The New York Post obtained emails showing that Joe Biden lied about not knowing what his son, Hunter, was doing regarding his Ukrainian activities. Hunter Biden was allegedly selling access while sitting on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, despite having zero experience in this field, while earning tens of thousands of dollars a month. This corrupt arrangement occurred back in 2014 when Joe was leading anti-corruption efforts in the country. Multiple people raised the alarm over this gig. And it’s a sore subject, as evidenced by Joe Biden’s aggressive reaction toward it (via NY Post):
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
Julio wrote that Twitter and Facebook are censoring the story, all but running interference on behalf of the Biden campaign. Facebook’s Policy Communications Manager Andy Stone, a former Democratic operative, said “While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
He added this was standard operating procedure to combat the spread of misinformation. Twitter went so far as to make the story as “unsafe.”
Shannon Bond, a tech reporter for NPR, said, “From Twitter spox: "In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter.”
From Twitter spox: "In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter." https://t.co/4bbO621CXj
— Shannon Bond (@shannonpareil) October 14, 2020
Twitter's policy says you can't use it "to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information". Company says it's taking this action because of the lack of authoritative reporting about the origins of the materials in the NY Post piece
— Shannon Bond (@shannonpareil) October 14, 2020
“Company says it's taking this action because of the lack of authoritative reporting about the origins of the materials in the NY Post piece,” Bond added.
The reaction has been bipartisan with both writers on both sides of the aisle trashing big tech for this election meddling. It’s a story that makes Biden look bad 30 days before an election and before what could be a key presidential debate next week. So, they rush to block and censor the story? They stepped in it. The Intercept’s Lee Fang wrote, “The Biden campaign isn't disputing the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails. If the story is fabricated, there might be justification for limiting it in some way, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.”
“The Pentagon Papers, Snowden's NSA docs, the FBI files revealing COINTELPRO, Trump's tax returns -- all of these files were taken without authorization and released through the press. Would Twitter censor all of these stories,” he asked.
Liberal reporter Michael Tracey added his two cents, noting that you don’t have to care about the veracity of the Biden story “to recognize how creepy and authoritarian this is.”
Twitter is now warning that the NY Post story on Hunter Biden is “unsafe.” You don’t even have to defend the veracity of the story to recognize how creepy and authoritarian this is pic.twitter.com/HxscxTqGpX
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 14, 2020
Media outlets that reported on the DNC/Podesta emails in 2016 would have been prohibited from sharing the links on Twitter under this new "hacked materials policy." That's what all this is about: doing everything in their power to prevent a repeat of 2016. It's 100% political
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 14, 2020
Never forget that it was JOURNALISTS who badgered and berated the tech companies to seize greater censorship powers. In the past, journalists loathed censorship as antithetical to their entire profession. Today, they demand it
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 14, 2020
The Pentagon Papers, Snowden's NSA docs, the FBI files revealing COINTELPRO, Trump's tax returns -- all of these files were taken without authorization and released through the press. Would Twitter censor all of these stories? https://t.co/kFvthuuq3F
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 14, 2020
The Biden campaign isn't disputing the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails. If the story is fabricated, there might be justification for limiting it in some way, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 14, 2020
Begging these tech officials to seize greater power to regulate the flow of information to the public was always about achieving certain political outcomes -- never about curbing genuine "misinformation," which media elites themselves so often peddlehttps://t.co/r1O1z9RNS4
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 14, 2020
"lack of origins" means The Atlantic cemetery story has to go, as does the NY Times tax story. These are their rules.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 14, 2020
Chinese propaganda can flourish, but the New York Post gets censored. This is okay to the left and Joe Biden
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) October 14, 2020
As always, he’s not afraid to shoot inside the ship, adding “Never forget that it wasjournalists who badgered and berated the tech companies to seize greater censorship powers. In the past, journalists loathed censorship as antithetical to their entire profession. Today, they demand it.”
This isn’t shocking. We know big tech is liberal, biased, and anti-Trump. Yet, the hypocrisy over Twitter’s hacked policy standards and Facebook’s fact-check-ceptions is explicit here. First, where the hell were these clowns when we were subjected to fake Trump-Russia collusion news for three years. Every so-called bombshell was wrong. Every development was garbage. Every story was fake. The whole thing was a media-manufactured myth—and no one got censored and fact-checked. Another huge allegation in that circus act, that Trump didn’t release his taxes because he owes Russia money, was debunked by The New York Times, albeit inadvertently.
Most recently, and Spectator USA writer Stephen Miller noted this, The Atlantic’s fake news piece about Trump denigrating America’s war dead back in 2017 should be removed forever. That’s the rules. It was based on four anonymous sources, supposedly, and the story died. Why? Because it wasn’t true. Talk about shady origins.
In 2016, election meddling was coming from the FBI. In 2020, it all arrows appear to be pointing at Silicon Valley.