Tucker Carlson's Missing Hunter Biden Documents

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Overview

Tucker Carlson's Missing Hunter Biden Documents refers to an account given by Fox News host Tucker Carlson about "damning" documents regarding Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's son Hunter, which were, as Carlson describes it, lost in shipping under mysterious circumstances. After Carlson speculated about the disappearance of the documents on his Fox News show, UPS announced that they found the documents.

Background

On October 28th, 2020, Tucker Carlson reported on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight that documents related to Hunter Biden vanished in shipment from New York to Los Angeles. He claimed that these documents were "damning" and "authentic." However, after asking producer to send the documents from New York to Los Angeles via a "large brand-name company." The documents never arrived

"Tuesday morning we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing," Carlson said. "The documents had disappeared."

Carlson went on to describe his communications with the shipping company, stating that they found the package opened and its contents missing.

"The company security team interviewed every one of its employees who touched the envelope we sent," Carlson continued. "They searched the plane, and the trucks that carried it, they went through the office in New York where our producers dropped that package off, they combed the entire cavernous sorting facility, they used pictures of what we had sent, so the searchers would know what to look for. They went far and beyond but found nothing."

Toward the conclusion of the segment, Carlson hinted at a mystery regarding the package, but that the documents are a "“trove of materials that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign that’s six days away." "We spoke to executives at the company a few hours ago and they seemed baffled and deeply bothered by this--and so are we."

Uploaded to YouTube that night, the clip received more than 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Developments

Online Reactions

After New York magazine reported that "Tucker Carlson reports he lost the only copy of documents that would nail Joe Biden," Salon writer Roger Sollenberger responded to the tweet^[7] with a screenshot of a text exchange with Tucker Carlson (shown below, left). In the conversation, Sollenberger asks Carlson, "Did you make copies of those documents? Or did anyone take photos?" Carlson answered, "Of course. The point is, someone's reading out texts."

The following day, Sollenberger again tweeted about the text message.^[8] "Tucker told me last night that he had made copies of them anyway," he wrote (shown below, right).

Online, many mocked Carlson's story. Some critics of the host posted image edits and mock theories about what happened to the documents, including joking that well-known celebrities were behind the theft and the search (examples below).

The missing package inspired conversation on Reddit, including two posts in the /r/politics^[1]^[2] subreddit. The first, posted by Redditor billthomson, received more than 78,000 points (85% upvoted) and 7,300 comments in less than 24 hours. A second post, shared by Brothanogood, received more than 11,000 points (97% upvoted) and 1,100 comments in less than 24 hours.

Discovery of the Package

On October 29th, 2020, the Daily Beast^[3] reported that UPS found the missing documents and were arranging for them to be delivered to Carlson's team. In a statement, a spokesperson said:

After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return. UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right.

That day,