Investigative reporter John Solomon — whose Ukraine-related reports may have influenced President Trump to request that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky look into the activities of Joe Biden, providing fodder for the House’s impeachment inquiry — had his laptop computer stolen on the eve of the Senate impeachment trial on January 16.
Solomon told Real Clear Investigations (RCI), which broke the story, that his computer contained notes on Ukraine and former Vice President Joe Biden and other sensitive information.
“It’s a pretty professional job,” Solomon told RCI about the break in, “but it’s probably just a coincidence.”
“It was probably just a street criminal searching for pass codes,” Solomon added. “Or it could be someone searching for my Ukraine stuff, we don’t know at this point.”
The laptop has since been recovered, but the investigation is still open. “The case has been assigned a detective and is under investigation,” a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department spokesman told RCI.
Solomon said he is working with a computer forensics expert to determine whether his hard drive was scanned by the thief.
A report in the National Sentinel noted that House impeachment manager Adam Schiff released a report last December that published Solomon’s phone records. Schiff cited Solomon no fewer than 35 times in his impeachment report. He also added Solomon’s phone-call history in the report, which asserted that Solomon reported “conspiracy theories” in The Hill to help Trump “push false narratives” about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, as well as Biden’s efforts as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma Holdings, a company that paid his son, Hunter, millions of dollars.
Solomon, notes the Sentinel, suspects that Schiff was singling him out as part of a political smear campaign.
“I’m the only [reporter] who ends up having his records released,” Solomon said in a recent interview with Fox Business News anchor Lou Dobbs.
“It makes me wonder whether it’s a political payback, because a few months ago, I wrote a story exposing the fact that Chairman Schiff had met with Glenn Simpson at the sidelines of the Aspen Institute at a time when he shouldn’t have been having contact with Glenn Simpson,” he added. “It feels like a political payback.”
A report in The New American last year cited a November 4, 2019 report from Solomon as the source for information about a Hunter Biden-Burisma Holdings influence-peddling scheme revealing why Democrats wanted to impeach President Trump for his phone call to Zelensky, during which Trump asked the Ukrainian president to probe the corruption scandal.
In his report, Solomon revealed that Hunter Biden and his colleagues at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company that employed him, met with State Department officials in 2015 and 2016. One of those meetings occurred a month before Hunter Biden’s father and the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden, pressured the country to fire its top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma.
While we don’t yet know who stole Solomon’s laptop or why, the fact that the computer and the contents of the computer bag were abandoned strongly suggests that someone wanted to extract the information found on it for political purposes.
Image: SKatzenberger via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
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