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If I had to summarize my post it would be "I started to suspect that motteposting was potentially arguing in bad faith or being inconsistent, so I laid a trap to see how he'd react to his own argument. Despite what I emotionally desired, motteposting demonstrated commendable consistency, although there were a few questions at the fringe. In the course of the discussion, he also changed my mind about something. The end."
I don't know what this means, what exactly do you find suspicious?
I think I understand the general pushback against focusing too much on a single user's actions but I believe it was appropriate here because it's difficult to discuss these topics in the abstract. And I'm not at all opposed to examining my own biases, but I have to admit that I have blindspots like everyone else. I like to think that I'm sufficiently scrutinizing but that's going to reek of "we've investigated ourselves and concluded we did nothing wrong."
I'll answer your questions in turn:
There's two parts here, Hutchinson's claim of what she heard, and whether what she heard actually happened. On what she heard, Hutchinson to me came across as credible because she doesn't appear to have either a motive or a history of lying. She described the events with sufficient detail, and named every person that was privy to the conversation. She provided this testimony under oath and was annoyed at being subpoenaed. As falsification, if Hutchinson wanted to lie and make up something damning about Trump to get back at him or whatever, the far easier thing for her to have done would be to talk about a scenario that did not involve her listening in on a conversation with 3 other people (who are available to refute what she said). If I was playing the role of Lying Hutchinson, I would've conjured up something salacious that only Trump would be in the position of denying (e.g. sexual harassment).
Regarding the claims about the steering wheel lunging incident, it seems plausible to me. Trump does not strike me as someone with good temperament control, especially in private away from the cameras. There was testimony from other people that corroborated how thrilled he was about what his supporters were doing on J6, and how much he wanted to be in the thick of it. The other testimony also established how surprised his security detail was when he declared during his speech that he was going to walk down to the capitol, because they had not prepared anything like that. Two secret service agents claimed to contradict Hutchinson's ultimate lunging claim and apparently said they were willing to testify back in June, but they haven't materialized. All that leads me to think it makes sense that Trump really wanted to go to the capitol, that his security detail said no, and that he's impulsive enough to act out the way he did.
At the time I wrote it, the parallels were kind of basic and mostly along the lines of "This person we know little about made a claim with no real corroborating evidence, should we believe them?" I realized after that there was a lot more corroborating evidence from Bobulinski I didn't know about (motteposting's first reply to me didn't mention any of it).
The lack of written proof wouldn't necessarily settle the issue on its own, but my operating assumption is that a deal like this would leave a paper trail of some kind, and all we had were very vague terse lines about "H holding 10 for the big guy." I did not know about their insistence not to discuss the deal in writing until I saw the Gilliar text messages after, and also Hunter saying somewhere that Joe Biden prefers talking on the phone. That is a compelling explanation for why the paper trail I was looking for and expecting would not exist.
Because they've had access to so much of Hunter's files for so long, my assumption is that the CEFC deal is is the most damning thing they could nail on Joe Biden (since that's the real goal). But the CEFC deal was only talked about and never happened. I also find 2rafa's idea that Hunter was largely talking a big game about his dad's involvement to generate clout to make a lot of sense given the lack of solid detail of Joe Biden's involvement. Even with their insistence not to discuss the deal in writing, I know from experience that people fuck up and break security protocol, and I still would expect some sort of corroborating evidence that Hunter was funneling money to his dad (e.g. "can't smoke crack 2nite, gotta wire $ to dad" or something). What we're left with is that "Joe Biden was at least contemplated to receive a cut of a deal that fell through" which seems like a dud.
The other dimension is considering the baseline. I was happy that Biden won the election, but only because it meant Trump lost. Biden is kind of boring which I do find refreshing, but as a libertarian I'm struggling to think of any of his policies that I actually support, and I'll never forgive him for his role in vastly expanding the carceral state. As a person, although he seems to have calmed down in recent years, his habit of sniffing girls/women's hair was really bizarre, and I'm still inclined to believe Tara Reade's accusation that he tried to force himself on her.
Which is why it almost feels unfair, akin to beating a dead horse, to even mention the Trump family nepotism, because it's so wildly and flagrantly out of proportion. Trump hires his own family as White House advisors, doesn't release his finances, doesn't put anything in a blind trust, openly invites foreign dignitaries to stay in his hotels, neither he nor his family stop from using his name to secure deals across the world, and etc etc. The comparison here is comically unfair. I expect a certain level of corruption from politicians (and I find things like Clinton's ridiculous $500k speaking engagement fees and government officials retiring into cushy "consulting" gigs to all be deplorable) but I'm never going to see "zero" so I'll settle for "way less than the other guy".
I didn't know about Bobulinski until motteposting mentioned him. When I initially looked at his claims I saw some things that didn't add up and concluded that he might be twisting the truth for his own clout. Later examining other evidence I wasn't aware of changed my mind and I revised my conclusion to Bobulinski most likely telling the truth. I'm not sure what you mean by "exact same position". If you're talking about Joe Biden's involvement, see the previous answer.
I genuinely really appreciate you taking me to task on the above topic. Answering your questions prompted me to seriously reflect on my position, and I really wish more people did that to me.
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