Wednesday, July 12, 2023

A Bigfoot And UFO Nut Is A Key Member Of Hunter's Legal Team

Last week I posted on an incresingly unserious-looking Kevin Morris, who represents himself as Hunter Biden's lead attorney. One item I noted was that Morris has hired bigfoot and UFO expert Denver Riggleman to work on the defense team. As I outlined in that post, Riggleman, who is not an attorney, served one term as a Republican congressman from Virginia from 2019 to 2021, but he managed to get so crosswise with the Republicans in his district that they refused to renominate him for the 2020 election.

The illustration at the top of this post is from his podcast's web site, which you can find here. On one hand, he pretty clearly believes in bigfoot and UFOs, and he also believes QAnon is a vast conspiracy. After leaving the House in January 2021, he nevertheless attached himself as an adviser to the January 6 committee and argued that the demonstrators had been guided by QAnon types.

As I said in my post last week, he's a flake and a quack. This is only confirmed by his YouTube channel, a sample episode of which you can see below:

This past Sunday, he was interviewed by Jim Acosta on CNN, who took him seriously -- and in fact, Conservative Inc took it seriously that Acosta took him seriously.

Acosta begins by noting that Riggleman worked with the January 6th committee, which apparently adds great credibility in the eyes of the host. At that point, Riggleman begins to suggest that the material on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which has been forensically authenticated by numerous news outlets (including The New York Times and The Washington Post, albeit belatedly), is actually fake. He claims to have the “data” on his side.

The link quotes from Riggleman in the Acosta interview:

What we wanted to look at first is the data that’s out there that’s purported to be Hunter Biden’s laptop. We wanted to see if there was any forensic format or if there was any forensic validity to it, and there was none. Jim, I think what surprised me is that, if you’re looking at data from 4chan or from a site like Marco Polo, you have to have forensic validity, and I am shocked that anyone anybody Congress would use that data or any journalist would even use those sources. Because what we found out, and we do have the data, we have the ones and zeros. we have the facts-based analysis based on the ones and zeros that we have, we found this the very same folks. We have videos.

His point, as far as anyone can parse it out, appears to be that what we think is Hunter's laptop -- and that includes what the FBI, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have concluded is Hunter's laptop -- is an elaborate hoax, apparently concocted with the help of AI by the same people who are behind QAnon. He claims an expertise in data analysis, "ones and zeros", that allows him to prove this. But according to Wikipedia, his educational and work background had nothing to do with this:

Riggleman earned an Associate of Arts from Rowan College at Burlington County, formerly Burlington County College, in 1996. He received an Associate of Applied Science in avionics systems from the Community College of the Air Force at Air University in 1996. In 1998, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. Riggleman received a graduate certificate in project management from Villanova University in 2007.

. . . Riggleman served in the Air Force for 15 years.[7] After initially serving as an enlisted avionics technician, he received a commission and went on to serve as an intelligence officer.

Riggleman founded NSA contractor Analytics Warehouse, LLC, in 2007, and was its CEO until 2015.

But here's my big puzzle: Kevin Morris, who represents himself as Hunter Biden's lead defense attorney -- by implication, this means he's supervising Abbe Lowell and Chris Clark -- has hired this guy to work on that same legal team on the basis that the laptop is a hoax generated by AI in the service of QAnon. But Clark in particular has repeatedly implied in public remarks that the laptop is authentic, for instance:

"I’ve seen people wave various random e-mails around. I’ve never seen it. Obviously whatever that stuff [is] has been available to everyone in the United States for many years, sadly. I don’t know how you’d feel if everyone was disseminating the contents of your stolen phone. I wouldn’t be happy about it," Clark said.

I can't imagine that Riggleman was able to get on CNN and represent himself as working on Hunter's legal team without Keven Morris allowing it to happen. For instance,

Acosta began with a softball: "Why did you decide to take on this case and work with the Hunter Biden legal team and what's your role here?"

Riggleman said he's doing the same forensic analysis for the Bidens that he did for Pelosi. . . . "I also found out, you know, as the Hunter Biden legal team reached out to me, that a lot of the people that have been pushing this are the same people that pushed the J-6 conspiracy theories."

I assume that Riggleman said these things with Kevin Morris's approval, because if he hadn't, Morris would have immediately issued a statement disassociating the legal team and Hunter from Riggleman and demanded a retraction from CNN.

But this in turn makes me start to think Kevin Morris is as big a quack as Denver Riggleman. Let's recall, though, that any potential case against Joe Biden will be inextricably linked to Hunter's cases, which will almost certainly not go away with his pending guilty plea in Delaware. But at least for now, Kevin Morris is running that show with the invaluable assistance of Denver Riggleman of bigfoot and UFO fame.

I'm still working my way through this.