A growing number of Republicans around the country are demanding a new investigation into Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, after the New York Times confirmed the authenticity of an incriminating trove of documents retrieved in 2020 from an abandoned laptop belonging to Hunter.
Others are calling for a probe into the near universal censorship of the story among leading U.S. media outlets at the time. Some experts, including former US Attorney General William Barr, believe the cover-up affected the outcome of the presidential election.
The infamous laptop surfaced in a Delaware repair shop a year and a half ago, replete with emails, pictures, documents and financial records detailing Hunter’s foreign business dealings, and implicating his father who was vice president in the Obama administration at the time of these business dealings, the New York Post reported in October 2020.
It contained evidence that Hunter Biden was wheeling and dealing with wealthy corporations in China and Ukraine and giving a cut to someone he referenced as “the big guy” and “my chairman”—whom experts who reviewed the emails identify as his father, Joe Biden.
Sources familiar with the contents say that the emails portray financial operations in which Hunter appeared to take advantage of his family’s political power, with several emails suggesting that Joe Biden, then Obama’s point man in charge of US-Ukrainian interests, was a silent partner in some of the deals.
“It’s still unclear how deeply and directly Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, is implicated in this sleazy business, which went on for years,” writes the British paper, The Spectator.
Hunter apparently got himself installed on the board of the now-defunct Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings—earning $50,000 a month—with a commitment that he would seek to bring his father aboard in some capacity, the emails showed.
Another cache of emails detailed Hunter’s multimillion dollar financial deals with Chinese business moguls closely linked to top executives in the CCP, China’s ruling Communist party.
The laptop eventually made its way to Trump attorney and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who brought it to the New York Post in September 2020.
The Post authenticated the computer and its contents in interviews with repair shop owner, Mac Isaac, and with Biden associates whose emails were found on the hard drive. The paper then published an expose about its findings in a series of reports, a few weeks before the presidential election.
One report said the “smoking gun” emails in the laptop raised the specter of foreign governments possessing highly sensitive information about the Bidens that could pose security risks to a Biden administration. China in particular, is known for its finely honed skill in leveraging financial and commercial ties with influential US entities to benefit Beijing.
Media Erected Wall of Silence
Coming on the eve of the 2020 election, the expose might have struck a devastating plow to Biden’s campaign. With the exception of the New York Post and Fox News, however, mainstream media outlets erected a wall of silence around the story. With a few notable exceptions, they dismissed the Post’s revelations as “scandal-mongering” and “Russian disinformation”—a story not worthy of media investigation or coverage.
This was despite the fact that Hunter Biden tellingly never denied the laptop belonged to him, nor did he denounce its contents as fabricated.
As the campaign to suppress the Post’s revelations by any means possible went into full swing, Politico cited a letter signed by 51 “national security experts” – former CIA people— asserting the Posts reports “had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.”
(At the same time, the letter provided its signatories with enough cover should the emails be proven authentic.)
“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement–just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.
For a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump’s defeat, the “suspicion” of “national security experts” that the emails were Russian hanky-panky was sufficient grounds to abandon all pretense of journalistic integrity and try to bury the Biden story. This included virtually every media outlet — CNN, ABC, NBC,PBS, NPR, Washington Post, Huffington Post and many others.
“Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden can count on his allies in the press and Big Tech to protect him through Election Day,” wrote the New York Post editorial board at the time. The article noted that whenever journalists had a rare chance to ask Joe Biden a few questions, they avoided all sensitive issues. Not one reporter asked him for his response to allegations arising from emails on his son’s computer as well as from eyewitness testimony, and how that could impact a Biden administration.
As an NPR spokesperson put it in October 2020, after the New York Post broke the story, ‘We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories. We don’t want to waste readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.’
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, acting on cues from Democrat party leaders and corporate media, took the unprecedented step of banning access to the Post’s reports about Hunter’s laptop to “limit the spread of misinformation.”
Twitter locked New York Post’s Twitter account for close to two weeks due to its refusal to obey Twitter’s orders to delete any reference to its reporting of the Biden scandal. The social media site also blocked all references to the story by users; Twitter users were barred even from linking to the story in private chats with one another. Facebook announced that it would suppress discussion of the reporting to ensure it did not spread, pending a “fact check” which never came.
The top executives of these social media companies were summoned (virtually) before the Senate to respond to allegations of discriminatory practices designed to influence the presidential election. Twitter executive Jack Dorsey denied the allegations but after a lengthy standoff, admitted he erred.
