Censorship of the laptop believed to have belonged to Hunter Biden in the final weeks of the 2020 election doesn’t warrant prosecutions, according to former Attorney General William Barr.
Newsmax host Sean Spicer, who served as former President Donald Trump’s first White House press secretary, pressed Barr on Thursday about whether there will be any “legal consequences” for the suppression of the story and for those who dismissed it as Russian disinformation.
“None that I can think of,” Barr said after noting that politicians and the media have a propensity to tell lies.
Details about Biden’s business dealings and personal life have emerged in the media thanks to copies of a laptop and hard drive, but early on, in October 2020, major media outlets sought to cast doubt on its authenticity, and Big Tech companies even took steps to suppress its spread in the final weeks of the election. A group of 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter suggesting Russia was involved, which led then-candidate Joe Biden and others to dismiss the laptop as being part of a Russian operation despite a lack of evidence.
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Barr spoke to the ramifications of the letter during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.
“The intelligence officials suggesting that it was Russian disinformation in order to essentially keep a cork in it until after the election,” Barr said, “I do think that … given how close the election was … that probably affected the outcome, or, at least, there is a very distinct probability of that.”
The FBI took possession of the actual hardware after the owner, believed to be Hunter Biden, left it for repairs at a shop in Delaware in April 2019 and never returned. Copies were made and spread across the media landscape, and the New York Post led the charge in reporting on the contents of the laptop.
When the New York Post attempted to post the articles on its Twitter account, the social media company claimed it violated its rule against sharing “hacked” materials, and both Twitter and Facebook limited users from sharing it for a time. Twitter locked the New York Post out of its account Oct. 14, 2020, in a standoff that lasted roughly two weeks.
In recent months, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post have come forth with reports saying at least some of the contents on the laptop have been authenticated. Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has called the New York Post lockout a “mistake,” and Elon Musk, who is on the verge of taking over Twitter in a $44 billion deal, called the censorship “incredibly inappropriate.”
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Hunter Biden’s financial affairs, including business dealings tied to countries such as Ukraine, China, and Russia, are under scrutiny in a federal criminal investigation. The younger Biden has never publicly denied that the laptop belonged to him but has insisted he is “100% certain” he will be cleared of wrongdoing.
As Republicans in the House gear up for a full-force investigation if they take control of the chamber after this year’s midterm elections, California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee’s panel on intellectual property and the internet, has sent out document preservation notices in preparation for an investigation into any efforts to suppress news coverage about the laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Barr agreed with Spicer that Republicans can investigate the laptop story, but when the host posited that there is “nothing” for which they could elicit a prosecution, the former attorney general said “Right.”
