Source says the Hunter Biden laptop controversy hints at a Russian disinformation operation
- President Donald Trump's lawyer and the New York Post getting their hands on a mysterious laptop purportedly containing embarrassing information about Hunter Biden is "too perfect," an Estonian intelligence official told Insider.
- The emails that the Post reported on are probably a mixture of real and manipulated material — a classic Russian disinformation tactic, the official said.
- "I can't imagine the Russians aren't involved in some way. On the small chance they're not I'm sure they're going to consider it a missed opportunity," the official said.
An Estonian intelligence official with knowledge of Russian intelligence operations says the Hunter Biden computer email scandal hints at a Russian disinformation operation.
The New York Post ignited a firestorm after it published a controversial story Wednesday purporting to show "smoking-gun" emails featuring Hunter Biden communicating with a top executive of Burisma Holdings, whose board he served on from 2014 to 2019.
The Post said it learned of the emails from former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and obtained a copy of the hard drive from President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The paper said Giuliani obtained the emails when an unidentified computer-repair-shop owner contacted his lawyer last year after someone dropped off a water-damaged laptop but never picked it up.
It's unclear if the story or the emails are authentic and much of the information provided in the New York Post's account was widely criticized as being misleading.
The Estonian intelligence official said that in a typical Russian disinformation operation, real documents are salted with forged or manipulated information and then presented in a way that news media — and social media — cannot resist.
"It's just too perfect," the official, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told Insider. "A laptop is dropped off to a blind computer repairman in the name of Hunter Biden — in the middle of a presidential election — that happens to be filled with extensive documents along with videos of sex and drug use and it ends up in the hands of the president's lawyer, who publicly admits to working closely with a Ukrainian official that the Trump administration itself has sanctioned as a Russian intelligence asset attempting to interfere in the presidential campaign."
Giuliani met with a sanctioned Ukrainian national to dig up dirt on Biden
The Post said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani obtained a copy of the hard drive from the computer repair shop in Delaware after it was dropped off in April 2019, but it's unclear when exactly Giuliani received it. The shop's owner, who said he is legally blind, told The Washington Post he was almost certain it was Hunter Biden who dropped off the laptop. He added that he repeatedly tried to contact Biden to return the computer, but when he got no response, he searched its contents, became concerned, and contacted Giuliani, members of Congress, and the FBI.
Giuliani met last year with Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian national who was sanctioned in September for acting as a Russian agent and spreading disinformation related to the 2020 election. The Washington Post reported that Giuliani and Derkach met to discuss digging up damaging information about the Bidens and Burisma.
The New York Post said Bannon alerted it to the emails' existence late last month, and Giuliani turned over a copy of the hard drive on Sunday.
Bannon was arrested in August and charged with fraud related to an online fundraising campaign. Giuliani is currently under federal criminal investigation over whether he violated foreign lobbying laws. Two of his Ukrainian associates were also indicted for wire fraud and campaign finance violations.
'I can't imagine the Russians aren't involved in some way'
The Estonian official told Insider that Russian intelligence operatives would perceive Trump associates searching for politically incriminating material against the president's rivals as an attractive target.
"Of course they're sending Giuliani nonsense just to see if it gets noticed," the official speculated. "It's exactly what an operative would be looking for: You don't need to convince the FBI or CIA or reporters at The New York Times. You just have to convince Giuliani. And he very much wants to be convinced. Or maybe he doesn't need to believe the information is true. I don't know. But I do know the Russians will think it so perfect that they won't care if he believes the shit or not because they know he will pass it along either way."
The New York Times reported that Russian military intelligence hackers breached Burisma's servers in January.
The Estonian official said that "we have known these emails would eventually show up" but cautioned that they did not know whether the laptop was "real or not."
"Now, if this is really a Russian disinformation operation, they will seed fake emails or videos that will be considering incriminating into a dump of what seems legitimate and might be verified," the official added. "We know hackers close to [Russian military intelligence] stole the Burisma emails, we know that Giuliani works with a Russian intelligence asset, we know the laptop has, to put it mildly, suspicious origins. And what little technical data they have provided about the emails and the hard drive itself doesn't make a lot of sense if this was all real."
The official concluded: "I can't imagine the Russians aren't involved in some way. On the small chance they're not, I'm sure they're going to consider it a missed opportunity."