Former US Attorney General William Barr: Lies and Cover-up Impacted the Election
“The widespread pushback against [the reporting] on the emails and other material from the laptop, the suppressing of that news definitely impacted the 2020 election,” former Attorney General William Barr affirmed on Fox News this week.
Barr said that he was very disturbed during one of the presidential debates “when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop. He was squarely confronted with the laptop and suggested it was ‘Russian disinformation. He knew this was a lie. I was shocked by that. Fortunately, the DNI and FBI came out and said, ‘No, this has nothing to do with Russian disinformation’ … If you’re talking about interference in an election I can’t think of anything more disturbing than that kind of thing,” Barr said.
“And it’s not a question of whether [Hunter’s foreign operations] were criminal or not. Just the facts alone were shameful,” the former US Attorney General added. “Most Americans would immediately see what was going on and how repulsive it was, and it would have had an effect.”
“The massive cover-up helped swing the election to Biden,” writes the Post. “Almost 50 percent of Biden voters knew nothing of the laptop scandal at the time of the election and almost 10 percent said they would not have voted for Biden had they known, according to a survey from The Media Research Center.”
“What you have is a situation today where the Bidens have repeatedly lied to the media and the media doesn’t care,” Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer said. “They don’t want to catch them in lies, they don’t want to pursue the lies.”
He cited a now-famous interview Hunter Biden gave to ABC News’ “Good Morning America” in October 2019.
“Hunter Biden goes on national television … and said he had not received a single penny from the Chinese. Well, we now know, of course, that he got close to $5 million from CEFC, a Chinese government-connected energy company. We know he had a big equity stake in [BHR], a $1.5 billion private equity firm.”
“We know there were other transactions involving [Hunter’s companies] Rosemont Realty and Rosemont Opportunities Fund, too,” Schweizer continued. We know he was flat-out lying to the national media. What’s been the media’s response? Nothing. They’ve swallowed it. In fact, they not only covered it up, Ben Smith of the New York Times ran a piece right before the election bragging about how the gatekeepers — which of course, include the Times and other publications — had effectively killed this story and how proud they were of it.”
The New York Times last week finally admitted that the laptop was real and its contents were legitimate. These admissions were not given straightforwardly, but were buried in paragraph 23 of a lengthy report about Hunter Biden facing a wide-ranging federal probe into his tax filings and business dealings around the world.
Some speculated that with a possible indictment against Hunter looming, it would look ridiculous to maintain media silence about the president’s wayward son and his laptop, whose documents, pictures and records have informed the federal probe. In any case, with the election over and Joe Biden safely in the White House, no longer is there a need to maintain the charade that the laptop was part of a Russian plot.
Hunter Biden Probe Could Implicate the President
Legal experts said a new Hunter Biden probe could potentially implicate his father, President Biden.
“There is very damning evidence that Hunter Biden sold his father’s access when his father was the vice president of the United States; this is on his laptop and there is even evidence that then Vice President Joe Biden may have been in on this,” said Mike Davis, a former chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The president needs to clearly state right now that he will not interfere in any federal probe into his son Hunter, and he will not use his presidential powers — including the pardon power — to rescue his son if there are charges brought against Hunter.”
Author and political consultant Peter Schweizer said that “three big flashpoints” in U.S. foreign policy stand at the center of the scandal uncovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, the author said he went through the laptop and uncovered $31 million in business deals allegedly with officials of China, Russia and Ukraine among other countries, while Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was serving as vice president.
“Joe Biden was a recipient and beneficiary of those funds. Hunter’s and Joe’s accounts were intermingled. This is a story that goes straight to the president. Each of these countries, particularly China, have a policy of using commercial ties, financial ties as leverage over foreign elites and they undoubtedly had that intent with Joe Biden,” Schweizer charged.
According to Schweizer, the $31 million in business deals came from Chinese businessmen who had links to the highest level of Chinese intelligence. This was a Chinese intelligence operation,” he said, alleging that the Bidens were manipulated by skilled operatives.
“I would argue this is the most important story when it comes to corruption in Washington D.C.,” he asserted in an appearance on Fox News. “And if you read the New York Times and rely on that for your source of information, you have no clue as to what’s actually going on.”
Schweizer alleged a grand jury has been meeting on the Hunter issue since 2018. “They were suspended during Covid due to healthcare protocols,” he said. “It’s back up and running and it’s very clear that when it comes to the issues related to the tax evasion and money laundering and the other issues wrapped up with it, Biden’s people are extremely concerned Hunter is going to be indicted.”
“The Hunter case has a counterintelligence component. It has a tax fraud component. It has a public corruption component,” the author explained. “This has been going on for two years and nobody in the national media took it upon themselves to actually pursue that story.”
