By Monica Chen
The New York Post’s bombshell story in October 2020 of Hunter Biden’s laptop, full of suspicious emails and much personal debauchery, was not “Russian disinformation” afterall.
The New York Times confirmed on Wednesday that the infamous laptop does belong to Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.
Buried in a story updating the progress of the Department of Justice investigation on Biden’s taxes, the Times wrote:
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
Conservatives cheered the revelation as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tried to shut down questions from reporters this week:
No, Hunter Biden isn’t a government employee, but his father is. And when the son of the vice president uses that connection to help foreign companies and land well-paying jobs for which he is not qualified, people will want answers. People will also wonder about how he is using that connection currently, and whether his father benefits.
Here is how Joe Biden responded to a question on Hunter’s conflict of interest during his 2020 presidential campaign:
Separately from the laptop scoop, Tony Bobulinski, former U.S. Navy lieutenant and former business partner of Hunter Biden also came forward on Oct. 22, 2020, less than a week after the Post story and on the day of the final presidential debate. Bobulinski provided statements on Biden’s business dealings in China, including the “10 percent for the big guy” peek behind the curtain, as well as Hunter referring to his father as “the chairman.”
It has to be pointed out that both before and after the Post’s scoop in October 2020, others in the media were also raising concerns about Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine and other countries.
“By taking the job at Burisma, Hunter exploited his father’s public power for private gain in a manner that undermined U.S. interests, according to several Obama administration officials,” wrote New York Magazine in 2019.
In September 2021, Business Insider reported from emails obtained separately from the laptop that Hunter Biden wanted a retainer of $2 million annually to unlock billions of Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.
That was the country the Obama administration, including then Vice President Joe Biden and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bombed in 2011 and drove into civil war. Ten years later, their assets are still frozen under Biden’s presidency.
So along with the denials and refusal to answer questions from our leaders is also a troubling trend on the part of the media: The media, especially conservative media, is so obsessed with the laptop and its seedy contents, they might have put Hunter Biden in control of the narrative, letting him sell whatever image of himself he wants.
Witness Jimmy Kimmel interviewing Biden extensively about his crack habit last April. At this point, Hunter Biden is somehow even beyond the usual coddling of celebrities, in a space that has no accountability or pushback whatsoever.
Not even Brad Pitt could get away with this self-serving victimhood.
Has a movie star ever gotten such sympathetic interview on their drug addiction? And imagine the Obama girls, the Trump children, and Chelsea Clinton laughing on national television about smoking crack in restaurants.
Where is the moral authority, not to mention poise and dignity, that a country demands of its leaders and people around them?
Finally, the strangest thing that no one in the media — including the reporters at the Post — wants to admit about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is how orchestrated it is.
Sure, Hunter Biden could have recorded himself smoking crack. But why would he put his phone on a dresser or turn on his laptop camera and record himself sitting in bed naked, with a naked woman, and talk about his business dealings? And let’s say one of the women he was with took this infamous picture of him passed out with a crack pipe dangling from his mouth. Wouldn’t a man who had some power as the son of the vice president immediately delete the photo? Why would he upload the photo onto a laptop? And finally, why would he identify himself on camera with his driver’s license, to make sure that we all know this is Hunter Biden?
Why does it look like the contents of this laptop were created specifically for third party viewing? And if the laptop and the photos and videos were planned and orchestrated, who was behind the camera?
Did the laptop as it came to the Post look like a normal laptop, with junk files, photos of pets, household bills and receipts? Or was it scrubbed clean save for a folder of incriminating photos and videos, along with select emails? What else is on the laptop?
The laptop story was a real journalistic triumph. The corruption detailed on it is real, but this question also needs to be asked: Are we seeing the real picture, or are we still just seeing what the Bidens want to show us?
The Spring Magazine 