Politico thought it broke a major story this week, claiming to have confirmed the authenticity of emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, emails that were suppressed by Politico itself at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Playbook claimed on Tuesday that a new book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.”
The story continued:
A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the change to meet Joe Biden. The same goes for a 2017 emails in which a proposed equity breakdown of a venture with Chinese energy executives includes the line, ’10 held H for the big guy?’ (This person recalled seeing both emails, but was not in a position to compare the leaked emails word-for-word to the originals.)
This comes eleven months after blockbuster reporting from the New York Post on the exact topic shook up the election. Politico meanwhile, participated in the seemingly coordinated media smear campaign to discredit the Post’s major scoop.
“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared a Politico headline on Oct. 19.
By the time of the election on Nov. 3, the Post’s report had been supported by forensic analyses, corroborating reports, the rare reveal of an active FBI investigation, an on-the-record witness, and on-the-record statements debunking the idea of a Russian disinformation campaign from the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of National Intelligence, and the Department of State. Even if the content found on the hard drive turned out to be foreign hoax, it was certainly far more credible than the years-long conspiracy campaign alleging President Donald Trump was as a covert Russian agent.
New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari pointed out his own paper was suspended from Twitter for weeks, had its links disabled on the platform, was accused of peddling Russian disinformation, and had its traffic suppressed on Facebook, all for reporting what Politico claimed to reveal this week—that Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he denied ever discussing business with his son, and also stood to rake in thousands from Hunter’s ventures.
Politico confirmed details of the Post’s reporting free of censorship this week, 11 months after the story broke and 10 months after the election. Conclusion: Politico is apparently superior to the nation’s fifth largest paper by circulation.
It’s difficult to overstate the damage done by the media’s cooperative shut down of incriminating information to surround the Biden family. A study commissioned by the Media Research Center in late November surveyed Biden voters across eight swing states after the election and examined their knowledge of several news stories the group felt the media had not fairly or adequately covered, including the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Of the 1,750 surveyed, 17 percent said they would not have voted for Biden had they known just one of eight stories presented. Biden carried seven of the eight states where voters were polled, including Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Trump would still be in office had the incumbent just captured 45,000 more votes across the three tipping-point states.
Would every crisis of Biden’s presidency—Afghanistan, the border collapse, runaway inflation, deteriorating world alliances—happened without the corporate suppression of Hunter’s emails? The answer speaks to the dangers of a disinformation police force with a monopoly on truth.