Apple Daily Taiwan's statement on NBC News report
https://bit.ly/3jK0wyW
A report published by NBC News today asserted that a 64-page document on Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden, and his businesses in China appear to be the work of a fake intelligence firm. As the part involving Apple Daily consists of false allegations, here is our statement in response:
1. Apple Daily Taiwan has never commissioned anyone to write the "documents" mentioned in the report, nor participated in the process of producing or writing the investigation report. We have nothing to do with the report and we demand NBC News to issue an immediate clarification.
2. Apple Daily Taiwan has never received any queries or request for comment from NBC News and has never responded to the issue.
3. Apple Daily Taiwan received the investigation report written by the firm Typhoon Investigations two months ago and saw the report on Intelligence Quarterly, the site that was also mentioned in NBC News' article. As both reports belonged to unknown foreign sources, Apple Daily Taiwan exercised caution and conducted independent verification of the documents.
4. Apple Daily Taiwan published two exclusive reports on Oct. 16 and Oct. 23, detailing Hunter Biden and his friend Michael Lin's activities in Taiwan as well as investigation of Lin's background. The reporting was conducted by Apple Daily Taiwan's journalists and verified with the relevant parties. Both of our reports were not mentioned in NBC News' article. A lot of the information on Hunter Biden and Michael Lin, including photos and press releases on his visits to China and Taiwan, were obtained from the website of Thornton Group, which was founded by Lin. The source of information was clearly stated in our reports and photo captions.
5. When independently verifying the information in the documents, we found that many of Hunter Biden's activities in China were mentioned in Secret Empires, a book by conservative political writer Peter Schweizer on the Biden family; as well as an investigative report on Hunter Biden published in September by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as well as the United States Senate Committee on Finance. The report cited information provided by the United States Secret Service that showed Hunter Biden visited China at least six times while his father was Vice President. Apple Daily Taiwan quoted this information in our report, based on this source and not the documents referred by NBC News.
6. Apple Daily Taiwan interviewed scholar Christopher Balding for a report on the Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Leak in September. Since then, Apple Daily Taiwan has not been in contact with Balding, including during the reporting of Hunter Biden's activities in Taiwan and China.
________
📱Download the app:
http://onelink.to/appledailyapp
📰 Latest news:
http://appledaily.com/engnews/
🐤 Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/appledaily_hk
💪🏻 Subscribe and show your support:
https://bit.ly/2ZYKpHP
#AppleDailyENG
