Who knows when Rudy first got access to the Hunter Biden laptop, but if he held it until three weeks before the election for maximum impact, it turns out he made a mistake. If the story had broken earlier, there would have been more time for follow-up reporting, some of which is happening now but there’s no way it can come close to being completed before November 3. If it had emerged earlier, Trump could have built a narrative around it (Biden as the worst sort of inside-Washington player), whereas it might be hard to make it stick at this stage. And, finally, it would have been hard for the media to maintain an embargo on the story for, say, three months rather than three weeks.