Liberal media has now been dragged kicking and screaming into having to take the possible charges against Hunter Biden seriously and you can see MSNBC doing just a bit of squirming in this hot take, downplaying for all they’re worth, saying while there’s this report, there aren’t any actual charges yet.
Of course, MSNBC leaves out a ton of stuff and yes, there were things on the laptop that could support charges regarding the gun purchase, not to mention a boatload of other things. But they do the most cursory comment ever and leave out all that stuff, particularly all the dealings with foreign entities, Joe Biden’s involvement, and any question of influence peddling. They don’t want to accord the laptop any credence, they act like they have no idea what’s on it. “It’s really unclear,” the Washington Post reporter says about whether the laptop factors into the charges. It wouldn’t be unclear if you had been covering the information on the laptop. The reporter takes the “Republicans pounce” position, rather than identifying what those bad dealings on the laptop were.
But one of the things that the MSNBC report makes sure to highlight is the comment of Hunter Biden’s lawyer — that if the FBI leaked this, it was a federal felony. Alex Thompson of Politico also highlighted that leaks were bad.
Funny, how the media didn’t highlight “leaks were bad” when the leaks were being constantly dropped on President Donald Trump. Then, the focus was on things that had no evidence apart from the leak, such as the claim that there were nuclear-related documents found during the raid at Mar-a-Lago. That was a “leak” targeted to hurt Trump. But suddenly, leaks are bad again, now that it’s Hunter Biden.
But not to pour cold water on the report, they’ve been slow-walking the charges for so long, I’ll believe it when I see it. But if these are the substance of the charges, it’s effectively a “split the baby” effort. They want to charge him on the things that don’t involve foreign dealings or Joe Biden, any questions about foreign government’s influence on the Bidens, or any FARA violations — Hunter acting as a foreign agent. That way they can claim “we were fair” and not touch Joe or anything truly substantive.
Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman also raised some important questions about the news dropping at this time, including that if the story was true, they weren’t looking at all the charges they could be looking at.
“The charges themselves, they talk about the lying and buying. … Why would you bring that charge when you have him actually possessing the firearm? You would bring the possession of a firearm by a user of narcotics instead of lying and buying because it has a far greater punishment. Some of this doesn’t add up,” Tolman explained. [….]
“The other is in relation to the charges they make, and first of all, the grand jury has expired. So they have the charges already and kept them under seal, or they do not have an ability to present any of these charges unless they impanel a new grand jury,” he added. [….]
“So much of it doesn’t make sense, Martha,” Tolman told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum. “It is a very awkward, clumsy story that seems to be identifying what is happening. … Some of this doesn’t add up. It does add up if, in fact, the whistleblowers are correct and they are trying to bury the story.”
We covered the report of the video of Hunter waving around the gun, so one would have to presume they have that information as well.
It does make sense if they’re trying to skate with minimal things they can tag him with. There had been positive indications the grand jury was looking at some of the foreign information. But if they haven’t even spoken to Tony Bobulinski, how far have they been trying to go with this?
We shall have to wait and see. But right now, it looks to me that if this report can be believed, it’s an effort to completely bypass any of the more serious issues in this matter.