Lawmakers Call For Congressional Action
NY Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney declared last week that the censorship episode demanded congressional action. “Big Tech’s censorship of a story the liberal media has now acknowledged to be true proves that a Republican House majority must take meaningful action next year to rein in Big Tech censors.”
“All options should be on the table, including probes into their conduct and its impact on the Democratic process.” Rep. Tenney added.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, R.-Texas, told the New York Post, “The most basic accountability requires firing those responsible for the ‘Russian disinformation” lie about [the laptop], including former intelligence officials who pushed unsubstantiated Russia conspiracy theories about President Trump. Big Tech leaders who participated in censoring the truth should answer to Congress and the American people in sworn testimony,” he said.
“How sad and ironic. We’re all talking about disinformation in Russia and other totalitarian countries and we are learning that we have it right here at home,” Staten Island GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said.
“This is just another example of the media being quick to silence anything that would shine a light on corruption in the Biden family,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, a leading GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate, told The Post. “As Pennsylvania’s next Senator, I would support an investigation into the findings of Hunter Biden’s laptop and any efforts to cover it up.”
Even now, after the New York Times admission that the NY Post’s “laptop” story is authentic, many prominent mainstream outlets still won’t mention Hunter’s laptop, its damning information, or their role in covering it up. NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN have all maintained silence since the Times story broke.
“When partisan goals become central to news judgment,” the article said, “those outlets have lost their way and morphed into political activists. When strong opinions dictate which stories are covered and how they are reported, as they did the Hunter Biden laptop case, the standard of unbiased journalism is corrupted.”
That is exactly what has happened to American journalism, the article noted. And that’s why public trust in their coverage has eroded.
“If you are waiting for apologies from reporters, anchors and editors who blew the story, you will wait in vain,” wrote The Spectator. “If you expect them to reflect seriously on their egregious errors or try to remedy them, you will have a cappuccino with the Tooth Fairy before that happens. But the media’s silence cannot hide their shameful failure.”
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The ‘Third Scandal’
In addition to the scandal of social and mainstream media acting as a propaganda arm of the Biden campaign, Sen Ron Johnson, R-Wis, as far back as November 2020, singled out a third scandal tied to the Hunter Biden allegations: “the suppression [of information] by some of the intelligence agencies and the deep state.”
He pointed to the dozens of former senior intelligence officials who, according to an article in Politico, signed on to a letter expressing their belief that the Hunter Biden emails show “classic earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
“The press and now the intelligence community and the deep state are in the tank for Joe Biden,” remarked Johnson in November 2020 in a Fox News appearance.
The senator said that all three entities knew the letter was going to be used by Joe Biden to worm his way out of any reporter’s questions regarding the material on his son Hunter’s laptop. “This is important information the American voters need to hear, and the deep state and the media are covering it up,” the senator continued.
He stressed that all three “scandals” have to be investigated as “they all represent an enormous threat to our democracy.” The senator’s remarks were greeted at the time with scorn and ridicule by White House spokesmen, Democratic congressmen and liberal talk show hosts.
Asked this week by WABC about the resurfacing of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, Johnson said, “I am frankly amazed that the New York Times just now came to the conclusion that the Hunter Biden laptop was genuine. Where have they been? This was pretty obvious within a week or two of the New York Post’s report.”
Last month, Johnson called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to confirm or deny key details regarding emails that indicate Hunter introduced his father in 2015 to a top executive at Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma Holdings, according to Fox News.
Johnson noted in a letter to Wray that more than a year has passed since the repair shop owner turned over the laptop to his committee. The Senate committee had turned the material over to the FBI, asking the agency to confirm certain details in order to validate the claim regarding the meeting between Burisma Holdings and Joe Biden.
“We reached out to the FBI when we were offered the laptop,” Johnson recalled. “They wouldn’t tell us it was genuine. They should have. But they didn’t. People should be outraged,” he said.
A justice department official has since confirmed that the FBI opened up a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates in 2018, focused on allegations of money-laundering. The official said the probe remains active.
In his letter to FBI director Wray, Johnson said he asked why the FBI didn’t open an investigation into Hunter Biden earlier. “Perhaps because of his last name?” he quipped ironically in the Sunday Morning Futures interview.
“We probably have two systems of justice, one for Democrats and the well-connected, and one for Republicans and the rest of Americans,” Johnson said. “That’s one of the reasons the American people are losing confidence in agencies like the FBI,” he added, referring to growing awareness of how the FBI has shown itself to be deeply partisan.
