Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe released a recording of CNN’s top brass reportedly saying the outlet would not cover the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.
“I do think, on the Breitbart, New York Post, Fox News rabbit hole of Hunter Biden, which I don’t think anybody outside of that world understood,” CNN President Jeff Zucker allegedly said in the recording.
Another CNN employee, reportedly Political Director David Chalian, said during the call: “Obviously, we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden, which seems to be giving its marching orders to Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber about what to talk about today.”
“Obviously, Hunter Biden’s lawyer is quoted in that New York Post piece, and we’ll just continue to report out, this is the very stuff that the president was impeached over. This is the stuff that Senate committees looked at and found nothing wrong in Joe Biden’s interactions with Ukrainians,” he added.
BREAKING: @CNN Execs Jeff Zucker, David Chalian, and David Vigilante SPIKE COVERAGE Of @NYPost Hunter Biden Laptop Bombshell
“OBVIOUSLY we’re not going with the New York Post story on Hunter Biden right now.”
“Perhaps there was a meeting with someone from Burisma…”#CNNTapes pic.twitter.com/Rh334srRz3
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 2, 2020
Another man on the call, reportedly CNN Executive Vice President and General Counsel David Vigilante, added: “Hey, Jeff, it’s just David, on the Burisma story, and we should be awfully careful about that obviously, but I do think there’s a media story. What in the world are Maggie Haberman and Jake Sherman doing retweeting that story?”
The New York Post published stories in October detailing that Hunter Biden allegedly set up a meeting between his father, when he served as vice president, and a senior official at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, Vadym Pozharskyi.
The report contradicted claims Joe Biden made that he and Hunter never discussed his son’s overseas business dealings. The material reported in the New York Post was reportedly found on the younger Biden’s alleged computer, which was left in a Delaware repair shop.
Following the New York Post publishing its initial report, Twitter and Facebook moved to censor the article. Twitter made it impossible to share the story on its platform, and it locked the New York Post’s primary Twitter account because of the piece, which sparked the ire of many and forced questions about whether Big Tech’s overreach has become untenable.
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
