Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or only consume information fed to you by the legacy media and Biden town halls), you’re likely aware a big story broke earlier this week concerning a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, wayward son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The New York Post broke the story (and subsequently, the Internet — or, rather, the social media behemoths otherwise known as Twitter and Facebook, who set the land-speed record for bending over backward to “stop the spread” of the story.)
Immediately, questions were raised as to the provenance of the laptop. Fair questions. I mean, the story is rather fantastical. Yet, you’ll note that the Biden camp hasn’t denied that the e-mails and photos are authentic. To the extent they’ve addressed it at all (I mean directly, not through Big Tech’s intervention), they’ve quibbled with some of the interpretations and danced around the issue of whether an actual meeting between the elder Biden and Hunter’s Ukrainian business associate/Burisma executive occurred. (“Well, it wasn’t on his official calendar!” You don’t say?!)
In other words, despite the warranted skepticism as to how exactly a Delaware computer repair shop owner with admitted partisan preferences just happened to wind up with a water-damaged laptop full of damning evidence pertaining to the former Vice President and would-be President and his son (which then found its way to Rudy Giuliani), it appears that said damning evidence may, indeed, be the real deal, rather than a fabricated ruse.
Though the Post didn’t identify the shop owner in its piece, it didn’t take internet sleuths but a millisecond to identify him and track him down (amazing how swiftly these things unfold given the proper motivation). Business Insider ran an article the day the story broke describing how he was revealed/identified:
However, two photos published in the Post’s story seem to point to a specific business in the Trolley Square neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware.
The photos, which appeared in a related slideshow, depict the first and third pages of a subpoena seeking a MacBook laptop and an external hard drive. The metadata of both photos show they were taken at, or very close to, a local establishment called The Mac Shop.
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The article included a photo of the federal-court subpoena showing that the FBI seized the computer and hard drive in December. It’s unclear why the bureau subpoenaed or seized the hardware after the repair shop’s owner voluntarily told authorities of its existence.
But the first photo in the Post story, depicting the cover page of the subpoena, offers additional clues. If you look closely, you’ll notice the faint outlines of handwriting, between and behind the printed text, that seem to suggest something was written on the reverse side of the page. This would make sense, as the blank subpoena — Form AO 110 — contains a second page to be filled out by the agent who serves it.
Reversing the image of the first page, and superimposing it on a blank version of the subpoena’s second page, clearly shows that the placement of the faint handwriting lines up with the placement of the various fields and design elements of the second page. The same handwriting indicates that the subpoena was served to a person or entity with four relatively short names, the third and fourth of which appear to begin with a capital “M” and a capital “I.” The owner of The Mac Shop appears to be a man named John Paul Mac Isaac.
Not only that, but the Insider noted that the photos included a clue as to the FBI agent who signed the subpoena that was served on the shop:
Further analysis of the subpoena’s faint handwriting suggests it was served by an FBI agent who listed their address as the bureau’s satellite office in downtown Wilmington. The name of the server, though not 100% legible, appears to be “Joshua Wilson.” Over the past decade, a number of news outlets have quoted or described an FBI agent with the same name.Last year, The Star-Ledger newspaper described Wilson as “an FBI agent based in New Jersey who has spent nearly five years working full time on child pornography.” In 2012, the same Joshua Wilson signed a criminal complaint that charged a New Jersey man with collecting and distributing child pornography. The signature on that complaint clearly matches the unreversed signature on the subpoena published by the New York Post.
The question then became: So, how long has the FBI had this laptop, and what exactly have they been doing with it? And, perhaps even more importantly, did they deliberately sit on this during the entire impeachment fiasco? (Note: I saw this asked repeatedly on Twitter and that thought occurred to me, as well. However, I’m not entirely certain that it would have been appropriate to reveal this information if they were in the process of investigating the situation. And, frankly, I don’t know that the information itself would have forestalled the impeachment, as the Dems would have continued to wave it away as irrelevant to their inquiry.)
It’s fair to question the FBI’s role in this. But do you know who else should be questioned? The Republicans in Congress (and their staff) who were made aware of this information and apparently did nothing with it, while the impeachment proceeded apace.
Adam Housley, who was a senior correspondent for the Fox News Channel until 2018, and now oversees his family’s winery in Lodi, CA, is one of my favorite follows on Twitter. He still maintains many of his connections/sources from his correspondent days and he’s not shy about sharing the tidbits of info that still come his way. He’s fairly careful not to say too much (presumably so as not to burn his sources), but he often says enough. Oh, and he goes out of his way to stay non-partisan — so if you can’t abide someone who doesn’t fully embrace Trump or the GOP (or the DNC, for that matter) — his timeline may not be to your taste. That said, it’s one of my primary go-to’s (in addition to Sharyl Attkisson and Catherine Herridge) when I want to get a bead on a hot news story.
Last night, Housley elaborated regarding the laptop’s journey and current status:
“JP” is the computer technician/shop owner (presumably the man identified in the Insider’s article.) In the next tweet, Housley’s “JO” is a typo — the intended reference is to JP. Note: they first attempted to alert the FBI in September 2019 — that’s 13 months ago. Per Housley in a later tweet, “I think there were three computers and he was tasked with putting all the info onto one hard drive. I’ll work to get clarification…tho it’s all coming out.”
Here, Housley likely means Joshua Wilson (referenced in the Business Insider article excerpted above.) Two months between the initial contact and a meeting.
Housley rightly notes the issuance of the subpoena raises a question, given that the hard drive was offered voluntarily. It may have simply been a formality. It may have been, in all honesty, an effort to give the shop owner cover for turning the computer/hard drive over, even if they rightfully belonged to him by that point, having been abandoned. And, again, he notes that its existence wasn’t divulged during the impeachment.
Later, Housley pointed out that Giuliani’s involvement could have been less than helpful:
More importantly, he notes that it isn’t just the FBI who should be scrutinized about this — what about those Republican staffers? Even if the FBI was not at liberty to disclose the information due to an ongoing investigation (or some other regulation), there were Republicans who had the information yet did nothing with it, despite the impeachment:
Why?
There are many questions that deserve answers. Regardless of the looming election — let’s hope we get some in the coming days.