We covered the recent release of images showing Joe Biden meeting with some of Hunter Biden's Chinese business associates, further exploding the categorical denial lies Biden and the White House shoveled at the public for years. In that post, we noted how some journalists seem to have been actively ignorant of some relevant related facts, due to what conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham describes as her "icky facts doctrine." In short, if the 'bad' or 'wrong' sorts of people uncover, or benefit from, certain facts, many partisans in the so-called news media simply ignore them, almost as a point of pride and principle:
"THE ICKY FACTS DOCTRINE": @mkhammer joined the #guybensonshow today and broke down the media's systematic and intentional burying of Biden's China dealings... and why they're willing to discuss them now.
— The Guy Benson Show (@GuyBensonShow) December 31, 2024
Listen to the full interview at the link below!https://t.co/BY3ofFnL99
In this case, much of the heavy lifting about the Biden family corruption scheme was done by right-leaning media figures and Congressional Republicans. Validating or legitimizing such people and sources would hurt the tribe, so much of the press just looked away. That's how exchanges like the one we wrote about come to happen. Journalist Eli Lake wrote this analysis about the photographs, and what they represent, for the Free Press -- starting with this context:
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand lies. Such is the case with the belated release of official photos of a 2013 visit to China by then-Vice President Joe Biden, accompanied by—whaddya know!—his son Hunter. In several photos, Hunter is shown meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and in another he’s seen shaking hands with China’s then-vice president, Li Yuanchao. In other pictures, Hunter’s dad shakes hands with Jonathan Li, the CEO of a Chinese firm seeking to acquire energy companies across the world. Shortly after the trip, the Chinese government approved the license to create Li’s company, BHR Partners, in which Hunter would eventually acquire a 10 percent stake. BHR Partners is primarily funded by Chinese nationals and entities, including the country’s primary investment bank. Between 2013 and 2019, it invested $2.5 billion in energy and other ventures across the world, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. Hunter held on to his 10 percent stake in BHR through at least 2017. He said he eventually relinquished his stake to the entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, perhaps as a means to repay the millions of dollars in loans Morris had made to Hunter over the years.
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Then came the dishonest denials:
In March 2024, when confronted on the White House lawn about the House impeachment committee’s findings into his interactions with Biden family business associates, Biden said, “I did not interact with their partners.” Really? The House Oversight Committee has documented 16 separate times that Biden lied about his knowledge or involvement with his family’s influence peddling. These deceptions began when Biden was running for the Democratic nomination in his party’s primary. “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said two months before the election—a line he repeated throughout the presidential campaign. Once Biden was president, his White House continued to promote this fiction. If this were just a case of a president and his aides trying to wriggle out of a scandal, it would be one thing. But the peculiar dynamics of the Trump era made the Democrats, the FBI, and the legacy press coconspirators in the cover-up.
Of course, we are just getting this additional proof of Biden's perfidy, thanks to a finally-fulfilled records request, only after the information cannot inflict any real damage to Biden, who is the lamest of lame ducks. This reminds me of another example of potentially-explosive images being deliberately suppressed in order to shield a high-ranking Democrat. I mentioned it on air the other day:
The belated release of these images — after they could damage Democrats politically — reminds me of another such episode: https://t.co/BmVyoP3Nci pic.twitter.com/RQcyn2b9kC
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 1, 2025
We highlighted the story in 2018, when it was belatedly exposed. Some of the details, in case you missed it at the time:
Put another way, Obama met with Farrakhan at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in 2005, and not a single person in attendance leaked that information until now. https://t.co/MytQ1PsuAm pic.twitter.com/aMLoKDmdc1
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) January 25, 2018
Barack Obama posed for a photo in 2005 with Louis Farrakhan, the virulently anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam movement, and the photographer said he suppressed its publication at the request of a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. The future president was the US senator from Illinois at the time. The Trice Edney News Wire first published the photo on January 20. It quotes the photographer, Askia Muhammad, saying that after snapping the picture at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, an unidentified member of the caucus asked him immediately not to run the photo. Muhammad said he gave the disk containing the photo to Farrakhan’s chief of staff. As there was already talk in 2005 of Obama running for president, Muhammad said he and others did not want to harm the Democrat’s chances.
A photo"journalist" took a photo of Obama knowingly grinning alongside a vile bigot, then withheld it from the public for years, at the request of Democrats, explicitly to protect Obama's career. The source of the picture was reportedly handed over to the bigot's team. Extraordinary. I'll leave you with two notes on the disgraced outgoing president, whose legacy is so tarnished that major donors may withhold funds for his presidential library:
The crash landing of Biden’s presidency soured major donors on funding his presidential library. The Hunter pardon added insult to injury and has prompted a bunch of heavyweights to close their wallets. Likeliest scenario is Biden team needs to scale back. https://t.co/pWGKdEn5Kv
— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) December 31, 2024
On Biden’s regrets — @Gutfeldfox pic.twitter.com/MD7YsNczuA
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) December 31, 2024
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