“Hunter offered to sell intelligence on Russian oligarchs to the US aluminum firm Alcoa Inc. for $55,000”.

JANUARY 30, 2023 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

MS. FOUND IN A LAPTOP

Miranda Devine buries revelations extracted from Hunter Biden’s laptop inside today’s New York Post column ostensibly devoted to public opinion on the Biden classified documents matter. Devine observes that “[t]here are several clues on the laptop that Hunter may have been selling classified information to his foreign paymasters” and cites the “uncharacteristically cogent email about Ukraine written by Hunter Biden in 2014…” I wrote about Devine’s discovery of the “uncharacteristically cogent email” last week in “Getting there.”

Devine follows up in her column today. She reports that “there’s more where that came from” — i.e., from the laptop:

For instance, documents on the laptop from 2011 show that Hunter offered to sell intelligence on Russian oligarchs to the US aluminum firm Alcoa Inc. for $55,000.

In internal discussions over Hunter’s proposal, a senior executive at Alcoa suggested the information was valuable because it “would not otherwise be on Government Affairs team’s radar.”

As I previously reported, Hunter offered to “provide Alcoa with statistical analysis of political and corporate risks, elite networks associated with Oleg Deripaska (OD), Russian CEO of Basic Element company and United company RUSAL.”

Alcoa had just signed a metal supply agreement with RUSAL.

Hunter promised to provide a “list of elites of similar rank in Russia, map of OD’s [Deripaska’s] networks based on frequency of interaction with selected elites and countries.”

In an email to Daniel Cruise, Alcoa’s then-vice president of government and public affairs, on June 3, 2011, Hunter offered, “a little better sense of the product by attaching some of the raw data that is produced through the elite mapping procedure.”

Five days later, Cruise’s colleague at Alcoa, senior analyst Pei Cheng, wrote: “I don’t believe the data analysis is worth the full $55,000. I think the most valuable piece for us would be the list of Russian elites connected to OD [Deripaska] that would not otherwise be on Government Affairs team’s radar, including various Russian Committee Heads, Union leaders or Ministers.”

How Hunter, 52, a raging drug addict with a voracious appetite for cash during much of his father’s vice-presidency, got access to classified information, is a matter of national concern.

It would be easy to overlook Devine’s discussion of the 2021 documents in Hunter Biden’s laptop, as the mainstream media undoubtedly will. I wanted to bring it to the attention of readers who have been following our coverage of the Biden classified documents matter.