The documents that supposedly link Hunter Biden to a company funded by the Chinese Communist Party – a cornerstone of the conspiracy theory being propagated by opponents to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden – were “found” by a company that isn’t real and an operative who doesn’t exist, NBC News reports.
The 64-page document was supposedly created by a man named “Martin Aspen” working for an intelligence firm called “Typhoon Investigations.” The document has been circulated among Republican operatives as evidence backing the laptop, supposedly Hunter Biden’s, that was abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop. The Typhoon Investigations document was first posted on a public blog called “Intelligence Quarterly” by Christopher Balding, an associate professor specializing in the Chinese economy at Fulbright University Vietnam in Saigon. Balding admits to writing some of the narrative in the document. He also admits that Aspen doesn’t exist.
“Martin Aspen,” though, comes with his own backstory, supposedly having worked for other intelligence firms; the firms listed on his LinkedIn page state no one with that name ever worked for them. The photo he used is a computer-generated image, composites of photos of various other people.
“I had really not wanted to do this but roughly 2 months ago I was handed a report about Biden activities in China the press has simply refused to cover. I want to strongly emphasize I did not write the report but I know who did,” Balding said in an email to NBC News.
To promote the document, Balding appeared on numerous podcasts including those produced by Steve Bannon and The Epoch Times, a virulent anti-Chinese publication run by the Fulan Gong, considered a dissident cult in China. Both are rabidly pro-Trump podcasts.
A disinformation researcher looking into Typhoon and Aspen found that the Typhoon logo was lifted from a Taiwanese fact-checking agency. Other than basic information, Typhoon had little internet presence, save for a Twitter account. (Typhoon is also potentially a play on “Crossfire Hurricane,” the name of the FBI investigation into Trump campaign involvement with foreign interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.)