The US presidential election was always going to be dirty given the characters involved and the obvious target in the Democratic Party candidate’s wayward son Hunter Biden (50). There’s some local interest too. The Sunday Times told us over the weekendĀ that in May last year Hunter married South African Melissa Cohen, formerly of King David School, Victory Park and 17 years his junior. Their courtship was brief, marrying just 10 days after being introduced by mutual friends. Hunter is going to need all of Missy’s support in the next three weeks as reports of his financial infidelity – with US taxpayer funds, nogal – are sure to escalate as Donald Trump tries to make up the 11 points he trails by in the polls. Here’s some forthright opinion on what’s going down from today’s Wall Street Journal. –Ā Alec Hogg
Collusion theory promoters attack new Biden story – WSJ
By James Freeman*
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
(Wall Street Journal) – News consumers should be gratified to know that the New York TimesĀ has decided it will demand the highest journalistic standardsāat least from its crosstown rivals. Just three days afterĀ a Times writer formally announcedĀ that the newspaper is transitioning āfrom the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives,ā Times staff is now attacking the juiciest narrative of the 2020 campaign.
The kerfuffle began with a story published this morning in the New York Post, a Times rival which, like the Journal, is owned by News Corp. The Postās Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle FonrougeĀ report:
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
āDear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. Itās realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,ā the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burismaās No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for āadvice on how you could use your influenceā on the companyās behalf.
The blockbuster correspondence ā which flies in the face of Joe Bidenās claim that heās ānever spoken to my son about his overseas business dealingsā ā is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
Thereās no question itās a juicy narrative, and the Postās principal source, former New York Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, says itās going to get juicier. Mr. GiulianiĀ tweets today:
Emails from Hunter Bidenās hard drive reveal Joe Biden lied about BURISMA.
Much more to come.
But the Times doesnāt seem to like this particular juicy narrative, and some of its employees have taken to Twitter to raise questions about the account. For example Maggie HabermanĀ wonders why Senate government affairs committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) never found such evidence:
Things that are sketchy in NYP story on Hunter Biden – why wasnāt this in Ron Johnson report if itās been in possession for awhile? When did Giuliani acquire it? Giuliani has been everywhere on the but this has been kicking around since late last year and unreleased till now?
It seems that reinstating the stodgy traditions of journalism is the Times policy when a narrative heads in a dangerous political direction. And the Times isnāt the only place that has suddenly become cautious about reporting on the foreign relationships of presidential candidates.
Sounding like a traditional publisher rather than a manager of an open communications network,Ā FacebookāsĀ Andy StoneĀ writesĀ on Twitter:
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebookās third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
Update: Twitter is blocking sharing of the Post story with a note saying, āWe canāt complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.ā
Kyle Griffin of MSNBCĀ instructs:
No one should link to or share that NY Post āreportā. You can discuss the obvious flaws and unanswerable questions in the report without amplifying what appears to be disinformation.
Politicoās Kyle Cheney has also been expressing his skepticism about the Post story but he seems to want to hedge his bets in case the report is accurate. HeĀ tweets:
Again, stipulating that the suspect email is real, thereās literally nothing in it that says Joe Biden met with a Burisma adviser.
āThe opportunity to meet,ā may just as easily have meant Hunter promised a meeting in the future that may never have occurred.
Possibly true, but if the emails are real it would still demonstrate that the Bidens have been hiding the true nature of the services Hunter Biden was performing for his lucrative paycheck. The already questionable Biden justifications for maintaining this clear conflict of interest fall apart. The Post says the Biden campaign did not respond to its inquiry.
But now PoliticoĀ reportsĀ that a Biden campaign spokesmanĀ saysĀ that āwe have reviewed Joe Bidenās official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.ā
Does this mean that the Bidens arenāt disputing the authenticity of the emails? The qualifier about Mr. BidenāsĀ officialĀ schedule also suggests that even the denial of a meeting–via a spokesman–is fairly weak.
Jonathan Chait at New York magazineĀ seems to fearĀ the email correspondence is legitimate because by early afternoon he was already spinning this morningās shocking report as old news:
The emails, if they are legitimate, show once again that Hunter Biden was trying to gain influence for Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that hired him, in an obvious ploy to gain an entry into Joe Bidenās inner circle… Was Burisma paying Hunter Biden in an attempt to influence his father? Yes.
This column must have missed the press conference where the Bidens admitted they were running an influence-peddling operation to leverage the vice presidency of the United States. Are all of Hunter Bidenās foreign business arrangements covers for lobbying operations and did he register as a foreign agent for each overseas sham?
Mr. Chait also continues to insist, like so many other media pundits, that when Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, it carried no benefit for Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
In August this columnĀ noted whyĀ thatās a highly questionable assumption:
A lot of media folk argue that the investigation of Hunter Bidenās business associate had essentially ended long before the elder Biden forced the sacking of the prosecutor. But evenĀ a long-winded effortĀ to make this argument by the Washington Postās āFact Checkerā column in 2019 acknowledged that an asset seizure order against the oligarch had been reinstated a mere two weeks before the prosecutorās firing. The story also acknowledged that the asset seizure wasnāt lifted and the case wasnāt closed until after the Ukrainians had complied with the Biden demand to fire the prosecutor.
Even if the conventional media view of the case is accurate, it still doesnāt explain why the Ukrainian energy tycoon felt the need to rent a Biden who knew nothing about Ukraine or energy.
If the Bidens now want to admit they were selling political juice, the question is what exactly they delivered in terms of U.S. policy. And if they say they never gave the oligarch what he wanted, why did he keep writing checks for years?
If the New York Times and other media outlets in 2016 had made the same effort theyāve made in todayās attempt to poke holes in the Post report, the bogus Russia collusion story would have died before Donald Trump even took office.
*Mr. Freeman is the co-author ofĀ āThe Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.ā
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