the New York Post believed to hold the “surprise of October”, the story which was to upset the presidential campaign of 2020 in the final stretch.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
“Biden’s secret emails,” read the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s conservative tabloid, which thus launched, three weeks before the election, a series of articles revealing the alleged contents of a laptop computer that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic Party presidential candidate.
But the exclusives of Post about the alleged corruption of the Bidens would provoke an outcry. Twitter has blocked the sharing of the daily’s articles on its network and suspended the account of the Post for 16 days, claiming that the emails may have been hacked.
Facebook has restricted the distribution of the same stories on its platform, saying it wants to make sure it is not used for “disinformation”.
And the most reputable media, including the wall street journalwhich belongs to the same group as the Posthave treated the matter with circumspection, saying they cannot authenticate the emails.
This caution was justified, up to a point. WikiLeaks had notably succeeded in influencing the previous presidential campaign by publishing over several days, starting on October 7, 2016, emails stolen by Russian hackers from the account of someone close to Hillary Clinton.
Another factor explaining this caution: Rudolph Giuliani, who had already relayed Russian disinformation in the Ukrainian affair, was involved in this story. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer is indeed the one who gave the Post a copy of a laptop hard drive that Hunter Biden allegedly left in April 2019 in a Delaware repair shop without ever recovering it.
What’s more, in a letter released on October 19, 2020, no less than 51 former American intelligence officials believed that this story had “all the classic characteristics of a Russian information operation”.
” The Times finally admit it”
However, over the last 15 days, two of the great jewels of the American press, the New York Times and the washington postsucceeded in authenticating several e-mails located on the hard drive given to the New York Post.
Since then, the tabloid and the American right have exulted, while castigating these same media for having waited 18 months – and a presidential election – before writing the truth.
” The Times finally admit it: Hunter’s laptop is real,” claimed the editorial page of the New York Post.
IMAGE FROM THE WEBSITE OF NEW YORK POST
One of New York Post from March 18, 2022
In fact, the Times didn’t recognize it. The newspaper simply wrote that some emails possibly coming from Hunter Biden’s laptop had been authenticated. But the tabloid could feel justified in showing off, up to a point.
“The wonder never ceases,” the columnist wrote on Wednesday. Post Miranda Devine, author of the book Laptop from Hellan expression borrowed from Donald Trump, who repeated it many times in the last weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign in reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“After our story was censored by Big Tech and dismissed as ‘Russian disinformation’ by Democratic prevaricator Adam Schiff and 51 former goons led by former CIA Director John Brennan, it is apparently safe to admit that the laptop is real and that the emails we posted can be easily authenticated,” she added.
However, Miranda Devine remains unsatisfied. Because neither the New York Timesnor the washington postnor CNN have concluded, as his newspaper and several Republicans have, that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s “corrupt” business in Ukraine, China or Russia.
“Hunter’s computer is a large piece of a puzzle that leads to such a shocking conclusion,” she wrote.
For the moment, this conclusion seems erroneous.
The investigation continues
In a long article published this week, the washington post declares not to have “found evidence that Joe Biden knew the details of the transactions with [la société énergétique chinoise] CEFC, which took place after he left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020 or personally benefited from it”.
CNN analyst John Harwood summed up the channel’s report on Hunter Biden’s affairs by saying that the latter exploited “his father’s name to make a lot of money”. But “there is no evidence that Vice President Biden, or President Biden, did anything wrong in relation to what Hunter Biden did,” he added.
the New York Times did not directly address this issue in his article. The newspaper simply quoted emails that could, in fact, help the son defend himself if he is charged.
Like other media, including CBS News, the Times confirmed that Hunter Biden is still under investigation by the US Department of Justice. In December 2020, the son of the future president had himself revealed to be the subject of an investigation into his tax affairs.
Since then, he has repaid a large tax debt. But his taxes represent only one of the elements of the investigation which targets him. In 2018, this expanded, under then US Attorney General William Barr, to include possible violations of foreign lobbying and money laundering rules.
Congressional Republicans promise to conduct their own investigation into Hunter Biden and his laptop if they win a majority in the House of Representatives or the Senate.
The hard drives returned to the New York Post and at washington post contain multiple photos or videos showing Hunter Biden smoking crack or engaging in sexual acts. The New York tabloid has already published several photos illustrating the addiction problems of Joe Biden’s son at one time.