> it doesn't seem plausible to me that the Bidens would not make that fact public
It makes sense to me, considering how damaging and embarrassing the content was. If they confirm it, they lose plausible deniability in being able to claim it's fake.
For a large period of time there was a coordinated effort to purge everything from the Internet and paint anyone bringing it up as a conspiracy theorist. It's harder to get away with that if you call attention to the leak and confirm it's authenticity.
Perhaps the laptop truly belonged to Hunter Biden. Without a confirmation or proper chain of custody, it's hard to say either way. It's not implausible that an advanced threat actor, especially one backed by a nation-state, could create an elaborate laptop forgery to 'layer'[0] hacked material into a legitimate news story and avoid the hack itself taking centre-stage like in 2016 — of course, this is speculation on my part.
It makes sense to me, considering how damaging and embarrassing the content was. If they confirm it, they lose plausible deniability in being able to claim it's fake.
For a large period of time there was a coordinated effort to purge everything from the Internet and paint anyone bringing it up as a conspiracy theorist. It's harder to get away with that if you call attention to the leak and confirm it's authenticity.
Perhaps the laptop truly belonged to Hunter Biden. Without a confirmation or proper chain of custody, it's hard to say either way. It's not implausible that an advanced threat actor, especially one backed by a nation-state, could create an elaborate laptop forgery to 'layer'[0] hacked material into a legitimate news story and avoid the hack itself taking centre-stage like in 2016 — of course, this is speculation on my part.
[0] https://www.moneylaundering.ca/public/law/3_stages_ML.php#:~...