There's a semi-tradition in American politics for the folks running the Democrat and Republican parties to dig up dirt on each other,

and more specifically on each other's presidential candidates, and then in the months leading up to an

election to deploy something really toothy from that collection of opposition research.

This is often referred to as an October surprise, though these sorts of scandalous

materials do not always arrive the month before the November election. And in fact, they've

trended toward being dropped earlier and earlier in the election cycle, as our news environment

and social media platforms have changed the way stories are picked up and spread.

Earlier deployment often means a longer runway for building up attention and a narrative around something juicy.

A would-be October surprise that did not seem to garner the attention the surprises had hoped for back in 2020 was the revelation in the pages of the

conservative leaning New York Post that a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's

son, was dropped off at a repair shop in 2019 and then never reclaimed. The hard drive of the

laptop containing all sorts of scandalous things, of the sort a presidential candidate, would not want to be associated with, even at arm's length.

This story, which was brushed off by many news entities at the time because the folks who were pushing it hardest, were known conspiracists and conmen,

who had often tried to push partially or entirely fabricated stories in the past,

and who were thus not the most trustworthy of messengers in the world for this sort of thing.

The story came across to most other news entities as a little too perfect, a little too well-timed,

and a little too desperate in a way, too, as it focused on the drug and sex-related escapades

of the opposing candidate Joe Biden's son. The story was then spun into a supposedly bigger story

in Biden's opposition than President

Trump said that Biden had acted in a corrupt manner to protect his son while vice president.

The accusation being that Biden supposedly withheld a loan guarantee to pressure the Ukrainian

government into not investigating a gas company called Burisma,

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