By now, it’s easy to blast the establishment media for their dishonesty in handling the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Easy, but still necessary. A new report from Politico shows why.
Top Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger released a book today examining the Biden family’s “fifty-year rise to power” in which, among other reports about the family’s problematic profiteering, Schreckinger confirms the authenticity of some of the emails found on the laptop in question.
This is, of course, about the umpteenth new story supporting the always-obvious legitimacy of the first New York Post reports about the computer. Still, the venue here is noteworthy. Politico is one of the “mainstream” publications that joined the frenzy last year hyping the flagrant lie that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for any of those media outlets to apologize for their botched coverage, nor for the “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials” who leveled that charge to atone for spreading a falsehood for which there was precisely zero evidence.
That said, the nature of these particular emails confirmed by Schreckinger’s book is important. One was the single most significant email included in and highlighted by the early New York Post reports. In the April 17, 2015, email, Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for having arranged a meeting the night before with his father, Joe Biden. The elder Biden always asserted that he never discussed Hunter’s Ukrainian business dealings with him, and Joe Biden’s spokesmen claimed he never spent time with Pozharskyi on the night in question even though he definitely dined that evening at the restaurant in question.
Pozharskyi is a top adviser to Burisma, the energy company that paid Hunter Biden $1 million annually to serve on its board even though he had no experience in the field. All along, discerning critics of the Burisma arrangement have said that although Hunter Biden’s deal was not technically illegal and even if most of his father’s diplomatic actions regarding Ukraine actually were pursuant to U.S. interests, the whole family should have avoided business entanglements related to a country for which the father was the Obama administration’s designated point man. That the father undeniably knew of his son’s paid position is bad enough. This confirmation of the Pozharskyi meeting is worse. It provides evidence that Joe Biden actually met with his son’s Burisma associates, which indicates an obvious potential conflict of interest and further undercuts international perceptions of U.S. policy in the region.
Those latter considerations move this story from one of mere private greed to one of U.S. public policy.
Also confirmed was an email indicating that one of Hunter Biden’s sleazy dealings with Chinese energy executives involved at least some discussion that a 10% share in the deal would be “held by H for the big guy,” with the “big guy” meaning Joe Biden. The latter email had been part of claims by former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski, who said he met directly with Joe Biden to discuss the arrangement. Even though Bobulinski’s account contained multiple elements that made it highly believable, most establishment news outlets mocked the entire story, not just in opinion pieces, but in allegedly straight news pieces.
As was evident from the start, the importance of the laptop always lay in what it said not about Hunter Biden, but about the man who is now president. That’s precisely why the establishment media performed ethical backflips to belittle the story: to protect Joe Biden. The establishment media are as corrupt as the Bidens are.
