THE BLIND HATRED LEADING THE BLIND TECH:

Late in the 2020 presidential campaign, trailing in the polls, Donald Trump and his allies worked to make a campaign issue out of a trove of files on a laptop that his opponent's son, Hunter Biden, had apparently abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The effort to publicize compromising emails, images, and videos from the device involved prominent Trump confidants including Rudy Giuliani and Steven Bannon. But it also featured an unexpected player: Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese tycoon who was working with Bannon to build a small empire of Chinese-language media outlets, nonprofits, and other ventures.

Mother Jones obtained scores of WhatsApp audio messages Guo sent to supporters, along with underlying material from Biden's hard drive that Guo's assistant distributed at his behest. Previous reports have noted the role of Guo allies and companies in publicizing sex tapes and other material involving Hunter Biden. But the WhatsApp messages, and sources who were involved in the effort, reveal that Guo--who has been accused in lawsuits of fraud and rape and of secretly acting as an agent for the Chinese Communist Party--played a larger role than previously known in ensuring that explicit images and videos from the laptop appeared online, and in spreading lies about them. (Guo has denied the allegations made in the lawsuits against him.)

Guo stage-managed an October 2020 effort to disseminate videos and pictures showing Hunter Biden engaged in sex acts and using drugs. After Giuliani, then President Trump's personal lawyer, gave him material from Hunter Biden's laptop, Guo issued detailed instructions to two WhatsApp groups that included dozens of Guo's supporters. Guo directed these supporters to package, post, and promote hundreds of explicit images and other material about Biden on websites Guo controlled, people involved in the effort said.

The material Guo publicized seems to be real, but he instructed supporters to couple it with false claims that it came from Chinese sources, and that the Chinese government had used it to obtain leverage over Hunter Biden and his father, Joe Biden. "We have to express...The Chinese Communist Party used these to threaten Hunter and [Joe] Biden," Guo told supporters in an October 24, 2020, message. (Mother Jones is quoting English translations of messages that were originally in Chinese. Multiple people independently verified the translations.)

People who helped Guo publish the material online said that it quickly became clear to them that he was lying about China's role. "They tried to link the Biden family to the [Chinese Communist Party]," said a person involved in the effort, who shared Guo's WhatsApp messages with Mother Jones and requested anonymity. "They wanted to help Trump win."

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