The establishment media has its marching orders regarding the Hunter Biden story, and they didn’t waste a minute. With Donald Trump’s legal circus all but over, we have many long months to talk about Hunter Biden. It will be in the news because House Republicans are launching an impeachment inquiry. Some of the unofficial spokespersons of this effort aren’t the best, and the strategy is flawed, but the liberal media line has been etched in stone: there is no evidence.
They will keep repeating it until everything is drawn together, creating a potential situation where liberal America must eat more crow than during their restitution period for believing the Russian collusion hoax. Multiple House GOP memos from Oversight have elaborated how the complex system of shell corporations and scheduled payments allowed Joe Biden to steer clear of legal scrutiny.
What father doesn’t know his son is raking in $20 million from oligarchs and being part of this scheme? You don’t think he’s getting a piece of the action? We’ll see. That’s the point. The evidence for an inquiry exists, something that Speaker Kevin McCarthy pulled out of a reporter when she tried delegitimizing the effort.
And if there is no evidence, why are reporters who have defended the Biden family over these allegations, so soft? The Washington Post’s Philip Bump suffered a total meltdown, leaving Noam Dworman’s podcast when pressed about aspects of the Hunter Biden bribery allegations. Now, a former New York Times reporter did the same on a podcast with a RealClearInvestigations reporter. James Risen barely lasted 20 minutes before hanging up the phone (via RCP):
Amazing -- my @RCInvestigates colleague Peder Zane was invited on a podcast to talk with former NYT reporter @JamesRisen1. When he questioned his Hunter Biden reporting, Risen hung up and left the podcast. https://t.co/I04i7hEtn1
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) September 20, 2023
I was expecting a lively exchange when Mike Gallagher invited me to debate the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen on his “No Interruptions” podcast last week. Instead, I was gobsmacked as the former New York Times reporter abruptly hung up the phone after some 15 minutes.
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Before we get to that, Risen, who now reports for The Intercept, does deserve some backhanded praise: In the few minutes he spoke on Mike Gallagher’s podcast, Risen delivered a master class in concision, echoing most every major talking point fashioned by Biden’s handlers and the mainstream media to defend the president.
The Loving Father: Risen framed his defense of Joe Biden by asserting that the president’s major fault may be that he loves his son too much…
No Evidence: As to Joe Biden’s actions, Risen repeated the scandalously common claim that there is no evidence the president has done anything “illicit or illegal…”
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Risen and Biden’s other defenders are playing word games. By evidence they really mean proof. Indeed, we don’t have a signed memo by Joe Biden stating he changed a specific policy in exchange for payments to his son. While we have multiple examples of Hunter’s business associates identifying Joe as the “big guy” who would get a cut of the action, we do not, as yet, have a check made out to the president. The evidence clearly shows that Joe personally facilitated Hunter’s efforts to earn money from China, Ukraine, and Romania based on the promise of access to his father. These hard facts cannot be wished away.
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The interview ended after Risen cast himself as a fearless journalist whose exoneration of Biden should have special weight because he had written one of the first articles, back in 2015 for the New York Times, addressing Hunter’s dealings in the Ukraine. I’m familiar with his piece and told him it reflected the problem with so much mainstream reporting on Hunter’s position on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma: It noted the company’s shady history but dug no deeper as it regurgitated spin concocted by the company, Hunter, and his team.
While we now know that Hunter was paid the princely sum of $83,000 per month for his service, I reminded Risen that he simply quoted a Burisma spokesperson who said Hunter’s pay was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions. I also pointed out that he merely quoted a Burisma spokesperson who suggested Hunter was brought on to help with “strong corporate governance and transparency.” This seems fanciful on its face. As Lee Fang reported this week for RealClearInvestigations, emails from Hunter’s laptop show his employment was connected to lobbying efforts in Washington and access to his father.
In response, Risen said he refused to be “insulted,” and hung up the phone.
This isn’t necessarily Woodward and Bernstein's work—there’s a lot to sift through, but everything is out there, along with the statements from Burisma, as noted above, and the timelines of Hunter’s travels. I guess there wasn’t time to get further into the details of Joe Biden offering Burisma their promised legal shield if Hunter was on their board. Biden got Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired from the corruption probe into the energy company by threatening to withhold aid.
All that had to be done to scare off an ex-NYT writer is simply pointing out that Burisma’s vocal defense of Hunter Biden’s employment is soaked in propaganda, thus producing an ‘as expected’ result. Going this route is like trusting Kim Jong-un’s press team that the country doesn’t have nuclear weapons. And what about the credible FBI source who alleged in an FD-1023 report that Joe and Hunter were bribed in 2015-16?
There’s plenty of ammunition. Use it because the war with the media on this topic will be as long and frustrating as the Russian collusion stuff.