- Businessman and self-confessed drug addict took the laptop to a back-street IT store in Delaware in 2019
- Scale and sensitivity of its contents – easily accessible to a hacker – is only revealed for first time today
- Included Joe Biden's personal mobile number and numbers for former President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary
- Were also personal documents including Hunter's passport, driver's licence, social security and credit cards
- Laptop also showed he spent $21,000 on one 'live cam' porn website. Were also sex act 'selfies' of him
In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an IT expert last night described as a 'national security nightmare' and 'classic blackmail material' – with a single, simple password: Hunter02.
Remarkably, the 50-year-old businessman and self-confessed drug addict took the machine to a back-street IT store in Delaware in April 2019 to get it repaired – yet never returned to collect it.
Its existence was revealed by the New York Post last month, but the staggering scale and sensitivity of its contents – easily accessible to a hacker with a modicum of skill – is only revealed for the first time today.
The material, none of which was encrypted or protected by anything as basic as two-factor authentication, includes:
Joe Biden's personal mobile number and three private email addresses as well as the names of his Secret Service agents;
Mobile numbers for former President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary and almost every member of former President Barack Obama's cabinet;
A contact database of 1,500 people including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh;
Personal documents including Hunter's passport, driver's licence, social security card, credit cards and bank statements;
Details of Hunter's drug and sex problems, including $21,000 spent on one 'live cam' porn website and 'selfies' of him engaging in sex acts and smoking crack cocaine;
While Hunter has been accused of using his family name to help with deals with Ukrainian and Chinese firms, there is nothing on the laptop to implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.
One email relating to a failed Chinese deal refers to a payment of ten per cent to 'the Big Guy', which some have suggested is the presidential hopeful.
However, Mr Biden has insisted: 'I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.'
Last night, IT expert Chris Greany said it was 'staggering' the laptop had not been encrypted.
New laptop revelations: An IT expert last night described as a 'national security nightmare' and 'classic blackmail material' the revelation that Hunter Biden protected his laptop - which was filled with with a treasure trove of top-secret material - with a single, simple password: Hunter02.
A contact database of 1,500 people included the numbers of Bill and Hillary Clinton, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, her ex-husband Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh
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Unpaid bill: A message from porn site Jasmin, shows Hunter's attempt to buy credit was 'declined due to insufficient funds on the credit card'. He shelled out more than $21,000 to one adult 'live cam' porn website
The full letter from Jasmin.com. Hunter Biden became so addicted to illicit sexual thrills that he once spent $11,400 on a single night of debauchery at a New York strip club
'It's a data breach and dangerous to have this type of material floating around,' said the former police commander, who advised successive British Foreign Secretaries on laptop security.
'For someone prominent, there is not only a risk of great reputational damage but also a risk of blackmail should the material fall into the wrong hands.'
In an act of 'politically motivated censorship', Twitter deliberately prevented users from sharing a link to a front-page newspaper article about Hunter Biden's private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine.
It included the claim that he arranged a meeting between his father Joe and a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter served.
Both men have denied any impropriety but normally an accusation alone of this nature involving a US presidential nominee would set the news agenda alight.
But with Facebook also imposing restrictions pending 'independent verification' by 'fact checkers', the article published by the New York Post fizzled out.
In what became a curious case of a disappearing story, Republicans claimed it had been suppressed to avoid helping President Trump's re-election campaign.
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey (pictured) Twitter was criticised after the site prevented users from sharing a link to a front-page newspaper article about Hunter Biden's private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine
Quizzing Twitter's chief executive Jack Dorsey during a virtual Senate hearing last week, Texas senator Ted Cruz asked: 'Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?' Mr Dorsey has apologised for Twitter's action and said its treatment of the New York Post story was 'unacceptable'.
Republicans have long accused the bosses of technology companies of double standards for editing, deleting or fact-checking Mr Trump's posts while allowing harmful hate speech to remain on their services.
But anger over the Hunter Biden story has not been confined to the Right.
Last week investigative Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, the news website he co-founded, after claiming he was silenced over an article critical of Joe Biden.
'The Intercept's editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression,' he wrote.
The revelations come just 48 hours before Americans give their verdict at the end of a rancorous election campaign.
They will send shockwaves through Mr Biden's campaign team, which is desperate to avoid last-minute scandals that may erode his eight-point lead in the polls.
Donald Trump has accused the mainstream US press and social media giants of ignoring – and even burying – the Hunter laptop affair.
He claims a liberal, pro-Democrat elite is 'protecting' his rival.
Hunter's laptop contains 11 gigabytes of material and covers the period from when Mr Biden served as Vice President under Mr Obama to when Hunter dropped...
