The thing is... if there was anything actually damning or illegal in these emails, the FBI supposedly already had them months ago and nothing came out of it. Rudy's decision to push ahead and have NY Post run a smear campaign using them... seems unwise. https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1317191231257051138

The story this came from a laptop that was dropped off at a computer repair shop run by a Seth Rich truther who has no idea who actually dropped them off, but he happened to open them, make copies of the hard drive, and... somehow come into contact with Rudy... doesn't add up.

I feel like it's way more likely that if the contents are legit, they came from a hack... specifically the hack NYT reported on in January. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html

But rather than acknowledge these came from a hack almost identical to 2016, and Rudy was conspiring with the people who hacked them to harm Biden (though, again, there don't seem to be any actual crimes in there, or... really anything scandalous), they made up a laptop story.

We know that Russia hacked the DNC's emails in 2016, fed them to Wikileaks, who dripped them out over the course of months to try to influence voters who were flooded with news about them anytime a new batch came out.

And we know that Russia hacked Burisma with the specific intention of finding something that could hurt Biden.

And suddenly, weeks away from the election a bunch of Biden's son's emails show up in a story from the NY Post with a cover story that makes no damn sense?

They're doing it again. The Trump campaign paid no price for cheating last time around, working with people claiming to have dirt on Clinton (which turned out to be the DNC's emails). And now they're doing it again. Amazing. Just amazing.

I'm curious if the New York Post knew the "laptop" backstory was BS or if they were genuinely fooled by the least convincing cover story ever.

In any case, there doesn't actually seem to be anything in the emails (even if they're legit) indicating that Joe Biden did anything wrong. NY Post slapped a headline calling them a "smoking gun" and made a bunch of insinuations, but nothing actually backs them up.

I think they're hoping that by releasing a story every day or so with some sort of NEW SHOCKING REVELATION that people will think there's a story there. But... the existence of emails themselves aren't actually a scandal.

Also... the lead reporter on those stories... has *only* written about this one specific topic. Zero bylines before this week.

And she had apparently been working at the Post since April. So you might think, "Okay, maybe she was working on these stories over a course of several months." https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1316395373620072449

But the article itself very specifically says that the Post only received this data *this week*

And yeah, she worked for Hannity for 3.5+ years as a segment producer... doing social media for Matt Schlapp's organization before that... and then... had a summer internship for a few months before that.

Odd resume for someone handed what is supposed to be a huge story.

But seriously compare the journalism here:

NYT on Trump's taxes: Examined thousands of taxes spanning years, conducted "dozens of interviews," cross-referenced public and private data.

NY Post on HB's emails: Received mystery files on 10/11. Published story on 10/14. #YOLO

NYT: here's an article explaining why we believe this is newsworthy, we will be clear what these stories show and what they don't show, we've assigned a team to this who have been working on this beat for nearly 4 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/trump-taxes-editors-note.html

Meanwhile, NYP is over there like, "Hey, we can't vouch for any of this, BUT you see where he says "my guy" here? That's referring to his dad..we think. And we're not sure what's being discussed here, but MAYBE it's shady? We're gonna say it was, but not specify what was illegal"

I know I criticize NYT reporters and editors a fair amount on here, but that's usually over story framing or story selection. Their process is thorough. NYP's process seems to be more like the thought process that someone goes through before posting a Facebook article.

I feel like what the Post is doing right now shows how reckless they are as supposed journalists.

In 2016, there were several news organizations that could have published the Steele dossier ahead of the election. They didn't, in part, because they couldn't verify the claims.

And that's what journalists do: they report out what they can verify. The only outlet that wrote anything about the dossier before the election at all was Mother Jones, and that was a post about what could be verified: that a dossier was being looked at by the FBI. No one else.

BuzzFeed waited until January 2017 to publish what they had. Some people agreed with the decision, others didn't agree, but it didn't swing an election.

For NYP to publish this series, which a.) lacks verification, b.) is framed as evidence of a crime or wrongdoing even though nothing in the documents reported on actually illustrate that, and c.) lacks any sort of context, it's irresponsible. It's not journalism.

Important BuzzFeed context: https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1317219712363909121

In any case, the whole thing with whatever NYP's doing right now just falls short of meeting even the most basic even the most basic ethics standards in reporting. I've been thinking about that a lot today.