Recently, Rudy Giuliani threatened to sue Tucker Carlson over Carlson’s attempt to rewrite the origins of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
To understand why Tucker would do this, consider both what Hunter can offer him and the relationship they already had. The two were neighbors, their wives were friends, and in 2014 Tucker and his wife asked Hunter to help their son get into Georgetown. Hunter wrote to the university’s president, and Tucker thanked him and suggested dinner.
Hunter belongs to one of America’s most powerful political families, practically a criminal enterprise that has spent decades trading on Joe Biden’s office, protecting its own and escaping consequences that would destroy almost anyone else. Hunter has money, connections, secrets, access, and intimate knowledge of Democratic power structures. He can bridge that world with the dissident right Tucker is assembling with Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and others.
Both camps, the Biden-Democratic machine and the anti-Trump faction now forming on the populist right, have an interest in weakening Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party. Tucker’s new political party has virtually no chance of winning; its immediate practical effect will be to siphon votes and energy from MAGA. Hunter’s prestige and information could help that project. But first, America’s best-connected former crack addict must be made publicly respectable again.
The greatest obstacle to Hunter’s return is the laptop material about his behavior around children. Burisma, Ukraine and “10% for the big guy” are politically damaging, but leave him room to argue over introductions, percentages, restaurant meetings and what his father knew. Allegations involving children, sex, drugs and Hunter’s conduct inside his family are much harder for the public to forget.
The laptop messages document Hallie Biden’s accusations that Hunter had been sexually inappropriate with her minor daughter. Hunter wrote that Hallie accused him of walking around naked, smoking crack, and talking to women on FaceTime with the girl, and believed a visit would mean him “walking around naked watching porn, masturbating, and doing drugs in front of her.” Other messages accuse Hunter of “getting off sexually” with the girl and posing “a danger sexually” to her; Hunter himself wrote that the girl thought he had molested her.
The family knew.
Jim Biden told Hunter that he and Joe were being “barraged by Hallie,” assured him they were on his side, and said they needed his account to “shove it down her fucking throat.” Hunter wrote that Jill had told Joe he was “sexually inappropriate with the children.” Hallie restricted contact: Hunter complained to Joe that she would permit him to see the girl only with Joe present “for her protection.”
Yaacov Apelbaum, the forensic analyst John Paul Mac Isaac brought in to examine the laptop data and create a forensic image, took this material to Tucker’s team in October 2020 before the election. He spent hours with Tucker’s producer and supplied a flash drive he described as a complete, actionable intelligence product; he also gave the material to the FBI. Apelbaum and Mac Isaac identify it as the drive Tucker later said had vanished in transit to California, essentially “lost in the mail.” Fox retained a copy, however, and UPS recovered the original shortly afterward.
Tucker therefore had the material and a copy, even while the package was supposedly missing. With laptop information already pouring into public view, he could not suppress the entire story. His coverage focused on Burisma and the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, leaving the most serious sexual allegations involving a child untouched.
Tucker has now admitted knowing about allegations involving the abuse of minors, but since his maniacal obsession with Jews and Israel began, he has claimed that “Israelis connected to Benjamin Netanyahu” brought them to him, while presenting no evidence that Israel, Mossad, or Netanyahu fabricated anything about Hunter and none beyond his own assertion that they brought the material to Fox.
His own account confirms that his team received the allegations before the 2020 election. Had Tucker believed they were false, he could have investigated and disproved them; had he thought they might be true, suppressing them was unconscionable. Five years later, he is helping Hunter ingratiate himself with the public by allowing him to dismiss the allegations as an Israeli operation without confronting a single underlying family message.
Which brings us to Jordan Arthur Bloom.
Bloom had worked for Tucker at The Daily Caller, then became editor of The American Conservative while Tucker chaired its advisory board. Presumably acting as Tucker’s proxy, Bloom accused Apelbaum of being an Israeli spy who shaped the Hunter Biden laptop story. Bloom was supposed to give Tucker cover to pin the whole thing on Israel, but it backfired spectacularly.
Apelbaum sued Bloom for defamation. Bloom stayed in communication with Tucker and tried to defeat the case with First Amendment and anti-SLAPP defenses. A Bloom victory would have given Tucker a court outcome to wave around: Apelbaum sued after being called an Israeli agent and lost, so Bloom’s description had survived legal scrutiny.
Tucker could then attach a name to the story. Yaacov Apelbaum, the supposed Israeli operative, had pushed fraudulent allegations against Hunter Biden as part of an Israeli intelligence operation. Hunter would become the victim of Mossad or Netanyahu, and Tucker’s burial of the allegations would be recast as wise skepticism.
Except Apelbaum won.
A federal jury found Bloom liable for falsely portraying Apelbaum as an Israeli spy and determined that he had acted with actual malice. Bloom was hit with $800,000 in damages.
The verdict made it unsafe for Tucker to use Apelbaum’s name while accusing him of acting for Israel. So, the specific man disappeared: “Yaacov Apelbaum” became “the Israelis,” then “Israelis connected to Netanyahu.” Vagueness preserved the accusation beyond the reach of another defamation verdict.
But Hunter clearly didn’t get the memo and named Apelbaum during the interview. Tucker visibly squirmed, and hard swallows followed. Hunter had connected Tucker’s hazy story about mysterious Israelis directly to the American cybersecurity expert who handled the material and won an $800,000 verdict over the claim that he was an Israeli spy. Hunter had accidentally exposed Tucker’s entire game. It was a beautifully awkward and revealing moment.
So, the purpose of the interview is clear: Hunter is presented as a reflective survivor whose corruption and depravity were exaggerated by a foreign operation; Tucker is relieved of responsibility for sitting on the most explosive material his team received before the 2020 election; Apelbaum is erased and replaced by nameless foreign agents as Israel and Netanyahu inherit responsibility for the Hunter allegations; Hunter gets washed clean enough to reenter public life, and Tucker gains a powerful ally capable of bridging the Biden machine and his emerging faction on the right.
In other words, Tucker Carlson’s interview with Hunter Biden was a full-blown laundering operation.
Welcome to the new resistance.
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