day,” the memo said. "Other intelligence shows Sportsman was in the area. Computershop calls Sportsman to tell him to bring in an external hard drive to put recovered data on to. Sportsman returned to the shop with the external hard drive. Phone records show the shop called Sportsman and Sportsman called the shop around this time."
Having taken possession of the device in December 2019, the agency started to scrupulously analyze its content which included messages, emails, pictures, and other types of files. By May 2020, FBI agents had little if any doubts that the collection of files was authentic and belonged to the younger Biden.
However, when the New York Post released its October 2020 story stemming from the laptop's content, the bureau and 51 ex-intelligence chiefs rubbished the bombshell as "Russia's disinformation operation".
Before that, during all of 2020, the FBI warned Twitter officials about an allegedly forthcoming "Russian hack-and-leak" operation "involving Hunter Biden", as per Twitter's then-Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth's testimony. The bureau particularly referred to APT28, claiming that it's a group of Russian hackers linked to Moscow's intelligence services.
24 December 2022, 12:41 GMT
Roth later told the US press that when Hunter's emails finally emerged, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells." On October 13, 2020, a day before the Post's publication, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan contacted Roth once again; on October 14, 2020, Twitter promptly banned the "laptop from hell" story.
Almost simultaneously, Biden campaign top operative Antony Blinken asked former acting CIA Director Michael Morell to smear the laptop saga as a ruse.
As per the House Judiciary Committee, in April 2023, "Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken… reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, although [Blinken's] outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell's reaction to the Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement."
Five days after the release of the Hunter Biden story, the US mainstream press got a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials including CIA Directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Mike Hayden, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as well as Michael Morell. The letter claimed that the data on Hunter's laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
According to Shapley, the FBI knew at the time that all the evidence cited by the Post was "reliable" which raises further questions about the alleged cover-up of the Biden family by the Justice Department and the bureau and their special treatment of political dynasty families.