‘NBC News’ Debunks Validity Of Hunter Biden Documents In Blow To Trump

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NBC News has revealed that the purported author of a 64-page document outlining corruption allegations against Hunter Biden does not actually exist. The document claims to be the work of a Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, but researchers have shown that a supposed image of Aspen is actually a creation of artificial intelligence, which can generate images of faces, making scams somewhat more difficult to spot and track. After all, these supposed people don’t have other identities on the internet — but they don’t exist in the real world either. The intelligence firm that supposedly produced the Hunter Biden document, Typhoon Investigations, does not appear to actually exist either.

The LinkedIn profile for Aspen claimed that he worked at a company called Swiss Security Solutions from 2016 through 2020. This company does actually exist, but they have confirmed that no one named Martin Aspen ever worked there — adding that no one named “Martin Aspen” even lives in Switzerland, in fact. Despite the documentation that the document’s origin was faked, people in the president’s inner circle were duped — the allegations were “disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump,” NBC notes, and this document’s emergence shortly preceded an infamous New York Post story claiming to reveal contents from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The allegations with the faked origin include the claim that “that Hunter Biden has a problematic connection to the Communist Party of China,” which has been used as an excuse “to baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government,” as NBC puts it. These Hunter Biden corruption allegations in the dossier with the faked origin first emerged last September on a blog called Intelligence Quarterly. Professor Christopher Balding posted it on his own blog weeks later — and he has admitted to having written portions of the material, and he has also admitted that “Martin Aspen,” the document’s alleged author, does not actually exist. Balding insisted that “the primary author of the report, due to personal and professional risks, requires anonymity” — although it’s definitely unclear that he’s telling the truth.

Balding claimed that the document was commissioned by a Hong Kong-based media outlet called Apple Daily, which has confirmed that it worked with Balding on the material. Balding promoted the document on former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, and even former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich tweeted out a link to the material. Blog posts spotlighting the document have received a whopping 70,000 public interactions across Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Nevertheless — the document’s origin was faked.

Ukrainian legislator Andrii Derkach, who has worked to spread dirt about the Bidens in the U.S., has been characterized by the U.S. federal government itself as a Russian agent, and he has been sanctioned. At one point, top Trump ally Rudy Giuliani met with Derkach, and Derkach also sent materials to GOP Senators, although these Senators have attempted to unequivocally distance themselves from him.

Donald Trump has pushed outright lies about the Biden family. During the final debate, he claimed that “Joe got $3.5 million from Russia and it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow and it was the mayor of Moscow’s wife” — but this claim is false. There is no documented payment of $3.5 million from Russia to Joe Biden — period. A former mayor of Moscow’s wife made a $3.5 million payment for consulting services to a firm with a name similar to one that Hunter Biden co-founded, but there’s no documented link to Hunter Biden, either.