Shortly before the 2020 election, the New York Post broke a story that was promptly suppressed by Facebook and Twitter. “Both social media companies said the moves were aimed at slowing the spread of potentially false information…(b)ut (each) gave few details about how they reached their decisions, sparking criticism about the lack of clarity and consistency with which they apply their rules.”
What was the substance of the story the Post had published that was so quickly labeled “potentially false information?” “Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post…(t)he blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s ‘never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings’ — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer. The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.”
That October, “(f)ollowing the purported revelations about Hunter Biden’s allegedly corrupt foreign business dealings…criticism of the story rained down. It was widely argued, especially among Democrats, that the laptop and its emails were nothing less than fake Russian disinformation meant to meddle with the upcoming U.S. presidential election. ‘We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,’ said NPR’s Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel. ‘(T)his was a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.’”
The “Russian disinformation” narrative was the party line for much of the media. “CNN’s ‘The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer’ was particularly egregious on Oct. 16, 2020 when Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., joined the liberal network to discuss the Post’s reporting…’We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. That’s been clear for well over a year now that they’ve been pushing this false narrative about the vice president and his son,’ Schiff told Blitzer. ‘Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin.'”
At one point, “(m)ore than 50 former senior intelligence officials…signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation’… Former CIA directors or acting directors (John) Brennan, Leon Panetta, Gen. Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin and Michael Morell also signed the letter, along with more than three dozen other intelligence veterans. Several of the former officials on the list have endorsed Biden.”
The support of these 50 or so “senior intelligence officials” was significant enough to be mentioned by Joe Biden himself during the October 22, 2020 Presidential debate;
“TRUMP: If this stuff is true about Russia, Ukraine, China, other countries, Iraq — If this is true, then he’s a corrupt politician. So don’t give me the stuff about how you’re this innocent baby. Joe, they’re calling you a corrupt politician…
BIDEN: Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four– five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.
TRUMP: You mean, the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? You gotta be–
BIDEN: That’s exactly what — That’s exactly what–
TRUMP: Is this where you’re going? This is where he’s going. The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia?”
Indeed. And this remained the position of much of the media and Democratic Party through Biden’s election victory, and for the past year and one half.
Until now.
Judge Wilson’s (ret.) report concludes tomorrow
Illustration: Pixabay