With only 20 days before the presidential election, the New York Post published what it called a smoking-gun email in a front-page feature accusing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of high-level political corruption. Within hours of its publication, the viral story was dominating the news cycle, with aggressive promotion from President Donald Trumps campaign.

Trumpworld seems to believe it has found an October bombshell that will damage Bidens dominant standing in the polls. But critical elements of the story are dubious, contradictory or outright false.

As the Post tells it, Bidens son, Hunter, left his damaged laptop which, the story claims, contained footage of him having sex while smoking crack at a Delaware repair shop last spring, but he never came back for it. The unnamed shop owner, unaware that the laptop was Hunter Bidens, noticed a Beau Biden Foundation sticker on it, so he made a copy of the hard drive and gave it to Robert Costello an attorney forTrumps lawyer, Rudy Giuliani who later gave it to the Post. The hard drive contained a 2015 email from a top executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, thanking Hunter for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and [spend] some time together.

The Post concludes that this is evidence of Joe Bidens misconduct because Hunter Biden introduced his father to the Burisma executive less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. (Bidens campaign says the alleged meeting with the Burisma executive never occurred.)

Its a highly suspicious narrative thats riddled with inconsistencies and other red flags. The storys premise and very first sentence contain a glaring, long-debunked falsehood: Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor in question, was not investigating Burisma, as The Washington Post reported more than a year ago in response to Trumps similar false claims at the time. In fact, Biden and other Western officials had pushed for Shokins ouster precisely because of his failure to probe the firm. The Obama-Biden administration was actually considering launching a U.S. investigation into Burismas alleged money laundering.

Its one of several inconsistencies in the storys version of events. Here are some of the biggest questions surrounding it.

How did the laptop end up at the repair shop?

John Paul MacIsaac, identified as the owner of the laptop repair shop after the Posts story published, told reporters on Wednesday that Hunter Biden had actually dropped off three laptops at his shop last April. MacIsaac initially suggested that because he is legally blind, he didnt recognize the younger Biden when he came into the shop and only later determined that the laptop was his after noticing the sticker, as the Post reported.

But MacIsaac later changed his story, claiming that Hunter Biden had actually introduced himself by name at the time.

Throughout the interview, MacIssac seemed nervous and claimed without elaborating that his life was in danger. He described Trumps impeachment as a sham, vaguely implied the FBI is involved in a coverup surrounding the alleged scandal, and repeatedly declined to answer whether he is or was working with Giuliani.

On Thursday, Giuliani, who was not present at the laptop repair shop at the time of the supposed dropoff, told SiriusXM that Hunter Biden was definitely the person who handed off the computer and that he was in an inebriated, heavily inebriated state at the time.

How did the emails get to the FBI?

MacIsaac claims that he made several unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with Hunter Biden and that his stores contract allows him to take possession of devices if they are not retrieved after 90 days. After the 90-day period had passed, MacIsaac said he grew curious about the contents of the computer. According to the Post, MacIsaac then made a copy of the hard drive and handed the hardware over to the FBI.

But in conversations with reporters, MacIsaac dodged the question of how he came to be in touch with federal agents. At first, he told reporters that the FBI approached him, although it is unclear how the bureau would have known about the existence and location of the laptops. He later told reporters that he reached out to people he trusted who connected him with contacts inside the FBI. And then they showed up, MacIsaac claimed.

How did Giuliani get involved?

MacIsaac told reporters that he became frustrated that the material on the laptop hadnt become public, so he gave a copy of the hard drive to Costello, Giulianis attorney. He refused to say whether he reached out to the attorney or if the attorney sought him out. He also would not say whether he has been in direct contact with Giuliani himself.

Giuliani is a notoriously unreliable source of information. As Trumps personal lawyer, he has long acted as a political operative targeting Biden for the Trump campaign, including traveling with far-right media outlet One America News to Ukraine as part of an effort to spread conspiracy theories about Biden. Over the course of the election campaign, Giuliani has repeatedly made wild claims without any evidence to back them up and has spun bizarre theories in an attempt to create the perception that Biden engaged in corruption.

Giuliani is now promising a slow release of allegedly damning information on the Bidens. On his personal website, he posted what he claims is a 2019 text message from Hunter Biden to his sister, Naomi, that was not included in the Posts story. There is no context for the alleged screenshot, no verification as to whether it is real, and no explanation as to why the Post didnt cover it.

How did the story end up in the New York Post?

The provenance of the Post story and the papers acquisition of the alleged copy of Bidens hard drive is vague and raises numerous questions. The report states that far-right media influencer and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September before Giuliani gave the outlet a copy on Sunday.

Both Giuliani and Bannon have pushed conspiracy theories and have close ties to Trump. The lead reporter on the Post story, Emma-Jo Morris, was formerly a producer for Fox News host and Trump ally Sean Hannity, as well as a former staffer at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The Hunter Biden stories were her first bylines for The Post, although she has worked there since April, according to her LinkedIn profile. On her Instagram account, Morris has posted numerous photos of herself posing with Trump associates including Bannon and Roger Stone.

Pro-Trump media has already begun to heavily promote and expand upon the story, with Fox News host Tucker Carlson announcing that he would release more of Bidens emails during his Thursday night prime-time show.

Are the emails authentic?

There is no indication that the Post conducted a forensic analysis to confirm the authenticity of the emails and photographs. The Post says it received the material on Sunday, just three days before publishing its report.

The metadata in the PDF files published by the Post, which supposedly contain Bidens emails, show that the files were created in September and October of 2019 months after MacIsaac said the laptops were dropped off and a full year before the Post story dropped.

Hunter Bidens lawyer George Mesires said in a statement, We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the NY Post.

Disinformation experts warned that the timing of emails release, the way they became public, and the lack of forensic evidence are all signs that the material could be the result of forgery, a hack, or a combination of the two. The Russian GRU unit responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016 hacked Burisma, The New York Times reported earlier this year, prompting fears that material from the hack would be leaked near the election in an effort to hurt Bidens campaign.

We want to know what youre hearing on the ground from the candidates. If you get any interesting or suspicious! campaign mailers, robocalls or hear anything else you think we should know about, email us at scoops@huffpost.com.

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Anatomy Of A Smear: Questions Surrounding The New York Posts Hunter Biden Story - HuffPost