This month, Hunter Biden was found guilty of federal gun charges. The real kicker was that the Biden Justice Department used the laptop of the cracked-out son of the president as key evidence. The device, long dismissed by liberal media members as Russian disinformation, turned out to be authentic after all. We’ve known that since October of 2020. It wasn’t until months later that every media outlet that ran with the fake news Russian disinformation theory opted to stealth edit their stories.
Ah yeah. That's the good stuff. pic.twitter.com/nzWvu7fD9N
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 12, 2024
Because Hunter Biden was just convicted based on evidence from his laptop - the same laptop which CIA, corporate media and Dems all united in 2020 to falsely brand as fake "Russian disinformation" - NYT finally has to grapple with what happened.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2024
But how they do so is pathetic: https://t.co/gSFn3Ym6Uj
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump also disregarded how this narrative became a desiccated carcass of a media narrative. What he wrote on June 12 is why no one trusts the media, why we mock them, and how they have an inability to apologize and admit defeat. Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote a takedown of Bump’s piece [bold text indicates Bump’s WaPo article]:
Across the media, journalists have recognized that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic and, as established early by American intelligence agencies, not “Russian disinformation.” With the authentication of the laptop in the Delaware trial as “real” and untampered, most media has chosen to walk away with a slightly embarrassed shrug. Not the Washington Post. Its columnist, Philip Bump, was one of the most prominent purveyors of what the U.S. government now calls a “conspiracy theory.”
…Bump ran another column to assure liberals that they were right all along about the laptop story.
[…]
After Hannity lamented the media’s silence on the so-called “critical development,” Turley offered a theory for why that silence had ensued.
‘If the laptop is authentic, if those files are real,’ he said, “then you have these detailed accounts of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation run by the Biden family. Those would also be authentic. But the media just simply doesn’t want to go there.’
Except that we already know that many of those files were real, because we got access to them and verified them. The reason the media ‘doesn’t want to go there’ on breathless claims about a ‘Biden family’ influence-peddling operation is that the material doesn’t prove any such operation. It shows — as has by now been exhaustively explained — work done by Hunter Biden and his Uncle James that involved lots of money but did not demonstrably involve President Biden. The entire point of the House Republican impeachment effort has been to prove Joe Biden’s involvement; they have been unable to do so.”
Once again, Bump makes it sound like the Post vigorously and quickly verified the laptop. The belated acknowledgement did not come until much later. It was not until March 2022 that the Post finally admitted that the laptop was real, but then did comparably little to pursue the corruption and other unlawful conduct detailed on the laptop.
Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid appeared to state the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
[…]
In deflecting questions about the coverage of the Biden corruption scandal, Bump simply ignores witness testimony that has proven that President Biden lied about having no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings and met with his clients both in person and over the phone. More importantly, he ignores that this was a massive influence peddling operation where President Biden was the object. He was the “brand” being sold.
Influence peddling is a form of political corruption that the government continues to denounce worldwide. The fact that millions went to Biden family members rather than the President does not change the fact that this was one of the largest influence peddling operations in history.
I’m shocked Bump would revisit this story ever since he ran away like a little schoolgirl when pressed about details of this story last September:
Here’s @pbump’s response to a simple question from @noam_dworman about what he as a journalist thinks of Hunter Biden’s text message to his adult daughter explaining that he has to give half his income to his father. The lack of curiosity is stunning. https://t.co/HuXKIMUVhC pic.twitter.com/Aa4dXZ6HJR
— a newsman (@a_newsman) September 1, 2023
I’m also amused that he feels half the country took a victory lap in an empty arena despite endless coverage on Fox News, the most-watched cable news network in the country. It sounds like grade-A cope and seethe material. This story was real, and Bump tried to gaslight his audience with that article. The Washington Post is bleeding money and was forced to lay off staff to keep the ship afloat. Having clowns who can’t admit they screwed up could be part of the problem.
Drew Holden had a lengthy post on Substack about the Hunter Biden laptop saga, laying out all the receipts concerning the media establishment’s heinous behavior regarding this story. It’s a marquee piece on the whole laptop fiasco, and it notes the most crucial point about it: this entire circus was homegrown election interference.
…lost in that shuffle was that key detail: the allegations of corruption against President Biden. The story instead became about Russian disinformation, Hunter’s lurid photos, drug addiction, media bias, and the actions of social media giants. It should have been that the soon-to-be president, while he was vice president, pressured a foreign government to remove a prosecutor who was threatening his son’s professional interests, and did so after meeting with the people who were paying the son. It should have been about corruption and abuse of power.
Voters should’ve known all that before they went to the polls. Our recollection of what happened should be tied firstly to that. Instead, the ruse worked. The detail got lost in the scuffle. Biden won the 2020 Election.
But voters felt duped. A 2022 poll found that 80 percent of respondents believed that Trump would’ve won the election if voters knew the full story (as it was incompletely known then) of the corruption contained in the laptop. That included two-thirds of Democrats who said it would’ve changed their votes… I know “election interference” is a sore subject these days. But what else can you call what the mainstream media, en masse, did?
And they’re going to try and do it again soon.