{"id":172161,"date":"2020-11-09T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=172161"},"modified":"2020-11-07T10:42:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-07T10:42:23","slug":"article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored-by-the-intercept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored-by-the-intercept\/","title":{"rendered":"Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored by The Intercept"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

29 Oct 2020 – I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden \u2014 the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it<\/a> absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept\u2019s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me \u2014 to shorten it, fix typos, etc \u2014 but it\u2019s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not \u201cedit\u201d but completely gut as a condition to publication.<\/em><\/p>\n

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TITLE:\u00a0The Real Scandal: US Media Uses Falsehoods to Defend Joe Biden From Hunter\u2019s Emails<\/h3>\n

Publication by the\u00a0New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, relating to\u00a0Vice President Joe Biden\u2019s work in Ukraine<\/a>, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family\u2019s\u00a0pursuit of business opportunities in China<\/a>, provoked extraordinary efforts by a\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.<\/p>\n

One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions \u2014 the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election \u2014 journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.<\/p>\n

After the Post\u2019s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.<\/p>\n

Individuals included in some of the email chains have\u00a0confirmed the contents\u2019 authenticity<\/a>. One of Hunter\u2019s former business partners, Tony Bubolinski, has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden\u2019s brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the published email chains,\u00a0appeared to confirm the authenticity<\/a>\u00a0as well, though he\u00a0refused to answer<\/a>\u00a0follow-up questions about it.<\/p>\n

Thus far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall Street Journal\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0that it found no corporate records reflecting that a deal was finalized and that \u201ctext messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don\u2019t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated \u2014 so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, the Journal\u2019s columnist Kimberly Strassel\u00a0reviewed a stash of documents<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cfound correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post,\u201d including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday\u00a0reached a similar conclusion<\/a>: while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, \u201crecords produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy,\u201d and \u201cmake clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his \u2018family\u2019s brand\u2019 as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture.\u201d<\/p>\n

These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, \u201cthat the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president.\u201d Strassel noted that \u201ca May 2017 \u2018expectations\u2019 document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for \u2018the big guy\u2019\u2014who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.\u201d And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi\u00a0published an article<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden\u2019s attempt to replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.<\/p>\n

All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son\u2019s business associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation\u2019s most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.<\/p>\n

The initial documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in\u00a0interviews with news outlets<\/a>\u00a0and then (under penalty of prosecution)\u00a0to a Senate Committee;<\/a>\u00a0he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.<\/p>\n

Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked\u00a0a highly unusual censorship campaign<\/a>\u00a0by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its \u201cfact-check,\u201d one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter\u2019s handling of the censorship and\u00a0reversed the policy<\/a>\u00a0that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation\u2019s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two weeks.<\/p>\n

After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs\u00a0have donated<\/a>\u00a0almost entirely<\/a>\u00a0to the Biden campaign, it was the nation\u2019s media outlets and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin responsibility for the story.<\/p>\n

Numerous news outlets,\u00a0including the Intercept<\/a>, quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the \u201cclassic trademarks\u201d of a \u201cRussian disinformation\u201d plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cno concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation\u201d and the paper said even the FBI has \u201cacknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post on Sunday\u00a0published an op-ed<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged conspiracy theories \u2014 that contained this extraordinary proclamation: \u201cWe must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation \u2014 even if they probably aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even the\u00a0letter from the former intelligence officials<\/a>\u00a0cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all part of some \u201cRussian disinformation\u201d scheme explicitly admitted that \u201cwe do not have evidence of Russian involvement,\u201d though many media outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic questions about them. \u201cI think we need to be very, very clear that what he\u2019s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night\u2019s debate. Biden\u2019s senior advisor Symone Sanders\u00a0similarly warned on MSNBC<\/a>: \u201cif the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name\u00a0trend all morning<\/a>\u00a0along with the derogatory nickname \u201cMAGA Haberman.\u201d CBS News\u2019 Bo Erickson was\u00a0widely attacked<\/a>\u00a0even by his\u00a0some in the media<\/a>\u00a0simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a \u201csmear.\u201d<\/p>\n

That it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor, in\u00a0an anazing statement<\/a>\u00a0representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR\u2019s refusal to cover the story on the ground that \u201cwe do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers\u2019 and listeners\u2019 time on stories that are just pure distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter\u27a1\ufe0f https:\/\/t.co\/CJesPgmGvo<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/jAi7PnpbZf<\/a><\/p>\n

— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n