Lawmakers call for investigation over Hunter Biden laptop story censorship
Now that media outlets admit the story was true.
Last week, The New York Times admitted that the Hunter Biden laptop story was authentic, about 17 months after the New York Post published its content in September 2020. Now, Republicans are demanding a probe into the laptop and the censorship of the information about the laptop that was reported, suggesting that the suppression and discrediting of the story could have impacted the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
When the post published the story, it was immediately censored by social media companies. Many mainstream outlets either ignored it or tried to discredit it. Some media figures dismissed the story as a Russian disinformation campaign.
Some of the Republicans that have called for a new probe into the laptop include Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz.
In a statement to The Post, he said: “The most basic accountability requires firing those responsible for the ‘Russian disinfo’ lie about the Biden family’s corruption, including and especially the former intelligence officials who were elevated to the top of cable news because they pushed wild and unsubstantiated Russia conspiracy theories about President Trump.
“Furthermore, Big Tech leaders who participated in censoring the truth should answer to Congress and the American people in sworn testimony.”
“It’s sad. We’re all talking about disinformation in Russia and other totalitarian countries and we are learning that we have it right here at home,” Staten Island GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said.
“Big Tech’s censorship of a story the liberal media has now acknowledged to be true just proves that a Republican House majority must take meaningful action to rein in Big Tech censors next year,” said GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney.
Hunter Biden left his laptop in a repair shop in Delaware. When he did not pick it up, the laptop ended up in the hands of Rudy Giuliani, who then took it to The Post. After verifying its authenticity, The Post published its contents.
Emails and other documents on the laptop suggested that Hunter Biden used his father’s influence as vice president in corporate dealings in eastern Europe, notably Ukraine.
According to research by The Media Research Center, more than half of Biden voters did not know about the controversy and about 10% would not have voted for Joe Biden if they knew about the laptop.
By Dan Frieth
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The Hunter Biden laptop story shows Joe is ‘compromised’
The New York Post’s columnist Miranda Devine says the real take-away from the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is the serious claims the US president has been “compromised” by the money and gifts given to his son by Ukrainian and Chinese interests.
Among photos of Hunter indulging in illegal drugs, there was potentially criminating information about payment and gifts given to him by foreign interests.
There were indications in the emails that Joe Biden may have also received some of the money and gifts, although this has not been independently verified.
Despite the Post’s story having significant public interest ahead of the 2020 election, all the major media outlets dismissed the story and social media giants banned it from being published.
By Sky News
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Biden's "Absolute" Defense Of Hunter Leaves Media & Justice Department In A Muddle
Below is my column in The Hill on President Joe Biden doubling down on his absolute defense of his son Hunter Biden. The comments only magnify the concerns over Attorney General Merrick Garland refusing to appoint a special counsel despite the clear basis for such an appointment. It is clear that the President “absolutely” stands by his son and that the media absolutely stands by the President. The question is whether Garland will stand by justice and appoint a special counsel.
Here is the column:
“We absolutely stand by the president’s comment.” With those words, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield reaffirmed that President Biden maintains his son Hunter Biden did “nothing [that] was unethical” and never “made money” in China.
Those claims appear demonstrably false — and they make the positions of both the media and Attorney General Merrick Garland absolutely untenable.
For the media, the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden by U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware has presented a growing danger of self-indictment over its prior coverage (or noncoverage). Weiss has called a long line of witnesses before a grand jury, and there is growing expectation of criminal charges against Hunter Biden.
Nothing concentrates the mind as much as a looming indictment.
Thus, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media faced the embarrassing prospect of an indictment based on a story they previously suggested was either a nonstory or Russian disinformation. Suddenly, in recent days, they all rushed to declare the story legitimate, 18 months after the New York Post reported it in October 2020.
What quickly emerged, though, was a new narrative: None of this implicates President Biden. On CNN, White House correspondent John Harwood declared, “There is zero evidence that Vice President Biden, or President Biden, has done anything wrong in connection with what Hunter Biden has done.” Anchor Brianna Keilar then added for emphasis that Harwood was making “an important distinction.”
It was important, but not because it was true. While many media figures now willingly admit the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s abandoned-laptop story, they are avoiding what the emails found on that laptop actually contain. Hundreds of emails appear to detail a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling enterprise by the Biden family, including Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden.
Influence peddling has long been the way Washington’s elite enriches itself. This common source of political corruption involves the relatives of powerful government figures who shake down corporations or countries for access and influence.
The Bidens would seem to be standouts in this common practice, engaging in a virtual family business. James Biden has been accused of marketing his connection to his brother. And in the emails discovered on his abandoned laptop, Hunter Biden practically sold timeshares of his father by dangling meetings and dinners for investors.
The key in any influence peddling scheme is to protect the principal. People apparently were told to avoid directly referring to President Biden. In one email, Tony Bobulinski, then a business partner of Hunter’s, was instructed by Biden associate James Gilliar not to speak of the former veep’s connection to any transactions: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”
Instead, the emails apparently refer to President Biden with code names such as “Celtic” or “the big guy.” In one, “the big guy” is discussed as possibly receiving a 10 percent cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm; other emails reportedly refer to Hunter Biden paying portions of his father’s expenses and taxes.
Despite President Biden’s repeated claims he knew nothing about these dealings, Bobulinski has said he personally met with the senior Biden to discuss Hunter Biden’s business activities. Bobulinski had been selected by the family to handle these deals.
As vice president, Joe Biden flew to China on Air Force Two with Hunter Biden, who arranged for his father to meet some of his business interests. Hunter Biden’s financial interest in a Chinese-backed investment firm, BHR Partners, was registered within weeks of that 2013 trip. Yet, President Biden repeatedly insisted that he never discussed such dealings with his son, a claim Hunter Biden has contradicted.
