On the corner of my desk is a pile of newspaper clippings, notes, and documents. Dating from last October, they are part of the scandalous information left on a laptop by Hunter Biden.
Normally I would have thrown away or put away the papers by now. But I kept them close because I knew the day would come when they would be needed again.
Friday was that day.
In a TV interview, Hunter actually admitted that the laptop was his first, which opened the door for another round of investigation into his foreign business scams and influence. This time, the door must remain open until America gets the truth.
Thanks to The Post’s stubborn work last fall, it was clear the laptop was Hunter’s. But because Democrats and their media makers tried to hide the truth, emails detailing suspicious behavior from the man now president have never been fully investigated and explained.
That blackout must end.
So far we’ve only gotten lies, like when Joe Biden called the laptop “a Russian factory” during a presidential debate. He had help concocting that claim, with 50 former intelligence leaders, including the odious John Brennan, saying the contents smelled like Russian disinformation.
That was a dog whistle for Big Media, which tried to debunk stories of the shocking content. Even when Tony Bobulinski, a decorated former naval officer, came forward to say he was the CEO in a deal involving the Biden family and Chinese energy officials, he spoke to Joe Biden about the deal and that Joe would have a secret 10 percent to get. cut, Big Media looked the other way.
That was a second dog whistle, this one for Big Tech, with Facebook and Twitter promptly blocking The Post’s reports during the stretch run.
The performance was a national disgrace – and a successful dirty trick that helped Biden win the election. How successful it became became more apparent in a poll in which 45 percent of voters said they knew nothing about Hunter’s business deals, and 9.4 percent said they wouldn’t have voted for Biden if they had known.
Weeks later, in December, Hunter admitted that he was the target of a criminal tax investigation by the Justice Department, in part because the FBI also had the contents of the laptop. How handy that the information was kept until after the elections.
Yet the media’s deliberate ignorance still continues. Last Thursday, in an NPR review of Hunter’s new book “Beautiful Things”, Ron Elving, an NPR editor, made the false claim that the “laptop story had been discredited by US intelligence agencies and independent investigations by news organizations.” Later he made a big-mouthed correction, but no real journalist could make that mistake.
But karma is a funny thing, and Hunter’s comments to CBS Friday during a book tour bring the laptop back into play. While I’m not naive enough to assume that The New York Times, CNN and Twitter will suddenly become something other than leftist shills, they no longer have a monopoly on the information many Americans get.
Moreover, Biden as president cannot hide as easily as last year. Press conferences allow journalists to ask him directly about his role in Hunter’s deals.
Also, press secretary Jen Psaki holds near-daily briefings, where reporters have time to address complicated topics. All of these events are televised, so just asking clear, fact-based questions about the president’s behavior alerts viewers to the issues and concerns.
If Biden or Psaki don’t provide credible answers, Americans will know they are hiding something important.
While Hunter still hasn’t been honest about his father’s role, responsibility has shifted to his father. It’s long past the time Joe Biden answers questions about how his family, including brothers Jim and Frank, managed to make tens of millions of dollars from contracts and connections to Joe’s government power.
The short answer is that they sold access and foreign governments and oligarchs liked to buy at exorbitant prices. The most famous scam, Hunter who got $ 4 million from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company, despite knowing nothing about energy or Ukraine, sums up the family business model.
The main open questions concern Bobulinski’s claims about China. He teamed up with Hunter and Jim Biden, along with two other investors, to form a joint venture with the energy conglomerate, whose owners had close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The plan was that the Americans would use Joe’s contacts to make deals with governments around the world so that the Chinese would buy and operate infrastructure projects. The Chinese would hang up all the money and the Americans would get a discount on every deal. They imagined that many billions of dollars would be traded in hands.
One of the emails on the laptop stated that Hunter would have 10 percent of the partnership for “the big man.”
Bobulinski told me that Joe Biden was “the big guy,” one of the phrases Hunter always referred to his father. Another partner, James Gilliar, told Bobulinski by text message, “Don’t say Joe is involved, it’s only when you’re personal, I know you know, but they’re paranoid.”
Bobulinski told me he had met Joe, Jim and Hunter to discuss the ‘family business’ in 2017 and in a second interview the next day, Joe said he should ‘watch my family’. When Bobulinski asked Jim Biden why the family wasn’t concerned about Joe’s role being exposed, he said Jim laughed and said, “Plausible denial.”
The joint venture collapsed, but Senate investigators revealed that Hunter, Jim and fifth partner, Robb Walker, received $ 11 million from the Chinese side in the ensuing months.
Did Joe Biden get any of that money, directly or indirectly? Recall reports that Hunter once said his father is claiming half of his income.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Whose committee investigated the Bidens’ Chinese connections, believes the money the family received poses a risk that China could “blackmail” the president.
These are serious concerns, but too much of the media doesn’t even care. It is up to the few honest journalists left to find out the facts.
It’s a shame for All-Star
Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new voting bill proves a claim often attributed to Mark Twain: A lie could come halfway around the world while the truth still be put on boots.
The lie is that Georgian law aims to suppress turnout. The truth, as Governor Brian Kemp says, is that it “makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
Maybe that’s the problem: the leftists don’t care if it’s easier to vote. They just want to make it easier to cheat.
Dems, do you want to make this clear?
Marcus Cederqvist, a former executive director of the city’s election council, makes a good point, writing: “If people are required to provide proof of identity to confirm their identity when voting is racist, the Democrats proposed ‘vaccine passports’ are no longer exponential.