The Hunter Biden saga has been filled with twists and turns, and it took another one on Sunday. Former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, who served in Virginia’s 5th district, is now advising the younger Biden’s legal team, and he went on CNN to share a new theory about the laptop.

Riggleman, who never had an extensive profile but did make news a couple of times throughout his tenure in Congress, spoke to Jim Acosta (the least surprising part of this story). Acosta seems enthralled throughout the interview, nodding profusely at the defense of a man fresh off legally barring his own daughter from taking his last name.

Tonight, I joined @Acosta to talk about my decision to advise Hunter Biden’s legal team.

One thing is clear—data is clarifying. Watch the entire segment here ⬇️
pic.twitter.com/rzpDCuaRq0

— Denver Riggleman (@RepRiggleman) July 10, 2023

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.

My role is really the same as it was at the committee. It’s really technical and analytical support based on computer forensics and phone forensics, and by the way, I’ve been doing this since late last year and we’ve been tracking data and what everybody’s been saying over the past two years, which has been really interesting.

Let me stop there because it’d be easy to miss what he’s really saying there. Riggleman’s nod to the idea that he’s been “tracking data and what everybody’s been saying” and that he finds it “interesting” isn’t idle talk. That’s a threat. He’s issuing a threat to anyone who has dared to speak the truth and report the facts on Hunter Biden’s laptop that if you continue to do so, they might sue you. That makes what Riggleman says next especially ironic.

But why did I really take this? Is because, you know, I do hate bullies, but 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 J6 conspiracy theories. And once I saw that some of the same techniques were being used, you know, and that you had Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Petter Navarro’s staff all involved in pushing the Hunter Biden laptop data, I got very curious. I love ones and zeros, I love forensics, and I think we have the best team in the world, and we saw that the Hunter Biden laptop data dissemination was so similar to what was happening on January 6th and it was the same people, I needed to jump in so I came in late last year.

Riggleman is using a common tactic by people seeking to avoid the meat of an issue, which is dismissing it via guilt by association. Steven Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, etc., are not at the heart of the Hunter Biden laptop story. That they have participated in it does not make the data on the laptop any less authentic. Bringing them up is a distraction that does nothing to actually provide evidence that the data from the laptop is somehow fake or altered.

The same applies to his continued references to January 6th during the interview. That has zero to do with the laptop or Hunter Biden. What Riggleman wants to do is tie those same events together so he and Hunter Biden’s team can attempt to collectively dismiss them entirely. That’s a weak tactic that isn’t going to work.

There are some things I can’t talk about because unlike the grifters out there pushing data, I actually have to have transparency and verification to, right, and data, to stand up in a court of law, but I can tell you this.

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. We have them self-identifying for them manipulating the data. We have people using words, like Steve Bannon, like editorial creativity, and we have specific instances of fabrication and manipulation of the data.

Before we continue, I want to further point out that at no point during this interview did Acosta pause and challenge Riggleman to back up a word of what he was saying. If data has been fabricated, surely some examples can be provided, right? Surely, Riggleman can tell us what email out there isn’t real or what picture of Hunter Biden doing crack with prostitutes was photoshopped? That never happens, and that’s just fine with Acosta.

Instead, Riggleman spends the interview trying to sound really professional while never saying anything of value at all. Anyone can go on CNN and say, “There’s no forensic format to this data.” What does that even mean? Riggleman doesn’t actually explain because it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just technical speak meant to scare off anyone from continuing to share what’s on the laptop.

Personally, I find this entire spectacle shameless. For someone like Hunter Biden to continue to not just own his mistakes is grotesque. It goes against every moral standard in existence. And for someone like Riggleman to join his team and push this kind of nonsense is equally disgusting.