There are emails of Ukrainian and other foreign clients thanking Hunter Biden for arranging meetings with his father. There are photos from dinners and meetings that tie President Biden to these figures, including a 2015 dinner with a group of Hunter Biden’s Russian and Kazakh clients.
It is important to note that when these foreign interests were clamoring to give Hunter Biden millions of dollars, he was, by his own admission, a hopeless addict. In his 2021 memoir, Hunter Biden admits he was “drinking a quart of vodka a day” and “smoking crack around the clock,” up until his father’s 2020 presidential campaign began. So why would Russian, Chinese and other foreign figures give Hunter Biden all of this money, if not to influence his father?
The new narrative suggests that, while Hunter Biden maintained one of the largest influence-peddling schemes in recent history, it did not involve the object of that scheme — his father.
Even if President Biden was not influenced by all of this, it’s hard to believe he didn’t know his son was selling access. In his book, Hunter Biden claims his father repeatedly intervened due to his addictions — and yet we are to believe that Joe Biden did not express curiosity about how his addicted son was raking in millions from foreign sources?
The point is that President Biden really did not have to ask: Hunter Biden had nothing to sell but influence. All President Biden had to do to facilitate such schemes was to be accessible — to allow his family to deliver face-to-face meetings and photo ops.
And that brings us to the untenable position of Garland.
It is hard to imagine a stronger case for a special counsel. Any effort to investigate Hunter Biden’s dealings will lead investigators to encounter repeated references to the president and how he may have benefited from those schemes. At the same time, the president is “absolutely” standing by his denial that his son did anything wrong or made any money from China.
The White House statement this week serves as a reminder to investigators that the president is heavily invested in this narrative and his denial of now-established facts.
This is not to say that Weiss, the U.S. Attorney investigating Hunter Biden, will not be independent in his efforts. However, the concern is the appearance of how a conflict might affect the investigation or limit the scope of any potential charges. Moreover, absent a special counsel, there is unlikely to be a report on these apparent influence peddling schemes.
Garland pledged to protect the Justice Department from such conflicts and to avoid even the appearance of political influence. He now has a president stating that alleged wrongdoing by his son is “absolutely” untrue, including dealings possibly impacting the president personally and financially. If Garland declines to appoint a special counsel, he will absolutely fail on his pledge.
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450GB OF ‘DELETED’ HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP MATERIAL TO BE RELEASED WITHIN WEEKS
A whistleblower who’s fled the United States for Switzerland has vowed to drop ‘450 gigabytes of deleted material‘ from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, which he says he also gave the the Washington Post, New York Times, and Sen. Chuck Grassley – all of whom he says sat on it for months.
For the past two weeks, former Steve Bannon War Room co-host Jack Maxey has been hiding in Zurich, where he told the Daily Mail he’s been working with IT experts to dig more data from Hunter’s ‘laptop from hell,’ and that he’ll post it all online in a searchable database in the coming weeks.
Maxey says the data includes 80,000 images and videos, and more than 120,000 archived emails.
“I came here so that we could do a forensic examination of Hunter’s laptop safely in a country that still respects human liberty and the ideals of liberal democratic principles,” he told the Mail. “I do not believe this would have been possible inside the United States. We had numerous attempts on us from trying to do things like this there.”
Maxey said that after contacting DailyMail.com about the laptop last year, black suburban SUVs appeared outside his house, and former US intelligence officer friends he shared copies with told him they received strange calls.
‘I showed this to a friend of mine in desperation in February [2021] because nobody would listen to me. No news organizations would take it. In fact, the very first major news organization to take it was the Daily Mail,’ he said.
‘Very dear friends of mine, the sharp tip of the spear, were making welfare calls to me every day, basically to see if I was still alive.‘ -Daily Mail
One former intelligence agency senior staffer allegedly told Maxey after he received the hard drive two years ago “If you don’t release enough of this, so that they know you can release all of it, I’m telling you brother, you’re a dead man.”
After receiving this advice, he began posting caches of emails and other material from the laptop on various file sharing sites – only to find the links removed within an hour.
“There were five drop boxes: two in the United States, one in New Zealand, two in the UK. All the same drop boxes in which they tell us child pornography is shared around the globe without any consequence because they can’t look at it,” he said, adding: “These are all Five Eyes countries, English speaking countries in an intelligence sharing agreement. And they were all ripped down.”
“??So this means that our intelligence services, who still have not even acknowledged that they have Hunter Biden’s laptop, were obviously diligently doing cache searches across the internet to find out if any of this stuff was being released. That should terrify every single decent person in the West.”
According to Maxey, he went to Switzerland because they are home to the only file sharing site that didn’t nuke the laptop files – Swiss Transfer.
The former Bannon podcast co-host said he is livid at the FBI, who he believes slow-walked their investigation into Hunter and failed to enter the laptop they received from Mac Isaac into evidence for months.
According to the New York Times, files from the laptop are now part of the evidence in Hunter’s federal prosecution for alleged tax fraud, money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying.
Among the files on the laptop are a raft of emails and documents showing Hunter’s dealings with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas firm that became the center of Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019.
The then-president was accused of pushing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce investigations into the Bidens and Burisma for alleged corruption. -Daily Mail
“The FBI had this on the ninth of December 2019,” said Maxey. “‘I suppose the first person betrayed was a sitting US president in an impeachment hearing, when the FBI had the exculpatory evidence in their hands to have that end instantly, and they did nothing.”
“The second group of people to be betrayed were all of the Democratic candidates in the spring primaries that year,” he continued. “The American people were utterly betrayed, because I guarantee you that Joe Biden couldn’t run for dog catcher if the American people knew about this laptop.”
Read the rest of the report here.
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