US president Joe Biden is facing renewed questions over the contents of a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter.
His Republican opponents have pledged to use the new session of Congress, which begins on 3 January, to investigate the controversy surrounding material on the computer.
A computer repairman has shown Sky News some of its content.
John Paul Mac Isaac says it strengthens suspicions around the president’s involvement in his son’s business affairs abroad.
Republicans believe the laptop could provide evidence of a conflict of interest.
President Biden, for his part, maintains he had no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.
Mr Mac Isaac encountered Hunter Biden when he came into a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, the Bidens’ home town.
He told Sky News of the day in April 2019 that Biden Jr, whose struggles with addiction are well-documented, walked into his store.
He said: “It was about 10 minutes before closing, Hunter comes into my shop – intoxicated – with three liquid-damaged MacBook Pros.
“He was a bit dishevelled and, kind of, spilt the laptops out onto the counter.
“He just wanted a data recovery, he did not want these things repaired. He just wanted the personal files and data off the laptops.”
Mr Biden did not return to collect the computer.
Under a 90-day “abandonment procedure”, Mr Mac Isaac says that, after that period had elapsed, he was entitled to access the material on the laptop.
“That’s when I witnessed the contents of the laptop, which obviously had a lot of Hunter’s home-made pornography, I saw a lot of embarrassing photos – the stuff that no powerful family would ever want in the possession of anybody outside that family.”
It was the email traffic that feeds into allegations of a presidential conflict of interest.
Hunter Biden was, formerly, on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.
Emails on his laptop included one from a consultant to the firm, which read: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spend some time together.’
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Mr Mac Isaac showed us a separate document that referred to someone described as ‘My guy.’
He said: “Hunter refers to his father as ‘my guy’, or ‘the chairman’ or ‘the big guy.’
The computer repairman, a Donald Trump supporter, said it raises questions for the president.
While Hunter Biden was on the board of the Ukrainian firm, his father was vice-president in the Obama administration and was in charge of the administration’s policy on Ukraine.
“Why did he lie to the American people? Because he was fully aware of his son’s business dealings, he was a tool of those dealings.”
President Biden has previously dismissed any suggestion that he was compromised, previously calling it ‘Russian disinformation.’
Republicans, newly empowered with a majority in the House of Representatives, want to interrogate further.
They are angered by what they view as a scandal largely ignored by the mainstream media and by major social media companies.
Mr Mac Isaac says he handed the laptop to the FBI in December 2019.
Subsequently, in the months before the 2020 election, the New York Post published a report on its contents but the story wasn’t given the column inches or air-time typically earned by allegations of White House corruption.
Much of that was down to FBI warnings about Russian disinformation in the months before the 2020 election.
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Facebook and Twitter say the concerns prompted them to restrict the story’s spread on their platforms.
As well as the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, House Republicans plan to look into illegal immigration at the Mexican border and the US government’s handling of COVID-19 as they seek to undermine the Biden administration for the remaining two years of his presidential term.
Separately, Hunter Biden is being investigated for possible tax crimes and making a false statement in relation to a gun purchase.
A decision on whether to press charges rests with the US attorney in Delaware.
