The FBI's authentication of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop, averring that it was, in fact, real, has hit the so-called mainstream media like a proverbial ton of bricks. How could it not? After more than three years of desperately trying to make the blockbuster story go away, their hopes were dashed.
As my colleague Bob Hoge wrote on Friday, here's a refresher:
Just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post broke the story about how Hunter Biden’s laptop had been left at a computer repair shop and turned out to have photos and documents that showed his drug-addicted, lascivious lifestyle while its contents also revealed many dubious emails that appeared to show the Biden Crime Family illicitly profiting from all sorts of shady international dealings.
So naturally, in knee-jerk reaction, left-wing media sock puppets across America, in concert with Democrat politicians and dubious leftists in the intelligent community, rushed to throw cold water on the Post's 2020 bombshell report.
And what better way to do so than crying, "Russia, Russia, Russia!"? Surely, the infamous laptop (with potentially devastating consequences for Joe Biden) had all the markings of a "Russian plot."
On Wednesday, everything changed.
The FBI not only admitted in court that Hunter Biden's laptop is real; but also that the Bureau has known it was real from the beginning. Oops, media hacks and Democrat politicians (I'm thinking about you, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)), you got played.
The video below shows members of the media and others (including Adam Schiff) making politically predisposed assertions (smug faces included) about a conspiracy theory that the FBI knew weren't true.
The FBI just admitted in court that Hunter Biden's laptop is real.
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) June 5, 2024
Here are 20 minutes of Joe Biden, U.S. intelligence officials, and the American media claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation."
The FBI has had possession of Hunter's laptop since… pic.twitter.com/5lzQaXitwq
So now what?
What do Democrats who went all-in, up to their eyeballs, on the "Russian plot" for more than three years say now? (Forget Adam Schiff; he'd rather self-immolate than admit he was wrong.)
So far, "they" are saying zero, admitting nothing, and hoping nobody remembers how magnificently wrong they were. In other words: "Cue the crickets."
George Washington University Law professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley summed it up perfectly.
Watching the coverage this week out of Delaware was like finding oneself in a parallel universe. There were ABC, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post and other news outlets reporting matter-of-factly that the Hunter Biden laptop showed no evidence of tampering and was both real and authentic.
These are the same outlets, and some of the same reporters, who eagerly spread the false claims that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
There was no effort to track down the signatories of the now-debunked letter from former intelligence officials just before the election. In the letter, figures such as Leon Panetta, former CIA director in the Obama administration, claimed that the laptop had all the markings of a Russian disinformation effort by intelligence services.
As Turley noted, Panetta continued to peddle the baseless assertion even in late 2023, a charge that the federal government now calls a “conspiracy theory.” As you might imagine, Leon wasn't available for comment.
Turley listed several examples of the media's intentional failure to chase down political figures who were all-in on the Russian plot narrative:
There was no attempt by the media to confront associates of the Biden campaign (including now Secretary of State Antony Blinken) who pushed a long effort to get former intelligence officials to sign a letter.
In 2020, CBS News’ Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens.
Figures like former Chief of Staff at the CIA and Department of Defense Jeremy Bash, who told MSNBC that the laptop “looked like Russian intelligence” and “walked like Russian intelligence.”Bash [said] it made Trump an effective agent of Russian intelligence since he kept referencing the laptop. ...
"[W]e have to acknowledge the fact that the President of the United States is supporting, is condoning, is welcoming a Russian intelligence operation in 2020. … This is collusion in plain sight.”
Except it wasn't. Every bit of it was a crock of crap — from the beginning.
And, best (worst) of all, Joe Biden.
There was no attempt to question President Joe Biden, who made this false claim in the presidential election to deflect any questions about the evidence of corrupt influence peddling on the laptop.
One should expect nothing more from a serial-lying man who somehow made his way to the presidency of the United States. And once he got there, he (his handlers) tried to destroy the country as we know it.
So here's the thing.
It's one thing when the liberal media ignores, misinterprets, or misrepresents the news solely to prop up Democrat politicians or policies. But it's quite another when they go all-in on a major story, eagerly allowing themselves to become duped, only to later find out they were wrong from the outset.
And when they do find out, they hope that nobody remembers their spectacularly wrong takes, and that the whole thing will just go away. Why? Jonathan Turley offered a perfect analogy.
Years ago, I wrote that the Biden campaign had pulled off the single greatest political trick in history. As I wrote back then, the key to this Houdini-esque trick was to get the media to invest in the deception like audience members called to the stage.
Houdini used to make his elephant Jennifer disappear on stage every night because he knew that the audience wanted her to disappear. They were part of the act. The Bidens made the media part of the act, and these reporters have to back the illusion or admit that they were part of the deception.
Nuff said.
Related:
